The Shoe Thrower

The world around you is falling apart, and no one is listening. How far do you go to be heard?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Latif Nasser?

  Just before we start, this episode discusses war, casualties of war, and torture. It may not be suitable for young or sensitive listeners.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Wait, you're listening.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  All right.

• 0:18Speaker 03

  You're listening to Radiolab.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Radiolab. From WNYC.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  See?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:30Latif Nasser?

  This is Radiolab. I'm Latif Dasser, and today we have a story from our reporter, Sarah Kari.

• 0:36Speaker 04

  Okay, so a couple of months ago, I got in the studio to do this interview that I'd been trying to make happen for close to a year. Hello.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Hi, Sarah. Can you hear me?

• 0:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  I'd been trying to connect with this Iraqi guy in Baghdad, but

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Hold on, I can't hear.

• 0:54Speaker 04

  Things were not really going to plan.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  So we are waiting.

• 0:58Speaker 04

  Hmm. It turns out my interviewee was taking his time having a little tea after his lunch. And then, after about 45 minutes, he shows up.

• 1:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, hello.

• 1:08Speaker 04

  Hello, I'm waiting. How are you?

• 1:10Speaker 05

  And Sarah, did you speak Arabic?

• 1:12Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:13Speaker 05

  You don't speak Arabic?

• 1:14Speaker 04

  Uh, only a little bit. We fumbled through, mostly me doing the fumbling. Sure, sure. With the help of Iraqi journalist Mace Al Bayat.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I've met you.

• 1:24Speaker 05

  Mace, hello and welcome. May Allah bless you.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  But then

• 1:28Speaker 05

  We have one hour, right, Sarah?

• 1:32Speaker 04

  So I was hoping to talk to you for longer because I want to get lots of details about your life and tell your story, and I don't want to miss any details.

• 1:40Speaker 05

  Okay, I hope you have another question or new questions. You have new questions.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  It was pretty clear that he was sick of talking about the one thing that I really wanted to ask him about. And if you're feeling frustrated, just tell me.

• 1:54Speaker 05

  Don't worry, I will tell you.

• 1:56Latif Nasser?

  Which is what?

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Well, okay, so maybe let's just start with introduce yourself and tell me why you're famous.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  My name is Muntadhar Azaidi. And I threw my shoes at George W. Bush.

• 2:20Latif Nasser?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Do you remember him?

• 2:22Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, I remember that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  Okay, well, just in case for anyone who doesn't remember, let me just do a quick refresher.

• 2:30Latif Nasser?

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  It's December 14th, 2008, more than five years into the war in Iraq. And George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he's giving a press conference.

• 2:43Speaker 06

  Thank you for your kind invitation.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Next to him is Nouriel Malaki, the Prime Minister of Iraq.

• 2:48Speaker 06

  And I'm looking forward to some food.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Now officially, Bush is there to sign an agreement, shake some hands.

• 2:56Speaker 06

  Leaving the next president with a stable foundation for the future.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  As he's on his way out at the end of his second term.

• 3:01Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  But he's also clearly trying to make this point.

• 3:04Speaker 06

  War is not over.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  That in his eyes

• 3:05Speaker 06

  But with the conclusion of these agreements, it is decisively on its way to being won.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  The war has been a success. At the end, he says, "Thank you" in Arabic.

• 3:17Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  And then

• 3:25Latif Nasser?

  Holy.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  So you see this guy just sort of pops out of the crowd out of nowhere and throws a shoe, and George Bush dodges it. And then he throws a second one, and Malaki tries to swat that one out of the way.

• 3:39Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  And then it's just chaos. He's tackled to the ground, they're dragging him out, and then the clip ends.

• 3:47Latif Nasser?

  Yeah. It's so quick.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  I know, it's so quick. And it blows up. I mean,

• 3:52Speaker 06

  Extraordinary scenes took place.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  You know, it's basically top of the news across the globe.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  George W. Bush, Muntadhar Azaidi.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  And the clip

• 4:05Speaker 04

  is all over the internet.

• 4:07Speaker 06

  Call it the shoe heard round the world.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  It's really as viral as something can be in 2008.

• 4:12Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  But even today, I feel like with most people, if you're like, hey, that shoe thrower guy, they're like, oh, yeah.

• 4:20Latif Nasser?

  I remember it feeling silly.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  Right. I mean, and definitely there were some like, how dare he kind of reactions, but generally

• 4:27Speaker 06

  No! Oh!

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Here in the US.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  It's slightly painful.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  It was as much like late night show fodder as it was news.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  Shoe me once, shoes on you.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  And for so many people, their main reaction was like

• 4:45Speaker 06

  Pretty quick, moving pretty quick.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  George W. Bush was weirdly agile there, like props to him.

• 4:49Latif Nasser?

  He was quick on his feet, I remember that. And he did a little side to side.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  Looks like we finally found something President Bush is good at. Dodgeball!

• 4:58Speaker 04

  And you know, for me, when this happened, I was 14 years old. I was growing up in a very Muslim immigrant community, going to Islamic school. You know, in this post-9/11 war on terror era, very aware of like how so many people had died in Iraq. And like a lot of people, I had a very intuitive understanding of the anger and frustration that this guy was expressing. But at the same time, I'll admit, like, I just sort of thought he was like a random crazy guy. You know, I think there was that much to it.

• 5:29Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, yeah. It feels like a rash move made in anger.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  But fast forward to today, with everything that is happening in the world right now, and things that the US is contributing to in Gaza, in Lebanon, and now in Iran, it feels like we're in another never-ending sort of out of control war.

• 5:48Latif Nasser?

  Very unpopular war.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Very unpopular, right. I just find myself flashing back to that era.

• 5:54Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  And specifically to that guy. And so a while back, I just looked him up. And the first thing I learned was that he was a journalist, like an Iraqi journalist.

• 6:05Latif Nasser?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Same. And suddenly I was like, oh, okay, like this act of throwing a shoe, I mean, it's not what anybody is supposed to do, but it's especially not what journalists are supposed to do.

• 6:18Latif Nasser?

  That's right, yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Right? You know, like even for us, like, we're not supposed to protest or advocate or even express opinions or emotions that could be seen as political.

• 6:28Latif Nasser?

  It's like literally in our job description here, yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Right, exactly.

• 6:31Latif Nasser?

  And for good reason. Like, the reason is we want people to trust what we say, the coverage we do, that we're not spinning it in one way or another. We don't have our thumb on the scale.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Right, no, totally. So I guess to see him not just like express his opinion, but to actually throw something at the president. I just kept thinking, like, what exactly got him to that point, you know? What, what happened there? And what does he think of that moment now?

• 6:59Speaker 05

  I can smoking some cigars.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Uh, I think so, as long as you stay close to the mic.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  I smoke without voice, okay? Don't worry.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Okay, okay. And once we sort of got warmed up, actually, this one interview turned into several. Like, we just ended up talking for, I think, something like eight hours.

• 7:18Latif Nasser?

  Wow.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  And there was so much about Muntadhar, what happened, that I had, and I think most people have no clue about. And also, this act at the center of it, this act of throwing the shoe, the more I learned about it, the more it became really layered and fascinating and weirdly kind of perfect.

• 7:47Latif Nasser?

  Huh.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Okay, just to back up a little here, when did you decide to become a journalist? And why did you want to become a journalist?

• 7:58Speaker 05

  He grew up with big imagination.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Muntadhar says that growing up as a kid in Iraq, his mom would read to him every night before bed.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Which was very inspiring to him.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  And he fell in love with stories and books.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  He used to visit any neighbors or any family members who have a library, and he would just read all of the books that he can lay his hands on.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  And in particular, as he got older, and Saddam Hussein was at the height of his dictatorship, he started to read the work of journalists and political poets who wrote about the plight of ordinary people under repression. Then in 1990, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. And in reaction, the US and its allies

• 9:00Speaker 06

  Together with many other nations, I ordered an embargo.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Place sanctions on Iraq.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  The stakes are high. Iraq is already a rich and powerful country.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  And of course, the impact of that, it's mostly felt by the people of Iraq.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  It was like a cancer. Eating your bones, eating your soul.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  By some estimates,

• 9:24Speaker 02

  over half a million children died.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Muntadhar was just 14 years old at the time.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  He had three brothers and three sisters and his mother.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  So he started lining up at construction sites, just looking for any job that he could get.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  He would work from the morning till the evening, and all of the income he would get out of it is literally to buy two bags of bread.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  And then 9/11 happens.

• 9:56Speaker 06

  At this hour,

• 9:56Speaker 04

  George W. Bush

• 9:57Speaker 06

  American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which now obviously we know wasn't true, decides to invade Iraq.

• 10:09Speaker 06

  To disarm Iraq, to free its people.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  And to defend the world from grave danger. Muntadhar, can you tell me about some of your memories of when the invasion started? And how old were you when that, when that happened?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  He was 24 years old.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  The first memory of the invasion for him, it was when he was in a bus and he saw a convoy of the American soldiers in Humvees.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  And one of the American soldiers, he got out of his Humvee in the middle of the traffic.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  And he actually pissed on a car.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  And his colleagues were laughing.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  He told me that in that moment, he could feel,

• 11:11Speaker 04

  as he put it, the disaster that was coming their way.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  They didn't come to liberate them. They came to piss on people.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  And this feeling started to come over him.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  That he has the duty to write about what's happening.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  Like, I want to become a journalist. Because he felt that journalists actually have this very real power.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  He said this thing to me very along the lines of that saying, that journalists write the first draft of history. They are the people that set the record on things.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  And he began writing in newspapers.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  Eventually, he ends up at a TV station called Al-Baghdadiya.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  And he starts reporting

• 12:16Speaker 04

  on all the ways that the invasion is unleashing, as he put it, suffering.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Pain.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Hunger.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  On ordinary people.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Muntadhar, can you give me some examples of the kinds of stories that you reported?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  The story of that little girl, eight years old girl called Zahra.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  One day in 2007 in Baghdad,

• 13:02Speaker 04

  some American soldiers found an explosive device on their convoy.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  It exploded in front of them and they start to shoot randomly after that.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  And because there was a school nearby.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  The school guard, he came out from the school and he's like, please don't shoot. But they kept shooting.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  This little girl Zahra was shot and killed.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  At that time, the Americans threatened everybody in the area and said that you must not say she was killed by, by the Americans.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  And so, Muntadhar says,

• 13:42Speaker 04

  a lot of journalists were intimidated by this story.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  And they didn't want to cover it.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  But he decided he was gonna do it.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  He interviewed the little girls who were with her outside the school.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  They were playing with her and they were talking and laughing. And then suddenly, that girl Zahra just fell on her face. And her friends, they thought that she was joking. They nudged her and she didn't say anything. And they saw blood streaming out of her body.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  He was, he was having impacted by Zahra's story.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  I'm curious, did you just report the facts? Or did you add, I don't know, some commentary? Or yeah, what was your perspective in that story?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  The way he was writing the story itself, it was very emotional.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  The final image was like a group photo of Zahra with her friends.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  So he said, this is the picture of Zahra,

• 15:05Speaker 02

  who was killed by the American soldier, who actually claims that he was in my country to build democracy.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Even when he read the script to his colleagues, everyone was crying.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Now, one note I want to make here is that, while I've been able to independently confirm many of the broad strokes of Zahra's story, I actually haven't been able to track down Muntadhar's own report on her. The Baghdad archives are really hard to track down all these years later, which means that for a few of the specific details that you just heard, we only have Muntadhar's account to go off of. However, from all of my sources, familiar with this time period in Iraq, stories like Zahra's were far from the exceptional case. Because what we know today, what is now well documented about the Iraq war, is that the United States military caused widespread harm to civilians. There were rampant abuses of power, like US forces doing arbitrary raids,

• 16:11Speaker 04

  stealing, arresting civilians en masse, committing torture and sexual violence, and indiscriminate killing. The estimates of senseless civilian deaths go into the hundreds of thousands. But to this day, we don't actually know the full extent of the civilian loss of life.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  But to go back to Muntadhar, what we do know is that a couple of days after the Zahra story came out.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  He was in the street and a car stopped by him and said, get in our car or it's gonna get nasty.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  So he actually got kidnapped.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  They put him in a small room. They wanted Muntadhar

• 16:53Speaker 02

  to be quiet and not speak again.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Like no more publishing stories like the one about Zahra.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  He believes it probably was someone from the Iraqi government who was connected at that time with the Americans.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  And I should point out that now it's also well documented that the US forces were like actively shutting down news reports and reporters who were trying to get these kinds of stories out into the world. And in fact, a couple of months later,

• 17:24Speaker 04

  American soldiers actually took him into custody.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  They raided his home and they detained him.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  Why?

• 17:31Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  The shameful part of it was they took him in his pajama.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  It was a baby blue pajama as well.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  In your mind, was the arrest also connected to your reporting?

• 17:53Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't know why.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  But as this was happening to him, the way he was seeing the Iraq war covered in the news around the world felt so upside down. Like even before the invasion started.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  George W. Bush, he said,

• 18:14Speaker 02

  the Iraqis are gonna welcome the American soldiers with roses and everybody will be happy.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  Full disclosure, I haven't been able to find evidence of this exact moment. It's actually possible that it wasn't Bush, but it was some other administration official. I mean, Dick Cheney said something like, they're gonna welcome us as liberators, you know? So that rhetoric was definitely really prevalent at the time. And weirdly enough, this specific image of Iraqis greeting Americans with flowers or roses is a thing that a lot of people I've talked to actually do remember hearing.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  It was heavily marketed by the American media, but also the Western media.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  What does that make you feel?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  When, when Muntadhar heard it, he said he really wanted to kind of say, this is not happening. People are not welcoming the American soldiers with roses.

• 19:08Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, I mean, I can imagine how galling that would be. Like it's, it's, it's your job to tell the story of your country, of what's actually happening. And not only is no one listening, like insult to injury, the story that is being told is dead wrong.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. And with all of these things piling up, it wasn't long before he hit a breaking point.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  It happened one day when he was reporting on the bombing of a house.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  An Apache war plane strike the house.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  And as he was looking into the rubble, he saw

• 19:44Speaker 02

  an elderly man wearing the Iraqi dschatacha, the white robe, in the middle of the wires and the concrete. All of his intestines were out.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  He could see hands and arms of children trapped under the collapsed roof.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  And after he submitted the footage to the TV station,

• 20:14Speaker 02

  he, he had a breakdown.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  He couldn't stop crying.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  He was so broken at that time.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  The thing that hit him was that despite the fact that he was reporting all of these stories,

• 20:33Speaker 02

  he could feel that no one was listening. No one cared. Maybe people would read about it within Iraq, maybe maximum would go in the Arab world. But the outside world, like Europe and America, these stories were not reaching. People's pain is not being heard.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  I really wanted all of this world to hear and understand the pain that people are going through.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  So finally, one day...

• 21:10Speaker 05

  I think I was in the shower.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 21:18Speaker 05

  And I talked to myself.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Like, what do I do? I need to do something.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  And that is when the idea pops into his head.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  I should throw a shoe at George W. Bush.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes, he is this. Okay, that's a great idea. And I kept thinking about it every single day. Every day, when I was going to work, I see him on TV. I say, "I swear, as soon as I see you, I'm gonna throw my shoe at you."

• 21:57Speaker 04

  I don't think, I don't think I fully understand, like, how did you even get the idea to throw a shoe? Like, I understand you were angry and you were, you know, all this was building up over a long period of time, but where does the idea to throw a shoe come from?

• 22:11Speaker 05

  In my mind.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  My evil.

• 22:18Speaker 05

  It's Shaitini.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  That loosely translates to mischief, by the way. No, but there's so many ways to do Shaitini, right? Like, you could have screamed at him. You could have waved a flag. You could have asked him a really pointed question. You could have demanded that he apologize. But why shoe?

• 22:35Speaker 05

  Exactly. That's, that's a good point.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  I want to speak in Arabic to explain my idea. Exactly.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Hmm, sure.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  A key reason was the ultimate gift that you can give in the Arab culture is roses. So it's a huge thing. And that is why, Montadar, he said, "I wanted to do something completely the opposite of roses."

• 23:03Speaker 05

  The complete opposite of that is actually what people wear in their feet, which is the shoe.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  And, you know, this is a thing in, in Muslim cultures, but probably a lot of cultures around the world. You know, shoes are unclean. You don't bring them into the house. Especially in Arab cultures, it's an insult to show someone the bottom of your shoe.

• 23:26Latif Nasser?

  It's like, here's what I think of you. You're beneath me.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  For our culture, it's by far the most degrading thing to do to somebody.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  For example, our mothers, they use slippers on our children.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  In our, our culture, and maybe in your culture as well.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  So that is where it came from.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  And Montadar also told me, you know, look, during the occupation,

• 24:01Speaker 05

  there were two types of resistance in Iraq. One, which was the armed resistance,

• 24:07Speaker 04

  like militias that had cropped up,

• 24:09Speaker 05

  fighting the American troops.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  And then, on the other hand, you had...

• 24:13Speaker 05

  The intellectual resistance. And I felt that I want to be part of the intellectual resistance, and hence why I decided to throw the shoe.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  I mean, throwing a shoe is not intellectual resistance. Like, did you, did you realize you were crossing a line beyond just intellectual resistance into something else?

• 24:35Speaker 05

  You cannot put yourself in my shoe

• 24:41Speaker 05

  to know what happened in my mind in this moment.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  I'm actually, I'm actually stunned by your reaction.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Really?

• 24:56Speaker 05

  Because I just told you that half a million children have been killed. Many people have suffered for years and years.

• 25:06Speaker 05

  And you were just listening, and you just acted like... It's okay. It's kind of like...

• 25:13Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. It's not that. It's not that.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  Let me just translate for you.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Sorry, let me, yeah. I just want to say, Montadar, it's not that. It's not that I don't think...

• 25:30Speaker 05

  I'm not obliged to kind of get a reaction according to your Western standard. And, and he's not, and he's saying... Let me just, please, let me finish, because it's, actually, he said a lot.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, sorry.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  He said, "Yes, I am a journalist."

• 25:49Speaker 05

  I've been documenting a lot, whether it's video, audio, written pieces. No one has listened. No one has done anything. No one was prosecuted. The Americans did not even get my stories. I wanted people to once stop and pause and ask, "Who is Zahra? What happened to Iraqis? Who are the people who were suffering?"

• 26:20Speaker 05

  By this action, which was very intentional action,

• 26:25Speaker 05

  I made the world ask the question, "Why this shoe was a thrown?" Hence why, it's been almost 18 years, and he's still doing all of these interviews to tell the world why he threw a shoe.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  If he was doing just a question that could embarrass the American president, this is not gonna be enough, because that question could be washed away.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  No, I totally understand. And, Montadar, this is, the reason I'm asking so many questions about this is because this is why I wanted to talk to you, honestly. Like, the reason I thought of you, I, I... One night, I, almost two years ago, I was reading the news about Gaza, and I was feeling so angry. And I was like in bed. I was trying to go to sleep, okay? And I was just so, so, so angry. And I, you know, I'm a journalist. I was like, and, and I don't know if you had this, but here in the US, like, there's a lot of pressure on journalists, like, "Oh, stay neutral. Just say the facts. Don't say how you actually feel.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Don't say anything political, because then people will think that you're biased." Like, I was feeling like, I was feeling like being a journalist was like having handcuffs on. Like, I can't say that this is something horrible that's happening. And I swear to God, I don't know why, but in this moment, I thought of you. I thought of what you did. And that's why I want to understand where that idea came from.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  There's so many different options you had, and you picked one specific option, right? Which is, "I'm gonna throw a shoe."

• 28:15Speaker 05

  In some moment, I actually thought, "Maybe I should be like an armed resistance."

• 28:22Speaker 05

  For example, one time, I was called by someone who told me that American soldiers raided the house and, and then they raped his wife and his sisters.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  So I went there, and I talked to the women who were weeping, and they covered their faces because of the shame.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  The tears were wetting their veil.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  I was very angry.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  And actually, as soon as I walked out from the house, I saw a Humvee, and Americans were standing just outside that Humvee, smoking and laughing and joking.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  And I thought, honestly, if I could have a weapon, I probably would have killed them.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Why did you decide not to do that?

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Because for me, these crimes that I've seen and I've covered, it's, it's not enough to prosecute one soldier or like kill one, one soldier or, or a couple of them. At the end of the day, those are just people who are following the command.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  The most important thing is to go to the head of the snake, the person who is giving the orders and who actually allowed and enabled this disaster to happen.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  When you were thinking about what to do to George W. Bush, did you think of any other options? Did you think of throwing anything worse than a shoe?

• 30:05Speaker 05

  No, I never thought of throwing anything but a shoe. And I... I'll tell you why.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 30:10Speaker 05

  If I have killed the president of the United States, he will become a hero.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 30:16Speaker 05

  He will be, um, he will be celebrated as a victim and as a martyr.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  It's so interesting because it's like you had to find the perfect sweet spot between the two options, right? One is the completely nonviolent option, which is like keep reporting or something, ask a really tough question or something. And then the other side is like do something that's actually violent. And this is like somewhere in the middle. And I find that very interesting. It's not quite violent, although maybe, I don't know, maybe it's more on the violent side, but it's like, it's somewhere in between the two options.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  It's actually, it's, it's interesting you say about that fine line between violence and nonviolent. So for example, Bolzconi. Silvia Bolzconi, the Italian prime minister in 2009. Someone who threw a vase at him.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  It was actually a small statue, but anyway. Oh, this is after you, 2009.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  2009, December, maybe.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  And he ended up bleeding.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  Do you see this picture?

• 31:28Speaker 04

  I can't see it too clearly. Can you describe it?

• 31:31Speaker 05

  Okay, one minute.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  It's of the Italian prime minister and, and his face is full of blood. Despite him being a corrupt prime minister, people were sympathizing by him because he bled.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  Even I was sympathizing with the fact that as an old man, he was bleeding.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  To me.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  It's, it's hard to, it's kind of hard to swallow.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Okay, so tell me, Muntadhar, what happens next in the story? It sounds like you have this idea in like 2005.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  Uh, I think.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  Which is like three years before you actually do it, right?

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  What, what happens in the meantime?

• 32:22Speaker 05

  I kept chasing Bush in multiple occasions.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 32:26Speaker 05

  And I tried to attend his press conferences multiple times and I, I did not succeed. I even one time, I wanted to go to Sharm El Sheikh in order to attend the press conference.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  In Egypt?

• 32:39Speaker 05

  In Egypt, yes. And it didn't happen. And so I kept, I kept pursuing him.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  And pursuing George W. Bush, like, how did you do that? How did you figure out where he was going to be and try to track him down?

• 32:55Speaker 05

  You know, I am a journalist.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  So every single time I know there's a press conference, I try to follow it. And interesting enough.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  That incident that when I threw the shoe at him, I didn't even know he was going to be there.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  No way.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Wait, okay, so.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  That's interesting story.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Muntadhar told me that in December of 2008, one day he's at work in the Baghdad newsroom. It's the end of the day, time for him to get up to go home.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  That's enough.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  But.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  By 6 o'clock.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  One of his colleagues turns to him and says.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  We need someone, like one correspondent and two cameramen to go to cover a press conference.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Like, can you go cover this? Because.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  George W. Bush. George W. Bush is gonna be there.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Hmm. What do you think? What's your reaction?

• 33:51Speaker 05

  I'm shocked. I'm freeze.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  He asked his colleague to repeat himself. Like, are you sure? And then he turns to this other reporter.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  And I said, you need to go with the two cameramen.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Like, you didn't want to go initially, Muntadhar?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Nah. No, no, no.

• 34:07Latif Nasser?

  Really?

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, in fact, Muntadhar told me the next thing that he did was.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  He got in his car and he went home.

• 34:17Latif Nasser?

  Huh.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Now, of course, we all know how the day is gonna end, but the dramatic story of how it all actually goes down is coming after the break.

• 34:54Speaker 07

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term sponsor, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Last night, I was having a nice sleep when my eyes popped open and suddenly I remembered an email I forgot to send. And then I was just left wondering if my right eye should be as itchy as it was. Here's the thing, anxiety does not pay attention to business hours. It shows up on the weekends, on vacation, and yes, after hours. But therapy can help. Having someone to talk to about those things on your mind can turn fitful nights into dreamy bliss. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp says it works with more than 125

• 35:38Speaker 07

  health plan networks and that eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/radiolab to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash radiolab.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  Radiolab is supported by Smalls. Did you know most cat foods out there use meat byproducts and cut their food with cheap grains, fillers, and artificial ingredients? Basically stuff that isn't great for your cat. Big pet food does this because it's cheaper to make, but what they save on cost, your cat pays for with their health. Smalls Fresh Cat Food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free, 100% human-grade ingredients you'd find in your fridge, and it's delivered right to your door. Their food is so healthy that 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. If you want to invest in your cat's health, Smalls is giving you 60% off your cat's first

• 36:38Speaker 06

  order, plus free shipping, and free treats for life when you go to smalls.com/radiolab. That's 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com/radiolab.

• 36:52Speaker 06

  Radiolab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone Trade-In, any condition. It has the ultimate Pro Camera System and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro. Requires Trade-In of iPhone 14 or higher excluding iPhone 16E and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  This is our class. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, things you hear in the news, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.

• 37:40Speaker 06

  Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know, I, I've never seen this happen. I've got skirts, I've got shorts. Wait, this is true? This is true.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Mysteries of every size, each week, This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:01Latif Nasser?

  Hey, I'm Latif. This is Radiolab and we are back with Sarah Kari.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when we left off, Muntadhar had just found out that George Bush was gonna be at a press conference in Baghdad. And instead of volunteering to go cover it, he high-tailed it back home.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  And I run home because I was wearing a brand new shoes that I bought from Beirut, Lebanon.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  You didn't want to throw.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  I want to get the dirtiest and the ugliest one.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  And it was, actually.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  I covered many massacres.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  By the Americans before.

• 38:52Latif Nasser?

  He's so, he's really thought this through.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like every last detail. What did the shoes look like? The ones you picked out?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  It was a very comfortable one and it was quite heavy.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  It was kind of like medical shoe, you know?

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Like a, like an orthopedic type of shoe, like?

• 39:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:16Speaker 05

  I bought it from Egypt. Okay.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  What, like colored?

• 39:19Speaker 05

  Black.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 39:21Speaker 05

  What size? You want, want to know the size?

• 39:23Speaker 04

  What size?

• 39:24Speaker 05

  My shoes, same number of George W. Bush president, same size.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  How did you know that?

• 39:31Speaker 05

  He's 43, president of United States.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Forty-third, so your size is 43 and he's the 43rd president? Is that what you're trying to say?

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  It was completely a coincidence.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  Anyway, as he was driving over to the press conference, Muntadhar said he just stopped for a second.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Right on the banks of the Tigris River.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  It was sunset.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  So I stood by the river and I was just staring at the river, at the sunset, and I thought to myself. This could be the last sunset I would ever see.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Like I might, there's gonna be Secret Service there, like there's a good chance I get shot and don't make it out alive.

• 40:33Latif Nasser?

  So, so he's willing to die to do this?

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Were you thinking through a game plan in your mind?

• 40:40Speaker 05

  No, I just threw my shoe at him.

• 40:45Speaker 07

  It was very simple. I just wanted to throw my shoe at him and that's it.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Can you just walk me through what happened step by step?

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Are you curious?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I'm very curious.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  I think you know the answer to that question.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  So here goes. He told me. He entered this area called the green zone.

• 41:08Speaker 07

  That was an area where most of the Saddam Hussein palaces were.

• 41:13Speaker 04

  It's where the Americans were based, pretty locked down.

• 41:19Speaker 07

  When I passed all of the checkpoints, I saw my colleagues there from the Baghdadi TV station.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  And they were kind of like, oh, okay, you came after all?

• 41:31Speaker 07

  And he said, no, no, no, I'm coming here as a citizen. I'm just coming here to watch.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  And he handed them his press credentials, his ID. And when he entered the press conference.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Conference room in the building of Prime Minister Castle.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Somehow.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  He was the first person in there. He looked around.

• 41:59Speaker 07

  The hall was quite massive. I saw all of the Iraqi and the American flags.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  Podium.

• 42:07Speaker 07

  I saw the red carpet.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  In the rows of chairs, he was trying to figure out where to sit.

• 42:15Speaker 07

  In the beginning, he went and sat on the first row. But then he thought, if I'm gonna throw my shoe at him, then I actually I'd better be a little bit behind.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Why? Because that was too close?

• 42:28Speaker 07

  Because if I was on the front row and I throw the shoe, then I will be shot dead straight away. But if I am on the third row, they will think before shooting at me.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  As people were filing in.

• 42:45Speaker 07

  I could feel my heart. It was popping out of my chest.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  He could feel his body catching up to the reality of what he was about to do.

• 42:56Speaker 07

  The adrenaline.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Excitement, fear, what is it?

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Both.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  And then, right before they all took their seats, some guards came in.

• 43:08Speaker 07

  And they were giving us all of these orders. And it was quite degrading.

• 43:14Speaker 07

  They say, you know what, you're gonna have to even be searched.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  And when he went up to get searched.

• 43:20Speaker 07

  There were two bodyguards.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  There was this one guard who was wearing a pilot suit.

• 43:27Speaker 07

  And the pilot one, he was extremely rude.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  After he was done searching somebody.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  He would literally smack them on their bottoms.

• 43:40Speaker 07

  And say, off you go.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  And Mutathar at this point was so amped up, you know, that if he got this guy, he just didn't even know how he was gonna react.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Thankfully, he ended up getting searched by the other guy. And when he's getting searched.

• 44:02Speaker 07

  I ended up taking off my shoes.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  And when he put them back on.

• 44:08Speaker 07

  I wore them like slippers. Because I wanted to be able to take them off easily.

• 44:16Speaker 07

  I was laughing inside because I thought like.

• 44:22Speaker 07

  If only he knew that this is my actual weapon.

• 44:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Wow, okay. Finally, when Mutathar sat back down. It was time.

• 44:34Speaker 07

  George W. Bush walked in.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Thank you for your kind invitation.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  George W. Bush starts saying. I am quite hungry.

• 44:50Speaker 07

  He was just thinking that the only thing that the president is gonna taste is this truth.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  When George Bush is giving the speech, are you listening to what he's saying?

• 45:00Speaker 05

  No, no, I don't know what he said. I'm in another world.

• 45:09Speaker 07

  I was reciting Quran.

• 45:14Speaker 07

  I was trying to do the whole ceremonies as if like I am leaving this world.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  He told me it felt like.

• 45:25Speaker 07

  Like a very nasty flu.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  And in this feverish haze, he heard this.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Voice inside.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  And this voice in his head was saying. Like, look at your life.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  You're chief correspondent, you have your own program. People love you.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  You have a house, you have a car.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Your future is wide open.

• 45:52Speaker 07

  Do you really have to do this?

• 45:57Speaker 07

  And I almost backed off and I thought, what am I doing?

• 46:03Speaker 04

  But suddenly. It was like he woke up.

• 46:08Speaker 07

  And then I was talking to myself and saying.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  If I back off now.

• 46:13Speaker 07

  I would call myself a coward.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Every day for the rest of my life.

• 46:17Speaker 07

  If I lose my self-respect, I don't care if the rest of the world would respect me.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  And so. When George W. Bush neared the end of his speech.

• 46:34Speaker 07

  Clearly, George W. Bush was practicing a lot to say thank you in Arabic.

• 46:40Speaker 05

  When he finished his word.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  In an effort to be at least somewhat honorable and not take him by surprise, he shouted.

• 46:52Speaker 07

  This is my good bike is to you, your dog.

• 46:57Speaker 07

  I never thought actually of saying that, but I just said it that moment.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  Oh, you didn't plan to say that?

• 47:04Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  How bad of an insult is it to call someone a dog? Is it a very bad insult?

• 47:10Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, it's very bad.

• 47:17Speaker 07

  And George Bush, when he saw I lifted my arm.

• 47:23Speaker 07

  I could see his face went completely pale, very pale. And he froze.

• 47:32Speaker 07

  And then.

• 47:35Speaker 07

  I threw the shoe at him. And he bent forward. And the shoe came above him.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  And then, of course.

• 47:46Speaker 07

  He was taking the other shoe.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, was that always the plan to throw both shoes?

• 47:52Speaker 07

  My original plan was just one shoe. Because I thought that as soon as I'm gonna stand up and I throw one shoe, I'm gonna be shot dead. But then.

• 48:05Speaker 07

  When I threw the first one and there was nothing. So I thought, okay, it's time for me to actually do the second side. So I threw the second one.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  Were you surprised at how quickly he dodged the shoes?

• 48:21Speaker 07

  I was mainly focusing on my own actions.

• 48:31Speaker 07

  And I kept releasing all of the anger

• 48:36Speaker 07

  from all of the stories that I've covered.

• 48:41Speaker 07

  For all of the anger that I was building up inside me for years and years.

• 48:48Speaker 07

  Swearing at him and his father.

• 48:54Speaker 07

  And I kept saying that this is for all of the Iraqis that have killed, that are raped, that they affected.

• 49:02Speaker 07

  So I managed to actually release all of that in one time.

• 49:15Speaker 07

  The one who stopped me was an Iraqi journalist.

• 49:21Speaker 07

  He tried to strangle my hand, you know, hold my hand. But then after that, they all gathered on top of me.

• 49:32Speaker 07

  Then I was taken by the security of the Iraqi prime minister.

• 49:46Latif Nasser?

  We'll be back with the rest of the story after this quick break.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Radiolab is supported by Capital One. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bankai. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Radiolab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0.

• 50:28Latif Nasser?

  With iPhone trade-in, any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life. So you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro. Requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher excluding iPhone 16E. An eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 50:54Speaker 07

  Radiolab is supported by Bombas. Cozy season is quickly coming upon us. That means crisp fall mornings and layers. Bombas makes your comfiest fall staples. So you can make the most out of one of the best seasons of the year. Fall weather can be fickle, but with Bombas in your sock drawer, you can rest assured that there's a perfect pair for whatever your day holds. After all, your first layer should be your comfiest layer. Then there's Bombas Compression Sock Collection. Specialized designs for travel, everyday, workout and recovery. There's a fatigue fighting pair for every moment. And the best part about Bombas? For every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchase equals one donation with over 200 million donated and counting.

• 51:39Speaker 07

  Head over to Bombas.com/radiolab and use code RADIOLAB for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash Radiolab. Code RADIOLAB at checkout.

• 51:52Latif Nasser?

  This is Ira Glass of This American Life. Do you know our show? Okay, well, either way, I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories, old fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations. And then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right, I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones. This American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:26Speaker 04

  All right, so we ended with you getting tackled to the ground. For most people, obviously, this is the end of the story. But for Muntadhar, it was not.

• 52:40Speaker 07

  The bodyguards gathered on me. They were beating me really, really bad.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  They broke my teeth. They punched me in the eye.

• 52:54Speaker 07

  And then they were shouting, oh, he's a terrorist. He's a terrorist.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  An Iraqi court sentenced him to three years in prison.

• 53:03Speaker 07

  They stripped me completely and just kept me with my underwears.

• 53:07Speaker 04

  He claims he was tortured pretty horrifically. Doused with cold water, shocked with electricity, beaten with iron bars.

• 53:16Latif Nasser?

  Jesus.

• 53:20Speaker 07

  Maliki's staff kept telling me that people are resentful about what I did and that people hated me.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  And then they-

• 53:33Speaker 07

  They took me in solitary confinement and they locked me there for three months.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  Three months. Oh, my goodness.

• 53:46Speaker 07

  Every single day was way longer than any days that I've ever spent in my entire life.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  On one of these days, Muntadhar was sitting in his cell.

• 54:03Speaker 07

  I just looked at my cell's door. Which had two holes only, so there was barely any light coming from it.

• 54:12Speaker 07

  Then suddenly I just saw- Zahra. Zahra.

• 54:24Speaker 07

  Wearing an off-white dress. She came and she sat on the bed.

• 54:36Speaker 07

  I knew it was Zahra because her mother gave me some of her pictures when I was reporting on this story.

• 54:44Speaker 07

  And she just looked at me.

• 54:49Speaker 07

  And then, then she disappeared.

• 54:58Speaker 07

  I was just surprised.

• 55:03Speaker 07

  He knows that this might be sound like he was crazy, but this is actually what happened.

• 55:09Latif Nasser?

  Wow.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  He told me the next thing he remembered was two officers entering his cell.

• 55:17Speaker 07

  Two high ranking officers from Maliki's office.

• 55:23Speaker 07

  And they were asking me why, why I threw the shoe at George W. Bush. And I just said, it's because they killed Zahra.

• 55:36Speaker 04

  Muntadhar says that some of the guards that are sympathetic to him-

• 55:41Speaker 07

  Began to leak me some information.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  About what was going on while he was in prison. Because outside, the shoe throw struck a nerve.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  In the days after his arrest, people in multiple cities in Iraq poured out into the streets. In the news footage, you can see seas of people waving shoes in the air. And not just in Iraq or in the Middle East.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  But in Latin America.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Europe.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  In the United States.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  I was just watching this really striking footage

• 56:29Speaker 04

  of these American activists throwing shoes at an effigy of Bush in front of the White House.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  But back to Muntadhar.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  After nine months in prison, he ended up getting released.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  And by this point, like a monument had been put up in his honor. One country had offered him a medal and another country had offered him a citizenship. I'm pretty sure several people have also offered their daughter's hand in marriage to him.

• 57:09Latif Nasser?

  No way.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, someone in Saudi Arabia reportedly bid $10 million for the shoes.

• 57:15Latif Nasser?

  Oh, my God.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  Although those allegedly were destroyed.

• 57:19Latif Nasser?

  Wow.

• 57:20Speaker 04

  And Muntadhar's impact on the culture didn't even end there because, jumping ahead a bit-

• 57:27Speaker 04

  In the few years following Muntadhar-

• 57:29Speaker 05

  There's many people used the shoes.

• 57:31Speaker 06

  A speech on economics interrupted with the new fashionable protest of throwing of a shoe.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  There's a rash of copycat shoe throwings at world leaders.

• 57:40Latif Nasser?

  Really?

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 05

  The latest target of a shoe thrower is Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  You have- The shoe yet again, this one directed at the prime minister. The prime minister of India.

• 57:51Speaker 05

  John Howard.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  Prime Minister of Australia.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Hillary Clinton was one I didn't even know about. What was that, a bat? That's somebody throwing something at me? And like truly, I'm not even joking, this is scratching the surface. There's a great Wikipedia entry of all the different shoe throwings.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  And I actually didn't realize that there was this much of a response to the shoe at the time until I started reporting on this, which did make me wonder. Like before Muntadhar, there was so much protest against the Iraq war already. Like what was it about this act that made it take on a life of its own?

• 58:37Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  And you know, there are the obvious reasons, like the high profile-ness of it. The fact that it was like directly at George W. Bush. The symbolism of the shoe that we talked about earlier. The fact that there were so many cameras in the room and this arrow where things kind of newly could go viral.

• 58:54Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Even just the timing of it all, like coming at this moment in the war where people were sick of what was going on.

• 59:01Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 04

  So it does seem like this perfect storm of things. But I do still find myself thinking back to the conversation that Muntadhar and I had earlier.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  About that Goldilocks space between violence and nonviolence. It's really something I don't think I ever thought about or even had the words for before I talked to him. Yeah, I'm just curious how you would describe that or what kind of name you would give that.

• 59:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  So I went looking for somebody who could help me think through it. Like what's the label we put on the shoebox? I actually don't even know how to articulate it. Well, quasi nonviolent methods that include the use of-

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Very low levels of, um, I'm not really sure what the term would be.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Fair.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  But I think there is that niche space.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  So this is Jamila Rakib.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  I am the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution, which is an organization that studies and promotes the use of nonviolent action in conflict.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  And she says that niche space actually does have a rich history.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  There's this long history of people throwing objects at political leaders, at invaders, at occupiers. There's things like throwing eggs.

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  Tomatoes, probably.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Tomatoes, potatoes.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Potatoes somehow feels more violent than eggs and tomatoes.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  You know what? That's, that's a tricky one. I, I think turnips, there's a historical precedence for turnips. It's going, it goes back to ancient Rome.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  No way.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Where people disagreed with the policies of a particular governor and actually threw turnips at him. That sounds painful.

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Heavy root vegetables? Yeah, that sounds, that sounds more painful, for sure.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  And lots of modern day examples come to mind, too. I read about like pie throwing.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Glitter.

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  Glitter. Oh, glitter.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  I mean, it's really hard to get off your skin, so.

• 1:00:57Latif Nasser?

  Didn't someone throw a milkshake at someone at some point?

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Yes, Nigel Farage.

• 1:01:02Latif Nasser?

  Right.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  The far right leader in the UK. Actually, important to note here also is the case of someone throwing the sandwich.

• 1:01:11Latif Nasser?

  Oh, I feel like I heard of that one. That was in DC? Is that right?

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Yes, at Border Patrol.

• 1:01:15Latif Nasser?

  Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  Part of the power of all of these, Jamila says, is.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  It's a very memorable moment.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  The sheer spectacle of it, but also.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  It shows that you can be anywhere at any time and someone can throw a object at you.

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  No matter how powerful you are.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  Because like, one thing I think about with the shoe throw is how it ever so briefly flattens the hierarchy between Montazer and George W. Bush.

• 1:01:42Latif Nasser?

  Like, it's like, it's just, they're no longer a, a citizen and a president or whatever. It's like, it's just like a dude throwing a shoe and dude dodging a shoe.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. It's just like all the roles fall away. Which when you consider that one of them has the might of the world's most powerful military behind them and the other is a disenfranchised journalist in a war torn country, it's kind of an extraordinary thing that they could even find themselves on the same plane.

• 1:02:09Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  Although I will say, it didn't come without a cost because when Montazer tried to get back to his life as a journalist.

• 1:02:19Speaker 05

  I cannot find any television to work with them.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  He couldn't find anyone to hire him.

• 1:02:27Latif Nasser?

  Why not?

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  Because there are more, more television in, in Middle East, friends with American and friends with the Iraqi government.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  He claimed that in order to avoid upsetting either the Iraqi government or the American government, all of these Iraqi channels basically blacklisted him, which, you know, is a claim that's very hard to prove. But from multiple journalists that I've talked to who knew the media landscape around this time, it's definitely plausible. But do you think part of it is that they stopped taking you seriously as a journalist? That they didn't trust you to, I don't know, be neutral and not be an activist?

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  No, no, not, not this reason, not that reason. That's not reason.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  I mean, it was clear that many journalists were genuinely upset by what he did.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Even if you just go back to the first moments after the shoe throw,

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  the other journalists in the room that day, specifically some of the Iraqi journalists, were immediately apologizing directly to Bush.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  Journalists here were very apologetic. They were, you know, they were said, this isn't, this doesn't represent the Iraqi people, but that's, that's what happens in free societies, where people try to draw attention to themselves.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  When I saw it, I felt embarrassed that a journalist would have done something like that.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  So this is Mace Albaia. You've heard her already, translating my conversations with Montazer. She is an Iraqi British journalist.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Because this is just wasn't professional. I mean, I don't think two journalists can disagree about that.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  I actually called her up after we were done with all of our interviews with Montazer. I think it was just hitting me that you, you have been through a lot of the same stuff as Montazer.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Like him, she was on the ground.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  I've been where Montazer was. I've been in the Green Zone.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  Reporting on the invasion as it was happening.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  For multiple international news outlets.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  And even though she wasn't one of the Iraqi journalists in the room that day, she told me that when she saw it.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  I was, I was shocked about it. No one sane could have done that.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  I guess, yeah, tell me a little bit more about when I, when I reached out to you and said, oh, I want to interview this guy. I don't know what, 18 years later, what did you think? What was your reaction to that?

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  I was, I was surprised because, um, like out of all of the stories on Iraq, he would not come to my mind.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  You're like, there's so much more to say.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  What? Why him? I was genuinely surprised by, by your, your quest, but, um, but going through the interview, I, I got why you, you were interested in him. And, and you know what? It actually put him in a different light.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  How, how so? How did it put him in a different light for you?

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Because I always thought that it was just someone who was absolutely crazy and that it was spontaneous that this happened. But when I heard the story and heard about the thought process behind it, it took me back in time. I had a big flashback.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  Back in 2008, Mace had been reporting on the Iraq war for five years.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Like, in a quiet day, would be probably 50 people killed.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  Wow. And she was reporting those numbers day in and day out. But she says, she started to notice that as the years wore on.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  It became less and less sexy because obviously, you know, other things happen in the world, fair enough. And then instead of taking a headline, it became the second big story, the third big story. And then suddenly it became page three.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  So she said in some sense, she understood how Montazer felt because even though people were seeing her reports, they just didn't have the same power anymore.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  People got used to it. And, and I understand it. I work in the news business. I understand how, how people are wired. It's like, okay, we know about this. What's the difference between what happened last month and what's happening today? Nothing. People move on. It's a number. It's a statistics. It's a figure. But to me, they are not numbers, they are people. I probably even know their names or people I might be related one way or another to them. So when I had the interview with you and him, I got his frustration. I got when he, it's like, no one cares. Really, no one cares. And he just wanted to grab attention.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  It changed my mind about him. I respected him more as, as a person who actually really wanted to make a big statement.

• 1:07:22Latif Nasser?

  Do you have a sense that, like, I mean, obviously, he was expressing a lot of his personal anger and frustration. It seems very clear that he inspired other protests. But did him throwing the shoe have a real measurable impact? Like in Iraq, on the, on the war or, or whatever?

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, just deeply obsessed with the effectiveness question.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  When I called Jamila Rakib, I actually asked her that also. And it was interesting to watch her brain work through it.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  I think that, uh, it's, it's more interesting how it fit into the larger puzzle of what's happening in the rest of society.

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  She said, what you need to do is, is look at the shoe throw in the context of the larger struggle.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  In this case, the anti-occupation struggle.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  And ask, how did this act affect not just George Bush and Montazer, but how did this act affect all the characters involved in this struggle?

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  So like, for example, the military.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Did it make it more difficult for them to carry out their policies, their military operations? Did it persuade them in any way?

• 1:08:26Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Or say, like, the people of Iraq.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  What impact did it have on ordinary Iraqis? Did it empower them?

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  For Iraqi journalists.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Did it make it harder for journalists to do their job in the future?

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Or even for people outside of Iraq.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Did it bring more people to the cause? So I am, I'm curious. These, I mean, I don't know the answer to any of this.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  And, and honestly, I don't know either. I mean, in some cases, it felt hard to know definitively how a certain group was affected. And on balance, I just came out of the conversation feeling like, it's just hard to imagine how, you know, this one moment changed all that much.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  But it did precisely what it set out to do, which is undermine the narrative that Iraqis were welcoming US forces as liberators.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Jamila reminded me that, you know, ending the occupation was never the goal of the shoe throw. It was always about getting people to pay attention. And in that sense, it's hard to deny the legacy of this thing.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  You know, I have, uh, more than 100K followers on Twitter. There's many people from America, okay?

• 1:09:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 05

  Yesterday, from America, he said, uh, "Montazer, we need you. America need you. We will have a pile of shoes at your disposal. Please come throw the, our government in your shoes." Every time the, the American people said, "Please come to throw Biden. Please come to throw, uh, Trump."

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  No, I know. And I, I feel like I see this on the internet. Remember that dude that threw his shoes at George W. Bush? Like, every couple of days, someone thinks of you. I'm a big fan of so many comedians, but the.

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  Funniest thing that's ever happened on television in my life was that guy.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Someone thinks of you, someone re-hacks the shoe throw on social media.

• 1:10:38Latif Nasser?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

  Someone just sent me a picture of someone on Instagram that made a ring. Etched into the ring is like a panorama of Muntadhar throwing the shoe.

• 1:10:49Latif Nasser?

  Whoa, wow.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  People are still thinking about and referencing this moment.

• 1:10:54Latif Nasser?

  Is it on George W. Bush's Wikipedia page?

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Oh, good question.

• 1:10:58Latif Nasser?

  I wonder if that is enough of a...

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  I mean, I will say, like, it is one of the things that George W. Bush still gets asked about.

• 1:11:04Speaker 06

  Mr. President, before Donald Trump, there weren't a lot of funny clips.

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Like, I just found a clip of George W. Bush going on Jimmy Kimmel just a few years ago. And the first thing that Jimmy Kimmel asks him about is this clip. Yeah.

• 1:11:20Speaker 06

  You were very, you have very good reflexes. And my guess is that Laura had done that before?

• 1:11:27Latif Nasser?

  Oh, it's, it is on George W. Bush's Wikipedia page.

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  Is it? Oh, my God.

• 1:11:31Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, here's what it says.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  Is it a section?

• 1:11:33Latif Nasser?

  It's not a subheading. It's like a sub-subheading.

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:11:36Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, but it's like a little, it's like a little section.

• 1:11:38Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:38Latif Nasser?

  It says 2008 Baghdad shoe-throwing incident. The word shoe comes up 14 times on this page. It's in multiple places on the Wikipedia page.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  So like, you know, one could argue it has become a small part of the legacy of George W. Bush.

• 1:11:54Latif Nasser?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  And even beyond that, honestly, I mean, the most powerful thing to me about the shoe throw is that it's this funny-looking Trojan horse where initially you're like, oh, ha, ha, that was crazy. Boom. Next thing you know, we're talking about messed up stuff that happened in Iraq. You know, like, to me, that's what journalism is supposed to do. It's supposed to create an opening to talk about these things, especially in a world where I don't think most of us Americans at least are eager to revisit all of the dark stuff that our country did during that time.

• 1:12:32Speaker 07

  I'm sorry, Sarah, but I think I'm gonna have to go by now.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  You have to go? Okay. Back in the interview with Muntadhar, by this time, we were in our third sitting. Mace had to go. Maryam, are you okay taking over?

• 1:12:44Speaker 07

  I mean, we can try. You wanna give it a try and we'll see how it goes.

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. And my producer in Baghdad, Maryam Dweydar, took over for translation.

• 1:12:52Speaker 07

  We might have to, like, share earbuds.

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  Now, Maryam, it so happens, in addition to helping me report parts of this story, is a documentary filmmaker who is making a film about Muntadhar.

• 1:13:03Speaker 07

  I think at one point he said to me, "It's a shame I wasn't like a caterpillar, like a caterpillar with 40 pairs of shoes. I would have just kept throwing them like one after the other."

• 1:13:13Speaker 04

  And when she first met him back in 2018, he'd gone from trying to find a job as a journalist to trying to run for parliament in Iraq. Can you tell me about him running for office?

• 1:13:24Speaker 07

  Yeah. So there was a day when I was in Iraq and I went to a market and I was just pulling people off the street. And I just said like, "Hey, did you know that Muntadhar Zaidi is running for parliament? What do you think about that?" Remember, there was one woman that was like, it's like a rough translation of a phrase, but she's like, "Oh, I would carry him and his shoes on my head," which is like an honor statement. She said, "If I have a son, I'm gonna name him Muntadhar."

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  So Muntadhar's reputation did get him a lot of attention in the election.

• 1:13:52Speaker 07

  But I think the shoe throw only took him so far.

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  Because come election day...

• 1:13:58Speaker 07

  He did get some votes, but not enough to win the seat.

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  On some level, it does feel like, for a lot of the world, the image of him did just get paused on him throwing the shoe. How about now? What are, what are you doing these days? What's happening in your day-to-day life?

• 1:14:14Speaker 05

  I'm just writing something in social media about the corruptions and follow the news for the dumb Trump and what, what happened in our globe.

• 1:14:26Speaker 07

  He does a lot of political commentating, cooking at home, playing the piano, which he does a lot, lighting candles. His favorite songs are "Gardena" and "Vanilla."

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  And I'm studying now.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:14:39Speaker 05

  Today, I'm, I have a new specialized, the interior design.

• 1:14:45Speaker 04

  Interior design?

• 1:14:46Speaker 05

  In university.

• 1:14:47Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:14:49Speaker 04

  What made you wanna do that?

• 1:14:50Speaker 05

  I have more skills.

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  It seems like he's also left the door open to maybe running for office again, but...

• 1:14:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would say, like, the shoe throw was, it didn't improve his life in the way I think a lot of people expected.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  No, the thing I wanna know is, like, do you miss being a journalist?

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  Yes, but worth, but worth.

• 1:15:11Speaker 04

  What did you say? I don't understand.

• 1:15:13Speaker 07

  The love of the Arabi.

• 1:15:15Speaker 05

  It's worth.

• 1:15:15Speaker 07

  He's trying to say it's worth it.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  It's worth it?

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  Why, why was it worth it?

• 1:15:22Speaker 07

  The tax he paid was worth it for what he did, even though he lost a lot. For example, like, working in the field of media, which he loves even up until this day.

• 1:15:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. This makes me think about, so as I was telling you yesterday, Muntadhar, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I've been having all of this anger and frustration about things that are happening in the world that I feel like I can't change, and I don't know what to do with it, you know?

• 1:15:53Speaker 05

  Yes, I get you.

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  You get me?

• 1:15:55Speaker 05

  I get you. If you do like me, maybe you will, you will without a job.

• 1:16:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, if you want a career change, you know what to do.

• 1:16:09Speaker 05

  I get you.

• 1:16:10Speaker 04

  I don't know. If I'm being honest with myself, I, I do wonder sometimes if I should continue being a journalist. Or maybe if I, maybe I should leave journalism and go do something else, like be an activist or work in politics or, you know, something different.

• 1:16:31Speaker 07

  No, don't leave journalism. I don't want you to leave your work, but your work should be for a cause and you can help to support in one way or another.

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  Muntadhar told me he still thinks that journalists do actually have real power to cause change, especially in today's world and especially in the US.

• 1:16:53Speaker 07

  He's talking about you in the third person in this, but he said, "Yes, because she has more freedom of speech, more freedom of movement, more freedom of influence."

• 1:17:04Speaker 07

  And there is a difference because you're in the heart of decision-making in America.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  The thing he said to me was like, "Look, within the constraints of my life, I was trying to figure out what worked for me, how I could make a difference."

• 1:17:25Speaker 07

  And eventually, I did think of something.

• 1:17:28Speaker 04

  Essentially, he was like, "You're in very different circumstances. Everybody's case is different. Find something that works for you the way that throwing a shoe worked for me." But I guess the thing I was wondering as much as anything else was, when he found that thing and did it, did it work for him? Like, did it actually help him as a person? You know, when we were talking before, you were telling me about the anger and the frustration that was building up inside of you, right? Like, that you had about Zahra or, you know, seeing that bombing. I guess I just wanna know, did throwing the shoe help with any of those feelings?

• 1:18:14Speaker 07

  Yes, of course. It was an expression of my feelings.

• 1:18:17Speaker 04

  He told me he does still, of course, carry around a lot of those memories from the war.

• 1:18:26Speaker 07

  When I think of Zahra, I feel grief.

• 1:18:33Speaker 07

  I was thinking the other day when I was talking to you, if she was alive, she could be a student today or married or something.

• 1:18:41Speaker 04

  But at the same time, he told me this other story too.

• 1:18:46Speaker 07

  When I saw Zahra's mom at the house,

• 1:18:54Speaker 07

  she told me that when I threw the shoe, she felt like I got, the literal translation would be like, "I got my daughter's rights," but I think it's like, I guess it would be the equivalent of like...

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  Revenge, revenge for my, revenge.

• 1:19:11Speaker 07

  It's something along the lines of justice, revenge, et cetera, for my daughter.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Yes, revenge for, revenge, yes.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  Okay, I think that's all the questions that I have, per you, Muntadhar.

• 1:19:39Speaker 07

  Are you sure?

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. So you just say your name and however you wanna describe yourself.

• 1:19:48Latif Nasser?

  This episode was reported by Sarah Kari with help from Maryam Dweydar. Translation by Mace Albaia and Maryam Dweydar. It was produced by Sarah Kari. Sound design contributed by Sarah Kari with mixing from Jeremy Bloom. And fact-checking by Emily Krieger and Hiba Elorbani.

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  If you wanna know more about Maryam's work, and believe me when I say, her documentary about Muntadhar is gonna be amazing. Keep an eye out for it. Or Mace's incredible journalism about Iraq. I will link to both of those and their social media in the episode description.

• 1:20:23Latif Nasser?

  Special thanks also to Azmat Khan and Mustafa Saleem. If you liked this episode and wanna hear more deep dives into the Bush-era war on terror, check out our episode 60 Words or our series The Other Latif. To find those, search for 60 Words Radiolab or The Other Latif Radiolab on your favorite streaming platform.

• 1:20:48Latif Nasser?

  Okay, and just before we go, if you liked what you heard, you want more, you want in on that sweet, sweet Radiolab bonus content, you are in luck. We have a newsletter, usually comes out on Saturdays. There's all kinds of things in that newsletter, recommendations from the staff, just random things we like that don't fit in a podcast format. Like, one thing we loved that we put in there was a rejection letter we received from Werner Hirdog that was especially florid and hilarious. Stuff we have coming up, like the live show that correspondent Dr. Vir Mitra and executive editor Soren Wheeler just did together.

• 1:21:32Latif Nasser?

  Yeah, it's just fun stuff. Subscribe at radiolab.org/newsletter.

• 1:21:46Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jonquill and I'm from Brooklyn. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Masa. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Standback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sundeep Nyanam Dambandhan, Matt Keelty, Mona Madgalka, Annie McEwen, Alex Nielsen, Sarah Kari, Natalia Ramirez, Joanna Strogatz, Enisa Vizza, Arianna Wa, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santos and Maya Appleby-Malamud.

• 1:22:31Speaker 07

  Our fact-checkers are Nora Belbidea, Hillary Elkins, Rachel Gross, Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, and Sophie Samai.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simmons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.