Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, strictly Facts family. I hope you are doing well. I'm away this week, but I couldn't go away without sharing some Strictly Facts history with you all, as I do every other week. We have a few conversations coming up on the Grenada Revolution, but I thought this was a great opportunity for a crossover episode.

Speaker 1: 0:18

In case you hadn't already listened to the amazing conversation over on Carry On Friends, what follows is a remarkable discussion hosted by Strictly Facts producer Auntie Carrie Ann Reed-Brown, in conversation with Martine Powers, senior host of the Washington Post reports, who also created the amazing yet heart-wrenching series the Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop heart-wrenching series the Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop. In the episode, she discusses the painstaking years she spent in creating her podcast, holding truth to power to tell the story of Grenadian leader Maurice Bishop, one of the region's most significant revolutionaries, whose life was tragically cut short in 1983. Learn more about Power's journey and be sure to tune in to both Carry On Friends and the Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop series for more discussions on Caribbean history, storytelling, our people and our culture. As always, we hope you enjoy listening and learning. Lickle more.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American Experience. And let me tell you I'm really excited about this episode. But before I get into the episode, I really want to shout out Carol. Carol is a supportive listener who is instrumental dare I say instrumental and the catalyst for making this episode happen. So before I get into my guest, I'll introduce her shortly. Carol sent me an email. Did you hear about this podcast? I said yes. Months later, she sent me another email. You need to email her so she could come on the podcast. She's on vacation, but when she come back, email her. And so, as a podcaster, you know a lot of times you're talking to yourself and so when an audience member is that engaged, they're emailing you and they're doing follow-ups. It is one of the best gifts that you can have as a podcaster. So, carol, I love you like cook food as a podcaster. So, carol, I love you. Like cook food big up yourself. And it's because of you my guest, martine Powers, is here on the podcast. Hi, martine, welcome.

Speaker 3: 2:33

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, and also thank you to Carol, who I know I love Carol. I'm a big fan of Carol now.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yes, all right. So I'm going to do a brief introduction on Martine and then she's going to tell us a little bit more about herself. So Martine is an audio journalist and she's a senior host of Post Reports, which is the Washington Post flagship daily news podcast and drum roll. She's also the host of the seven part episode podcast series the Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop, which is about none other than Grenada's own Maurice Bishop, who was executed in a coup in 1983 with several other people and the whole mystery around the body, and the body disappear. And so if you have not listened to this podcast series, well, after this episode run, go listen to it. You can binge it, but I'm excited to talk to Martine. Martine, welcome to the podcast. So excited to have you. How are you?

Speaker 3: 3:31

I'm good, thank you, and I'm excited to jump into the podcast. I have to say it's been like maybe seven-ish months now since it came out, and so, as you're saying this, I'm like, oh yeah, it's such a fascinating history and I just love the experience of being able to dive into it, and now that I'm a few months out of it, I feel like it's even more exciting to hear other people who find this part of Grenadian history and Caribbean history like just as engaging and just as, I think, informative to like our present moment.

Speaker 2: 4:01

All right. So why don't you tell the community of friends a little bit about your personal story and connection to the Caribbean?

Speaker 3: 4:08

Oh sure, yeah. So gosh, where do I start? Well, I'm Martine. I am originally from Miami, though I live in Washington DC. Now, as you said, I work at the Washington Post.

Speaker 3: 4:19

But my mom is from Trinidad and my whole life had been going to Trinidad, like twice a year, to visit my grandma, and my aunts and my uncles go to Maracas, like do the, do the like typical things you do in Trinidad. And in the last what was it? Seven years my parents have been living in Grenada. My parents lived in Miami for most of my life. Obviously, that's where I grew up. Grenada. My parents lived in Miami for most of my life. Obviously, that's where I grew up, but they decided to retire in Grenada because, you know, I think, as lots of Trinidadians will understand like to go back to Trinidad. As my mom would say plenty traffic, plenty crime, and so they had friends in Grenada and they decided to move there.

Speaker 3: 4:57

So in the last few years, I've been spending a lot of time in Grenada to visit my parents and we have some longtime family friends who live there as well and basically what started to happen was I was there meeting people who you know were part of the Grenadian government in the early 80s or who lived through this part of the revolution, that part of the revolution, and people would talk about the revolution and I didn't even know what they were talking about. I never heard the revolution. The airport's called Maurice Bishop International Airport. I was like Maurice Bishop, like who is that again? And it was through having more conversations with people in Grenada, and even you know friends in Trinidad who were like, oh, you got to, you got to hear more about Maurice Bishop, you got to listen to the speech that he gave at Hunter College, that like changed people's lives. I started to realize like this person is incredible and he was very controversial as well. And, you know, I think it's important to recognize that there are a lot of Grenadians who are not down with the legacy of Maurice Bishop, but he inspired so many people and hearing about him and hearing about what it was like in Grenada in the early 80s and like how people take such pride in this part of Caribbean history, that was really interesting to me.

Speaker 3: 6:12

And then I heard about this thing that happened in October of 1983, where Bishop was murdered and these other people were murdered. And not only were they murdered, which was, I think, highly traumatic, basically, for everyone who was in Grenada at the time. But then their bodies were never recovered, which is like a whole other mystery unto itself. And it wasn't until I started hearing people say, well, you know, like people have been saying for a while, it was actually the US government who disappeared those bodies, or the US government had something to do with the fact that those bodies were never recovered. First I thought, like is that? You know, people say stuff like that, like is that really real?

Speaker 3: 6:53

But I started to look into it, I started to see the accounts people had given in the past, some of the documents, and I was like, oh, this has some legs to it. And it felt, like you know, as a person who's a journalist at the Washington Post, what the Washington Post does is we cover the US government. I mean, we like hold the government accountable for things that happen here and happen in countries around the world. And so it felt like there was this intersection of here's, this thing that, like, my family cares deeply about and people you know that are close to my family care deeply about. And I happen to have this job that puts me in a position to, like, ask some real questions and try to track down some answers that you know so many people in Grenada are still so invested in. So that's kind of where the idea came about. Though it was, it took years to like get it off the ground.

Speaker 2: 7:45

So I'm glad you say that I'm gonna get to the years. So what I love about the series was not only because it was informative, but there is a distinctive Caribbean element or essence about the series, because you're speaking with a lot of people, um, from Grenada, some people from Trinidad and a couple of Jamaicans in there, and Bajans also, and Bajans.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Yes, but for me I was completely hooked. I love documentaries regardless. I watch so many documentaries. But you kind of told a similar story in episode one. But it's when you called your mom and your mom said I'm paraphrasing like honey Martine is on the phone. Can you stop that? I can't hear her. I thought, yes, this is going to be good, because it was. And then you heard the crickets in the background, all of that stuff, and I thought like yes, this is going to be a nice, warm blanket reminding me of home. And that was what drew me in, or made me more excited, not only because of the historical element, but because there was all these other aspects of history that for lack of a better word common people are participating in, not historians or not, you know, dr, so-and-so like everyday people who can recount and tell aspects of our history and do it with the Caribbean flair that we know of right.

Speaker 3: 9:14

Oh, kariana, it just makes me feel so good to hear you say that, because that's exactly what I was hoping to do and, yeah, and I'm just so glad that that's something that resonated with you, this idea of like, because I think that's the thing that I felt a lot, where I could imagine other people and, frankly, like Americans coming in to tell this story.

Speaker 3: 9:32

And to be clear, like I'm you know, I was born in the US, I'm an American, I speak with American accents, so it's not like I can like completely stand in for the experiences of people there, but I so wanted. I was like the texture of what it means to like be of this place and to have family here and to like grown up around these accents is something that I really, really wanted to get across and really wanted to like kind of bring that richness of here's what you can hear Grenadian accents and Jamaican accents and Asian accents and so, yeah, I just I thank you for saying that and I'm glad that we were successful and trying to make that texture really apparent. It really was.

Speaker 2: 10:07

It came with the traditional cast of characters. You need to find somebody. There's an auntie who knows somebody, who knows somebody, who knows somebody, and there there was that in the series as well, and I was just like this is caribbean life at its finest right. So let's go back to how long it took for this series to actually happen and let's talk about the process, like what was it for you to get this, the series, approved, and how long did it take to actually record and produce the series?

Speaker 3: 11:21

Yeah, yeah. So it took a while. I honestly first started thinking about this maybe in 2018, so a while back and for a year or so I was doing some of that research I was hearing about. Oh, there's this mystery, but I kind of wanted to make sure, if I pitch this to the Post, is it going to be something that I know? Who are the people that we need to try to track down? Like, I have a plan for how we would investigate this, how we would report it.

Speaker 3: 11:51

So it was sort of a year of research and, to be clear, like I have a, I have a real job. That's like we covered, you know, this daily podcast. It's always breaking news about Trump and what's happening and wars around the world or whatever about Trump and what's happening and wars around the world or whatever. So it's. You know, a lot of this was like finding time just on the edges of my days to be able to work on this, and then, and then 2020 happened, and then it was COVID, and then it was like, like I can't even get to Grenada to see my parents, let alone like think about traveling for some documentary thing, and so it wasn't until like 2021 that I started kind of making noise about it. But the thing is is that I knew and I don't want to be disparaging about my employer because the post has been incredibly wonderful and all this and gave me a ton of time to work on this, or way more than I think than people at other places might have. But I still knew it was going to be like an uphill battle, right, because this is a place full of Americans who, some of whom are familiar a little bit with Grenada from the invasion, but don't know a lot about this place, think that it's called Grenada, it's like the standard stuff. And so I was like, okay, how do I make the case that I'm gonna tell you about this small island at the bottom of the Caribbean and you're going to be interested, as these characters and the characters are so great.

Speaker 3: 13:06

And so I ended up just making like a one episode like history podcast and not to get too deep into the details, but there's a podcast at NPR called Throughline which, if you're into history podcasts, you should definitely listen to Throughline, because Ramtin and Runt, who are the hosts, they have a similar kind of take on. You know, like their families are from other places in the world, you know not American places in the world, and they look at history through the lens of, like, what are the stories that we can tell that are different than how we tell the story in the US? And so I kind of went to them and was like, hey, I think you guys should do a thing on the US invasion of Grenada. Like Americans might know that it happened but they don't know the story about it. Like it would be interesting to kind of tell it from the perspective of, like what was happening in Grenada before the US showed up. And so I did this like one episode history podcast with them.

Speaker 3: 13:59

And I wanted to do that podcast because I thought it was a really interesting story to tell and it didn't have anything to do with, like the bodies or much of like the aftermath of Bishop's death, but, but mostly I wanted to use it as like a proof of concept, right? So when I came back to people at the post, I was like, well, if you listen to this 45 minute podcast, like you can hear just a little flavor of some of the history and some of the like shocking moments that we could unpack if we really leaned into this. And so so there was that I wrote a pitch memo, I wrote an outline, I made like a fake trailer. I mean, most of the tape in this trailer like never saw the light of day. But but just because I like really had to like dot my I's and cross my T's to make the case like I'm capable of doing this, here's a plan, here's what it would take. And so they finally said yes, and then after that it was about yeah, it was basically one year of reporting and in that year I think I made two trips to Grenada.

Speaker 3: 15:01

One was an actual work trip, one was a like vacation to see my parents where I was just doing work stuff on the side, and that year I was still doing my main job but then I'd have one to two days a week to work on this. So it was really hustling to get the reporting going. So that was one year, and then basically the nine months after that I had full time to work on this, and then it was like we're writing scripts, we're recording narration, we're making drafts and um, and so that that last nine months was the, was the real, like rubber to the road you know, even as we're writing scripts, people that we're trying to get in contact with for months and months, for over a year, like are finally calling us back.

Speaker 3: 15:41

So then we have to go back and re-ord things because things are changing now that we finally heard from this witness and so it was definitely exciting, but it was well, it was stress and and, you know, I think we could have worked on it for a whole nother year and found even more and but at some point it was like OK, we got a lot here and like let's get it out, let's give people an opportunity to listen.

Speaker 2: 16:03

I love that you are able to tell the story in this way and I'm a history geek and the fact that you're telling this story in a way that so, from you know your pre-research, it's about like what two years, two and a half give and take, and even you, just talking about, you know the people you are trying to reach. One of my favorite parts was, I think, towards the end of the series, you're trying to get in touch with this one person. Y'all were looking through, scouring through phone books. Y'all were asking the Jamaicans who worked at the Washington Post, do your mother, your grandmother, some auntie know somebody? And I was just like, yes, this is how we do things Ask somebody if they know somebody. And he came through at the end and I was like they did it.

Speaker 2: 16:51

So it was a bit of a suspense in that part as well, but it goes to show the effort that it takes to tell these very Caribbean stories in an American context. Right, and I think where you live in America, as a Caribbean Americans, you're like but we know this, why the world don't know this? So what were some of the things that you uncovered or learned about your culture or being Caribbean and these things that are important or known to your parents and people of your parents' generation or even younger folks, but it's not that I don't want to say not that important, but it's not top of mind or front of mind for those who live in America and what you learn about how that impacts Caribbean folks and telling those stories or trying to get those stories to be told, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 17:44

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the trick with this podcast and what I found personally really challenging, was this feeling of like I know there are going to be aunties and uncles who are going to listen to people like you, who, like know this history and this is like a part of their culture. We're going to listen to this podcast because you know there are so few, like from major news outlets, right, like there are so few kind of like deep dive storytelling, especially into the eastern caribbean. I mean, I think there's like um, you know a certain way, that, like haiti and the dominican republic and cuba are covered, but, like, once you get down to barbados, grenada, trinidad, um, uh, dominica, um, I think you don't see that type of coverage from mainstream news outlets. So it was like both trying to speak to an audience of Caribbean people and also speaking to an audience of Americans who, again, like there are people who are going to listen, who are like Granada, like I thought that was a place in Spain, and like having to give a dumbed down version without making it feel like we're like speaking down to people or recognizing that it's going to be a diverse audience hearing this.

Speaker 3: 18:50

But I mean the thing that I found so powerful about just imagining this time in history is that there's such a kind of US cultural imagination about the Caribbean. That's all about like chill vibes, right, you go to the Caribbean, you go to a resort, there's beautiful rum punch, you like eat lots of things with coconut in it, and you know someone might be playing steel pan and it's great. You know that it's all very like tranquil and relaxing and everything's on island time and you know, certainly like you can go to any of these islands and obviously, like there is an aspect of that and I think that's something to be proud of too. Right, it's a place where people love pleasure and love to be with each other and slowing down and I think that out there, making Ronald Reagan mad and annoyed and Maurice Bishop is living rent-free in Ronald Reagan's head and to hear what it was like in Grenada at this time, where there is a Soviet embassy and the Soviets are hobnobbing with the North Koreans, and then there are Europeans who are there and they might be spies, everyone is wondering like who's a spy for everyone else?

Speaker 3: 20:12

And it's like this you know, what you could describe as a small place is this epicenter for so much geopolitical high stakes negotiations and, like everyone here, has this connection to something bigger in the world, and I think that's what I was excited to tell that, like this is a part of the world that is important and has, like this, rich political and cultural history, and like stuff that was going on there was intense and it was, you know, really difficult at times and obviously really scary at times, but that this time was important and that the people who are at the center of this were important people, and I feel like that's a lot of what I wanted to get across.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Yes, beautifully said. It was a lot of misunderstanding like who are these people, why? Why should I care? But you were able to tell it in a way that I appreciated because it was through a different lens, because, again, we think of all the ways that we've gotten the message or the story about Grenada, maurice Bishop and even before him, his coup with Gary and all these other things. It was like telling a fuller picture.

Speaker 3: 21:30

Because and not to cut you off, but because, yeah, like, even for people who the Americans that I find, who know about the US invasion of Grenada, they still think of it like, even if they're on the side of I think, that the invasion was the wrong thing for the US to do. A lot of times it's rooted in this idea of like, but you know why did we even show up to this tiny island anyways? This was so silly and I thought at the time like what a waste of time and resources and American lives to invade this place that is, you know, the size of Atlanta. It's just understanding of that history that's not rooted in what was actually happening there and how it felt to be on the receiving end of that. But sorry, continue with your question.

Speaker 2: 22:07

No, exactly that right. Because again, everything feels very distant and it was very real to the people who live there, the people in the region, like all the other Caribbean countries who came in and to be part of the investigative process. I thought that was something new that I learned. I didn't realize that there were all these other Caribbean countries that were part of the investigative process and it was just like wow. But for me it was the stories from the widows and the children that was the most impactful, what they remembered, what they they remember the day very clearly, you know, cause it's like it is forever etched, frozen in time in their minds about what that day was, what they were doing.

Speaker 2: 23:00

And I just really appreciated the telling of the story. You know, I felt like the speech. Again, we know lots of people don't really care for Maurice Bishop, but I think giving the broader picture and not being biased in the telling of the story, as as in making Maurice too much of a hero, kind of telling both sides again love the story, love the characters in the story and even you sharing some of the angst, I guess, about getting the data or the information you needed to complete the story. So I kind of felt that you felt some responsibility in, like I need to tell this story. I don't want my mother and my father to be ashamed of me.

Speaker 3: 23:50

Yeah, yeah, that's a real honestly yes. Well, and cause it felt like I mean not to say that other people can come in uh later and like make even more progress. And I still think that there's like more to uncover and and and we're still trying to get documents and and um and get more people to talk to us. But it's like to me it felt a little bit like this is kind of one of the last shots to get a clearer picture of this because, especially, it's been 40 years now and so, like, a lot of people have died since then.

Speaker 3: 24:20

You know, it's like right around the mark where people who are in the military if they're like 25, 26, 27,. You know those people are in the military. If they're like 25, 26, 27,. You know those people are in their late 60s and so that's. You know they're still young enough to have really good memories and to be able to talk really fully about what happened there. But, like, once you get to folks in their 70s, 80s, like it gets a little harder. And so, yeah, if you're hearing angst in there, it's the angst of feeling that you know the Washington Post is not going to send another reporter to go like do more of this again and really wanting to get as many answers as we could with the opportunity that we had here, and I think we did get like a lot of pretty good answers. So I think that there is still more to tell of the story. I do agree.

Speaker 2: 25:06

And so, as we kind of wrap up, I mean, now that you've done this, what are your hopes or what do you think the opportunity exists for more stories like this, maybe not from a major news outlet like the Washington Post, but telling of Caribbean histories or Caribbean stories in a way that a mostly American audience can appreciate or learn about the history of this region, which is so complex, which you know, you and I know, is. It was the first little test tube of a lot of things that we now experience in the world. So I'd love to get your perspective on, now that you've done this project, where else can you think it'll go, and the opportunities for Caribbean stories and podcasters to tell more stories.

Speaker 3: 25:58

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, specifically with this mystery and with Grenada, one of the big closed doors that we had that one hopes will open soon is there's a lot of classified documents that the State Department has about the US invasion of Grenada that are currently quote unquote under declassification review. So 40 years is about the period of time that a lot of these federal records are supposed to be made public. But they still have to go through them to make sure that there's like nothing that would still affect the US's relationships with other places or whatever, and so I think, once some of those documents become public, I have some optimism that there might be nuggets in there that can close some of these gaps.

Speaker 3: 26:42

You'll also hear when you listen to the podcast. There's one or two people, one person in particular, who I'd really love to get him to agree to an interview, and he's told me many a time at this point that he doesn't want to be interviewed about this, but I remain optimistic that maybe in the future he'll be open to talking about his time in Grenada and what that meant. So there's some of that stuff. But I think to your point more broadly, there's so many stories in the Caribbean that I think are, yeah, just ripe for the telling. I mean one that comes to mind Jamaica, and I think many of your listeners either might have read, or be familiar with, a Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, which I believe they're making into, I think, a Netflix series, or at least like a TV series.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Listen, it was supposedly bought by HBO. I cannot remember her name, but the woman who did Insecure I can't I'll butcher her name Issa Rae, not Issa, but the woman Malatakis I cannot remember her name was was associated with it at this one point, so I don't know where it is now. So it's it's supposed to have some film rights but it's not there. But I agree that book was.

Speaker 3: 28:00

Yeah, yeah. And when you talk about the role of, you know, the US clandestine services in Jamaica at that time it was, you know, and like manly, and there's like the political stuff, the spy espionage stuff, the Bob Marley stuff. I mean I think that that's a part of history that would be like great to dive into more. One thing that I've also been thinking about more recently is, you know, obviously Haiti is in this like incredibly dire moment right now with the situation with gangs there and this new peacekeeping force that's coming in, which includes, is headed by Kenya, but I believe will also include Bajans, Bahamians and I think Jamaicans you might have to fact check me on that part, I think Jamaicans, you might have to fact check me on that part. But but the idea of Caribbean peacekeepers going into another Caribbean country in, I think, a very fraught and complicated moment, like some of it, brings a little Grenada like to me and what it means for you know, like the military of one Caribbean country to go into another. But also I just think that that's a that's a story that is, at least to an American audience, is being told with American voices in many ways, and I just feel like there's so much more that needs to be done and reported.

Speaker 3: 29:20

That brings in more of that texture of like what it feels like for Haitians to be going through this and what it feels like for Haitian Americans and how fraught and complicated this all is. And, like my uncle, my husband is Haitian and I love him dearly and he's just such a like fun, interesting, vibrant, funny person and I feel like that's such the quality of Haitians generally and is the quality of, like Caribbean people in general, right Like. This is a place of that texture of of how you know, like what it means to be Haitian and how proud Haitians are of where they come from. Even though this is a really, really difficult and frightening moment, and I yeah, I just think that there's a lot to do on that. I don't know if I'll be the one to do it, but I would encourage other people to to really like take a stab at that I definitely like that.

Speaker 2: 30:30

you brought up the point of Jamaica. So just quick sidebar you know, when I moved here to this country in like 93, like up until that point I mean, I was too young to participate in politics. But even though I couldn't participate, you experienced politics, right? So in Jamaica around election time, you know you didn't wear certain colors. You know there were certain things that you experienced and one of the things, when I started studying American politics and I came here, I was like, oh, I don't have to be scared of you know these conversations about Democrats or Republicans, right, this is such a different approach than when you're in Jamaica.

Speaker 2: 31:12

You live in specific communities that are particular political party and I think for me when and January 6th happened and everything leading up to that, it was very frightening to me because I saw a point where I was I'm over 40.

Speaker 2: 31:30

So there's a point where growing up in Jamaica, where politics could get very violent, that's what this brings up for me, this anxiety because I can, I know where that can go and seeing this play out, I'm like, oh, this feels very reminiscent. I remember there was when I was very young there they had a campaign about wearing blue and they had this PSA song. All we are saying is give peace a chance, because they didn't want political violence, didn't want political violence. And to see that play out January 6th and you know all the all the things that are happening feels gives me that level of anxiety, because I've seen the threads of this. This is, yes, yeah, in, in in Jamaican politics in the eighties. So so, so that's so. It's interesting that you say that, because we have these different perspectives, living outside the country and now living here and seeing how the country's now changed and juxtaposed to where our countries are now moving to and the US is moving away from what we were trying, it's just very interesting.

Speaker 3: 32:43

So yeah, no, I think that's a really important point and I mean just to just to quickly mention I don't know if it's OK for us to say like when we're recording this, but you know, we're recording this on what? Friday, may 31st, which is a day after Trump was just convicted and this hush money trial in New York, which is what I actually now cover, like now that I'm back on Daily News. But I saw this meme that someone posted yesterday that I thought was really insightful, that it just showed a map of the Americas and it's like North America and South America and the Caribbean, and like these are all the places where heads of state or heads of government have been convicted of a crime, either before or after they're elected, and like now you add the us to that, and I just I think that there's been a lot of the narrative of like oh, this is historic, that america has never seen a former president charged with a crime, and that's true. But actually, like in the scheme of the world and in the scheme of this part of the world, it's actually not that unusual. And to think about how these things can kind of escalate and play out, and like even I was having a conversation with one of the other producers who works on this podcast yesterday where we're like well, what happens if Trump is put on house arrest during that campaign?

Speaker 3: 33:59

But what if his supporters went to his house to try to free him from house arrest? Which is like kind of what happened with Maurice Bishop, right, that he was on house arrest and people thought that it was unjust and they tried to free him, and the circumstances are hugely different in both of these cases. But that's just all to say that. I think there is a little bit of an American bias against thinking that like, oh, the US can go in that direction, right, that it's like, well, we're Americans, we solve things a different way and in these like small chaotic countries and Latin American in the Caribbean, they do things a different way. But like, we're exceptional and we're not exceptional, and I think for a lot of people, january 6th was a wake up call to that. But I think even now it's, without being too like pessimistic or alarmist, I do think it's insightful to understand well, this is how things escalate in other countries and it's not outside the realm of possibility that we could see a future escalation here in the US, whatever this looks like.

Speaker 3: 35:03

But not to say that I want that to happen.

Speaker 2: 35:06

No, and that's exactly it. We don't want it to happen. But you have a generation of Caribbean folks like my mom and everyone is just like Lord Jesus. What is going on? Like they're very like oh, so um, but this is for another podcast, but I I do appreciate um you being on the podcast, truly enjoyed the conversation. Big up to all the Jamaicans at Washington Post who pitched in on the investigative.

Speaker 3: 35:34

Many grandmas were asked if they knew an Earl Brown. It was yeah, it was funny to send out that message because we have like a Black People Slack channel at work and I was like, okay, listen up, black people Like among you I'm sure there are Jamaicans please, everyone, raise your hand and then you have to commit to uh, yes, calling your family members and I felt you, you're like when she said, when you said Earl Brown, I said, boy, that feel like every other Jamaican, every two Jamaican men with that name yes, my last name is Brown I'm like, I don't know not to go down.

Speaker 2: 36:06

So it was in those moments where you're just like. I mean, culture is life. You know, even in these serious moments they find some way to bring some levity into these things and it's a really great series and thank you again for hoping to spearhead this and bring this again, for helping to spearhead this and bring this. You know, so a new generation of Caribbean Americans, children born here to Caribbean parents, can understand a part of their history and culture. And so the Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop is available on all podcast platforms. I'll include that link in the show notes. And, martine, any final words where people could find you all that good stuff.

Speaker 3: 36:48

I just, yeah, just listen to the podcast. The podcast that I do for my actual job post reports. That's a daily show, so certainly subscribe to that too. And yeah, other than that, I try not to. I used to be on Instagram and Twitter and went on to try to be less on that because it's just like ruining my life. So so, yeah, just listen. And, and if you want to reach out my, my email is always open martinepowers at washpostcom. So, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 37:18

Thank you and, as I love to say at the end of every episode walk good.

Speaker 3: 37:23

I love that.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Yeah, good, I love that. Yeah, thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit strictlyfactspodcastcom for more information from each episode. Follow us at strictlyfactspod on instagram and facebook and at strictlyfactspd on twitter.