This is Michael Rapaport and I have been professionally podcasting for 10 years. The podcast game has changed so much. And if you're looking for the most disruptive podcast in the world, then subscribe to the I Am Rapaport Stereo Podcast today. We're talking sports, politics, pop culture, entertainment and anything that catches my attention.
Listen to the I Am Rapaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies, like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lydie Hoike, Alison Roman and Ina Garten. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen must-haves. Just sign up at Katie Couric dot com slash good taste. That's K A T I E C O U R I C dot com slash good taste.
I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. My name is Michael Wolff. Each week on Fire and Fury, the podcast, I take you deeper into the mind of Donald Trump and his campaign than any other journalist ever goes. I've written three books on Trump, but for some reason the people around him, they keep on talking to me. To find out what they tell me, listen to Fire and Fury, the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
And how deep do his lies go? Listen to deep cover George Santos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues. Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the health care community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy and we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other.
Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we return to our American stories. Up next, a listener's story from Charles Burrell on a journey, a boat, some Soviets and a Siberian gulag. Let's get into the story.
Take it away, Charles. I remember reading Moby Dick, sitting in the classroom and thinking to myself, I have to do this. I have to go to sea.
Not exactly whaling, but at least get out there and experience it. Well, I was offered a job in my hometown at a junior high school teaching English at the age of 21. And it was a horrific year. I didn't know what I was doing. And I kept a journal that year. And in the middle of November, I wrote in big capital letters in my journal, Am I Happy?
And whenever you find yourself asking that question, you know what the answer is. So I decided I was going to retire. It was early July 1977. I packed up some old clothes in a duffel bag, cleaned out the classroom, parked my old beater car in my grandmother's garage, put $400 in my pocket, and I headed out on foot. Figured I could do better hitchhiking than trying to drive that old beater car that I had. And my plan was to go out West for about three months. What I wanted to do, more than anything else in my life, I wanted to write. I wanted to find out who I was and write about it. After three months, my money ran out, my $400 ran out, actually after a month and a half.
And I decided that, well, I'm going to keep on going. I got a job at a Best Western Lodge just outside of Yellowstone Park, Cook City, Montana. And during that time, I met a guy by the name of Gordon Lucas. He lived outside of Yellowstone. He lived in a teepee. He had a big four-wheel drive truck. He'd been to Alaska and he said, kid, if you want some adventure, go out to Alaska and work on the fishing boats. That's where the adventure is.
You want something to write about. I took him up on it and I took a Greyhound bus out to Seattle and hitchhiked the rest of the way. I arrived on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula, Homer, Alaska, five or six thousand miles from home, only to find out that I missed the fishing season. And so I got a job at a restaurant working as a night cook. At the end of the halibut fishing season, a good friend of mine told me that there was a freighter down at the boat harbor that needed a cook.
Now, these are the boats that go out for weeks, months at a time. And I thought, yes, this is what I'm looking for. This is the kind of adventure that I want. And so I went down to the boat and I always believed in going to the top dog, so to speak. So I got out there and a guy came out about my age, said, what can I do for you? I said, well, I want to talk to the captain. And he said, what can I do for you?
And I want to talk to the captain. And he said, look, you're wasting my time here. I said, OK, OK, all right.
Figured I wasn't getting anywhere that way. So I said, I'm looking for a job as a cook. I heard you needed one. He said, just a minute. And the captain came down and I was stunned. I was shocked. I expected an old man with a gray beard, like fresh off the Titanic. This guy was younger than me, Tab Tomes.
He looked like he was barely out of high school. He came up to me and said, what can I do for you? I said, I heard you.
I'm looking for a job as a cook. He said, well, you ever worked before as a cook? I said, yeah. And he said, OK, come back at eight o'clock in the morning and we'll try you out.
I came back. He showed me all the food. He said, go ahead, cook breakfast. And I said, OK, any particular you want? He said, yeah, food. I said, OK, the food you want, food you'll get. Bacon and eggs and ham and hash browns. I put onions and green peppers, for crying out loud, in those hash browns.
And I, you know, all kinds of juices and coffee. And I put a spread out on the table and called the crew in and stuffed them. Next was lunch.
Same thing. Then dinner. Next day, breakfast, clean up, lunch, clean up, dinner. I'm cleaning up and the crew is playing rock and roll music and they're hanging out and the captain comes down. He's rocking out, too. And they're all real, you know, the captain was in a good mood. So I figured that'd be a good time to ask. So I said, sir, do I have the job? And he kind of laughs. He pointed at me in front of the crew and he started laughing. He said, can you imagine this guy looking for a job on my boat? And I thought, well, it was a good try.
I gave it my best. And then he got serious and he said, you've got to be kidding me. He said, that's some of the best food I've had in a long time. Pack your bags. We're leaving in three days for Bristol Bay. And I went back to where I was renting a place, a cabin. And I'm pumped.
I said, yes. And I told the landlord, I'm all excited. I've got to leave in three days.
I'm heading for Bristol Bay on a boat. And he said, oh, gee, I'm so sorry. Without two weeks notice, I'm going to have to keep your $250 deposit.
There was no sense in trying to cause any trouble. So I just said, sir, you can keep the deposit. I'm going to see. I'll never forget the day, May 31st, 1982, we left the port of Homer, Alaska. And halfway out the bay, 730 in the morning, I'm making breakfast down there in the galley. And the captain comes on the loudspeaker and he says, whales, whales, everyone on deck. And so we went out, we ran out on deck and we looked and looked and nothing was out there, just the wide open blue.
And we looked and looked and we kept on waiting. And we were just about ready to head back down thinking it was a false alarm. And I saw two huge white beluga whales breaching completely out of the sea, two of them together. Like slow motion, primordial, magnificent and crashed into the ocean. And I thought, what a way to begin our travel. Later that night, I finished my watch at three o'clock in the morning. And instead of going to sleep, I was wide awake right into my journal trying to describe how those whales looked when they breached completely out of the sea together. So here I am. And then, well, you can call it the ship of dreams, I guess.
I'm on the free decay of 115 foot landing craft heading down the Shelikov Strait for a new adventure. Now there's something that happened that first winter that is essential to the story. I met a Native American Indian. His name was Glenn and he came into work and he was always cheerful. And one day I asked him, Glenn, why are you always in such a good mood?
Don't you ever have a bad day knowing the history of Native American Indians and the tremendous poverty and hardship they have experienced? Glenn, what is your secret? And he said to me, it's no secret. I'm a Christian. My faith is in Jesus Christ and he sees me through. He gave me a Bible to read. So having no other friends in town but Glenn at the time, I took that Bible and cherished it.
And I read the Old Testament in the morning before going to work and the New Testament in the evenings after work. And I realized when I got to the part about Jesus Christ describing those going to heaven and those going to hell, I realized that I did not fit the description of those going to heaven. And I bowed my head and I prayed to Jesus Christ for him to forgive me of my sins and to take over my life. And I became what I like to call a genuine Christian that day. Others might call it being born again.
I became a genuine Christian that day. That part of the story is critical for when I would later be captured by the Soviets and taken to Siberia. And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell us the story of his own life. He'd been journaling and he wrote a question in his journal, Am I Happy? And then, of course, answer that question to himself.
If you find yourself writing that question, you already know the answer. So he packed his bags, headed west on the border of Yellowstone, and then from there headed further west and north looking for real adventure on fishing boats in Alaska. By the way, if it reminds you of another writer's journey, this is Melville's journey. He said, My college was the seas.
My college was the ships. And out of it came Moby Dick. So this is one of the great traditions of writers, whether you're a memoirist, whether you're just writing for fun. To write your own story, you have to have some adventures.
And he was looking for him. When we come back, more of Charles Burrell's story from teacher to writer and more here on Our American Stories. This is Michael Rapaport, and I've been professionally podcasting for 10 years. The podcast game has changed so much.
And if you're looking for the most disruptive, most consistent podcast in the world, then subscribe to the I am Rapaport stereo podcast today. We're talking sports. Steph, Katie, Anthony Davis and LeBron. They were better. And those teams pushed them to greatness.
They brought the greatness. Politics. These people are not your friends. They're looking for your votes. This is not a popularity personality contest.
To me, it's a policy contest. Pop culture, entertainment and anything that catches my attention. New episodes come out twice a week and always pack a punch with over 1100 episodes in the catalog. Listen to the I am Rapaport stereo podcast on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone.
It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health.
Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything serums to use through menopause exercises that improve your brain health and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.
Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that, too. Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at Katie Couric dot com slash body and soul.
Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. I'm Jacob Goldstein. I used to host a show called Planet Money. Now I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem?
Every week on What's Your Problem? Entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build once they solve a few problems. How do you build a drone delivery business from scratch? Our customers, they want us to do this unbelievably reliably in the storms no matter what.
Hundreds of times a day. How do you turn a wild dream about a new kind of biology into a 10 billion dollar company? We didn't have a particular technology. We didn't have a way of making money. It was a great way to start a company.
I highly recommend it. How do you sell millions of dollars worth of dog ramps for wiener dogs in the middle of a pandemic? We're working with 400 influencers, and the majority of them are actually not a person, but it's actually a dog. I can tell you right now, the dog ramp guy has some very interesting problems. Listen to What's Your Problem?
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. America. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At Grand Canyon University, we believe in equal opportunity, and the American dream starts with purpose. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private. Christian. Affordable.
Visit gcu.edu. And we return to our American stories and with Charles Burrell's story. When we last left off, Charles had arrived in Alaska, become a born again Christian, and had gotten a job on the Frida K, a boat run by mostly 20-somethings that would provide a wonderful job opportunity, running supplies to seismology vessels far out in the Bering Sea. They'd be on their third trip doing this when trouble arose. Let's return to the story.
We were running ahead of schedule. He was an adventurer, and he wanted to go into, there's an Indian village on the west side of Little Diomede Island. Tombs wanted to go and get t-shirts like, I survived Diomede, that kind of thing. Now at that time, 1984, there was a reef that we would have to go around to get into the village. The NOAA ships that went in there, they didn't know how big that reef was. It was too close to the Soviets.
They didn't go in there. And we spotted a gray ship off the starboard bow, the Russia side. It had no markings, no flag. We thought it was a fishing trawler. You know, we had encountered in our travels over the two years I worked on the ship, we had encountered Japanese, Korean, never any Russian trawlers. But we would always pull up, we would always trade, and we never encountered any Russian ships, but you know, there's always a first time. We figured, look, we were all on our, our ship's engineer was 18 years old. The rest of us were all in our 20s. We were thinking, naive as we were, we were thinking, hey, listen, we're so far west, they're so far east.
So what if they're Soviets? We'll pull up, we'll get information about this reef, we'll do some trading with them, and we'll move on, we'll head on. Well, we pulled up, there was one man that came out on deck. He was making a signal with his hands that to us indicated, come alongside.
So we did. We came alongside, we threw up our lines, and Captain Tomes went out on deck with a pencil and paper in his hand, and he wanted to communicate with the other captain and ask about this reef. But there was nobody on that ship, so we waited. And after about 10 minutes or so, we saw all these heads popping up all along their rail.
And they're looking down at us, and we're looking up at them, and they have an expression like, what are you guys, nuts? After 10 or 15 more minutes, I looked behind me, and I saw all these soldiers, boom, boom, boom, coming over onto our deck, full uniforms, boots, knives, AK-47 machine guns. They stormed the boat, they surrounded us, they grabbed the captain, and their officials disconnected all of our radio equipment, so we had no contact with anybody in the United States.
For all they knew, we dropped off the radar. And the authorities that were there, one of them speaking broken English, presented papers in the wheelhouse to Tomes that were written in Russian. They wanted Tomes to sign these papers. They wanted him to record his latitude, longitude, and then sign it. But he recorded our numbers, and then he asked the officials, what do these papers say? The officials responded by saying, we cannot tell you what they say, but you must sign. Well, what happens if I refuse?
Then you will be taken to Siberia. Tomes stepped away, and he walked to the edge of the wheelhouse where there was a door. He opened the door, cupped his hands, and he shouted in order to the crew that I will never forget, sign nothing! And so it was decided that they would put us under tow, tow us to Siberia. For 30 hours they towed us through the night, all the next day, into the following night. But I need to back up for a second now and tell you what happened during that first night.
It's somewhere in the middle of the night. Tate Tomes, the 18-year-old ship's engineer and the younger brother of Tab Tomes, the captain, and Mark Help and the first mate, 20 years old, they wanted to try to activate the EPIRB, the emergency position indicating radio beacon. Every ship has one. Our EPIRB was a cylinder that was mounted in a styrofoam case on the back of the wheelhouse roof. If a ship goes down, the EPIRB will float and a signal will be released showing where the ship went down. Mark wanted to activate that EPIRB and send a signal to the United States that we were in distress.
And naturally, we thought, they would come and get us, 20-year-old thinking. But Mark needed permission to go up on the wheelhouse roof. So he goes up into the wheelhouse and there's the captain, surrounded by Soviet officers and armed guards, and there are armed guards throughout the boat. And Mark says to the captain, sir, I need to go up on the wheelhouse roof and fix a broken spotlight. And Tomes said to Mark, Mark, here we are being towed to Russia and you're worried about a broken spotlight?
Sir, the spotlight is very expensive. We need to turn it upside down. And their minds met. And Tomes said, yes, we need to do that. Tomes got permission from the Soviet officers. So Mark climbs all the way up, goes out onto the roof and he goes to the spotlight, but a Soviet soldier followed him up. So Mark starts to take apart the back of the spotlight and realizes that it's not going to work with a Soviet soldier up there. So Mark goes all the way back down. He says, Tate, it's not working.
They're following me up there. Tate says, okay, hold on, take your time, slow down, wait a little bit. Mark's excuse the first time up there is he forgot his channel locks.
So Tate says, here's your channel locks. So Mark goes back up there with his tools like before, and the Soviet soldier follows him up again. So Mark's, oh man, shoot, this isn't working.
I forgot my wire cutter. So he goes back down again. Tate, it's just not working. Tate says, okay, all right, all right, let's pray. So they prayed and they finished praying and Tate says, go on up. So Mark goes on up again, climbing up that long ladder and no soldier follows him.
There was no guard up there. So Mark had to stay low. So he crawls on his belly across the wheelhouse roof and Tate had arranged at a prearranged time that Tate would create a diversion by activating the engine room alarm.
So Mark was looking at his watch. He could see the lights of a Siberian port in the distance and the wind was cold up there and Mark is shivering. He crawls up to the EPIRB and right at the prearranged time, bam, bam, bam, there's pandemonium on the boat.
Soldiers are running everywhere. The door of the wheelhouse slams open. Mark grabs the EPIRB. He flips it upside down and stuffs it back into the case and he backpedals quickly. He puts some grease on his hands to make it look good. He climbs back down thinking he's in the galley, goes back down to the galley where I was. He is sitting there. He's smiling like a Cheshire cat thinking, oh, I can see it now.
Headlines. First mate activates EPIRB, rescues crew. About 15 minutes later, the Soviet communications specialist comes into the galley with the EPIRB in his hand. He dismantles it in front of Mark's face and puts the parts on the galley table and Mark, he could have crawled, he could have dug a hole and crawled in.
He was so embarrassed. The Soviet port that we had been passing picked up the signal and radioed back to the destroyer that a signal has been emitted in their area, a distress signal. And that's how they discovered.
As far as we know, the United States never do a thing. And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell his story. Again, we always want to hear your stories and adventure stories are a big part of our show. Heck, we just did Lewis and Clark. We've done the Wright Brothers. You want to talk about an adventure? That was a heck of an adventure out in Kitty Hawk. All by themselves, testing out planes, the world's first test pilots. Hemingway, Jack London to build a fire, we told the story.
And of course, my favorite, we haven't done the story yet, but one of my favorite adventure stories is Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm. And it's such a part of American literature. Moreover, it's a part of American life. Young men and women seeking adventure, heading west, heading north, heading south. And my goodness, these young men in their 20s, mostly even younger now in a jam.
When we come back, what happens next on the free decay here on our American story? This is Michael Rapaport and I've been professionally podcasting for 10 years. The podcast game has changed so much.
And if you're looking for the most disruptive, most consistent podcast in the world, then subscribe to the I am Rapaport stereo podcast today. We're talking sports. Steph, Katie, Anthony Davis and LeBron. They were better. And those teams pushed them to greatness. They brought the greatness and politics.
These people are not your friends. They're looking for your votes. This is not a popularity personality contest.
To me, it's a policy contest. Pop culture, entertainment and anything that catches my attention. New episodes come out twice a week and always pack a punch with over 1100 episodes in the catalog. Listen to the I am Rapaport stereo podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone.
It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health.
Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything serums to use through menopause exercises that improve your brain health and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.
Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that, too. Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at Katie Couric dot com slash body and soul.
Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. I'm Jacob Goldstein. I used to host a show called Planet Money. Now I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem?
Every week on What's Your Problem? Entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build once they solve a few problems. How do you build a drone delivery business from scratch?
Our customers, they want us to do this unbelievably reliably in the storms no matter what, hundreds of times a day. How do you turn a wild dream about a new kind of biology into a 10 billion dollar company? We didn't have a particular technology. We didn't have a way of making money. It was a great way to start a company.
I highly recommend it. How do you sell millions of dollars worth of dog ramps for wiener dogs in the middle of a pandemic? We're working with 400 influencers, and the majority of them are actually not a person, but it's actually a dog. I can tell you right now, the dog ramp guy has some very interesting problems. Listen to What's Your Problem?
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we return to our American stories and with the final portion of Charles Borrell's story. When we last left off, Charles and his fellow crewmates aboard the Frida K were captured at gunpoint by the Soviet Union, and would be put under tow and brought to a Siberian gulag. You'll hear a name at the end of this story, Harry.
For future reference, that was the Soviet translator. Let's return to the story. I remember the moment I set foot on Siberian soil. I had one of those moments, one of those epiphanies, where I thought, seven years. It's been seven years since I left home. I was going to leave for like three months to get a few stories. And here I am, a captive in Siberia.
If I ever get out of this, this is my story. It got pretty serious. They separated us into two rooms, and they started the interrogation. They would interrogate you at any hour.
There was no such thing as day or night. And they would take you one at a time. They would shine a bright light in your eyes. And they would ask you every question imaginable about your life, your family, your education, your girlfriend, if you had one, the color of your girlfriend's eyes. I mean, they left nothing out. The whole time, their purpose was to get us to sign the papers. They had crossed our latitude and longitude numbers off and put in their own. And their goal was for us to sign the paper. At one point, the captain asked, if we refuse to sign, what could happen? And they said, you could get up to 30 years in prison.
All right, give me 30 years, but let the boat and the crew go. This was unacceptable to them. I mean, it was intimidation, is what it was. They'd be pointing their finger into your chest and asking you these questions. They were trying to intimidate us into signing. And at one point, I tell you, I was about ready to sign just to get them off my back. But when I felt myself ready to sign, I would just, like a turtle, I'd go into a shell and just refuse to answer any more questions. And they would just get me out of there, get him out of here.
And they would interrogate the captain. And when they took him in, when they took Tomes in for questioning, because I knew they were going to be hardest on him, I got on my knees and I prayed till he came back. I don't care how long he was there. I prayed till he came back.
Days went by. I have to backtrack for a second, because during the days that we were there, we were there for a total of eight days, we had a very significant exchange with the highest ranking military man in that part of the world. He was the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Eastern Frontier Guard. Throughout the time of our confinement, we had interactions with the Russian guards who were our age. They were clearly fascinated with these Americans. About half of them, you can tell, really wanted to communicate with us, but they were not allowed to speak with us. We always had to be escorted by a guard to an area that we called the pit, which is where we had to relieve ourselves, which was two holes in the floor.
I'll spare you the details. But there was one guard in particular who seemed to be particularly interested. And I wanted to share with him my faith, because I knew that the Soviets taught their schoolchildren that there is no God. So I wrote him a letter. It took me several days to write the letter. I had to revise it several times to keep the English as simple as I possibly could.
I printed it out on these yellow sheets of paper that I had. We were told to write our story numerous times of what happened. And so I wrote him on this paper that we were given.
I shared the message of the Bible as simply as I could from the Garden of Eden, Genesis Chapter three, all the way through to the time of Christ. But at the last paragraph, I encouraged him to put his faith in Christ. And in the last paragraph, there's a prophecy in the Bible, Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39, that talks about a nation from the uttermost north that will invade Israel in what the Bible calls the latter days. And it would be a horrific battle.
And this army would be supernaturally defeated. Anyhow, I put that in there as a warning. And then I signed the letter. Now, when I finally got it finished and ready, I asked him to accompany me to the pit. I did not want anyone else seeing an exchange between us.
When we got there into the pit, there was a water barrel on the right hand side and we were standing next to the water barrel. And I pulled out the letter, neatly folded, and I handed it to him. And he turned away. He couldn't take it. And he crossed his arms and turned his head and shook his head.
He can't take it. And so in frustration, I left the letter on the lid of the water barrel and went back to my quarters, waited two hours and went back. The letter was gone. I asked him, where's the letter?
Do you have it? And he patted his breast pocket and nodded his head. And I was excited.
I was happy. I was sure that if he didn't understand English, one day he would have this letter in my naivety and he would be able to read it. Well, time went by and finally a man arrived. This was the lieutenant colonel. At first, he was very, very kind. Later, in the last meeting we had with him, he was not kind. He was very, very, you could tell he was very upset.
He was very controlled. We knew that something had happened in the interval that I'd given this letter to the guards. Something had happened, something serious. And the lieutenant colonel asked Tombs if he was familiar with Middle Eastern geography, Middle Eastern geography. And Tombs said, no, I'm not familiar with Middle Eastern geography. And then the lieutenant colonel, to my shock, he pulled out my letter and he put it on the table and he said to the captain, do you realize this letter talks about the Soviet Union? You have brought on behalf of one of your crewmen propaganda of war into our country, punishable by prison sentence.
Man, my heart started to pound and I leapt up and I shouted, this is the word of God. He didn't want to talk to me. He didn't want to talk to the cook.
He just dismissed me. He wanted to talk to the captain. And Tombs said to him, let me see the letter. And so the lieutenant colonel carefully pushed the letter across the table and Tombs turned it right side up so he could read it. It was like he was treating a letter like it was some kind of like it might explode, like it was a grenade. So Tombs leaned over the table, put his elbows on the table, and he studied the letter. He read it. It must have been five minutes, 10 minutes. Everyone's quiet and it is tense.
You could have cut. And when Tombs finished reading the letter, he looked up at the lieutenant colonel and their eyes locked. And he said, Soviet Union?
Where does it say Soviet Union here? Because what I had done in the letter when I wrote it, I quoted Ezekiel. All he wrote in that prophecy was a nation from the uttermost north, which is what I quoted, will invade with allies the land of Israel.
And God will supernaturally end that conflict. And the lieutenant colonel looked back at the letter and there was nowhere to go from there. And he said, thank you. The officers behind him rose to their feet.
Tombs rose to his feet. And the rest of us, we all stood. It looked like it was going to be sentence time. And the lieutenant colonel said, you and your crew, on behalf of your actions, had been declared unfriendly to the Soviet state. And he wheeled around about face and he left the room.
And the officers left the room. Tombs' attorney said to me, I thought I told you not to sign anything. I said, oh, yeah, Tab, you did.
I'm so sorry. And he said, do you think God led you to write that letter? And I said, yes, I do. And Tombs said, OK, no problem. About a day later, at two o'clock in the morning, one of the hostile officers banged on our door and he told us to get up out of our bunks. And he said, Moscow has decided to release you into the custody of the United States Coast Guard.
You have 20 minutes to get your things. And I remember Mark talking to Harry and he was fascinated with the United States. He was fascinated.
He was fascinated with the state of Florida. Right. Then he says to Mark, what is it like living in the United States?
I mean, he started to get honest. Mark said, we're free. I can do anything I want to do.
I can fly anywhere I want to fly. We're free. And Harry said to him, we are free, too, in our country. I can have anything I want in my country, including your God. And Mark responded and said to him, no, you're not. You don't know what freedom is. They left it at that. We never did sign the papers. And you know what?
We never did get those T-shirts from Little Diamond Island. And a great job on the editing by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to listener Charles Burrell for sharing his story. And what a story about faith, what a story about courage and about so much more.
The story of Charles Burrell captured by the Soviets here on Our American Stories. Listen to the I Am Rappaport stereo podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyt, Alison Roman and Ina Garten. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen must-haves. Just sign up at Katie Couric dot com slash good taste. That's Katie Couric dot com slash good taste.
I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. My name is Michael Wolff. Each week on Fire and Fury, the podcast, I take you deeper into the mind of Donald Trump and his campaign than any other journalist ever goes. I've written three books on Trump, but for some reason, the people around him, they keep on talking to me. To find out what they tell me, listen to Fire and Fury, the podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's like, you know, Mr. Ripley meets Catch Me If You Can. I mean, the guy hoodwinked everyone. How did George Santos convince everyone that he was someone else?
And how deep do his lies go? Listen to deep cover George Santos on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues. Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the health care community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other. Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
