The Massacre at Tiananmen Square

# Stuff You Should Know: Tiananmen Square

Josh and Chuck dive deep into one of the most significant political uprisings of the modern era—the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in Beijing. The episode traces the roots of the student movement calling for reforms like free speech and reduced corruption, through the government's violent crackdown that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths over just two days in June. With fresh context from recently declassified accounts and a PBS Frontline documentary, the hosts examine how initial nonviolent resistance against military troops surprisingly worked the first time, but ultimately couldn't stop the regime's brutal determination to suppress what they saw as an existential threat to their power.