Selects: 911 Is Not a Joke

6:09Josh Clark:And another important thing here is that 80 % of calls these days are from your wireless phone. That's a big deal. It is, which we'll get to, but that changed things.

6:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the big spoiler is that the 911 system that we currently use in the United States is hopelessly antiquated. And they're working on improving it. And nothing that we should say about how antiquated it is should keep you from calling 911. It still generally works. But it's having trouble or it's had trouble traditionally keeping pace with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications that has gone on in the last couple decades.

6:48Josh Clark:Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward and they don't think like, oh, but maybe we should slow the pace for 911.

6:54Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. And plus, I mean, 911, we'll see those systems are built alongside the other system. So when the other system leads forward, they have to go through and rebuild this system that's just for 911.

7:08Josh Clark:Because you can't get rid of an old system because people – well, we'll get to that stuff.

7:11Chuck Bryant:We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it.

7:13Josh Clark:But we were laughing earlier about things that you should and should not call for. Some of these are debatable, I think. Oh, yeah? I think so. Says who? Says me. Okay. We'll get to the last one really is the only one that's debatable. But obviously if there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire.

7:33Chuck Bryant:Where there's smoke, there's fire. Medical emergency, and you can't, you know,

7:38Josh Clark:obviously get in your car and run someone to the emergency room if you can, if it's quicker, and you can do so safely.

7:45Chuck Bryant:It's quicker and cheaper. Oh, well, sure. Cost of gas, maybe a couple tolls, who knows, compared to like an ambulance ride. No, that's a good point.

7:55Josh Clark:But, I mean, I imagine if you're home just loaded and your kid gets hurt, you should probably call 911.

8:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah, call 911.

8:03Josh Clark:Car accidents, of course, if they are major enough and, like, have injuries, call 911.

8:09Chuck Bryant:You should be able to tell. Like, if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck, you don't have to call 911. Right. You could call. Here's the other thing. If we're saying don't call 911, that doesn't mean, like, don't alert anybody. But there are, there's a, your police have their own phone number. Your local police have their own phone number. They do. Look it up and call that, the non-emergency number.

8:28Josh Clark:Right. And then obviously the last category is some sort of crime being committed, violence being committed. Sure. Call 911.

8:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So that's like no one's going to argue with that. I think so. Okay. There are plenty of instances where you shouldn't call 911, and yet people reliably call 911 for stuff like this.

8:50Josh Clark:And I think that's because it's been drilled into everyone's head. It's kind of a double-edged sword. You can't drill that into everyone's head. 911, 911, all you got to do is call 911 and then not expect to get some cat stuck in the tree calls.

9:04Chuck Bryant:You keep going back to that. Well, we actually did that when I was a kid. Did you? You called 911 for that?

9:09Josh Clark:Well, you know the funny story? It's not very funny to my dad, but we had a cat stuck in a tree.

9:14Chuck Bryant:Okay.

9:15Josh Clark:My dad went up and he got stuck in the tree.

9:18Chuck Bryant:He just climbed up too high?

9:19Josh Clark:Yeah.

9:20Chuck Bryant:And you got freaked out? I think so. I mean, I was a kid, so, you know, they weren't saying,

9:25Josh Clark:your father's very afraid and has screwed up. Right. I was just a kid kind of like, well, now dad's up there, and now there's firemen here helping my dad out of a tree. Cats and dads get stuck in trees. Yeah, and looking back, I think that's totally probably what happened. Sure. I think he got way up there and was freaked out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's cute. I'll have to ask him about that one day.

9:46Chuck Bryant:Okay, so your dad's stuck in a tree. I would say that's a call 911 situation. Cats stuck in a tree, no. Unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call 911 for that. Yeah, that's true. If you have a question about the speeding ticket you got the other day, that's not a call that you would place through 911. Again, you can just call. There's even a number on the back of the ticket. Don't be dumb. Okay? Hey, bringing that back? Just for that second. Okay. What else, Chuck?

10:14Josh Clark:Oh, of course, anything dealing with your animals, unless, well, I'm not even going to say that. What? I was going to say if there's an animal attacking someone. Yeah, you would call 911. You'd call 911 for that? Come out and shoot this dog? Basically. It could be rabid. It's terrible. Call Hectate out? But otherwise, if the cat in the tree lost animals, injured animals, noisy neighbors. I love that Dave puts power outage in here. And in parentheses, call your power company.

10:44Chuck Bryant:Right.

10:45Josh Clark:It's that last one I think is a little – it kind of opens a can of worms, and that is the suspicious person thing.

10:52Chuck Bryant:All right.

10:53Josh Clark:Because, you know, they say to call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person. Right. I think the distinction is, and what we see, and we'll get into this later, racial biases, you know, people in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're black and walking down my street.

11:16Chuck Bryant:Right.

11:16Josh Clark:Which happens.

11:17Chuck Bryant:Right.

11:18Josh Clark:That is not a suspicious person. Mm-hmm. Even, I mean, if there's nothing going on, I know people try to justify it, but then local police say, you know, hey, always call us if you think something might be going on. Right. And that's where it gets dodgy because that comes down to a human being's perception, which can be very tilted.

11:39Chuck Bryant:As Dave puts it, he put it a couple of ways that I thought were pretty smart. He said people aren't suspicious. Behavior is suspicious.

11:47Josh Clark:Yeah, and they say specifically to call 911 for suspicious activities. Right. But again, these are people. So it's just such a weird fine line you're walking there.

11:56Chuck Bryant:The other little litmus test that I've seen is stop just for a second. because it's a suspicious behavior. If you see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody, that's beyond suspicious. That's like the act.

12:09Josh Clark:That's the act. That's a crime being committed.

12:12Chuck Bryant:So you have a second when you see a suspicious person to stop and think like, would I call 911 if this person were white? Or if you're a black person doing this, say, would I call 911 if this person were black? And if the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't call. Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously.

12:28Josh Clark:Yeah, it's just interesting on these Facebook neighborhood pages is it's kind of evenly divided between people saying, don't call 911 for this. This is just a guy going door to door, perhaps.

12:39Chuck Bryant:Right.

12:40Josh Clark:Other people saying, no, you know what? If it's 9.45 or 10 o 'clock at night and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood. It seems like suspicious behavior. Maybe you should call the cops and let them work it out. And for the cops, they say, you know, call us. That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to your home, but we might work you through the situation, and it's all going to be fine.

13:02Chuck Bryant:Yes.

13:03Josh Clark:But this is the only one where I thought was a little bit like, you shouldn't just say like, don't call 911 when you see a suspicious person.

13:10Chuck Bryant:No, you certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time, though, I think one of the big hesitations for calling 911 these days is like either the increase or the increase in reporting of people, innocent people, who had 911 called on them being killed by the cops. Exactly. And that death would not have happened. Their death wouldn't have happened had the person been suspicious of them and called 911. And the fact, you know, when news of something like that gets out, it will make you second guess that kind of thing. For sure. It makes you realize you're bringing like people who are armed and jumpy out to a situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever.

13:57Chuck Bryant:And when you look at it from that respect, it can make you second guess the whole thing.

14:02Josh Clark:Yeah, and things can look like potential malfeasance that's not, you know, like a lot of people, you see a lot of people saying, well, I think someone's casing my house because a car pulled into my driveway and sat there for two minutes.

14:15Chuck Bryant:They asked me if I wanted to know more about Sierra Club.

14:19Josh Clark:Or someone stopped and was taking pictures of my house. Like, you never know. Somebody might be taking a picture of the oak tree that they're trying to learn about. Or just looking up something on their phone and standing in the direction of your house.

14:32Chuck Bryant:Nine times out of ten, they're trying to figure out more about the oak tree near your house.

14:38Josh Clark:Oh, I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, you know. No, I'm with you. Anyway, it's just that's where it gets a little dodgy. For sure. And we'll have statistics later on about actual racial bias because it's real. Sure. Okay.

14:54Chuck Bryant:Moving on. You want to take a little break after that? It seems like a good spot. Oh, I think I do. Okay. Well, everybody, we're taking a rare Josh break. And we'll be right back.

15:13Josh Clark:Hey, everybody. Here's a fact for you. So in the United States, there is a break-in every 26 seconds. And that means that somewhere right now, an intruder is getting closer. And the problem with most security systems is that they only alert you after the break-in has started. And that's too late.

15:27Chuck Bryant:Well, that's what makes SimpliSafe different. They use alerts. SimpliSafe's U.S.-based live agents, they identify threats on your property and help deter them before they actually break in. So the intruder never gets into your house. The crime has stopped before it even starts.

15:42Josh Clark:That's right. Right. And another great thing about SimpliSafe is they have no long-term contracts. They give you peace of mind and great value with their monitoring deterrence plans because they just start at about a dollar a day.

15:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah. SimpliSafe sent us a setup years back and I still use mine every day.

15:57Josh Clark:Yeah. And apparently setup, you can like do it by yourself in under 30 minutes. So it's a really good value and it doesn't take long.

16:02Chuck Bryant:So if you want to experience the SimpliSafe peace of mind, you can take advantage of the SimpliSafe discount offered to Stuff You Should Know listeners. Right now, you can get 50 % off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com slash stuff. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash stuff. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

16:26Josh Clark:Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive.

16:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, the truth is figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in.

16:52Josh Clark:That's right. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas, and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you.

17:08Chuck Bryant:Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash no stuff to learn more.

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18:47Chuck Bryant:Okay, we're back. That Josh break was invigorating. I wasn't doing anything. I was just taking a picture of your oak tree. Will you get off my back? Oh, my gosh.

18:56Josh Clark:What kind of oak is that, sir?

18:58Chuck Bryant:There's only one kind of oak. No, I know there's a bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland is like, no, that's not true.

19:08Josh Clark:While we're mentioning calling 911, though, you can get arrested. It is a crime to prank call 911. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Or to swat. It's called swatting. I think that deserves its own podcast. Maybe, because there was some guy got killed, right, from a swatting incident.

19:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think it's happened more than once.

19:28Josh Clark:Yeah, that's serious stuff.

19:29Chuck Bryant:If you don't know what swatting is, we'll just give you the 411 on this abusive 911. Man, I love myself sometimes. That's great. So swatting is where you are a hacker, right? Mm-hmm. And you can disguise the number that you're calling from to make it look like you're calling from a house that you want the cops to go to.

19:53Josh Clark:Right.

19:53Chuck Bryant:And you basically say, like, I'm in this house and I'm holding hostages and what are you going to do about it, Johnny Law?

19:59Josh Clark:Yeah.

19:59Chuck Bryant:And the law comes out and usually SWAT, I shouldn't say usually, in some cases the SWAT team will actually enter this house where people who have no idea what's going on are. Right. And maybe the people who have been SWATed, you know, said something mean to the guy who, you know, called the SWAT team out on them. But it's basically, it's not like saying like there's a, I think there's a hostage situation in this house. It's I'm the guy holding the hostages and here's where I am.

20:28Josh Clark:You see something mean like, and SWAT teams stink. Right, exactly. So the SWAT team's like, we're going to go kill that guy.

20:34Chuck Bryant:I'll bet you would never in a million years bring your SWAT team out.

20:38Josh Clark:And whatever you do, don't come in guns blazing.

20:41Chuck Bryant:Right.

20:42Josh Clark:Which we're joking about something that's really happened.

20:44Chuck Bryant:Sure, so like I really think we need to talk at least the short stuff. I think so. We'll look into it a little further.

20:50Josh Clark:We'll do one on swatting and one on doxing.

20:52Chuck Bryant:Okay.

20:53Josh Clark:The two weird new things that people do now. Right.

20:56Chuck Bryant:But swatting is definitely a crime.

20:59Josh Clark:Yes.

20:59Chuck Bryant:Okay. Also, so that you don't make 911 feel like, I think this is great. This is almost like a public service announcement that we're in the midst of.

21:07Josh Clark:Yeah, we do these.

21:08Chuck Bryant:So you don't get in trouble with the 911. So they don't think that you're pranking them when you're not. If you ever call 911 accidentally or say your kid does or whatever, you do not want to hang up the phone. Yeah, I did that a few years ago, I feel like.

21:25Josh Clark:I accidentally called 911 because I think cell phones have a feature that enacted like an automatic call by accident.

21:35Chuck Bryant:Right.

21:35Josh Clark:And I saw it and I went, oh, crap, and I hung up.

21:37Chuck Bryant:Right.

21:38Josh Clark:And I got a call back like in a second.

21:40Chuck Bryant:That's great. Ideally, you should. Yeah. Yumi has a great story from when she was a kid. And she got scared. I can't remember. Something about her grandmother, who was perfectly fine. But she called 911 and got scared when 911 answered and hung up. And they kept calling back and she kept hanging up. That's very cute. So they came out to the house.

22:01Josh Clark:A little welfare check. Yeah, basically.

22:04Chuck Bryant:But you don't want to do that. Don't follow the Yumi model of 911. Just stay on the phone and be like, I'm really sorry. This is an accidental call, and I'm definitely not the bad guy pretending that this is an accidental call. Make sure you say that, too.

22:18Josh Clark:My name is Timmy. I'm five. It's all good.

22:21Chuck Bryant:My name is Little Boy with brown hair. So I think the history is fairly interesting because England started 9, not 9-1-1, but their version, which is 9-9-9, way back in 1937 in London. I didn't know this.

22:39Josh Clark:I didn't know it either, but they were the first city in the world that created the three-digit model. Apparently, as the story goes, there was a fire in downtown London, and people tried to get through the fire department, and they were put on hold and switched around. And so they said the town crier came out and said 999 is the answer.

22:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which – so 999, it's easy to remember. Sure. I guess no one else was using 999 at the time. But this is back in the day of rotary phones, right?

23:10Josh Clark:Oh, yeah.

23:11Chuck Bryant:So that's actually, that was a burden to dial 999 with a rotary dial phone. Should have been 111. Should have been, for sure.

23:19Josh Clark:Yeah.

23:19Chuck Bryant:I just thought that was kind of clumsy of them.

23:22Josh Clark:A little bit. Clumsy of the Brits. But let me see here. I think it was a 12-mile radius around London at first after World War II and went wider. and because, you know, Britain liked to do a little world conquering, you can find 999 in cities all over the world. Yeah. Where England has left their imprint.

23:47Chuck Bryant:That's a way to put it for sure. Yeah. And the U.S., of course, said, well, we're not going to let the Brits outdo us. You're going to do Brexit? Hold my beer. Yeah, we're going to wait 20-something years and do it ourselves. Right, exactly. So I think in 1957, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry, the National Association of Fire Chiefs, I was way off. They said, hey, we should come up with an easy to remember three-digit number for people to report fires. And other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll do that to report emergencies. And the Fire Chiefs Association said, no, just fires.

24:26Josh Clark:Yeah, right.

24:26Chuck Bryant:Luckily, no one listened to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just fire part.

24:31Josh Clark:That's right.

24:32Chuck Bryant:And then a couple of years after that, or maybe a few years later, the National Academy of Sciences said, this is actually a really good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances too. And then finally, a presidential commission on law enforcement and the administration of justice said, no, all emergencies should have a three-digit easy-to-remember number.

24:54Josh Clark:That's right. So the FCC says, who should we get in touch with here? How about AT &T? Because these were the days of phone monopolies. Right. Or phone monopoly. It was just one, right?

25:08Chuck Bryant:No, I think.

25:09Josh Clark:When did they break up the phone companies?

25:12Chuck Bryant:I think it was before this.

25:14Josh Clark:Okay.

25:15Chuck Bryant:Because they broke them up into the different bells, right?

25:18Josh Clark:Yeah.

25:19Chuck Bryant:Were all the different bells part of one big phone company?

25:22Josh Clark:That's right. The Liberty Bell. Which one? I just said two different things. The Liberty Bell, the Southern Bell.

25:27Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

25:28Josh Clark:Bell from... Pacific Bell. Pacific Bell, the Bell from Beauty and the Beast. Right. All the bells. Albuquerque Bell? Sure, why not?

25:38Chuck Bryant:You Can Ring My Bell. That's a good one. That's a good song. It's a good one. But I think More, More, More by Andrea True Connection is far better. What's that? Virtually the same thing, but just a better song. Oh, okay.

25:51Josh Clark:They got in touch with AT &T, and they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently, AT &T is the one that chose 911 because it hadn't been used yet, which is kind of the first stumbling block. Again, the rotary dial. Rotary dial. That was – 911 is a lot better than 999. Way – it's two-thirds better. It is two-thirds better. And it was easy to remember. And, you know, I think they had set up at this point already 411 in a lot of areas. So they just kind of extended that idea of the something one one.

26:26Chuck Bryant:Right. So the first, this really surprised me, the first 911 call that was ever placed in the United States. New York City. You would think so? Washington, D.C. No. Chicago. What else you got? Chicago. You already said that one. Okay, I don't know. What about Los Angeles? Yeah, why not? What about Albuquerque? They're doing fine. Okay, no, none of those are correct. Haleyville, Alabama was the site of the very first 911 call.

26:55Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a good little trivia question, I think. That is pedal to the metal. By the way, I recently watched, I had recorded all those Jeopardy shows with Ken Jennings on there, the Champions run. That was some of the better TV I'd seen in a while. Really good stuff. Oh, yeah? Well, I mean, if you're a Jeopardy fan, it was as good as it gets. Like the smartest competitors and like big time drama. Because they, you know, they had to bring it on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show. Like they were daily doubling on like$20 ,000 and stuff. Like it was really tense. Wow. Like good drama.

27:36Josh Clark:Yeah. It was so cool. Because I think Ken knew that other guy, the Holtsheltzer guy was a gambler. And he made his name for really just going all in. and Ken knew this, so he had to do the same in order to beat these chumps.

27:49Chuck Bryant:If you're playing a gambler, you get dragged into gambling whether you want to gamble or not. Bring it in there. It's good stuff.

27:55Josh Clark:Anyway, good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Haleyville, Alabama did. It was kind of a publicity stunt, it sounds like.

28:03Chuck Bryant:So the little phone company there, the Alabama Telephony Co., basically said— That's pretty funny. AT &T is about to do this. They're about to launch this 911 system. We want to jump on it and adopt it first. So we're going to set this up as fast as we can because here's the thing. We'll find out more about this in a minute. But there's no national 911 system. Everywhere in the United States, 911 reaches an emergency dispatcher or an emergency operator. But each system is local, regional at best. Right. Right. So Haleyville, Alabama could jump on this and set up their own system and get started.

28:44Chuck Bryant:And that's exactly what they did.

28:45Josh Clark:That's right. February of 1968, they had a state senator named Rankin Fight. He dialed 911 as a, you know, obviously, is this like a photo op or video op? In other words, there wasn't an emergency. Sure. It's like, man, what a coincidence that the state senator had the first emergency.

29:05Chuck Bryant:And happened to be standing next to this special phone.

29:08Josh Clark:That's right. They had a special bat phone, a red phone, and I think an Alabama congressman was on the other end at the police station. Congressman Tom Bevel, known as the Pork King. Really?

29:20Chuck Bryant:Not just the Alabama Pork King, the Pork King of Congress.

29:23Josh Clark:And the state senator said, Pork King, what are you doing at the police station? I've got an emergency. And he said, are we really going to do this bit?

29:33Chuck Bryant:I would force whoever's on the other line to do it.

29:36Josh Clark:So, yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey, we did it first. They did it a week later. They still have a big festival every year, too. Sure. A 911 festival.

29:46Chuck Bryant:I wonder if they reenact this famous phone call.

29:49Josh Clark:Oh, man, if we could play those two parts. I'm the port king. How great would that be? Forget Drunk History. Just put us there.

29:56Chuck Bryant:That's cool.

29:58Josh Clark:And when I say forget Drunk History, I mean we very much want to be on it.

30:01Chuck Bryant:Are we still pursuing that?

30:03Josh Clark:No, I mean, just by occasionally yelling out of my window every now and then. Okay. Why not us?

30:09Chuck Bryant:The crickets are deafening. I'm surprised no one said like, hey, this is a natural fit.

30:16Josh Clark:These guys are great storytellers about history. They can get drunk with the best of them.

30:20Chuck Bryant:We've been saying this for years. No one's listening.

30:24Josh Clark:So Nome, Alaska, about a week later, did the same thing, and we're the second city. and then throughout the 70s and 80s it kind of started rolling out, but it takes a while to get this kind of thing going. It does because, again, it's a local, again at best, regional system, okay?

30:43Chuck Bryant:And your local city might not have the money to put in a new telecommunications system to be used for emergency services. And at first, you know, cities that were a little more flush with cash because they had a larger tax base, had the money to roll these out. So as expected, aside from Haleyville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting to roll out the earliest 911 systems. But the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation based on Johnson & Johnson's company, they took an early interest in this and started handing out grants to rural areas to set up their own 911 systems.

31:28Chuck Bryant:So ironically, Haleyville, Alabama, had it not jumped on it, probably still wouldn't have a 911 system were it not for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to like, you know, small towns around the country for their own. Yeah, because they're like, you know what?

31:44Josh Clark:People call 911, they go to the hospital, they're going to be using Johnson & Johnson products. Yeah. I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that, you know, 911 is probably good for the Band-Aid business.

31:56Chuck Bryant:I would guess so. And baby shampoo? Yeah, because if you can't get an ambulance to that person, they're going to croak. But if you get the ambulance to them— Right. You don't need Band-Aids when you're dead. Nope. That's just like a fact of death. Mm-hmm. But if you survive, you're going to need a lot of Band-Aids, depending on what you've done to yourself.

32:18Josh Clark:That's right. Here's some stats for you. By 1976, when I was five years old, only 17 % of the U.S. had 911.

32:26Chuck Bryant:You want to know a surprising fact? 1976, I was just born.

32:31Josh Clark:Well, you probably weren't covered by 9-1-1. Again, not until 1989. Well, by 1987, only 50 % of the country, which is, that's kind of, that's pretty late. I would have thought we would have had a lot more of the country covered by then.

32:45Chuck Bryant:For sure, you would think so. And it wasn't until 99, actually, Chuck, that 9-1-1 officially became the emergency number for everywhere in America. 1999.

32:58Josh Clark:Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about 9-9-9? And they went, Bill. Yeah, please. Wrong country. Canada, speaking of wrong countries, they are very much the right country because they got on board with 9-1-1 as well. That's absolutely true, Chuck. Because they were like, why make things too difficult?

33:19Chuck Bryant:You know, that's a great question, Canada. And I think the answer to that is you shouldn't make things too difficult. Just kind of go with the flow. Go with the American flow. Should we take another break or should we do some more stuff here? I was thinking maybe another break. Okay. Are you okay with that? Yes. Are you sure? Yes. What about you listeners? Yes. Okay, good. Well, we'll be right back. Stuff you should know.

33:47Josh Clark:Hey, everybody. Here's a fact for you. In the United States, there is a break-in every 26 seconds, and that means that somewhere right now, an intruder is getting closer. And the problem with most security systems is that they only alert you after the break-in has started, and that's too late.

34:02Chuck Bryant:Well, that's what makes SimpliSafe different. They use alerts. SimpliSafe's U.S.-based live agents, they identify threats on your property and help deter them before they actually break in. So the intruder never gets into your house. the crime has stopped before it even starts.

34:17Josh Clark:That's right. And another great thing about SimpliSafe is they have no long-term contracts. They give you peace of mind and great value with their monitoring deterrence plans because they just start at about a dollar a day.

34:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah. SimpliSafe sent us a setup years back, and I still use mine every day.

34:32Josh Clark:Yeah. And apparently, setup, you can do it by yourself in under 30 minutes. So it's a really good value, and it doesn't take long.

34:37Chuck Bryant:So if you want to experience the SimpliSafe peace of mind, you can take advantage of the SimpliSafe discount offered to Stuff You Should Know listeners. Right now, you can get 50 % off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com slash stuff. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash stuff. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

35:01Josh Clark:Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive.

35:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, the truth is figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in.

35:27Josh Clark:That's right. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas, and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you.

35:43Chuck Bryant:Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash no stuff to learn more.

36:03Josh Clark:Hey, everyone. If you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic or swap screens for sunsets with curious like-minded people, then Stuff at Sea is your kind of voyage.

36:15Chuck Bryant:That's right. Stuff at Sea is a five-night, culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe.

36:31Josh Clark:On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments.

36:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush. Just long, sun-drenched days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, Curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences, and a lineup designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable.

36:58Josh Clark:Stuff at Sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at-sea experiences exclusively with Virgin Voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love.

37:12Chuck Bryant:Book now at virginvoyages.com slash stuff.

37:27Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck. Let's talk about how it actually works.

37:33Josh Clark:Yeah, in the early days, obviously it was all landline telephones. So when your call got routed to the switchboard, which was a 911 switchboard dedicated to that, they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated to 911 to what's called a PSAP, a public safety answering point. And at the time, they were a lot of times like in the fire department or in the police station.

38:00Chuck Bryant:Right, so they could just turn in their chair and be like, Sarge, dispatch some people to this address.

38:06Josh Clark:We got a suspicious person staring at oak trees.

38:10Chuck Bryant:Right. Again. Right. Right. And like today a 911 dispatcher is a highly trained, highly skilled person. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's like a flight attendant. Remember when we learned like flight attendants are actually trained to save your life in an emergency and they just hand out peanuts as like a side thing? Right. This is basically the same thing with the 911 operator or call taker. They know how to do a lot of stuff. But the earliest ones just knew how to answer the phone, take down your info, and then turn around and send it off to the fire department or the police department or, you know, the paramedics or something like that.

38:48Chuck Bryant:You know, they'd be like, okay, I got to go. All right, I'll see you. Bye. Right. And then they would get off the phone.

38:52Josh Clark:And that evolved to the call center. that evolved to what was called Enhanced 911, which was in the 1970s, again, driven by telecom advancing with AT &T. With new technologies, they developed ANI and ALI, Automatic Number Identification and Location Identification.

39:14Chuck Bryant:ANI is just caller ID. That's what everybody calls caller ID. Yeah. Remember those cute little boxes that you can plug your phone line into and show you in some little terrible readout.

39:25Josh Clark:Yeah.

39:25Chuck Bryant:Basically dot matrix readout. Yep. Who was calling? Yep.

39:29Josh Clark:Pretty neat. And then it was on your handheld cordless phone.

39:33Chuck Bryant:Right.

39:34Josh Clark:You could look at it and that was like, whoa. We're living in the future. If you were rich. Or the answering machine now is digital. We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That was like a big revolution too.

39:45Chuck Bryant:That was huge.

39:46Josh Clark:Amazing.

39:47Chuck Bryant:Because you could leave as long a message as you wanted now. Yeah. But you couldn't get that clever nobody's hold Home. Nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message. Right. You could sing it, but they actually had that tape you could buy that you could put in there. Yeah. There was one that was like a whole mixtape of them.

40:05Josh Clark:Of just like gag answers? Mm-hmm. Oh, boy.

40:08Chuck Bryant:You don't remember that?

40:09Josh Clark:Not really. There was a very famous ad that ran. Really? Yeah. It was like, delight your friends. Basically, yeah. Wow.

40:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

40:19Josh Clark:That's pretty funny.

40:20Chuck Bryant:So this enhanced 911 system, the automatic number and the automatic locator, that was a big deal because now all of a sudden, if you were a call taker for 911 and a call came up, on your little computer screen it said what the number was and what the address was. And because everybody was calling from landlines, you knew exactly where that person was who needed help. That's right. It saved a bunch of time. It was a very huge life-saving measure. Yeah. I mean, when you think about people in an emergency, could be everything from crippling fear, keeping you from even knowing where you are.

40:58Josh Clark:Yeah. To having been hit on the head and not being able to say where you are. Yeah. Or you just can't speak. Yeah. And so that really, imagine that they spend a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through that first step of where are you.

41:10Chuck Bryant:Right. So this was an enormous leap forward. And in the 70s and 80s, it really kind of cemented how helpful and life-saving this 911 system could be. And then cell phones came along. And the rest of us kind of leapfrogged right over 911 because the cell phone carriers didn't have ANI and ALI. When you call 911, still to this day, from a cell phone, it does not come up what your number is or where you are in any specific way. And so Congress, or at least the FCC, said, hey, we need you guys to do something. Like there's got to be something. It just can't be like, you know, you have no idea where this person is in the country.

41:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Because part of the other thing about the automatic locator that they had originally with 911 in the 70s and 80s is it would route you to the closest public safety answering point. Right. So that would be saving time too because the person you're talking to is in the same area as you and knows the area you're talking about and can more quickly dispatch people.

42:18Josh Clark:Right.

42:18Chuck Bryant:With cell phones, it's not the case.

42:19Josh Clark:Yeah, and Dave makes a good point. Even if they could have located like where your cell phone plan was or your phone was activated, you don't have to live in the city where that is. Right. I have friends that have L.A. numbers that work in the film industry here just because that stupid LA 310 or 323 makes them look like a more legitimate hire.

42:40Chuck Bryant:Just so cool.

42:41Josh Clark:It's so cool and so dumb.

42:43Chuck Bryant:Right.

42:43Josh Clark:But yeah, they would be like, you're in Atlanta? It says you're in Los Angeles.

42:48Chuck Bryant:Is this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah. Yeah. So the FCC said, okay, you guys need to do something. So what they did was they came up with a triangulation where the closest cell phone tower's address comes up when you call. Yeah, it's a good start. It is a good start, but if you're out in the sticks, the closest cell phone tower might be miles and miles and miles away. That's true. And even if it's not miles away, let's say it's a football field away. Well, if you're in a densely populated area.

43:20Josh Clark:Yeah, and you're bleeding out. Sure. That doesn't help.

43:22Chuck Bryant:It does not help at all. But it gets you a little bit closer, and it helps to transfer your caller to route your call to the closest PSAP. Okay? And then the other thing that they have them do now, phase two of this enhanced wireless enhanced 911, is it gives your GPS coordinates.

43:40Josh Clark:Right.

43:40Chuck Bryant:Which is so 90s, it's ridiculous. It is. It's like MapQuest.

43:44Josh Clark:Anyone who's ever waited on a ride chair that thought you were down the street from where you were knows how accurate that GPS can be. It's still great, but—

43:56Chuck Bryant:That's way more accurate than what 911's working with.

43:59Josh Clark:Well, they're just working with longitude and latitude points, right?

44:01Chuck Bryant:One of the big qualities, a quality to have as a 911 operator is to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude coordinates, GPS coordinates, into like Google Maps to get an address really fast. And a smooth, sexy voice. Sure. Like Barry White with fingers of fury.

44:23Josh Clark:Or like Halle Berry. With Barry White's fingers. Did you see that movie, The Call?

44:29Chuck Bryant:No.

44:29Josh Clark:She played a 911 call specialist in a movie, a thriller. It was good. Was it? It wasn't great. Yeah, it was good. Okay. Brad Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director.

44:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I know that name.

44:43Josh Clark:And it seemed like this sort of from what? You going to call me out on that? I didn't hear you. From what? From where? Oh, I don't get what you mean. From where? Like what other? Oh, what other movies has he directed? Yeah. He directed a scary movie called Session 9.

45:00Chuck Bryant:Oh, yes. Okay. Well, then this guy is one of my favorites of all time. You know that movie? It's one of the best horror movies ever made.

45:06Josh Clark:Yeah. I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a range of genres. Like one of his early movies is this kind of spacey rom-com called Happy Accidents that was great. Happy Accidents? Yeah, really good with Marissa Tomei and Vincent D 'Onofrio. but it had this, it was a rom-com with a sort of a bit of a sci-fi twist to it. Oh, okay. And he did Trans-Siberian. He's done, he did Next Stop Wonderland was one of his first little indies. But yeah, he does, it's unusual for a director to tackle all these weird or different genres.

45:41Chuck Bryant:That's neat.

45:42Josh Clark:Disparate genres.

45:43Chuck Bryant:Well, you had me at session nine.

45:45Josh Clark:Yeah, The Call is a good, you know, popcorn movie. I highly recommend it.

45:48Chuck Bryant:Okay, I'll check it out.

45:49Josh Clark:Halle Berry is a call center person and that's all I'll say.

45:52Chuck Bryant:Hey, she's quality. She's a quality actress. She is. But the fact that I had never even heard of this movie really made me suspicious. It did pretty well. Okay. It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like 60 million bucks. But that's really surprising. Like, I'm very aware of movies. Like, I'll know what the movie's about, and I'll have never seen it. Not even seen a preview. I'll just kind of know. Sure. So I'm surprised.

46:16Josh Clark:Yeah. Okay.

46:18Chuck Bryant:I recommend it. I'll check it out. Yeah.

46:19Josh Clark:I mean, it's no Black Coat's daughter, but. Man, that's a good one, too. So where are we now? We are now at texting to 911.

46:30Chuck Bryant:Oh, wait, hold on. I want to drive this home real quick.

46:33Josh Clark:Okay.

46:33Chuck Bryant:Okay. Drive it home. The 1996 FCC rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower, tell 911 its address, the closest one to your cell phone, and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell phone they think the cell phone is. That's the 911 system that's in place nationwide today in 2020.

46:57Josh Clark:That's why they ask you from a cell phone who are you and where are you, just like they did in the early days.

47:03Chuck Bryant:Right, and this is a problem because, like you said earlier, 80 % of 911 calls in the United States are made from cell phones, and 911 does not know where you are unless you tell them. Yeah, but it's also balanced out by the fact that you have that cell phone right there immediately.

47:24Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah, that's true. Remember the old days, you're like, let me find a payphone. Let me go knock on someone's door and ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I won't get shot.

47:32Chuck Bryant:Right.

47:33Josh Clark:So people are calling right away. So I would think that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness of location.

47:40Chuck Bryant:I think you're right, Chuck. We'll see. Well, you really swooped in there.

47:44Josh Clark:I say we'll see as if there's some report coming out.

47:46Chuck Bryant:The thing is, though, is people have figured out the people, the powers that be who are concerned with 911 and its system are well aware of this major flaw.

47:57Josh Clark:Yeah.

47:57Chuck Bryant:And our work have figured out how to update it. It's just now we're in the process of rolling out updates. Well, and then privacy advocates are going to be like, what?

48:07Josh Clark:You're going to like locate every single person with a cell phone and know where they are at all times?

48:12Chuck Bryant:Right. And Amazon and Apple are like, dude, we already know that. It's just 911 is the only one who doesn't know where you are at all times, which is a problem. It's funny. I saw a Wired article from 1998 that was like wringing its hands like, oh, you know, privacy advocates are worried that they may be able to track the movement of cell phone users based on this information that 911 gets now. Yeah. They're like, maybe. I don't know.

48:38Josh Clark:We'll have to see. We'll see who the future holds. Yeah. So texting to 911 is the latest technology. About 10 years ago, 11 years ago in Iowa, in Blackhawk, they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service. And it's still kind of coming out. I think a couple of years ago, all 50 states had text capability. But it's— Not everywhere in each state. Yeah, exactly. It's very sparse. And it's just text. I love Dave points out you can't send emojis. I need help emoji. But you can't send text and video, and that kind of thing would be super helpful, I think.

49:20Chuck Bryant:Right. So this is where we are in the next generation. It's literally called Next Generation 911, NG 911. And it's where 911 finally catches up to every other telecom company and device manufacturer already is. And it basically uses all the information from the Internet of Things that lets people know exactly where you are. Not just like what your address is, what floor of a building you happen to be sitting on right now. All of that information is now going to be funneled to 911 when you call because 911 is finally abandoning landlines. Landline telecom, that's what they're dealing with currently.

50:05Chuck Bryant:They're going over to VOIP. So 911 will be using a secure internet connection in the near future. And when they get to that point, they will be able to accept video photos. Like this is the guy that's attacking the lady. Hurry up, that kind of thing. And then they'll also be able to because they're setting up a separate wireless broadband network just for first responders called FirstNet.

50:30Josh Clark:Yeah, that's going to be a big deal.

50:31Chuck Bryant:And so 911 will be able to say, hey, here's a photo of the guy that you're looking for. They can't do that now. As mind-boggling as it is, they cannot do that.

50:42Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, just to have a dedicated wireless network cuts down on, I imagine, interference and potential hacking.

50:50Chuck Bryant:Plus, in a disaster, if you're out there in the field, you are using your own wireless device that's on the public broadband right now. And so if the public broadband goes down, because there's so many people trying to use it to find out what's going on in like an earthquake or something, Like the first responders suffer from that too. So this separate broadband network just for first responders won't crash in the event of a disaster.

51:13Josh Clark:Yeah, and speaking of first responders, I think it's kind of time we join certain people and saying call center employees are first responders.

51:25Chuck Bryant:Are people saying they're not?

51:26Josh Clark:Well, I don't think they're generally thought of as first responders if you work at a call center.

51:31Chuck Bryant:Because they just sit around? Maybe.

51:33Josh Clark:But they are literally the first and most important first thing that happens in an emergency. And like you said earlier, they are trained to walk people through CPR, Heimlich, how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, suicide, domestic abuse. If you're a kid and you're scared because grandma fell over, like how to handle children. like they're really skilled and I think it's a shame that like I feel like the only time you hear about 911 call center responders is when there's a bad one and you release those calls and everyone's horrified yeah you know and it is it's awful but those are clearly like the standouts I guess not

52:19Chuck Bryant:standouts the standouts are all the good employees there have been some doozies for sure yeah I read about one where somebody called in a wildfire in Oregon. Oregon, sorry, Oregon. Oregon. And the 911 operator said, what you're seeing is probably just the play of sunlight on the fog. Right. It was like, how would you even know that? You're in a call center. I'm looking right at this thing. It's a wildfire. And they didn't dispatch anybody. And like a half hour or 20 minutes later, or somebody else called it in, and by this time it was like raging.

52:57Josh Clark:There was the one lady drowning in her car too. That one was horrific.

53:00Chuck Bryant:I didn't hear about that one.

53:01Josh Clark:She was in her car that was going down, and I think I don't remember exactly what happened, but she was freaking out. Yeah. And I think the 911 person was just sort of dismissive, and it was really kind of rude even.

53:15Chuck Bryant:Wow.

53:15Josh Clark:But, you know, that makes the news.

53:17Chuck Bryant:Right.

53:17Josh Clark:Not the 650 ,000 calls a day that go through and our lives are saved.

53:24Chuck Bryant:No, no, absolutely. That's absolutely true. That's a great point. There are plenty of stories of people like of them just like straight up doing hero stuff. Yeah. Going above and beyond. You should see Halle Berry in this movie. One of the things that can happen is as much as you're trained to not let it happen, you can become emotionally invested in a call. And I've read that some operators are just fine at leaving it at the door, at least appearing to leave it at the door, but others can suffer burnout, PTSD. And one of the big things that I saw that's a huge psychological problem for 911 operators is that there can very frequently be no resolution.

54:12Chuck Bryant:Right. They can be on the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage and they're trying to talk them down. And all of a sudden the cops come in and the line goes dead. If they're not good friends with the cops who came in, they may never find out what happened. Like no idea. They're talking someone through who's been shot or whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious. They have no idea what happened to that person. They have to take the next call. And that's a huge problem. There's no closure. And then sometimes there is closure. Like if you're a 911 operator, you probably have been on the phone with somebody when they took their last breath.

54:47Chuck Bryant:Right. When they were murdered, when they died very, very scared. Right. That kind of stuff takes its toll on people and that's a big, it can be a big problem and there can be pretty frequent turnover among 911 dispatchers.

54:59Josh Clark:It's a Halle Berry movie. Oh, yeah. I'm telling you. It's all there. Yeah, because even if they don't get closure on the work site, they could see it on the news that night. Be like, man, I took that call.

55:11Chuck Bryant:Right.

55:11Josh Clark:of this murder.

55:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

55:13Josh Clark:Or whatever. Pretty bad. Sure. Not a job for me.

55:17Chuck Bryant:I don't think I could hack it either. And then practically speaking, there's like, you have to be able to type really, really fast with a high level of accuracy while somebody's telling you other information.

55:29Josh Clark:Yeah, I would.

55:29Chuck Bryant:Like you might be taking info in and you have to be chatting with, you know, a cop on IM who you're sending out while you're also taking the description from the other person. You're just going back and forth.

55:40Josh Clark:Yeah, you got to be able to compartmentalize and multitask. Yeah. None of those things are my specialty. No. If you're wondering, you pay for 911 if you have a phone bill, cell phone bills included. That's a little surcharge there. That's outrageous. Just scream socialism, everybody. Yeah. And as far as those statistics we talked about earlier about the racial bias, of course, if you were a fan of Public Enemy, you remember the great, great song, 911 is a joke.

56:10Chuck Bryant:Flavor Flav.

56:12Josh Clark:There was a study done by the ACLU in 2013. Residents of Grand Crossing, this is a Chicago study, African-American neighborhood on the south side, waited 11 minutes for a cop to come after a priority call, two and a half minutes for the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. And response times were four and a half times slower in the black community. And there's, you know, like I mentioned earlier with the people calling 911 on, you know, just an African-American person living their life. There have been cases where people ended up dead because of that after escalation. And that's just like a pure tragedy.

56:58Chuck Bryant:For sure. um there is a there like when you have something this massive and huge and it involves people at like their worst moment of their life a lot of stuff is going to kind of come out of it's there's a lot to 911 a lot of legends and myths and everything but one of the things i saw that everyone seems to know about is that if you call 911 and pretend you're ordering a pizza they will understand that you are in a position where you can't talk and they'll dispatch the police. Supposedly that's a myth, but it makes total sense.

57:33Josh Clark:You've heard that before? I was just thinking of Die Hard. Oh, I don't remember that. There was that line where he's calling the 911 dispatcher. Well, I guess, I don't even think it was. I think it was an actual cop on the other end. And she's like, calm down, sir. And, you know, it's not an emergency or whatever. And he said, what do you think I'm doing? Ordering a pizza? Oh, yeah, that's right. And that might've been a reference to that.

57:55Chuck Bryant:Maybe so. So what are you saying again? The urban legend is that if you, like, let's say there's somebody who's, like, got a gun on you. If you can somehow get it to the point where you're like, hey, let's order a pizza right now. You can call 911 and say, hey, I'd like to order a pizza. And that's code for having trouble. Here's my address. And then, yeah, and that 911 will get what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's not true. But there is, there's another, there was an urban legend I saw in the UK with 999. that if you call and you don't say anything, that they will send someone out.

58:32Chuck Bryant:And I think that is kind of widely believed over here in the U.S. too. Apparently in the U.K., that is true, but it's going to send you through a series of prompts if you don't respond. And if you press 55, you will be confirming that, yes, there is an emergency and you just can't talk right now, and they will send people out. If you don't press 55, then they won't. It'll just take it as like an accidental call.

59:01Josh Clark:Well, and that's the big benefit. I don't even think we kind of brought up about texting to 911 because you might think like, ugh, because people want to text. Millennials. But there are plenty of cases where you can't talk. You're maybe in a domestic dispute. Or if you're hearing impaired. And you're hiding in a closet or if you're hearing impaired or if you've been kidnapped and don't want to use your voice out loud or you're a scared child. like plenty of great cases to be made for texting.

59:27Chuck Bryant:And since text to 911 isn't everywhere, the FCC has a law that if your telecom carrier doesn't have text to 911, they have an immediate bounce back that says, like, you can't do that. You have to call 911.

59:42Josh Clark:Yeah, which is, that's pretty valuable.

59:44Chuck Bryant:It is. And one last thing. If you find an old phone that has a charge in it, even if it hasn't had service for 20 years, you can dial 911. you will be connected. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Every single phone that is in operation dials 911 for free.

1:00:00Josh Clark:Yeah, I like that.

1:00:01Chuck Bryant:I do too, man.

1:00:02Josh Clark:I love 911.

1:00:04Chuck Bryant:I think Kurt Vonnegut said there's no greater display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down the street with its sirens blazing.

1:00:12Josh Clark:Oh, really?

1:00:14Chuck Bryant:That sounds like something he'd say. Interesting. Well, if you want to know more about Kurt Vonnegut, you can just type that into the search bar how stuff works, and who knows what that will bring up.

1:00:23Josh Clark:Who knows?

1:00:24Chuck Bryant:And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. This is a response when we asked for examples of racism in today's military,

1:00:35Josh Clark:and we heard from a range of people, I have to say, from this guy who—

1:00:41Chuck Bryant:To the other guy.

1:00:41Josh Clark:To the other guy. This guy said—I'll just tell you what this guy said in a minute, but other people have said that, yeah, they've seen some pretty bad racist stuff in the military, but they're isolated incidences just like in the real world. Gotcha. But this is what Matthew Applewhite says. Start off, I'm a white guy. I can't speak on everyone's experience while in the service. But during my four years, I saw more camaraderie between a mix of races than I ever see in my real life. It seems like this is the response that we got the most. The most, I think you're right. They taught us from the start in boot camp, Marine Corps, that you're all nothing and you will all become Marines.

1:01:20Josh Clark:And with that in common, it gives a common ground between any race or nationality. They might often refer to African-American Marines as dark green, implying, yes, they may have a different skin tone, but they're still green. And over the years, in and out of training, you learn that everyone endures the suck and the hard times together. And no one is above another. In the end, you learn to trust the man to my left and right with my life, no matter what his skin color. And ladies, too. They're female Marines. Sure. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Now saying all this, some prejudice from other people's upbringing do still remain.

1:01:57Josh Clark:But most of the time it is shot down very fast with harsh repercussions and it is kept to a minimum. I made many friends from all walks of life that I would have never even imagined being so close to without the common ground we stood on or the hard times that we endured together. And that is from an avid listener named Matthew Applewhite.

1:02:14Chuck Bryant:Thanks a lot, Matthew. We appreciate you letting us know. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know. Virtually the same thing.

1:02:22Josh Clark:Yeah, except for the couple of standouts.

1:02:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Matthew did, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com. And I think our social links are there. Who knows? But you can always get in touch with us via email at stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

1:02:40Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

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1:03:51Chuck Bryant:And dinosaurs! Lingo Kids!

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