Speaker 1: Do do do do. Attention Pacific Northwest, both the Canadian
Speaker 1: side and the American side. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: coming to you live. That's right. And this combined with
Speaker 1: Seattle in San Francisco, which we have just completed, will
Speaker 1: be our I would say, our only true West Coast
Speaker 1: dates this year. So true. So if you are anywhere
Speaker 1: near Portland or Vancouver, then come on out and see us. Yep.
Speaker 1: So we're going to be in Vancouver at the Chain
Speaker 1: Center on Sunday, March twenty nine, and then the next
Speaker 1: night we're going to go on down to Portland, and
Speaker 1: this time we're going to be at the Arlene Schnitzer
Speaker 1: Concert Hall, which is a beautiful room, will be there
Speaker 1: for the first time, and that's going to be on
Speaker 1: Monday March. That's right. We have stepped it up in
Speaker 1: viny side. So don't make fools of us, please, right,
Speaker 1: So you can go get tickets and all the info
Speaker 1: you need at s y s K live dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: there's guest producer Josh t rocking it out and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Take to a dish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the rare second takes. We lost a whole
Speaker 1: fourteen seconds of try number one. Right. It wasn't any
Speaker 1: good anyway, that's what it was. Josh turned into like
Speaker 1: Elvis Custel was like, no, no, stop, stop, I don't
Speaker 1: look at that reference SNL call back. Yeah it was nice.
Speaker 1: So um, as you can tell, Chuck, I'm pretty excited
Speaker 1: about this episode, which is kind of surprising because talking
Speaker 1: about nine one one seems like it might be the
Speaker 1: most boring thing we could talk about. You think, untrue
Speaker 1: what with all the people dying and well cats stuck
Speaker 1: in trees? Sure, what else? That should name everything you
Speaker 1: shouldn't call nine one one four? Let's see neighbors playing
Speaker 1: his music too loud? That one exactly. Uh Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call nine one one four,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about. But um one thing, like I
Speaker 1: am familiar with nine one one. I remember growing up
Speaker 1: as a child in the eighties and I was like,
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about this new system that was coming
Speaker 1: around when I was growing up in Toledo and I
Speaker 1: was like, that doesn't make any sense because nine one one,
Speaker 1: it turns out, has been around at least since nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight in the US. It's been around way longer
Speaker 1: than parts in UK. True, but I like to think
Speaker 1: of Toledo is kind of a happening spot. Toledo didn't
Speaker 1: get a fully functional nine one one system until nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: Did you look it up? Yeah? So you you guys
Speaker 1: resorted to the previous method, which was run down the
Speaker 1: street screaming for neighbors, just swinging a cat by tail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was siren. Yeah. I seem to remember. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly when we got it, but I think I
Speaker 1: remember it happening like because if I if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, we had one of those
Speaker 1: little cards next to the kitchen phone that had police
Speaker 1: fire and whatever else. So that had to have been
Speaker 1: pre nine one one or else we wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: that dumb thing, right, Yeah, that would just confuse the children.
Speaker 1: Call these numbers first, right, and if they don't answer,
Speaker 1: then did the super easy thing that will rout it
Speaker 1: to the correct person child. Your parents have just taken
Speaker 1: out a substantial life insurance policy on you. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: that's a long that's a long game, right, there is
Speaker 1: so chuck as new as nine one one as even
Speaker 1: though it seems old, right, especially for younger listeners, I
Speaker 1: would guess that it seems pretty They probably think it's
Speaker 1: been around since you know, of course some buggy days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: since rotary phone days. Yeah right. So um, as as
Speaker 1: as old as it is or as new as it is,
Speaker 1: it's gotten pretty uh robust, very robust. Yeah, every year.
Speaker 1: These are some stats that are Buddy Dave Russe helped
Speaker 1: us compile two hundred forty million calls in the US.
Speaker 1: That is six hundred and fifty thousand calls a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like nine hundred thousand calls a minute. No, sure,
Speaker 1: I just did that back of the m uh. And
Speaker 1: another important thing here is that of calls these days
Speaker 1: are from your wireless phone. That's a big deal, it is,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But um, that changed things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The big spoiler is is that the nine one one
Speaker 1: system that we currently currently use in the United States
Speaker 1: is hopelessly antiquated, and they're working on improving it. And
Speaker 1: nothing that we should say about how antiquated is should
Speaker 1: keep you from calling nine one one is still generally works,
Speaker 1: but it's having troubler. It's had trouble traditionally keeping pace
Speaker 1: with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications. Yeah, has has
Speaker 1: gone on in the last couple of decades. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: telecom is always trying to move forward and they don't
Speaker 1: think like, but maybe we should slid the pace for
Speaker 1: nine one one, right, exactly know and plus I mean
Speaker 1: nine one one was we'll see those systems are built
Speaker 1: alongside the other system, so when the other system leads forward,
Speaker 1: they have to go through and rebuild this this system
Speaker 1: that's just for nine one one, because you can't get
Speaker 1: rid of an old system because people, well we'll get
Speaker 1: to that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it.
Speaker 1: But uh, we were laughing earlier about things that you
Speaker 1: should and should not call for. Um, some of these
Speaker 1: are debatable, I think, Oh yeah, I think so, says
Speaker 1: who says me, We'll get to the last one really
Speaker 1: is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if if
Speaker 1: there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire,
Speaker 1: where there's smoke, there's fire, medical emergency and you can't
Speaker 1: you know, obviously getting an ambulance or get in a
Speaker 1: get in your car and run some one of the
Speaker 1: emergency room if you can. If it's quicker and you
Speaker 1: can do so safely, it's quicker and cheaper cost the
Speaker 1: gas maybe a couple of tolls, who knows, compared to
Speaker 1: like an ambulance ride. No, that's a that's a good point.
Speaker 1: But I mean imagine if your home just loaded and
Speaker 1: your kid gets hurt, you should probably call nine one one,
Speaker 1: Call nine one Uh. Car accidents, of course, um, if
Speaker 1: they are major enough and like have injuries, yeah, called
Speaker 1: call nine one one. You should be able to tell,
Speaker 1: like if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck,
Speaker 1: you don't have to call nine one one. You could
Speaker 1: call Here's the other thing. If we're saying don't call
Speaker 1: nine on one, that doesn't mean like don't alert anybody.
Speaker 1: But there are there's a your police have their own
Speaker 1: phone number, Your local police have their own phone number.
Speaker 1: Look it up and call that the non emergency number, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then obviously the last category is some sort of
Speaker 1: crime being committed, violence being committed, call nine one one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's like no one's going to argue with that,
Speaker 1: I think. So Okay, there are plenty of instances where
Speaker 1: you shouldn't call nine one one, and yet people reliably
Speaker 1: call nine one one for stuff like this, And I
Speaker 1: think that's because it's been drilled into everyone's head. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a double edged sword. You can't drill that
Speaker 1: into everyone's head. One one one, one one one. All
Speaker 1: you gotta do is call nine one one and then
Speaker 1: not expect to get some cats stuck in the tree calls.
Speaker 1: You keep going back to that, Well, we actually had
Speaker 1: did that when I was a kid. Did you call
Speaker 1: nine one one for that? Well, you know the funny story.
Speaker 1: It's not very funny, my dad, but we had a
Speaker 1: cat stuck in a tree. My dad went up and
Speaker 1: he got stuck in the tree and he just climbed
Speaker 1: up too high. Yeah, and you got freaked out, I
Speaker 1: think so. I mean, I was a kid, so you
Speaker 1: know they weren't saying your father is very afraid and
Speaker 1: he's screwed up. I was just a kid kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: now dad's up there, and now there's fireman here helping
Speaker 1: my dad out of a tree. Cats and Dad's get
Speaker 1: stuck in tree. Yeah, And looking back, I think that's
Speaker 1: totally probably what happened. He got way up there. It
Speaker 1: was freaked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. I have
Speaker 1: to ask him about that one day. Um. Okay, so
Speaker 1: your dad's stuck in a tree, I would say, that's
Speaker 1: call nine one on cats stuck in a tree. Now,
Speaker 1: unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call nine one one
Speaker 1: for that. Um. If you have a question about the
Speaker 1: speeding ticket you got the other day, that's not a
Speaker 1: call that you would place through nine on one Again,
Speaker 1: you can just call there's even a number on the
Speaker 1: back of the ticket. Dumb. Okay, hey, bringing that back
Speaker 1: just for that second. Okay, what else? Oh, of course,
Speaker 1: anything dealing with your animals unless well, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: even gonna say that. I was gonna say, if there's
Speaker 1: an animal attacking someone, yeah, you would call tell nine
Speaker 1: one one for that. Come out and shoot this dog.
Speaker 1: Basically it could be rabid. It's terrible call. Heckt hat out? Uh.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, if the cat in the tree, lost, animals, injured, animals,
Speaker 1: noisy neighbors, I love that day. Puts power outage in
Speaker 1: here and in parentheses, call your power company, right, It's
Speaker 1: that last one I think is a little it kind
Speaker 1: of opens a can of worms, and that is the
Speaker 1: suspicious person thing, because uh, you know, they they say
Speaker 1: to call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person.
Speaker 1: I think the distinction is uh and what we see
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this later racial biases. You know,
Speaker 1: people in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're
Speaker 1: black and walking down my street, which happens, that is
Speaker 1: not a suspicious person um even I mean, if there's
Speaker 1: nothing going on, I know, people try to justify it.
Speaker 1: But then local police say, you know, hey, always call
Speaker 1: us if you think something might be going on. And
Speaker 1: that's where it gets dodgy, because that comes down to
Speaker 1: a human beings perception. So it can be very tilted.
Speaker 1: As Dave put it. He put it a couple of
Speaker 1: ways I thought were pretty smart. He said, people aren't suspicious.
Speaker 1: Behavior is suspicious. Yeah, and they say specifically to call
Speaker 1: nine one for suspicious activities. But again, these are people,
Speaker 1: so it's just such a weird fine line you're walking there.
Speaker 1: The other little litmus tests that I've seen is stop
Speaker 1: just for a second, because this is suspicious behavior. You
Speaker 1: see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody
Speaker 1: that's that's beyond suspicious. That's like the act. That's the
Speaker 1: act um, that's a crime being committed. So you have
Speaker 1: a second when you see a suspicious person to stop
Speaker 1: and think, like what I what I call nine on one?
Speaker 1: If this person were white, or if you're a black
Speaker 1: person doing this, say what I called nim one with
Speaker 1: this person were black, And if the answers no, then
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't call. Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just interesting. On these Facebook neighborhood pages, it's kind
Speaker 1: of evenly divided between people saying, uh, don't call nine
Speaker 1: one one for this, This is just a guy going
Speaker 1: door to door perhaps other people saying, no, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's it's nine or ten o'clock at night and someone's
Speaker 1: knocking on your door in our neighborhood. Semious, maybe you
Speaker 1: should call the cops and let them work it out.
Speaker 1: And for the cops, they say, you know, call us.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to
Speaker 1: your home, but we might work you through the situation
Speaker 1: and it's all going to be fine. Yes, But this
Speaker 1: is the only one where I thought was a little
Speaker 1: bit like you shouldn't just say, like, don't call nine
Speaker 1: one one when you see a suspicious person. No, you
Speaker 1: certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time that, I
Speaker 1: think one of the big hesitations for calling nine one
Speaker 1: one these days is like the either the increase or
Speaker 1: the increase in reporting of people innocent people who had
Speaker 1: nine one one called on him being killed by the cops.
Speaker 1: That and that death would not have happened. Their death
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened had a person been suspicious of them
Speaker 1: and called nine one one. And the fact, you know,
Speaker 1: when when news of something like that gets out, it
Speaker 1: will make you second guess that kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: you're for sure you're It makes you realize you're bringing
Speaker 1: like people who are armed and jumpy out to a
Speaker 1: situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever. And
Speaker 1: when you look at it from that respect, it can
Speaker 1: make you second guess the whole thing. Yeah, And things
Speaker 1: can look it can look like potential malfeasance that's not
Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of people, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of people saying, well, I think someone's chasing my house, um,
Speaker 1: because a car pulled it into my driveway and sat
Speaker 1: there for two minutes. They asked me if I wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about syrac or someone stopped and was
Speaker 1: taking pictures of my house, Like, you never know, somebody
Speaker 1: might be taking picture of the oak tree that they're
Speaker 1: trying to learn about, or or just looking up something
Speaker 1: on their phone and standing in the direction of your house.
Speaker 1: Nine times out of ten they're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: at the oak tree near your house. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: give people the benefit of the doubt, you know. No,
Speaker 1: I'm with you anyway. It's just that's where it gets
Speaker 1: a little dodgy and what we'll have statistics later on
Speaker 1: about actual racial bias, because it's real. Okay, moving on,
Speaker 1: you want to take a little break after that. It
Speaker 1: seems like a good spot. I think I do. Okay, well, everybody,
Speaker 1: we're taking a rare Josh break and we'll be right back. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. That Josh break was invigorating. I wasn't doing anything.
Speaker 1: I was just taking a picture of oak tree. We'd
Speaker 1: get off my back. What kind of oak is that, sir?
Speaker 1: There's only one kind of oak. I know, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland's like, no, that's
Speaker 1: not true. Uh, while we're mentioning calling one though, um,
Speaker 1: you can get arrested. It is a crime to prank
Speaker 1: call nine one one. Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Or to swat. It's called swatting. That's a I think
Speaker 1: that deserves its own podcast. Maybe because there was some
Speaker 1: some guy got killed right from a swatting incident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's happened more than once. Yeah, that's serious stuff.
Speaker 1: If you don't know it's swatting as well, just give
Speaker 1: you the four one one on this abuse of nine
Speaker 1: one one man, I love myself something great. Um. So,
Speaker 1: swatting is where you are a hacker, right, and you
Speaker 1: can disguise the number that you're coming you're calling from, uh,
Speaker 1: to make it look like you're calling from a house
Speaker 1: that you want the cops to go to, and you
Speaker 1: basically say like, I'm in this house and I'm holding
Speaker 1: hostages and what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 1: Johnny law? And the law comes out and usually swat
Speaker 1: that I shouldn't say. Usually in some cases the swat
Speaker 1: team will actually enter this house where people who have
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on are and maybe the the
Speaker 1: people who have been swatted, you know, said something mean
Speaker 1: to the to the guy who you know, called the
Speaker 1: swat team out on them. But it's basically it's not
Speaker 1: like saying, like there's a I think there's a hostage
Speaker 1: situation in this house. It's I'm the guy holding the hostages.
Speaker 1: And here's where I mean, like and swat teams stick
Speaker 1: right exactly, the swat teams like we're gonna go kill
Speaker 1: that guy. I'll bet you would never in a million
Speaker 1: years bring your swat team out, and whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't come in guns blazing, right, which we're joking about
Speaker 1: something that's really happened. Sure, So like I really think
Speaker 1: we need to talk at least the short we'll look
Speaker 1: into it a little first, one on swatting and one
Speaker 1: on dockx inga two weird new things that people do now, right,
Speaker 1: But but swatting is definitely a crime. Yes, okay. Also
Speaker 1: so that you don't make nine on one feel like
Speaker 1: I think this is great. This is almost like a
Speaker 1: public service announcement that we're in the midstup. So you, um,
Speaker 1: you don't get in trouble with the nine one one,
Speaker 1: so they don't think that you're pranking them when you're not.
Speaker 1: If you ever call nine one one accidentally, or say
Speaker 1: your kid does or whatever. You do not want to
Speaker 1: hang up the phone. Yeah, I did that a few
Speaker 1: years ago. I feel like I accidentally called nine one
Speaker 1: one because I think cell phones have a feature that
Speaker 1: it enacted like an automatic call by accident. And I
Speaker 1: saw it and I went, oh crap, and I hung
Speaker 1: up right and I got a call back, like in
Speaker 1: a second. That's great. Ideally you should. Yeah. Umi has
Speaker 1: a great story from when she was a kid. She
Speaker 1: um got scared. Uh, I can't remember something about her
Speaker 1: grandmother who was perfectly fine, but she called nine on
Speaker 1: one and I got scared with nine on one answer
Speaker 1: and hung up and they kept calling back and she
Speaker 1: kept hanging up. They came out to the cast a
Speaker 1: little welfare check. Yeah, basically, Um, but you don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. Don't follow the Umi model of nine
Speaker 1: on one, Like just stay on the phone and be like,
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry. This is an act sentental call and
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not the bad guy pretending that this is
Speaker 1: an accidental call. Make sure you say that to. My
Speaker 1: name is Timmy, I'm five, It's all good. My name
Speaker 1: is little boy with brown hair. So I think the
Speaker 1: history is fairly interesting. Um because England started nine, not
Speaker 1: nine one one, but their version, which is way back
Speaker 1: in n seven in London. I didn't know it either,
Speaker 1: but they they were the first city in the world
Speaker 1: that created the three digit model. Apparently, as the story goes,
Speaker 1: there was a fire in downtown London and people tried
Speaker 1: to get through the fire department and they were put
Speaker 1: on hold and switched around, and so they said. The
Speaker 1: town crier came out and said nine is the answer, yeah,
Speaker 1: which so easy to remember. Um, I guess no one
Speaker 1: else was using at the time. But this is back
Speaker 1: in the day of rotary phones, right. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so that that's actually that was. It was a burden
Speaker 1: to dial with a rotary dial. One should have been
Speaker 1: for sure. I just thought that was kind of clumsy
Speaker 1: of them, a little bit clumsy of the Brits. But
Speaker 1: let me see here. I think it was a twelve
Speaker 1: mile radius around London at first after World War Two
Speaker 1: and went wider. Uh And because you know, Britain like
Speaker 1: to do a little world conquering. You can find in
Speaker 1: cities all over the world where London has or where
Speaker 1: England has left there. Uh. Imprint that's a way to
Speaker 1: put it, for sure. Yeah. Um. And the US of
Speaker 1: course said, well, we're not gonna let the Brits outdo us.
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna do brexit. Hold my beer. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna wait twenty something years and do it ourselves, right exactly. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen fifty seven, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry,
Speaker 1: the National Association of Fire Chiefs I was way off. Um.
Speaker 1: They said, hey, we should come up with an easy
Speaker 1: to remember three digit number for people to report fires.
Speaker 1: And other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll we'll,
Speaker 1: we'll do that to report emergencies, and the Fire Teach's
Speaker 1: Association said no, just fires, right. Luckily no one listened
Speaker 1: to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just firepart,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. And then a couple of years after
Speaker 1: that or maybe uh yeah, a few years later, the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Scizees said, this is actually a really
Speaker 1: good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances to
Speaker 1: And then finally, um Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and
Speaker 1: the Administration of Justice said no, all emergencies should have
Speaker 1: a three digit, easy to remember number. That's right. So
Speaker 1: the FCC says, who should be get in touch with here?
Speaker 1: How about a T and T? Because these were the
Speaker 1: days of phone monopolies, right or phone monopoly it's just
Speaker 1: one right? Uh No, I think when did they break
Speaker 1: up the phone cup niece. I think it was before this,
Speaker 1: because they broke them up into the different bells, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: where they were all the different bells part of one
Speaker 1: big phone company. That's right? Which one? I just said,
Speaker 1: two different things? Liberty Bell, the Southern Belle bell from
Speaker 1: Pacific Bell, Pacific Bell, the bell from Beauty and the Beast,
Speaker 1: all the bells, Albuquerque Bell. Sure, why not? You can
Speaker 1: ring my bell. That's a good one. That's a good song.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. But I think more and more
Speaker 1: and more by Andrea true connection is far better. What's that?
Speaker 1: Virtually the same thing, but just a better, better song. Okay,
Speaker 1: they got in touch with a T and T and
Speaker 1: they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently
Speaker 1: a T and T is the one that chose because
Speaker 1: it hadn't been used yet, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: first stumbling block again. The rotary dial. Rotary dial that
Speaker 1: was nine one ones a lot better way. It's it's
Speaker 1: two words better. It is, sure, it's better and it
Speaker 1: was easy to remember. And you know, I think they
Speaker 1: had set up at this point already four one one
Speaker 1: in a lot of areas, so they just kind of
Speaker 1: extended that idea of the something one one right. So, um,
Speaker 1: the first this really surprised me. The first um on
Speaker 1: one call that was ever placed in the United States.
Speaker 1: New York City. You would think, so, Washington, d C, Chicago,
Speaker 1: what else you got? Chicago? You already said that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know. What about Los Angeles? Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: What about Albuquerque? They're doing fun? Okay, No, none of
Speaker 1: those are correct. Haileyville, Alabama was the site of the
Speaker 1: very first nine one one call. Yeah, that's a good
Speaker 1: little tribute question. I think that pedal to the metal.
Speaker 1: By the way, I recently watched I had recorded all
Speaker 1: those Jeopardy shows with the Ken Jennings on there. The
Speaker 1: Champion run some of the better TV I've seen in
Speaker 1: a while, really good stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're a Jeopardy fan that it was as good as
Speaker 1: it gets, like the smartest competitors and like big time
Speaker 1: drama because they you know, they had to bring it
Speaker 1: on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show
Speaker 1: like they were daily doubling on like twenty dollars and
Speaker 1: stuff like. It was really tense, good drama. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: cool because I think Kid knew that other guy, the
Speaker 1: whole Celtzer guy was a as a gambler and he
Speaker 1: made his name for really just going all in, and
Speaker 1: Ken knew this, so he had to do the same
Speaker 1: in order to beat these chumps. If you're playing a gambler,
Speaker 1: you get dragged into gambling, whether you want to gamble
Speaker 1: or not. Get in there. You know. That's good stuff. Anyway,
Speaker 1: good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Hayley Bill
Speaker 1: Alabama did it was It was kind of a publicity stunt.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they so the little uh, the little
Speaker 1: phone company there, the Alabama Telephone he co um basically said,
Speaker 1: it's pretty a T and T is is about to
Speaker 1: do this. We're about to launch this nine one one system.
Speaker 1: We want to jump on it and adopt it first.
Speaker 1: So we're going to set this up as fast as
Speaker 1: we can. Because here's the thing. We'll find out more
Speaker 1: about this in a minute, but there's no national nine
Speaker 1: one one system all everywhere in the United States. Nine
Speaker 1: one one reaches an emergency dispatcher or an emergency operator,
Speaker 1: but each system is local, regional at best. Um so
Speaker 1: hailey Ville, Alabama could jump on this and set up
Speaker 1: their own system and get started. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: they did. That's right. February they had a state senator
Speaker 1: named Rank and fight he dialede as a you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: is this like a photo op or video op? In
Speaker 1: other words, there wasn't an emergency. It's like, man, what
Speaker 1: a coincidence that the state senator had the first emergency
Speaker 1: and happened to be standing next to the special phone.
Speaker 1: That's right. They had a special bat phone, a red phone,
Speaker 1: and I think an Alabama congressman was on the other
Speaker 1: end at the police station, Congressman Tom Bevill, known as
Speaker 1: the pork King really not just the Alabama pork King,
Speaker 1: the poor King of Congress. And the state senator said,
Speaker 1: what are you, pork King? What are you doing at
Speaker 1: the police station? I've got an emergency? And he said,
Speaker 1: are we really going to do this? Bit? I would
Speaker 1: force whoever is on the other line to do it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we did it first. Uh, they did it a week later.
Speaker 1: They still have a big festival every year too, a
Speaker 1: nine one one festival. I wonder if they re enacted
Speaker 1: this famous phone man, if we could play those two parts,
Speaker 1: I'm the pork King. How great would that be? Forget
Speaker 1: drunk history. Just put us up there. That's cool, um.
Speaker 1: And when I say forget drunk history, I mean we
Speaker 1: very much want to be on it. Are we still
Speaker 1: pursuing that? No, I mean just by occasionally yelling out
Speaker 1: of my window every now and then. Why not the
Speaker 1: crickets are deafening. Yeah, I'm surprised no one said like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a natural fit. These guys are great storytellers
Speaker 1: about history. They can get drunk with the best of them.
Speaker 1: And we've been saying this for years. So uh No.
Speaker 1: M Alaska about a week later did the same thing,
Speaker 1: and we're the second city. And then throughout the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties it kind of started rolling out. But it
Speaker 1: takes a while to get this kind of thing going.
Speaker 1: It does because again, it's a local again at best,
Speaker 1: regional system okay, and your local um city might not
Speaker 1: have the money to put in a new telecommunications system
Speaker 1: to be used for emergency services. UM and at first,
Speaker 1: you know, cities that were a little more flush with
Speaker 1: cash because they had a larger tax base had the
Speaker 1: money to roll these out. So as expected, aside from
Speaker 1: hailey Ville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan
Speaker 1: areas that were starting to roll out there the nine
Speaker 1: the earliest nine one one systems, but the Robert Wood
Speaker 1: Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation based on Johnson and
Speaker 1: Johnson's company, UM, they took early interest in this and
Speaker 1: started handing out grants to rural areas to set up
Speaker 1: their own nine one one systems. So ironically, hailey Ville, Alabama,
Speaker 1: had it not jumped on it probably still wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a nine one one system where it not for the
Speaker 1: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to like, you know,
Speaker 1: small towns around the country for their own Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're like you know what people call nine one one,
Speaker 1: they go to the hospital. We're using Johnson and Johnson products. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that you know,
Speaker 1: nine one one is probably good for the band aid business,
Speaker 1: I would guess so. And baby shampoo, Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you can't get if you can't get an ambulance to
Speaker 1: that person, they're gonna croak. But if you get the
Speaker 1: ambulance to them, right, you don't need band aids when
Speaker 1: you're dead, No, that's it's just like a fact of death.
Speaker 1: But if you survive, you're gonna need a lot of
Speaker 1: band aids depending on what you've done to yourself. That's right.
Speaker 1: Here's some stats for you. By nineteen seventy six, when
Speaker 1: I was five years old, only seventent of the US
Speaker 1: had nine one one. You want to know a surprising fact.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy six, I was just born, Well, you probably
Speaker 1: weren't covered by nine one one. Again, not until nine Well,
Speaker 1: by seven, only fifty percent of the country, which is uh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's pretty late. I would have thought
Speaker 1: we would have had a lot more of the country
Speaker 1: cover by then, for sure, you would think so. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until ninety nine, actually, chuck that um the
Speaker 1: that nine one one officially became the emergency number for
Speaker 1: everywhere in America. Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said,
Speaker 1: what about nine nine nine? And they went, Bill, please,
Speaker 1: wrong country, Canada. Speaking of wrong countries, they are very
Speaker 1: much the right country because they got on board within
Speaker 1: one as well. That's absolutely true, because they were like, why,
Speaker 1: why make things too difficult? You know, that's a great
Speaker 1: question Canada, And I think the answer to that is
Speaker 1: you shouldn't make things too difficult, just kind of go
Speaker 1: with the flow, should do some more stuff. Here, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, maybe another break. Okay, are you okay with that?
Speaker 1: Are you sure? Yes? What about you listeners? Well, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back, Okay, Chuck, Let's talk about how it
Speaker 1: actually works. Yeah, in the early days, obviously it was
Speaker 1: all landline telephones. So when your call got routed to
Speaker 1: the switchboard, which was one switchboard that kidded to that,
Speaker 1: they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated
Speaker 1: to nine one one to what's called a peace app
Speaker 1: a public safety answering point. And at the time they
Speaker 1: were a lot of times like in the fire department
Speaker 1: or in the police station. Right, so they could just
Speaker 1: turn their chair and be like, Sarge, dispatch some people
Speaker 1: to this address. We've got a suspicious person staring at
Speaker 1: oak trees right again? Right? And um, like originally, like today,
Speaker 1: at nine on one, dispatcher is a highly trained, highly
Speaker 1: skilled person. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's
Speaker 1: like a flight attendant. Remember when we've learned like flight
Speaker 1: attendants are actually trained to save your life in an emergency,
Speaker 1: and they just hand out peanuts is like a side thing. Um,
Speaker 1: this is basically the same thing with the nine eleven
Speaker 1: operator call taker. They know how to do a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but the earliest ones just knew how to
Speaker 1: answer the phone, take down your info and then turn
Speaker 1: around and send it off to the fire department or
Speaker 1: the police department or you know, the paramedics or something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, they'd be like, okay, I gotta
Speaker 1: go all right, I'll see you buy right, and then
Speaker 1: they would get off the phone, and that of all
Speaker 1: to the call center. Um. That evolved to what was
Speaker 1: called enhanced nine one one, which was in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: again driven by telecom advancing with A T and T
Speaker 1: with new technologies. They developed a N I and a
Speaker 1: L I automatic number identification and location identification A and
Speaker 1: I just caller I D. That's what everybody calls caller
Speaker 1: I D. Yeah. Remember those cute little boxes that you
Speaker 1: can plug your phone line into it on your little
Speaker 1: table show you in some little terrible readout. Basically dot
Speaker 1: matrix readout yep, who was calling? Pretty neat and then
Speaker 1: it was on your handheld cordless phone. Right, you could
Speaker 1: look at it, and that was like, whoa, we're living
Speaker 1: in the future, rich or the answering machine now is digital.
Speaker 1: We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That
Speaker 1: was like a big revolution too. That was huge, amazing
Speaker 1: because you could leave as long a message as you
Speaker 1: wanted now, but you couldn't get that clever nobody's home.
Speaker 1: Nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message, right,
Speaker 1: you could sing it, but they actually had that tape
Speaker 1: you could buy that you could put. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: one that was like a whole mixtape of them, just
Speaker 1: like gag answers. Boy, you don't remember that, not really.
Speaker 1: There was a very famous ad that ran. It was
Speaker 1: like delight your friends basically yeah, wow, yeah, it's pretty funny. Um.
Speaker 1: So this enhanced nine in one system, the automatic number
Speaker 1: and the automatic locator. That was a big deal because
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, if you were a call
Speaker 1: taker for and a call came up on your little
Speaker 1: computer screen, it said what the number was and what
Speaker 1: the address was, and because everybody was calling from land lines,
Speaker 1: you knew exactly where that person was who needed help.
Speaker 1: It's right, saved a bunch of time. It was a
Speaker 1: very huge life saving measure. Yeah. I mean when you
Speaker 1: think about people in an emergency, could be everything from
Speaker 1: crippling fear keeping you from even knowing where you are too,
Speaker 1: haven't been hit on the head and not being able
Speaker 1: to say where you are yeah, or you just can't
Speaker 1: speak yeah. And so that really imagined that they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through
Speaker 1: that first step of where are you right? So this
Speaker 1: was an enormous leap forward, and in the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties it really kind of cemented how helpful in life
Speaker 1: saving this nine one one system could be. And then
Speaker 1: cell phones came along and the rest of us kind
Speaker 1: of leapfrogged right over nine one one because the cell
Speaker 1: phone carriers didn't have an I and a L I
Speaker 1: when when you call nine one one still to this
Speaker 1: day from a cell phone, it does not come up
Speaker 1: what your number is or where you are in any
Speaker 1: specific way. And so Congress, or at least that c
Speaker 1: C said, um, hey, we need you guys to do
Speaker 1: something like there's got to be something that you just
Speaker 1: can't be like, you know, you have no idea where
Speaker 1: this person is in the country. Because part of the
Speaker 1: other thing about the automatic locator uh that that they
Speaker 1: had originally with nine one one in the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties is it would route you to the closest um
Speaker 1: public safety answering point, right, So that would be saving
Speaker 1: time too, because the person you're talking to is in
Speaker 1: the same area as you and knows the area you're
Speaker 1: talking about and can more quickly dispatch people cell phones.
Speaker 1: Is not the case. Yeah, And Dave makes a good point.
Speaker 1: Even if they could have located like where your cell
Speaker 1: phone plan was or your phone was activated, you don't
Speaker 1: have to live in the city where that is, right.
Speaker 1: You can friends to have l A numbers that work
Speaker 1: in the film industry here just because that stupid l
Speaker 1: A three one O or three to three makes them
Speaker 1: look like a more legitimate higher just so cool. It's
Speaker 1: so cool and so dumb. But yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: like you're in Atlanta, says you're in Los Angeles. Is
Speaker 1: this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah? So um,
Speaker 1: the so the FCC said, Okay, you guys need to
Speaker 1: do something. So what they did was they came up
Speaker 1: with UM, a triangulation where the closest cell phone towers
Speaker 1: address comes up when you call. It's a start, it
Speaker 1: is a good start. But if you're out in the sticks,
Speaker 1: the closest cell phone tower might be miles and miles
Speaker 1: and miles away. And even if it's not miles away,
Speaker 1: let's say it's a football field a way. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're in a dense um densely populated area and you're
Speaker 1: bleeding out, sure it doesn't help. It does not help
Speaker 1: at all, but it gets you a little bit closer,
Speaker 1: and it helps to to transfer your collar to rout
Speaker 1: your call to the closest peace app Okay, And then
Speaker 1: the other thing that they have them do now, Phase
Speaker 1: two of this enhanced wireless, enhanced nine on one is UM.
Speaker 1: It gives your GPS coordinates, which is so nineties it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous and it's like map quest. When who's ever waited
Speaker 1: on a ride share, uh that thought you were down
Speaker 1: the street from where you were knows how accurate that
Speaker 1: GPS can be. Well, still, it's still great, but that's
Speaker 1: way more accurate than what nine one ones working with. Well,
Speaker 1: they're just working with longitude and latitude points. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the big, one of the big qualities. A
Speaker 1: quality to have as a nine one one operator is
Speaker 1: to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude coordinates
Speaker 1: GPS coordinates into like Google Maps to get an address
Speaker 1: really fast and it smooth, sexy voice like Berry White
Speaker 1: with fingers of fury, or like halle Berry with fingers
Speaker 1: she uh. Did you see that movie The Call? She
Speaker 1: played a call uh specialist in a movie, a thriller.
Speaker 1: It was good, It wasn't great. Yeah, it was good. Okay.
Speaker 1: Brad Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that name, and it seems like this sort
Speaker 1: of from what you're gonna call me out on that.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear you from what? From where? Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't get what you mean from what? Like what other
Speaker 1: what other movies is he directed? He directed a scary
Speaker 1: movie called Session nine. Oh yes, okay, well, then this
Speaker 1: guy is one of my favorites of all time. That's what.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best horror movies ever made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a
Speaker 1: range of genres. Like one of his early movies is
Speaker 1: this kind of spacey rom com called Happy Accidents. That
Speaker 1: was great. Happy Accident, Yeah, really good with Mercy Thoma
Speaker 1: and Vincent dina Frio. But it had This was a
Speaker 1: rom com with a sort of a bit of a
Speaker 1: sci fi twist to it. And he did Trans Siberian.
Speaker 1: He's he's done. He did Next Stop. Wonderland was one
Speaker 1: of his first little indies. But yeah, he does. It's
Speaker 1: unusual for a director to tackle all these weird are
Speaker 1: different genres, it's disparate genres. Well, you have me at
Speaker 1: Session nine. Yeah. The Call Is is a good, you know,
Speaker 1: Puckcorn movie. I highly recommend it. Okay, I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: Halle Berry is a call center person. No, no, that's
Speaker 1: all I'll say. Hey, she's quality quality actress. She is.
Speaker 1: But the fact that I had never even heard of
Speaker 1: this movie really made me suspicious. It did pretty well.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like sixty
Speaker 1: million bucks. But that's really surprising. Like I'm very aware
Speaker 1: of movies, like I'll know what the movie is about,
Speaker 1: and I have never seen it, not a preview. I'll
Speaker 1: just kind of no, So I'm I'm surprised. Okay, I
Speaker 1: recommend it I'll check it out. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: no black coat's daughter, but that's a good one too.
Speaker 1: So where are we now? We are now at texting
Speaker 1: to oh wait, hold on, I wanted to drive this
Speaker 1: home real quick. Okay, okay, drive it home. The FCC
Speaker 1: rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower,
Speaker 1: tell one it's address, the closest one to your cell phone,
Speaker 1: and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell
Speaker 1: phone they think the cell phone is. That's the nine
Speaker 1: one one system that's in place nationwide today. That's why
Speaker 1: they ask you from a cell phone, who are you
Speaker 1: and where are you, just like they did in the
Speaker 1: early days, right, And this is a problem because, like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, of nine one one calls in the
Speaker 1: United States are made from cell phones, and nine one
Speaker 1: one does not know where you are unless you tell them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also um balanced out by the fact that
Speaker 1: you have they want to help, well, you have that
Speaker 1: cell phone right there and immediately. So yeah, yeah that
Speaker 1: remember the old days, You're like, let me find a
Speaker 1: pay phone, let me go knock on someone's door and
Speaker 1: be and ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I
Speaker 1: won't get shot Um, so people are calling right away,
Speaker 1: So I would think that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness,
Speaker 1: yes of location. I think you're right, Chuck. We'll see,
Speaker 1: well you really swooped in there, I say, we'll see
Speaker 1: as if there's some report coming out. And the thing is, though,
Speaker 1: is there there people have figured out the people, the
Speaker 1: powers that be who are concerned with nine one one
Speaker 1: in its system are well aware of this major flaw,
Speaker 1: and our work have figured out how to how to
Speaker 1: update it. It's just now we're in the process of
Speaker 1: rolling out updates. Well, and then privacy advocates are going
Speaker 1: to be like, what you're gonna like locate every single
Speaker 1: person with the cell phone and know where they are
Speaker 1: at all times. And Amazon and Apple are like, dude,
Speaker 1: we already know that. It's just one is the only
Speaker 1: one who doesn't know where you are at all top,
Speaker 1: which is a problem. It's funny. I saw um a
Speaker 1: Wired article from that was like wringing its hands, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, privacy advocates are worried that they may be
Speaker 1: able to track the movement of cell phone users based
Speaker 1: on this information that now yeah, they're like, maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know, we'll have to see the future holds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so texting the one is the latest technology about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, eleven years ago in Iowa in black Hawk,
Speaker 1: they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service and
Speaker 1: it's still kind of coming out. I think. Um, a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago they all fifty states had text capability,
Speaker 1: but UM, it's not everywhere in each state. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and it's just text. I love day points out you
Speaker 1: can't send emojis. Um, I can need help emogi, but
Speaker 1: you can't send text and video and that kind of
Speaker 1: thing would be super helpful, I think. Right, So this
Speaker 1: is where we are in the next generation. It's literally
Speaker 1: called next generation, and it's where nine one one finally
Speaker 1: catches up to every other UM telecom company and device
Speaker 1: manufacturer already is. And it basically uses all the information
Speaker 1: from the Internet of Things that lets people know exactly
Speaker 1: where you are, not just like what your addresses, what
Speaker 1: floor of a building you happen to be sitting on
Speaker 1: right now. UM, all of that information is now going
Speaker 1: to be funnel to nine one one when you call,
Speaker 1: because ninmon one is finally abandoning land lines landline telecom.
Speaker 1: That's what they they're dealing with Currently they're going over
Speaker 1: to v O I P so nine one will be
Speaker 1: using a secure internet connection in the near future. And
Speaker 1: when they get to that point, um, they will be
Speaker 1: able to accept video photos like this is the guy
Speaker 1: that's that's attacking the lady, hurry up, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And then they'll also be able to because they're setting
Speaker 1: up a separate wireless broadband network just for first responders
Speaker 1: called first net. Yeah, that's going to be a big deal,
Speaker 1: and so nine one one will be able to say, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a photo of the guy that there that you're
Speaker 1: looking for. Um, And they can't do that now is
Speaker 1: mind boggling as it is. They cannot do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to have a dedicated wireless network cuts
Speaker 1: down on I imagine interference and potential hacking. Plus in
Speaker 1: a disaster, if you're out there in the field, you
Speaker 1: are using your own wireless device that's on the public
Speaker 1: broadband right now. And so if the public broadband goes
Speaker 1: down because there's so many people trying to use it
Speaker 1: to find out what's going on in like an earthquake
Speaker 1: or something like, the first responders suffer from that too.
Speaker 1: So this separate broadband network just for first responders won't
Speaker 1: crash in the event of a disaster. Yeah, And speaking
Speaker 1: of first responders, uh, I think it's kind of time
Speaker 1: we join certain people and saying call center employees are
Speaker 1: first responders, are people saying they're not well. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're generally thought of as first responders if you
Speaker 1: work at a call center, because they just sit around maybe,
Speaker 1: but they are literally the first and most important first
Speaker 1: thing that happens in an emergency. And like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: they are trained to and walk people through epr Heimlich,
Speaker 1: how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, uh, suicide,
Speaker 1: domestic abuse, um, if you're a kid and you're scared
Speaker 1: because grandma fell over, like how to handle children? Like
Speaker 1: they're really skilled. And I think it's a shame that,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like the only time you hear about
Speaker 1: call center responders is when there's a bad one and
Speaker 1: you release those calls and everyone's horrified, you know, and
Speaker 1: it is, it's awful. But those are clearly like the standouts,
Speaker 1: I guess not standouts. The standouts are all the good employees.
Speaker 1: There have been some doozies, for sure. Yeah, I've read
Speaker 1: about one where somebody called in um of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon,
Speaker 1: sorry Oregon, and uh, the nine one one operator said,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is probably just the play of light
Speaker 1: on sunlight on the fog. It was like, how would
Speaker 1: you even know that you're in a all center. I'm
Speaker 1: looking right at this thing. It's a wildfire, and like
Speaker 1: they didn't dispatch anybody, and um, like a half hour
Speaker 1: twenty minutes later, somebody else called it in and by
Speaker 1: this time it was like raging. Um. There was the
Speaker 1: one lady drowning in her car too. That one was horrific.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear about that one. She was in her
Speaker 1: car that was going down and I think I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly what happened, but she was freaking out, and
Speaker 1: I think the person was just sort of dismissive and
Speaker 1: it was really kind of rude even But you know,
Speaker 1: that makes the news, not the six and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: calls a day that go through and our lives are saved. Like, no, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true. It's a great point. Um. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of stories of people like of them just like
Speaker 1: straight up doing hero stuff, going above and beyond. You
Speaker 1: should see halle Berry in this movie. One of the
Speaker 1: things that can happen is as hard as much as
Speaker 1: your trained to not let it happen. UH, you can
Speaker 1: become emotionally invested in a call totally. And I've read
Speaker 1: that some some operators are just find it leaving it
Speaker 1: at the door, at least appearing to leave it at
Speaker 1: the door. But others can suffer UM burnout PTSD UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the big things that I saw that's
Speaker 1: a huge psychological problem for nine one operators is that
Speaker 1: there can very frequently be no resolution. They can be
Speaker 1: on the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to talk them down, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the cops come in. The line goes dead.
Speaker 1: They if they're not good friends with the cops who
Speaker 1: came in, UM, they may never find out what happened,
Speaker 1: like no idea. UM, they're talking someone through who's been
Speaker 1: shot or whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious.
Speaker 1: They have no idea what happened to that person. They
Speaker 1: have to take the next call, and that's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: There's no closure. And then sometimes there is closure, like
Speaker 1: if you're a nine one one operator, you probably have
Speaker 1: been on the phone with somebody when they took their
Speaker 1: last breath, when they were murdered, when they died, very
Speaker 1: very scared. That kind of stuff takes its toll on people,
Speaker 1: and that's a big It could be a big problem,
Speaker 1: and there could be pretty frequent turnover among dispatchers' halle
Speaker 1: Berry movie, Oh yeah, I'm it's all there. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: because even if they don't get closure on the work site,
Speaker 1: they could see it on the news that night be like, man,
Speaker 1: that I took that call of this murder or whatever.
Speaker 1: Pretty bad. Sure, not a job for me. I don't
Speaker 1: think I could hack it either. And then practically speaking,
Speaker 1: there's like you have to be able to type really
Speaker 1: really fast with a high level of accuracy while somebody's
Speaker 1: telling you other information, like you might be taking info
Speaker 1: in and you have to be chatting with you know,
Speaker 1: a cop on I am who you're sending out while
Speaker 1: you're also taking the description from the other person who's
Speaker 1: going back and forth. Yeah, you gotta be able to
Speaker 1: compartmentalize and multitask all. None of those things are my
Speaker 1: special team though. If you're wondering, you pay for one.
Speaker 1: If you have a phone bill cell phone bills included.
Speaker 1: It's a little little surcharge there. So Uh, that's outrageous
Speaker 1: to scream socialism everybody. Uh. And as far as those
Speaker 1: statistics we talked about earlier about the racial bias, Um,
Speaker 1: of course, if you were a fan of Public Enemy,
Speaker 1: you remember the Great Great Song is a joke. Flavor flavor. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a study done by the a c l
Speaker 1: U in two thousand thirteen, residents of Grand Crossing this
Speaker 1: is Chicago study, Uh, African American neighborhood on the South
Speaker 1: Side waited eleven minutes for a cop to come after
Speaker 1: a priority call. Um two and a half minutes for
Speaker 1: the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. Um in response
Speaker 1: times in that were four and a half time slower
Speaker 1: in the black community. And there's you know, like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier with the people calling on one on you know,
Speaker 1: just an African American person living their life. There have
Speaker 1: been cases where people ended up dead because of that
Speaker 1: after escalation, and that's just like a pure tragedy for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: There is there like when you have something this massive
Speaker 1: and huge and it's involves people at like their worst
Speaker 1: moment of their life. A lot of stuff is going
Speaker 1: to kind of come out of it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to nine one one, a lot of legends and myths
Speaker 1: and everything. But one of the things I saw that
Speaker 1: everyone seems to know about is that if you call
Speaker 1: nine one one and pretend you're ordering a pizza, they
Speaker 1: will understand that you were in a position where you
Speaker 1: can't talk, and they'll dispatch the police. Supposedly that's a myth,
Speaker 1: but it makes total sense. Doesn't you've heard that before?
Speaker 1: I was just just thinking of die Hard. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. There was that line where he's calling
Speaker 1: the nine one one dispatcher. Well, I guess I don't
Speaker 1: even think it was. I think it was an actual
Speaker 1: cop on the other end, and she's like, calm down, sir,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's not an emergency whatever, And he said,
Speaker 1: what do you think I'm doing ordering a pizza? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that might have been a reference to that maybe,
Speaker 1: So so what are you saying again? The urban legend
Speaker 1: is that if you like, let's say there's there's somebody
Speaker 1: who's got a gun on you, if you can somehow
Speaker 1: get it to the point where you're like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: order a pizza, right, now you call nine on one
Speaker 1: say hey, I'd like to order a pizzas my address
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and then nine one one will get
Speaker 1: what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's
Speaker 1: not true, okay, but there there is. There's another. There
Speaker 1: was an urban legend I saw in the UK with
Speaker 1: that if you um call and you don't say anything,
Speaker 1: that they will send someone out, and I think that
Speaker 1: is kind of widely believed over here in the US too.
Speaker 1: Apparently in the UK that is true, but it's going
Speaker 1: to send you through a series of prompts if you
Speaker 1: don't respond um, and if you press five five it
Speaker 1: will you will be confirming that yes, you there's an
Speaker 1: emergency and you just can't talk right now, and they
Speaker 1: will send people out. If you don't press five five,
Speaker 1: then they won't. It'll just take it as like an
Speaker 1: accidental call. Well, and that's the big benefit. I don't
Speaker 1: even think we kind of brought up about texting to
Speaker 1: nine one because you might think, like because because people
Speaker 1: want to text, But there are plenty of cases where
Speaker 1: you can't talk. You're maybe in a domestic dispute, or
Speaker 1: if you're hearing you're hiding in a closet, or if
Speaker 1: you're hearing impaired, or if you've been kidnapped and don't
Speaker 1: want to use your voice out loud, or you're scared
Speaker 1: child like, plenty of great cases to be made for texting.
Speaker 1: And since text to nine one one isn't everywhere, the
Speaker 1: FEC has a law that if you're telecom carrier doesn't
Speaker 1: UM doesn't have text nine one one, they have an
Speaker 1: immediate bounce back that says like, you can't do that,
Speaker 1: you have to call nine one. Yeah, which is that's
Speaker 1: pretty valuable. It is. And one last thing, if you
Speaker 1: find an old phone that has a charge in it,
Speaker 1: even if it hasn't been had service for twenty years,
Speaker 1: you can dial nine one you will be connected. That
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Every single phone that is that is
Speaker 1: in operation dials nine and one for free. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like that. I do too, man, I love nine one one.
Speaker 1: I think Kurvanni gets said there's no uh, no greater
Speaker 1: display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down
Speaker 1: the street with its sirens blazing. Really it sounds like
Speaker 1: something it's interesting. Uh. Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about curvanning get you can just type that into
Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works and who knows what
Speaker 1: that will bring up. Uh. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener. Man, this is a response.
Speaker 1: When we asked for examples of racism in today's military,
Speaker 1: and we heard from a range of people. I have
Speaker 1: to say, from this guy who the other guy to
Speaker 1: the other guy. This guy said, I'll just tell you
Speaker 1: what this guy said a minute. But other people have
Speaker 1: said that, yeah, they've seen some pretty bad racist stuff
Speaker 1: in the military, but they're isolated incidences, just like in
Speaker 1: the real world. But this is what Matthew apple White says. Uh.
Speaker 1: Start off, I'm a white guy. I can't speak on
Speaker 1: everyone's experience while in the service, but during my four
Speaker 1: years I saw more camaraderie between a mix of races
Speaker 1: than I ever see in my real life. It seems
Speaker 1: like this is the response that we got the most
Speaker 1: the most. I think you're right. They thought us. Oh,
Speaker 1: they taught us from the start in boot camp Marine
Speaker 1: Corps that you're all nothing and you will all become Marines.
Speaker 1: And with that in common, it gives the common ground
Speaker 1: between any race or nationality. Uh. They might often refer
Speaker 1: to African American Marines as dark green implying, yes, they
Speaker 1: may have a different skin tone, but they're still green.
Speaker 1: And over the years, in and out of training, you
Speaker 1: learned that everyone endures the suck and the hard times together. Uh,
Speaker 1: and no one is above another. In the end, you
Speaker 1: learn to trust the man to my left and right
Speaker 1: with my life, no matter what his skin color. And
Speaker 1: ladies too, there are female marines. Uh. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: said that. Yeah. Now saying all this, some some prejudice
Speaker 1: from other people's upbringing do still remain, but most of
Speaker 1: the time it is shot down very fast with harsh repercussions,
Speaker 1: and it has kept to a minimum. I made many
Speaker 1: friends from all walks of life that I would have
Speaker 1: never even imagined being so close to. Without the common
Speaker 1: ground we stood on are the hard times that we
Speaker 1: endured together. And that is from an avid listener named
Speaker 1: Matthew apple White. Thanks a lot, Matthew. Um, we appreciate
Speaker 1: you letting us know. Thanks to everybody who wrote in
Speaker 1: to let us know. Virtually the same thing. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: for the couple of standouts. Yeah. Um. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, like Matthew did,
Speaker 1: you can go on to stuff you should know dot com.
Speaker 1: And I think our social links are there. Who knows,
Speaker 1: but you can always get in touch with us via
Speaker 1: email at stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. M h m hm