Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: and there's guest producer and Loll Loll today and this
Speaker 1: is Stuff you should Know. I over enunciated Lowell's name
Speaker 1: because I didn't want you to perk up and be
Speaker 1: like Noel. I wanted the people who who get perked
Speaker 1: up by Lowell to perk up. That's right, which is
Speaker 1: to say the whole world. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: about it. I think Lowe has said in once before. Yes,
Speaker 1: and did we record two episodes? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: Lowell even got a shout out at a live show,
Speaker 1: that's right, So we have released an episode with Lowell.
Speaker 1: So this isn't as far as everyone is concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a I don't know if we ever told Lowell,
Speaker 1: but yes, he got a shout out. Did we ever
Speaker 1: tell you that lot? No, he's not answering. He knows
Speaker 1: what he's doing. Look at my thumb here and you'll
Speaker 1: notice that the double band aid I uh cut pretty
Speaker 1: deep into the tip of my thumb, slicing a bagel
Speaker 1: with the brand new sharp serrated knife. And uh, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: how like how much not having the use of a
Speaker 1: thumb takes out of your life? Yes, man, it's I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe just because it really hurts, so I'm
Speaker 1: not using it, but everything from like unbuttoning my pants,
Speaker 1: two buttoning your pants, buttoning my pants. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I usually just pop it off with my left thumb um.
Speaker 1: But there's so many things that I'm not able to
Speaker 1: do or have a struggle to do. And trust me,
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining generally about this is an affliction in life,
Speaker 1: but just to point out, like the deal with like
Speaker 1: just one thumb, you really got to rethink some things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy because you hear those things like you know,
Speaker 1: you you can't really walk if you're missing your peaky
Speaker 1: toe or your big toe or something like that. It's like,
Speaker 1: try me. That sounds like a wager to me. But
Speaker 1: when you when you injure yourself like that, you really
Speaker 1: find out just how true that kind of thing is,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and especially of course texting has been maddening. Yes,
Speaker 1: to try in one thumb text you need to just
Speaker 1: now is the time to start using Sirie to text. Well,
Speaker 1: I have I don't use Siri, but whatever, the the
Speaker 1: little microphone button when I voice to text or whatever.
Speaker 1: Sure it works pretty good. Yeah, but you can do
Speaker 1: like you can just say series send a text. I
Speaker 1: haven't tried this myself, but you just say the text
Speaker 1: and then it sends a text text rather than a
Speaker 1: voice recording. Oh no, no, no it when I say
Speaker 1: voice to text, I mean I say it out loud
Speaker 1: and it makes it good to text. And you're using
Speaker 1: something other and Siri. Huh, Well I just hit the
Speaker 1: little microphone button. Huh. I gotta try that because I
Speaker 1: know the microphone button. Then you're speaking of well, there's two.
Speaker 1: There's one that where you're talking about where you can
Speaker 1: record a message. Uh, and then there's one when you
Speaker 1: go to type in the very bottom. Oh no, did
Speaker 1: you hear that? Sorry? Oh this is so boring, everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Thumbs down. No, you can, but the
Speaker 1: it's incomplete, so chuck. Um. We're talking about safe cracking
Speaker 1: obviously today obviously, and there have been some really great
Speaker 1: safe cracking movies, movies that featured safe cracking. What's your favorite?
Speaker 1: Die Hard is as far as safe cracking goes. That
Speaker 1: had its own subplot, but that's not my favorite safe
Speaker 1: cracking movie. Favorite safe cracking movie is bad, Sannah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know what's funny. When I was looking over
Speaker 1: this list, I got to die Hard and I was like,
Speaker 1: there's no safe cracking and die Hard is that right?
Speaker 1: Really it's its own thing, and no, it's I think
Speaker 1: because it's a vault. It temporarily tripped me up because
Speaker 1: I was thinking about small safes, but a vault is
Speaker 1: a large safe. And then I felt like a dumb dumb. No,
Speaker 1: don't you can feel like a dumb dumb for cutting
Speaker 1: your own thumb off. Man, it was bad. But other
Speaker 1: than that, immediately ran and showed it to my daughter
Speaker 1: because she's been obsessed lately with I've been telling her
Speaker 1: stories of being injured as a child and I never
Speaker 1: broke bones, but you know, I cut myself and had
Speaker 1: stitches a bunch of times. Um, I would advise you
Speaker 1: to knock coom Wood here. Yes, it's been a while,
Speaker 1: but she was She's constantly asking me, tell me about
Speaker 1: the times you got cut. And so finally I had
Speaker 1: a real world experience. I ran in there and went look, look,
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like. Look at all that blood.
Speaker 1: What did she do? Did she faint? No, she just
Speaker 1: kind of looked at it and was like, oh, oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: She's going to be the same person to look up
Speaker 1: wounds later on on. It is but the safe cracking
Speaker 1: movies I think. Uh. I mean, I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of Oceans, Love the Boy, Sexy Beast. It's hard to beat.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie. I don't recall the safe cracking
Speaker 1: in it, though, is is that? What? Um? Uh? What's
Speaker 1: his name? M what's his name? I want to call
Speaker 1: him Edgar Winners? Obviously that's not it great great guitars.
Speaker 1: What is his name? Are you talking about? Ben Kingsley?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about? You might remember if I say
Speaker 1: this and uh slight spoiler. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: one of the more imaginative highest scenes ever filmed because
Speaker 1: it was underwater. Remember that. No, I don't. They flooded
Speaker 1: it as part of the I think it's it's been
Speaker 1: a while, but I think it's part of disabling security.
Speaker 1: So they did the whole thing underwater, which was really
Speaker 1: a twist I had not seen before. That's neat. I
Speaker 1: gotta go back and see that movie then, because I
Speaker 1: remember it being good. It was great. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: your best safe cracking movie maybe, I mean I love
Speaker 1: that movie a lot. Okay, so we've got We've got
Speaker 1: Sexy Beast and Bad Santa and with die Hard is
Speaker 1: an honorable mention, that's right. So in each of these
Speaker 1: movies they're actually probably fairly true to life if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly. And die Hard they had a devil of
Speaker 1: a time getting through that safe. They're using industrial drills
Speaker 1: to try to drill through the lock. And Bad Santa
Speaker 1: he tried everything and finally managed to smack it open
Speaker 1: with a sledgehammer at least the one scene that we
Speaker 1: were shown with him robbing the safe. And then obviously
Speaker 1: I don't remember Sexy Beasts. But normally, in like a movie,
Speaker 1: when you watch somebody cracking a safe, they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: some pink Panther esque cat burglar who wears like black
Speaker 1: leather gloves and like twist the dial a few times
Speaker 1: with maybe like a stethoscope up to the safe, and
Speaker 1: then the safe comes open. There are actually a few
Speaker 1: people in the world who might be capable of something
Speaker 1: like that in that time, but If you expand that
Speaker 1: time to say an hour, the number of people in
Speaker 1: the world who would be capable of doing something like
Speaker 1: that expands greatly. But there's still just crumbs among humanity
Speaker 1: as far as the number of people who could actually
Speaker 1: crack a safe like that is concerned. When it comes
Speaker 1: to safe cracking, most often it is the Billy Bob
Speaker 1: Thornton brute strength method of hitting it with the sledgehammer. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the range that safe cracking takes up,
Speaker 1: you know, from you know, a master thief to a
Speaker 1: guy with a sledgehammer. Um. Safes are are broken into
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways, and Crumbs Amongst Humanity
Speaker 1: is also the best album by who Crumbs Amongst Humanity
Speaker 1: Edgar Winner. Okay, I also was reminded when you were
Speaker 1: talking about the ways to crack in that great scene
Speaker 1: and out of sight when they finally find the safe,
Speaker 1: just raise their pistols up to shoot at it. Oh really,
Speaker 1: I still have yet to see that movie. I just
Speaker 1: saw The Lie Me. Oh that's right, great movie. It
Speaker 1: was great man. Yeah, you were absolutely right. It was
Speaker 1: a very good movie. Yeah. I had a feeling you'd
Speaker 1: like that one. You'd like out of sight you. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch that one next. I promise I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna throw any turkeys your way. Please don't. I know,
Speaker 1: I know you won't. I don't think you ever have
Speaker 1: throw a few year away. Nah, surely I have. I
Speaker 1: take pride in the fact that I have. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: one man's turkey is another man's great, like the troll
Speaker 1: Hunter and stuff like that. You've thrown my way. Troll
Speaker 1: Hunter is great. Yeah. See, some people might say it wasn't,
Speaker 1: but I didn't discue your your way. Who doesn't like
Speaker 1: troll Hunter? You've heard people who don't trolls. They're like,
Speaker 1: it's graphic and disturbing. Well, this is what I proposed, Charles. Okay,
Speaker 1: we have been a bit like um, a little black
Speaker 1: and white cartoon donkey swatting at flies with his tail
Speaker 1: and starting this one. So I proposed that we take
Speaker 1: an ab break already, yes, collect ourselves, and come back
Speaker 1: to save cracking with guns blazing. Alright, very controversial. Let's
Speaker 1: do it all right? You ready? So I was taking
Speaker 1: a poop this morning. Yes, I'm ready. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I want to say is, uh, in this house
Speaker 1: stuff works article, they talk about, and it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. The one fundamental weakness of a safe
Speaker 1: is the fact that you know, if you lose the
Speaker 1: combination or something happens, you've got to be able to
Speaker 1: get into it. Still, and therein lies the true weakness
Speaker 1: is that you have to be able to get into
Speaker 1: it without knowing the combination, right Like, it has to
Speaker 1: be accessible to anybody who who needs to get into it,
Speaker 1: which in some of those anybody's can be burglars. So
Speaker 1: the fact that you can't just encase it in concrete
Speaker 1: and hide it away from humanity, even crumbs of humanity,
Speaker 1: um means that it is a vulnerable place to put
Speaker 1: your stuff. Yeah, but I was wondering, surely they could
Speaker 1: make a truly uncrackable safe with the the sales caveat
Speaker 1: of like, hey man, you're buying this thing. If you
Speaker 1: lose the combination, you are screwed. But it is truly uncrackable.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. I mean it sounds like
Speaker 1: from from this article like there's some way to get
Speaker 1: through to any safe. It's just degrees of difficulty. Because
Speaker 1: the other the other kind of thing about this whole
Speaker 1: thing is like any safe is inherently vulnerable because people
Speaker 1: can get to it. But the longer you can make
Speaker 1: it um take to crack a safe, the longer the
Speaker 1: amount of time you can make it take, um, the
Speaker 1: less chance you have of actually being robbed. Like there
Speaker 1: might be some guy sitting at your in your house
Speaker 1: trying to crack your safe, but if you have a
Speaker 1: really good safe, he's either going to give up or
Speaker 1: spend enough time there that he gets caught. Um And
Speaker 1: either way, your stuff should be protected. That seems to
Speaker 1: be what they're after when they make safe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know what I did yesterday while I was researching this,
Speaker 1: did you buy a safe? Safe? It's something that had
Speaker 1: been meaning to do for like two years and finally
Speaker 1: I just did it. And the kind of safe that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here that a lot of people keep
Speaker 1: in their homes. Uh. If it's not like you know,
Speaker 1: some people have gun safes and things like that, but
Speaker 1: is is a fire safe. And that's basically like, let
Speaker 1: me put imported documents or irreplaceable things in here. They're
Speaker 1: generally pretty small, uh, and they keep your stuff safe
Speaker 1: from like flood and fire is a general idea. Then
Speaker 1: there are burglary safes, which don't keep your stuff safe
Speaker 1: from fire. In fact, if there's a fire, will probably
Speaker 1: cook it. Uh, but that is a little harder to
Speaker 1: get into what I want. I mean, I got the ultimately,
Speaker 1: I got the fire safe, but what they don't make
Speaker 1: and I think, I don't know if it's a guy thing,
Speaker 1: but what I really wanted was one of those safe
Speaker 1: with like the little spinny wheel on the front of it.
Speaker 1: It looked like a super movie type safe. I think
Speaker 1: those are several price points beyond whatever safe you've got.
Speaker 1: I think those are really expensive safe. They are, and
Speaker 1: that's not what I need. So I was just like, no,
Speaker 1: just get the one that's like whatever. I think it's
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred bucks. So, yeah, you've got fire
Speaker 1: safe and you have burglaries safe, and they do two
Speaker 1: different things. And I was like, surely somebody's come up
Speaker 1: with a fire fire resistant burglar resistance safe and know
Speaker 1: that apparently isn't the case. There apparently still two different things.
Speaker 1: But there's also a certain degree to a fire resistance safe.
Speaker 1: Um that makes it kind of a subsection of a
Speaker 1: fire resistance safe called a media safe, where your digital
Speaker 1: documents are going to be protected in the amount of
Speaker 1: fire or in the event of a fire. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned gun safes. Those are the closest, uh to
Speaker 1: what I'm describing as in cool looking like they're kind
Speaker 1: of the tall things that look like you would find
Speaker 1: in an old timey bank with the big wheel that spins,
Speaker 1: and that's where you can put in like rifles and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, not like the little handgun safe you
Speaker 1: might keep under your bed or whatever. Right, And then
Speaker 1: depending on the kind of safe you want, it will
Speaker 1: be rated one way or another. If it's a fire safe,
Speaker 1: it will be rated for how many hours it can
Speaker 1: withstand a certain amount of temperature, usually about the temperature
Speaker 1: of a house fire. Um. And they also usually rate
Speaker 1: them so that they'll survive about a twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: ft drop, as if the floorboards that are holding the
Speaker 1: safe up on the third story of the house have
Speaker 1: burned through and the safe falls all the way to
Speaker 1: the foundation. Yeah, that's another one too. A burglar safe
Speaker 1: isn't going to protect your stuff in the fire, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's gonna cook it. But they're also rated
Speaker 1: for how difficult it is to penetrate. And um, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that manufacturers add to a
Speaker 1: burglar safe, which is you know, iron clad, UH steel frame,
Speaker 1: steel bolted, usually multi um multi bolted, like when you
Speaker 1: turn that that that lever the handle to open the safe,
Speaker 1: to unlock it, there's usually two three, four, depending on
Speaker 1: how big the safe is, bolts that are holding it
Speaker 1: in place that you're you're releasing UM and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other like kind of bells and whistles that
Speaker 1: they add to UM two safe to protect them from burglary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I was thinking too when I was
Speaker 1: and we'll get to it later on. But one of
Speaker 1: the methods is to you know, get us blow a
Speaker 1: hole in it where you can get a screwdriver in
Speaker 1: there and take off parts from the interior. I love
Speaker 1: that method. I was like, rivets, well, I got screws
Speaker 1: in there, right, It seems like a no brainer. It
Speaker 1: really does seem kind of surely there's people have figured
Speaker 1: this stuff out by now, you know, I know, maybe
Speaker 1: we should, you know, when this whole thing drives up,
Speaker 1: get into the safe design industry, I think we might
Speaker 1: or safe cracking. Sure. Okay, So with UM we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some of the methods that manufacturers used to foil burglars.
Speaker 1: But there's one thing that's common to fire safe burglar
Speaker 1: safes just about any safe these days, and that's been
Speaker 1: a kind of a commonality for about the last time
Speaker 1: three years, and that's the fact that basically all of
Speaker 1: them have combination locks. Those wheels that you used to spin,
Speaker 1: like on your high school locker to open it. That's
Speaker 1: a combination lock, and it's the same thing. Although you
Speaker 1: probably have a much tougher, much more sophisticated one on
Speaker 1: a burglar um safe than you did on your high
Speaker 1: school locker, it's it's basically the same component, and which
Speaker 1: when you kind of get just even a rough grasp
Speaker 1: of how the combination lock works, you can get a
Speaker 1: better idea of of how people break into those things too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's a couple of different types UM categorized
Speaker 1: thrilling lee as a group one and group two. Group
Speaker 1: two is the kind you're most likely to find in
Speaker 1: someone's closet. Uh. That's usually a three number combination, but
Speaker 1: it can be one, two or three. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't see how a one number combination really helps you much. No,
Speaker 1: because you can just try like things you need to
Speaker 1: get in there exactly. That's true. But um, the group
Speaker 1: one locks, you can have up to six numbers in
Speaker 1: the combination and they are suffered to get into their
Speaker 1: sturdier uh, and they have more wheels. And you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear us talk about wheels in the wheel pack. Each
Speaker 1: number on the combination is represented by a separate wheel.
Speaker 1: So if you have a six number lock, that means
Speaker 1: you have six wheels in that wheel back right exactly,
Speaker 1: And so each of those wheels has a notch in it.
Speaker 1: And when you are doing the combination, you know left thirteen, right,
Speaker 1: fifty seven, you know left nine, combination right some mine,
Speaker 1: believe me. Um, when you when you get that combination right,
Speaker 1: what you've done is line up each of those wheels
Speaker 1: that are stacked behind one another so that their notches
Speaker 1: all line up, which allows this thing called the fence
Speaker 1: to fall into that notch. And when the fence has
Speaker 1: fallen into that notch, it's no longer preventing the lever
Speaker 1: from moving. And when you can move the lever, you
Speaker 1: can open the bolt, which opens the safe. It's it's
Speaker 1: it sounds very easy, and it's way easier. If you
Speaker 1: see like a diagram or cutaway or a cross section
Speaker 1: of it. But it's really it's really that. And I
Speaker 1: mean they came up with combination locks about a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago and there have not been too many improvements
Speaker 1: on the general design of it. It was virtually a
Speaker 1: perfect locking design, is like, right when they came up
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, and it is kind of cool to
Speaker 1: look at a breakdown of the inside of one of these,
Speaker 1: because if you're like me and you're fascinated by some
Speaker 1: sort of simplistic mechanical designs, the combination lock is a
Speaker 1: great example of that. It really is. It really is.
Speaker 1: So just the number of wheels you have is the
Speaker 1: number of numbers in that combo um and then you
Speaker 1: know that's really it. That's your your combination lock. So
Speaker 1: one of the first things if you're trying to get
Speaker 1: into you ready to talk about breaking into these safes? Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean with the caveat that this is uh, I
Speaker 1: mean I was about to say it's illegal. Technically, it's
Speaker 1: probably not illegal to crack a safe, but it is
Speaker 1: illegal to steal something. No getting illegal to steal something right,
Speaker 1: absolutely wrong. It's a free for all. It's like the
Speaker 1: purge for your stuff. Um, they they I have seen
Speaker 1: that there are laws where if you are caught entering
Speaker 1: a house with safe cracking tools, you you're automatically accused
Speaker 1: of of It's the same charge as if you have
Speaker 1: successfully broken into and stolen contents from the safe. Safe
Speaker 1: cracking it's a separate crime. There's you know, breaking and entering, larceny, burglary,
Speaker 1: and there's also safe cracking. So in addition to burglary
Speaker 1: and larceny and breaking and entering, you'll get an additional
Speaker 1: safe cracking um charge against you. And they used to
Speaker 1: be stiff. Apparently there was a guy who got something
Speaker 1: like fifty seven or seventy years for safe cracking and
Speaker 1: appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that it was
Speaker 1: cruel and unusual for a safe cracking beef, which is
Speaker 1: I think the wording they use. But but um, it's
Speaker 1: still like its own separate thing. People will get years
Speaker 1: in prison just for the safe cracking element of their
Speaker 1: their charges. Yeah, I guess I think what I was
Speaker 1: saying was it's not inherently illegal, Like if you and
Speaker 1: I bought a safe and we wanted to try and
Speaker 1: crack it for fun, right, right, that's it's illegal to
Speaker 1: crack into someone else is safe without their uh tacit approval, right,
Speaker 1: So then that actually brings up this whole other thing, Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's a there's some of the people, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who break into safes are professionals. They're safe technicians,
Speaker 1: their locksmiths. There are people who come to your aid
Speaker 1: when you have forgotten the combination. Um. They're very frequently
Speaker 1: called them when somebody um inherits an old safe that
Speaker 1: they don't have a combo for anymore. Um. If a
Speaker 1: bank employee accidentally locks the vault uh and there's you know,
Speaker 1: they can't open it because there's it's a time law,
Speaker 1: but they need to get in there because it's still
Speaker 1: business hours. There's like safe technicians who will travel like
Speaker 1: around the country or the world, who lead very very
Speaker 1: interesting lives because they cracked saves. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that they try to do is to make it
Speaker 1: so that it's almost like they weren't even there. So
Speaker 1: the level of impact that they have on that safe,
Speaker 1: they try to keep to such a minimum that it
Speaker 1: just needs maybe minor repairs um to to bring it
Speaker 1: back to operating level again. Yeah, can we go ahead.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a nice little set up. I know
Speaker 1: I'm jumping ahead. But can we talk about Harry C.
Speaker 1: Miller for a minute. Yeah, let's so we'll get to
Speaker 1: what how he actually does this. But Harry Miller, he's
Speaker 1: he passed on and he was an expert safe cracker
Speaker 1: and basically the guy that came up with the with
Speaker 1: with you know the kind of thing that you see
Speaker 1: in the movies when you crack a safe without using
Speaker 1: dynamite or plasma cutters or you know, explosives or whatever.
Speaker 1: And he became the foremost genius an authority kind of
Speaker 1: worldwide for safe cracking, such that he taught the FBI,
Speaker 1: he taught law enforcement officials. Uh. He was hired privately
Speaker 1: during World War Two. He opened up a gold bully
Speaker 1: on chest for Shanghai check. He there was a dictator,
Speaker 1: uh full gen Cio Batista. He hired him to open
Speaker 1: safe that have been captured from Fidel Castro. During the
Speaker 1: Roosevelt administration, he was called to the White House to
Speaker 1: open a safe after the assassination of the guy who
Speaker 1: the only person who knew the combination. So he had
Speaker 1: a really like you were saying, a really exciting life.
Speaker 1: And he was the guy. Uh he was known as
Speaker 1: Miller the safe Man. And after a while he was
Speaker 1: able to crack any safe within twenty minutes by manipulation, which,
Speaker 1: like we said, is is using your hands and your
Speaker 1: ears and your eyeballs. Yeah, and he created eventually a
Speaker 1: manipulation proof lock, which was the first innovation in like
Speaker 1: seventy a hundred years in lock technology. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: he ended up and apparently in Kentucky. And I think
Speaker 1: you and I should totally go to this place at
Speaker 1: some point. There's a museum that houses uh more than
Speaker 1: twelve thousand locks that he's collected dating back to hreds.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Yeah, the UM like safe technicians and
Speaker 1: locks guys, they just collect safe in old locks and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah. This, this guy's collection is neat.
Speaker 1: So his his legacy, Chuck was, I mean, it's still alive.
Speaker 1: And well there was a guy named Jeff Star who
Speaker 1: died I think last February, UM and he was the
Speaker 1: eight time winner of the Lockmaster's International Safe Cracking Competition,
Speaker 1: which is basically the world Championship of of safe cracking.
Speaker 1: Like he worked for the government too. There was like
Speaker 1: some ship in the Persian Gulf who's safe was um
Speaker 1: locked and nobody could get in. They flew him out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was just like this master safe cracker and came
Speaker 1: across another guy, um that um Jeff Manna interviewed in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic named Jeff. I'm sure he goes by Jeff,
Speaker 1: but I always pronounced it Jeff anyway. Um, he his
Speaker 1: name is Charlie Santory. He's pretty pretty cool. He's got
Speaker 1: like kind of this um criminals swagger to him, Like
Speaker 1: he wears Fedoras and stuff like that while he's cracking
Speaker 1: in the safe. But he's like, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: he's a safe cracker. He's on the up and up
Speaker 1: from what I understand out in l A. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like really interesting interviews with safe crackers
Speaker 1: out there that they'll they'll all share information, but you
Speaker 1: can tell, and I've figured this out in the research too,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff they're not they're not sharing.
Speaker 1: It's really tough to go figure out how to crack
Speaker 1: a safe just um, you know, without becoming part of
Speaker 1: like the inner circle of safe crackers. From what I
Speaker 1: can tell been with the information that's out there, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information out there, it's just there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of it that's complete from what I
Speaker 1: can tell. Well, before we jump into lock manipulation, which
Speaker 1: is uh, the one that Harry Miller had perfected. Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll go sort of with the dumb dumb methods. When
Speaker 1: you get your safe, it's gonna have it's it's called
Speaker 1: a tryout combination, or basically the default combination that it
Speaker 1: comes with. And a lot of people don't reset this,
Speaker 1: even though they tell you really need to reset your combination,
Speaker 1: some people just don't do it. And uh, they are
Speaker 1: known combinations. So the first thing a safe cracker will
Speaker 1: try is that default combination, because you never know, you
Speaker 1: might have a fifty shot of that thing opening up
Speaker 1: without anything other than just twisting the old dial right exactly. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, since so many of them are like
Speaker 1: industry standards, they'll just use you know, they'll try a
Speaker 1: few of them, maybe spend a couple of minutes just
Speaker 1: giving it a shot, and if it happens, awesome, there's
Speaker 1: all so something called daylocking, which is if you have
Speaker 1: a safe and you dial in the combination of the safe, um,
Speaker 1: you can turn the lever and open the safe. You
Speaker 1: can also close the safe and close the lever without
Speaker 1: changing the combo again, so it's technically unlocked. You just
Speaker 1: have to open the lever to open the safe, and
Speaker 1: apparently a lot of people just kind of leave their
Speaker 1: safes that way. And if you're a burglar, step one,
Speaker 1: even before you try some of those industry standards combinations
Speaker 1: try out combinations, is yeah, try the lever. Just try
Speaker 1: that first, Yeah, because I guess you don't want to
Speaker 1: spin the thing at all, because that would reset it
Speaker 1: right exactly. Uh. The other thing you can do is
Speaker 1: just look at the safe and see if there's a
Speaker 1: sticky note on it with the safe combination, because there
Speaker 1: are plenty of dumb dumbs who do that as well.
Speaker 1: I love that one too, or screwed scribbled on the
Speaker 1: wall nearby or something like that. Yeah, there's even if
Speaker 1: you went to the trouble of hiding it, it's probably
Speaker 1: in the same room as the safe, and it's probably
Speaker 1: on some little scrap of paper that you tried to
Speaker 1: make look as innocent as possible. But to to cab
Speaker 1: burglar a safe cracker, they're they're going to be able
Speaker 1: to say this is the combination to the safe. Thank
Speaker 1: you chump. Yeah, like it says, um, you know, they
Speaker 1: just scrambled the word safe and it says off say combination. Right,
Speaker 1: they use pig land. That'll that'll trick them. So we're
Speaker 1: at the point where we're at lock manipulation. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the process of opening a safe without drilling it,
Speaker 1: without defacing it. This requires you too. This is what
Speaker 1: you see in the movies. But it doesn't go down
Speaker 1: like you see in the movies because it takes a
Speaker 1: lot longer than it does in the movies. Even Harry Miller,
Speaker 1: the most genius safe cracker of all time, apparently, uh
Speaker 1: it took him like twenty minutes. So in a movie,
Speaker 1: you don't have that kind of time. You got they
Speaker 1: do that thing in like thirty seconds, right they do.
Speaker 1: And and so when you see like, um, someone in
Speaker 1: a movie um using like a stethoscope, that's actually kind
Speaker 1: of accurate. That's not far off at least um so
Speaker 1: that that's not entirely made up or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But it takes way longer, Like you're saying. The reason
Speaker 1: why it takes way longer because you're actually graphing the
Speaker 1: these different attempts. You're making over say all hundred numbers
Speaker 1: of the dial. You're doing them two to three numbers
Speaker 1: at a time, and you're going through this procedure um
Speaker 1: back and forth to kind of find where possibly the
Speaker 1: um those slots and the wheels line up for each
Speaker 1: each number. And because this takes so many attempts, say
Speaker 1: so say just real quick, say there's like four wheels
Speaker 1: in a lock um. That means that for every single
Speaker 1: one of those wheels, while you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the number over a hundred numbers, you're doing them in
Speaker 1: increments of two, right, And for each one of those
Speaker 1: increments of two, you're graphing down where you think the
Speaker 1: lever is, and this takes a tremendous amount of time.
Speaker 1: After you graph it, you have to go back and
Speaker 1: look to see where these dips are, where it seems
Speaker 1: like the levers are, and then you start to narrow
Speaker 1: down where the number might be for each of those wheels.
Speaker 1: And then when you finally have it narrowed down, you
Speaker 1: have it at four different numbers that you're pretty sure
Speaker 1: the numbers of the combination. You still don't know what
Speaker 1: order they go in, so you have to try every
Speaker 1: single combination of those four numbers left and right until
Speaker 1: you finally hit the one that opens the safe. That
Speaker 1: is the the standard, that's the one that Harry Miller
Speaker 1: came up with. That's the highest level of safe cracking.
Speaker 1: UM and even that takes a tremendous amount of time.
Speaker 1: To be able to do that in twenty minutes is
Speaker 1: mind boggling. Yeah, I mean, I think you hit it
Speaker 1: on the head and that what you're doing is is
Speaker 1: narrowing it down because while you are listening for clicks,
Speaker 1: just like in the movies, it's not like you turn
Speaker 1: something and you hear a click and you're like, well
Speaker 1: that's the number. Let me go back left click, Well
Speaker 1: there's the other one. Because like anybody could do that
Speaker 1: that that's super easy. And I can't believe that, like
Speaker 1: the movie going public has been buying it for this
Speaker 1: long the solid to you know, Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like that thing where um or like they don't have
Speaker 1: to reload the gun um because you know, no one
Speaker 1: wants to see him reload the gun. And I actually
Speaker 1: saw that there was a a um A focus group
Speaker 1: done in like the eighties or something at the heyday
Speaker 1: of like Schwarzenegrance Stallone and the movie studios wanted to
Speaker 1: know if people wanted to see that. They were like,
Speaker 1: do you want realistic where they stop and reload, or
Speaker 1: do you want them to just shoot a million bullets
Speaker 1: in a scene? And overwhelmingly people were responded with a
Speaker 1: million bullets in a scene. Police, that's what we want
Speaker 1: to see. I generally don't care, but when whenever there's
Speaker 1: a wee gun revolver, I still find myself counting and
Speaker 1: I try not to and it doesn't like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: tick me off, and like that's not possible. But I'm
Speaker 1: always kinda like six eight Okay, all right, here we go.
Speaker 1: I thought you I thought you were talking about that
Speaker 1: wheelgun they had in Predator that Jesse Ventura had, Remember
Speaker 1: that one? Was it a Gatlin gun? Yeah? That was amazing. No,
Speaker 1: I just mean a standard revolver. They're called wheel gun.
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, Like this, this Stallone movie
Speaker 1: is just completely unbelievable. Exactly. That was the only thing.
Speaker 1: But so it's the same thing. My point was, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: we got kind of far away from My point was
Speaker 1: that is a kind of boiled down, simplified version of
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but rather than just hearing the click safe,
Speaker 1: you just have to find four clicks for each for
Speaker 1: this four number combination, and then you're in the safe.
Speaker 1: You have to go over this hundreds of times to
Speaker 1: go over a graph and then go back and narrow
Speaker 1: it down X number of times depending on how many
Speaker 1: numbers there are in the combination. You have to try
Speaker 1: every combination of those numbers. So it's like a boiled
Speaker 1: down version of that. It's not entirely made up, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty far off from reality. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: the movie version. I think. What would be fun to see,
Speaker 1: and I'm surprised no one's done this yet, is for
Speaker 1: someone to kind of, uh, what's a nice way to say,
Speaker 1: take the piss um, take the piss. I believe, to
Speaker 1: take the piss out of a scene like that and
Speaker 1: have a non safe cracker be like here's you know,
Speaker 1: here's your stethoscope. It'll take like a minute, right, and
Speaker 1: for the person to say like, no, you gotta graph
Speaker 1: this stuff out and you gotta narrow it down, like
Speaker 1: you've seen too many movies that kind of right, exactly
Speaker 1: pretty creepy. I don't know, I'm waiting for it to
Speaker 1: We need uh one of the Zucker brothers to make
Speaker 1: it for us. Oh man, I miss those fans. So um.
Speaker 1: So that's lock manipulation. That is the the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: safe cracking, because whether you're a safe tech mission or
Speaker 1: a cat burglar um, you have basically left no trace.
Speaker 1: It's like you just came in and figured out through
Speaker 1: sight and sound, um, in precise detail, what the combination
Speaker 1: of that safe was, and then you opened the safe.
Speaker 1: You didn't beat it up, you didn't do anything. Um,
Speaker 1: you are even the cops consider you a master criminal
Speaker 1: in one of basically a dying or dead breed. Um.
Speaker 1: That is a very very small number of people, not
Speaker 1: just alive today but in the history of crime who've
Speaker 1: done that. Most people have looked at a safe and
Speaker 1: been like, let me just blow that open. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I also thought lock manipulation before I read what that meant.
Speaker 1: I thought that might have been like emotional manipulation, Like
Speaker 1: you go to the lock and you're like, you probably
Speaker 1: can't even unlock yourself, can you that kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh you're clad in that, yeah, and then the yeah
Speaker 1: with the sad face. So safe manipulation is well hold on,
Speaker 1: Should we take another break? Should we? I'm calling for
Speaker 1: the bra today, baby, All right, let's do it, all right?
Speaker 1: Safe manipulation, We're back, everybody. Oh yeah. Safe manipulation is
Speaker 1: sort of the the guerilla method to the technicians method
Speaker 1: that we mentioned before. And there are many ways to
Speaker 1: manipulate a safe, uh, And we'll get to some of
Speaker 1: the louder bang bang types in a minute. But drilling
Speaker 1: is the kind you see a lot in movies, and
Speaker 1: it's a really common way to get into a safe
Speaker 1: in a movie. You're generally working against a clock or something.
Speaker 1: But I don't think we pointed out a lot of
Speaker 1: times you will just try and steal the safe and
Speaker 1: bring it back to your you know, your villain's warehouse
Speaker 1: to do all the work there your layer, Yeah, where
Speaker 1: you've got all the time in the world to drill
Speaker 1: into that thing. Um. But that's generally what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're drilling, uh. And you've got a serious drill because
Speaker 1: they do make them very tough to get into. So
Speaker 1: you've either got like a diamond bit or something to
Speaker 1: try and drill through what's usually a cobalt plate that
Speaker 1: is designed to keep you from drilling into it or
Speaker 1: at least slow it down. Yeah. Right, So, like if
Speaker 1: you use a regular you know, metal drill bit for
Speaker 1: for drilling into metal, that that cobalt plate will just
Speaker 1: eat those things up, like you'll just never get through them.
Speaker 1: But if you have diamond tip or tungsten carbide is
Speaker 1: another preferable tip um when you're drilling through it, if
Speaker 1: you're if you have enough time and enough um drills,
Speaker 1: because apparently the drill bits will outlast the drills when
Speaker 1: you're using them like this um, you will eventually punch
Speaker 1: through that that cobalt plate. UM and drilling is a
Speaker 1: is a pretty I think drilling is actually the most
Speaker 1: widespread method of breaking into safes, whether you're a safe
Speaker 1: technician or a burglar um because it's it's it's precise,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it doesn't require anywhere near
Speaker 1: the skills of um lock manipulation. Yeah, and when you're drilling,
Speaker 1: there's a few different ways or places you can drill
Speaker 1: the you know what. A common one and a pretty
Speaker 1: obvious one is to go right through that combination lock itself,
Speaker 1: right through the face of the lock. Uh, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty easy way to do it. But that's where that
Speaker 1: cobalt plate is. So you can also avoid that thing.
Speaker 1: And you can drill in above it and an angle
Speaker 1: and dodge the plate. I guess you know you've done
Speaker 1: your research. If you're a safe cracker, you know how
Speaker 1: big that plate is. Probably yeah, So you go in
Speaker 1: at an angle from the top, let's say, or I
Speaker 1: guess the bottom, and then you put in a fibroc
Speaker 1: to UH fiber optic camera called a boroscope. And you
Speaker 1: can just get these at a hardware store, any kind
Speaker 1: of specialty equipment. Sometimes they'll use like medical devices like
Speaker 1: that they stick in your bottom, they'll use those two. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've just seen it out there. There's a guy who's
Speaker 1: actually a master safe Cracker UM who has what are
Speaker 1: called penetration parties unfortunately named penetration parties. His name is
Speaker 1: Dave mccomi, and I believe he is the founder or
Speaker 1: at least the guy who's running the show at the
Speaker 1: National Safe Cracker International Safe Cracker support for him UM
Speaker 1: and he and UH at least one of these these
Speaker 1: UM he creates like a newsletter for the industry, like
Speaker 1: for real and in the bottom he's got he sells
Speaker 1: two scope kids with light source and cases for fifty
Speaker 1: dollars and their medical grade arthroscopes. So I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: at least some pros use the medical stuff. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they haven't been in anyone's but although if they have been,
Speaker 1: I'll bet you can get them for a deep discount.
Speaker 1: So he has held penetration parties and it has a
Speaker 1: drill bit newsletter called just the Tip, Chuck, you have
Speaker 1: been on fire my man in que four. All right.
Speaker 1: So what you're doing though when you insert that camera
Speaker 1: is once you have drilled in from above it at
Speaker 1: an angle, you put in the camera and then you
Speaker 1: can just see the whole mechanism from inside there and
Speaker 1: just line everything. Yeah yeah, yeah, rather than using a
Speaker 1: stethoscope in your you know, site and sound. You're just
Speaker 1: watching to see where the levers are and twisting the
Speaker 1: thing until they line up and there's your safe open.
Speaker 1: Which is that was news to me. I thought when
Speaker 1: you drilled into a safe your point was to like
Speaker 1: destroy the locking mechanism. I didn't realize to see, you
Speaker 1: can also drill into the safe. Um. Sometimes they'll use
Speaker 1: multiple holes depending on how easy it is to get through,
Speaker 1: one for the arthroscope and one one for I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this is gonna turn so sexual, one for the
Speaker 1: bores cope, and then one for like a punching rod.
Speaker 1: Good lord, um, and the punching rod. Will you can
Speaker 1: manipulate the inside of the lock with the punching rod
Speaker 1: to like move the stuff around while you're watching, Lord,
Speaker 1: maybe a partner's watching, who knows. Uh. There's also oh man,
Speaker 1: what is happening? I don't know, but the walls are
Speaker 1: melting all of a sudden. So there's also another backup system.
Speaker 1: Because here's the deal. Every time you find a work
Speaker 1: around to get into a safe, there's some manufacturer that's
Speaker 1: trying to destroy that work around, and there's something called
Speaker 1: a relocker, and that is tripped when your drill bit
Speaker 1: breaks through some sort of indicator, like a piece of
Speaker 1: plastic or glass that you drill through, and once that
Speaker 1: thing is breached, it's gonna trigger an auxiliary locking device.
Speaker 1: And apparently this like completely locks you out to the
Speaker 1: point where you have to go to a unlocksmith or
Speaker 1: a safe technician. Yeah. And the reason why is because
Speaker 1: it's this locking device is unrelated to the combination lock. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's just like basically a booby trap. And then
Speaker 1: once it's tripped there, you can't unlock it. You have
Speaker 1: to go in and drill and then manipulate the thing
Speaker 1: to open it back up. So um, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a a self destruct mechanism for the safe.
Speaker 1: And because it's not related to the combination lock, it's
Speaker 1: a separate, independent lock. You can twist the combination all
Speaker 1: day long and know the combination it's not going to
Speaker 1: do anything. It's locked separately. Um and apparently not just
Speaker 1: cat burglars and and um uh, you know homeowners accidentally
Speaker 1: tripped this thing. It's pretty frequently tripped by safe technicians
Speaker 1: to um who live in dread. I read on one
Speaker 1: safe technicians forum that at the very least, when you
Speaker 1: break the glass and trip the relocker, you can relax
Speaker 1: because you know the worst case scenario has now happened,
Speaker 1: and then you have to dig your way out of it.
Speaker 1: Another drilling method is if you go in on the
Speaker 1: back side, you can drill a couple of holes. And
Speaker 1: this is the one we mentioned earlier where I thought
Speaker 1: rivets might come in handy. You put in the boroscope
Speaker 1: and then you have a really long screwdriver and you
Speaker 1: just unscrew that cobalt plate. But again I don't know
Speaker 1: why they would ever use a simple screw, So then
Speaker 1: you've got cobalt plates relockers. I also saw chuck that
Speaker 1: there was a trend early in the last century where
Speaker 1: they would add either manufacturers would put them on, or
Speaker 1: you could buy them and put them on like aftermarket parts.
Speaker 1: Um a a little like steel plate thing that you
Speaker 1: riveted onto the safe, and then inside the steel plate
Speaker 1: were extremely fragile glass vials that contained phosgene gas or
Speaker 1: incredibly potent tear gas, so that if you attacked a
Speaker 1: safe using you know, a drill or a hammer or
Speaker 1: try to drop it or something like that, you'd break
Speaker 1: these vials of gas and would basically poise in yourself,
Speaker 1: and you would be run away from the safe as
Speaker 1: fast as possible. Apparently it is a great idea, or
Speaker 1: so it was for you know, old timy days before
Speaker 1: they had laws um. But as people kind of got
Speaker 1: wise to the dangerousness of this whole thing, they started
Speaker 1: removing them. But every once in a while you'll still
Speaker 1: find an old safe. And there is a legend, an
Speaker 1: urban legend among lock um locksmiths and safe technicians that
Speaker 1: over the decades this gas turns into nitroglycerin, and so
Speaker 1: it'll actually blow up if you break these vials. So
Speaker 1: more than one bomb squad has been called out when
Speaker 1: like a locksmith came upon one of these things and
Speaker 1: believed the urban legend that he'd heard all these years
Speaker 1: this this is probably nitroglysten, when really, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just phosgene gas, which is not good. But it
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't explosive like nitroglyscer and it certainly hadn't spontaneously
Speaker 1: turned into it. Very interesting, I thought so too. You know,
Speaker 1: I wondered if just thought about the rivet thing again.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that cobalt is so. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's not rivetable. You know, you seem like a frog
Speaker 1: right now, you know what I mean. Though, maybe you
Speaker 1: can't rive it through that thing. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: can drill through it with diamond tip um, you could
Speaker 1: rivet it, especially if you're the manufacturer, you totally could.
Speaker 1: They're just being lazy. Let's talk about some of the
Speaker 1: other things you see in a movie sometimes, which are
Speaker 1: the use of torches um. Sometimes you will see something
Speaker 1: like an oxy acetylene torch, and they those daddies can
Speaker 1: go up to degrees useless useless you think, you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: from what I saw, like a good burglar safe would
Speaker 1: resist that. So those were the old days, yes, I
Speaker 1: or they were just never used. It might be like
Speaker 1: movie kind of thing because what I saw it takes
Speaker 1: something like a thermal lance which gets up to eight
Speaker 1: thousand degrees fahrenheight. Those are pretty cool, or they are
Speaker 1: very cool. Or get this, a plasma cutter, which uses
Speaker 1: a current of electricity to convert um highly compressed gas
Speaker 1: into plasma, which plasma is the fourth state of energy
Speaker 1: um and it gets apparently up to fifty thousand degrees fahrenheight.
Speaker 1: And we'll just cut right through a safe if you
Speaker 1: know what you're doing. But they're really hard to use,
Speaker 1: they're really dangerous and they require um extensive training. Like
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a plasma cutter guy, you're probably
Speaker 1: getting more than just the standard share of the loot
Speaker 1: um for a safe job. Well, I feel like a fool.
Speaker 1: Now we'll be here with my oxy acetylene torch. You've
Speaker 1: been going at it for a while. You're just like
Speaker 1: just gonna make a crimbrole a honey, right, make a
Speaker 1: smoky gin Anton, Oh yeah, exactly. So these plasma cutters
Speaker 1: and uh thermic glances, you can just I mean, sometimes
Speaker 1: you're trying to cut the lockout and sometimes you're just
Speaker 1: cutting a hole in there so you can reach in
Speaker 1: and get whatever you're trying to get, right, which I
Speaker 1: mean that makes sense. But one of the things you
Speaker 1: have to be careful with is not excellently burning all
Speaker 1: of like the cash inside or something like that. It's
Speaker 1: it's delicate work. It seemed like you want to maybe
Speaker 1: cut the hinges off or something like that. Is is
Speaker 1: a good way to do it. Yeah, if you know
Speaker 1: what you're going for, Like if you know they were
Speaker 1: just diamonds, if there's ice in that thing, m hm,
Speaker 1: he might be safe, go for it. But also, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you know enough that the you know
Speaker 1: the placement of the stuff in there, maybe you could
Speaker 1: cut the top off of the safe and know that
Speaker 1: there's nothing high up in it, or or cut the
Speaker 1: back off because there's nothing in the back, it's all
Speaker 1: stuffed towards the front. Who knows it's not entirely out
Speaker 1: of the realm of possibility because is one of the
Speaker 1: one of the hallmarks of being a safe cracker is research,
Speaker 1: not just researching the safe you're working on to know
Speaker 1: what you're dealing with, what safeguards and securities you're having
Speaker 1: to get around, but also your mark the person you're robbing. UM,
Speaker 1: you want to have done some sort of research on
Speaker 1: them so you can, um at the very least make
Speaker 1: educated guesses about what kind of behavior they're going to
Speaker 1: engage in and putting stuff in their safe, where they
Speaker 1: would put it, how they would put it in there,
Speaker 1: what they would put in there, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe what the combination is if they've actually changed the
Speaker 1: combination to something personal. Sure, is it diamonds? Is it
Speaker 1: bare bonds? Is it Cougarran's is it other things in
Speaker 1: movies that have heard? Is it smoleans? Uh? You mentioned
Speaker 1: nitroglystener in earlier, and this is another thing that you
Speaker 1: can do. Uh. It's called a jam shot or nitroglysteners,
Speaker 1: also called Greece if you're in the industry. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand how this worked other than the
Speaker 1: fact that what you're essentially doing is blasting this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just making like a little funnel out of soap
Speaker 1: that you're adhering to, like where the door and the
Speaker 1: safe come together, putting some nitroglycerin in it, putting a
Speaker 1: blasting cap in there, and touching the wires together while
Speaker 1: you're very far away. You set off the blasting cap,
Speaker 1: which sets off the nitroglyctener, which blows the door off
Speaker 1: of the safe, which again you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that there's just diamonds in there, something that can withstand
Speaker 1: this blast, because that's you don't want to blow up
Speaker 1: the loot. That's not a good good move for a
Speaker 1: burglar or a safe technicsue is being called out to
Speaker 1: open a safe. If you blow the door off of
Speaker 1: your clients safe, uh and blow up everything inside, do
Speaker 1: you you're probably not gonna get paid that day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to picture a thief um taking the time
Speaker 1: to break into what will be in my safe and
Speaker 1: be in and finding my ziploc bag of concert ticket stubs, right,
Speaker 1: which is disappointed? I would I would suggest chucked us
Speaker 1: to leave it a daylocked. Yeah, yeah, because I mean
Speaker 1: at the very least you'll you'll have your safe. Still
Speaker 1: they'll be like this is this is useless? Worthless stuff,
Speaker 1: and you'll say not to me, cat burglar, now please
Speaker 1: leave my house. Yeah, I'm not even sure what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. I have a feeling it's going to be
Speaker 1: in one of those things where everyone's like, you need
Speaker 1: a fire safe and we're gonna get it in our
Speaker 1: house and open it up, and then Emily and are
Speaker 1: going to look at each other and say, well, what
Speaker 1: do we put in there? Well, you put things like
Speaker 1: I don't know, like um, a tax documents maybe, or
Speaker 1: just the most eye bleedingly boring stuff you can think of.
Speaker 1: That's why a fire safe is for. It's just for
Speaker 1: basically like document storage. I know, but I can't think
Speaker 1: of any document that's not electronic these days. Well, you
Speaker 1: can put those things on a thumb drive and then
Speaker 1: put the thumb drive in the that's yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess maybe, especially since I mean it's kind of mundane. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you treasure memories and you have a ton
Speaker 1: of of digital files, putting them on multiple thumb drives
Speaker 1: in a safe isn't a bad idea? Yeah. Or if
Speaker 1: you have an extensive collection of precious memories figurines, if
Speaker 1: you want to keep those safe, put them in your
Speaker 1: fires safe are your little holly hobbies exactly. Uh, most
Speaker 1: locks and and this safe that I got is an
Speaker 1: electronic safe, so it has an electronic lock, which allows
Speaker 1: for far greater number of groupings and combinations you can
Speaker 1: do things. Some of them you can connect to an
Speaker 1: app to open it. Some of them have like these
Speaker 1: electronic front door locks. You can have different combinations for
Speaker 1: different people, you can lock people out, so a lot
Speaker 1: more variety and an electronic lock safe, right, So this
Speaker 1: is like represented this kind of new leap forward among
Speaker 1: safe cracking because they're like, Okay, we'll learn to deal
Speaker 1: with this. There's um this. I love this. If you're
Speaker 1: a really good cat burglar, you may break into the
Speaker 1: house the night or a couple of days before you
Speaker 1: plan to break in and rob the safe and put
Speaker 1: ultra violet ink on stuff, but you know the person
Speaker 1: will touch and then you go back when you go
Speaker 1: to rob the house and use a black light and
Speaker 1: shine it on the computer keypad of the electronic lock,
Speaker 1: and you can see what numbers have been pushed, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, you can just try the combination of
Speaker 1: say like those four, six, eight numbers and pop the
Speaker 1: safe right open. I love that one that's like, that's
Speaker 1: just like nineteen eighties computer hacker movie stuff. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen that in like a Mission Impossible
Speaker 1: or something. Surely we have where you sign a shine
Speaker 1: a black light and you see like the thumb print
Speaker 1: or the fingerprint or whatever on the combination. That's there's
Speaker 1: just there's no way we haven't. But the idea that
Speaker 1: someone does that in real life is just I mean,
Speaker 1: I tend not to respect criminals, but hats off to
Speaker 1: that one. That's that's some real sticktuitiveness. So, uh, is
Speaker 1: there anything else here? Um? Oh, yeah, there's there's Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was this one at the very end they say
Speaker 1: don't try this at home. By the way, this article
Speaker 1: is written on how stuff works, like you said, but
Speaker 1: it was written by a guy named Robert Valdez who
Speaker 1: who made maybe the most valuant effort I've seen at
Speaker 1: explaining in words how to manipulate locks, and then a
Speaker 1: really good job. It's just really hard to understand just
Speaker 1: reading it. But I would also shout out another site
Speaker 1: that went even deeper, like David Reest does um and
Speaker 1: they like really explain how to manipulate safe is called
Speaker 1: opening Safes. By manipulation by Gail Johnson on lock smith
Speaker 1: Ledger dot com. And I mean it's it's as detailed
Speaker 1: as I've seen for sure, So shouts out to them.
Speaker 1: But at the end of this um this how stuff
Speaker 1: works article, it says this is all very much too legal.
Speaker 1: Don't don't do this, especially for crime. That's correct, especially
Speaker 1: for crime, especially for crime. Everybody. Um, well, that's it
Speaker 1: for safe cracking. I'm glad we did this one. Chuck,
Speaker 1: how about you? Yeah, me too, fun movie stuff, lots
Speaker 1: of body humor. Yeah, they did get body. Uh. And
Speaker 1: since we said did get body everybody, that means it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener. Man. Uh. Let me see here.
Speaker 1: This is some advice for Julia. Hey, guys, been a
Speaker 1: listener since summer of two thousand eighteen, the Summer of love.
Speaker 1: That's right, very nice. About one year after I graduated
Speaker 1: in college, go banana slugs. So, I think that's you,
Speaker 1: see Santa Cruz, right, I think? So? I began to
Speaker 1: flail around aimlessly, searching for meaning and purpose. One thing
Speaker 1: I didn't have to flail for was love of learning,
Speaker 1: especially once I discovered your show. I really appreciate the
Speaker 1: work you do and giving us listeners hundred thousands question
Speaker 1: mark of episodes to listen to remember a thousand? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can call that thousands though,
Speaker 1: didn't need to be at least two thousand. I don't know, yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: so we'll just say scores and scores. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask a question, since you all seem like open minded,
Speaker 1: knowledgeable people, what were some of the things you did
Speaker 1: after college? High school? Uh, let's go ahead and answer
Speaker 1: each one of these. Wanted to time. Well, I'll take
Speaker 1: this one. Um. You know, I've I've talked about it before,
Speaker 1: but I worked in the film industry for a while
Speaker 1: and then worked in marketing for a little while, and
Speaker 1: then eventually was a writer like you for How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works yep dot com. So that the some of the
Speaker 1: things I did the dream job getting hired like that,
Speaker 1: you know, like we both want to the writers and
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, you're professional writers, now tried. How
Speaker 1: didn't you hold on real quick? Chuck? Didn't you turn
Speaker 1: in a movie script as as your writing sample? All
Speaker 1: I had? That's boss and you got the job? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Luckily our boss, Uh it was as a screenwriter himself.
Speaker 1: So he was like I'll take this. Yeah. Nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he turned it into his own and he stole it.
Speaker 1: How did you come to find yourselves where you are now? Well,
Speaker 1: I think we discovered that we got a job writing
Speaker 1: for the website and our boss said, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: you try this podcasting thing? Yeah, and boy was at
Speaker 1: a great day. In retrospect, it really was because, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what we were doing, but because no
Speaker 1: one knew what we were doing and we were able
Speaker 1: to like kind of fly under the radar and just
Speaker 1: try it out, try new things. There weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of expectations or anything like that, and next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: people started listening to it. So yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was cool, you know, just kind of being able to
Speaker 1: do it on our own terms all these all these years. Agreed.
Speaker 1: Next question, did you ever feel like you would not
Speaker 1: find your your place and your niche speaking for myself,
Speaker 1: I very much felt that way absolutely, Although I mean
Speaker 1: the writing gig was cool, but it definitely wasn't like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, this is it for me forever, right,
Speaker 1: And I think anybody who has ever been alive has
Speaker 1: gone through that point, you know, whether you um drop
Speaker 1: out at school or whether you graduate with the pH d.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't matter. There's like some point in your
Speaker 1: life where you have a crisis of confidence either what
Speaker 1: am I gonna do with the rest of my life?
Speaker 1: Or have I been going down the wrong path this
Speaker 1: whole time and now I need to figure something else out.
Speaker 1: Everybody has that that crisis, you know, usually multiple times
Speaker 1: throughout their life. So yeah, of course we felt that way.
Speaker 1: Everybody feels that way, and if you do feel that way,
Speaker 1: don't don't get discouraged like it. You come out of
Speaker 1: that that little woods that you have to go through. Well,
Speaker 1: that sound kind of satisfies the last question from Julia
Speaker 1: as any advice for my quarter life crisis, I don't
Speaker 1: think that advice is great. And also, you know, if
Speaker 1: you are at your quarter life crisis, you've got a
Speaker 1: long way to go. So my advice is just don't
Speaker 1: stress too my uch, now try some different things. You've
Speaker 1: got time, and uh, you don't really feel that life
Speaker 1: clock ticking, at least I didn't until I was in
Speaker 1: my forties. It's true, but I remember being worried in
Speaker 1: the twenties and the thirties and everything. To you kind
Speaker 1: of have those times, you know, Yeah, but don't let
Speaker 1: it consume you try some stuff out. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be making forever decisions right now. Uh. And you might,
Speaker 1: you know, you might find yourself backing into an experience
Speaker 1: because you have tried out different things. Yeah. And even
Speaker 1: if you do have to make a forever decision, just
Speaker 1: know that very few decisions are irrevocable. And even if
Speaker 1: it is irrevocable, if you remember the mantra to be kind,
Speaker 1: be kind, be kind, those are the three most important
Speaker 1: things in life, says Bertrand Russell, then you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to make a forever decision that's irrevocable and horrible
Speaker 1: at the same time. You know what, that's great advice. Look,
Speaker 1: thanks man. Thanks. So she concludes with saying thanks for
Speaker 1: your work on stuff you should know, movie Crush and
Speaker 1: The Into the World, my favorite three podcast. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see you at SF. Sketch Best that's from Julia. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Julia. Good luck with your quarter life
Speaker 1: crisis will pass. Don't worry about that. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you're like Julia and you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us for advice or just to say hi or whatever,
Speaker 1: you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: and check out our social links there and you can
Speaker 1: send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
Speaker 1: the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.