Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here on your Saturday Selects, and hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take us on a little walk down memory lane from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and my fix for the next geez maybe
Speaker 1: up to twenty weeks for me and then Josh picks his,
Speaker 1: so maybe forty weeks almost a year. Are going to
Speaker 1: be walking back through the year of COVID, kind of
Speaker 1: what was going on thematically that year and before and after,
Speaker 1: and we'll see if there's any fruit to bear as
Speaker 1: far as looking back. I hope this is more interesting
Speaker 1: than your usual select. But we're going to start it
Speaker 1: off with February thirteenth, twenty twenty pre COVID by about
Speaker 1: a month ish with our episode nine to one one
Speaker 1: is not a joke, all about nine to one one
Speaker 1: and how it works.
Speaker 2: Great episode, check it out.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 2: Charles W.
Speaker 3: Chuck Bryan over there, there's guest producer Josh t rocking
Speaker 3: it out, and this is Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: Take to a dish. Yeah, one of the rare second takes.
Speaker 1: Right it we lost a whole fourteen seconds of try
Speaker 1: number one.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It wasn't any good anyway, That's what it was. Josh
Speaker 3: turned into like Elvis Costell was like, no, no, stop stop.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, look at that reference snl callback. Yeah it
Speaker 1: was nice.
Speaker 3: So, as you can tell, Chuck, I'm pretty excited about
Speaker 3: this episode, which is kind of surprising because talking about
Speaker 3: nine to one one seems like it might be the
Speaker 3: most boring thing we could talk about. You think untrue,
Speaker 3: what with all the people dying and well, yeah, cat
Speaker 3: stuck in trees?
Speaker 1: Sure what else? I should name everything you shouldn't call
Speaker 1: nine one one.
Speaker 2: For Let's see neighbor playing his music too loud.
Speaker 1: That's fine, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call nine
Speaker 3: one one for, which we'll talk about. Sure, but one thing,
Speaker 3: like I'm familiar with nine one one. I remember growing
Speaker 3: up as a child in the eighties, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I remember hearing about this new system that was coming
Speaker 3: around when I was growing up in Toledo. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I was like, that doesn't make any sense because nine
Speaker 3: one one, it turns I has been around at least
Speaker 3: since nineteen sixty eight in the US.
Speaker 2: It's been around way longer than parts in the US.
Speaker 3: In UK, Yeah, true, but I like to think of
Speaker 3: Toledo as kind of a happening spot.
Speaker 1: Sure, Toledo didn't get a.
Speaker 2: Fully functional nine to one one system until nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Did you look it up? Yeah, so you guys resorted
Speaker 1: to the previous method, which was run down the street
Speaker 1: screaming for neighbors.
Speaker 3: Just swinging a cat by its tail. Yeah, that was
Speaker 3: your siren.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I seem to remember. I don't know exactly when
Speaker 1: we got it, but I think I remember it happening
Speaker 1: like because if I if I remember correctly, when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, we had one of those little cards
Speaker 1: next to the kitchen phone that had police, fire and
Speaker 1: whatever else. So that had to have been pre nine
Speaker 1: one one or else we wouldn't have had that dumb thing, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would just confuse the children.
Speaker 3: Right, call these numbers first, right, and if they don't answer,
Speaker 3: called nine one one, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then do the super easy thing that will rout it
Speaker 1: to the correct person. Child.
Speaker 3: Your parents have just taken out a substantial life insurance
Speaker 3: policy on you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For uh, that's a long that's a long game, right,
Speaker 3: there is so chuck as new as nine one one is,
Speaker 3: even though it seems old, right, especially for younger listeners,
Speaker 3: I would guess that it seems pretty.
Speaker 1: They probably think it's been around since you know.
Speaker 2: Of course some buggy days. Yeah, since rotary phone days.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, So.
Speaker 3: As as as old as it is or as new
Speaker 3: as it is, it's gotten pretty.
Speaker 2: Uh robust, very robust. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every year. Are some stats that our buddy Dave Ruse
Speaker 1: helped us compile two hundred and forty million calls in
Speaker 1: the US. That is six hundred and fifty thousand calls
Speaker 1: a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like nine hundred thousand calls a minute. No,
Speaker 2: are you sure? I just did that. Back of the
Speaker 2: arm made the double takes that I noted.
Speaker 1: And another important thing here is that eighty percent of
Speaker 1: calls these days are from your wireless phone. That's a
Speaker 1: big deal, it is, which we'll get to, but that
Speaker 1: changed things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The big spoiler is is that the nine to one
Speaker 3: win system that we currently use in the United States
Speaker 3: is hopelessly antiquated, and they're working on improving it. And
Speaker 3: nothing that we should say about how antiquated it is
Speaker 3: should keep you from calling nine one one. It still
Speaker 3: generally works, but it's having trouble or it's had trouble
Speaker 3: traditionally keeping pace with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications. Yeah,
Speaker 3: has gone on in the last couple days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward, and
Speaker 1: they don't think like, oh, but maybe we should slid
Speaker 1: the pace for nine to one one.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly.
Speaker 3: No, And plus I mean nine one one is we'll
Speaker 3: see those systems are built alongside the other system, so
Speaker 3: when the other system leads forward, they have to go
Speaker 3: through and rebuild this system.
Speaker 1: That's just for nine to one one, because you can't
Speaker 1: get rid of an old system because people, well we'll get.
Speaker 2: To that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it.
Speaker 1: But we were laughing earlier about things that you should
Speaker 1: and should not call for. Some of these are debatable,
Speaker 1: I think, oh yeah, I think so it says who
Speaker 1: says me, Okay, we'll get to the last one really
Speaker 1: is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if there's
Speaker 1: a fire or smoke that you think is a.
Speaker 2: Fire, where there's smoke, there's fire.
Speaker 1: Medical emergency and you can't you know, obviously get an
Speaker 1: ambulance or get in a get in your car and
Speaker 1: run someone of the emergency room if you can. If
Speaker 1: it's quicker and you can do those safely.
Speaker 2: It's quicker and cheaper.
Speaker 3: Oh well, sure, the gas maybe a couple of tolls,
Speaker 3: who knows, compared to like an ambulance ride.
Speaker 1: No, that's a that's a good point. But I mean
Speaker 1: imagine if your home just loaded and your kid gets hurt, right,
Speaker 1: you should probably call nine one one, Yeah, call nine one.
Speaker 1: Car accidents, of course, if they are major enough and
Speaker 1: like have injuries, yeah, call nine one one.
Speaker 3: You should be able to tell, like if somebody's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that kind of hurt my neck, you don't have to
Speaker 3: call nine one one.
Speaker 2: You could call Here's the other thing.
Speaker 3: If we're saying don't call nine one one, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean like don't alert anybody, right, But there are there's
Speaker 3: a your police have their own phone number, Your local
Speaker 3: police have their own phone numbers. They do look it
Speaker 3: up and call that the non emergency number.
Speaker 1: Right, And then obviously the last category is some sort
Speaker 1: of crime being committed, violence being committed.
Speaker 2: Sure, call nine one one. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's like no one's gonna argue with that, I think, so, okay,
Speaker 3: there are plenty of instances where you shouldn't call nine
Speaker 3: one one, and yet people rely. I oblique called nine
Speaker 3: 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 nine one. All you gotta do
Speaker 1: is call nine one one and then not expect to
Speaker 1: get some cat stuck in the tree calls.
Speaker 2: You keep going back to that, Well.
Speaker 1: We actually had did that when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Did you called nine one one for that?
Speaker 1: Well, you know the funny story. It's not very funny
Speaker 1: to my dad, but we had a cat stuck in
Speaker 1: a tree. My dad went up and he got stuck
Speaker 1: in the tree and.
Speaker 2: He just climbed up too high. Yeah, and he got
Speaker 2: freaked out. I think, so that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean I was a kid, so you know they
Speaker 1: weren't saying, your father's very afraid and has screwed up, right,
Speaker 1: I was just a kid kind of like, well, now
Speaker 1: dad's up there, and now there's firemen here helping my
Speaker 1: dad out of a tree.
Speaker 2: Cats and dads get stuck in tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and looking back. I think that's totally probably what happened. Sure,
Speaker 1: he got way up there, it's freaked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. I have to ask him
Speaker 2: about that one day.
Speaker 3: Okay, so your dad stuck in a tree, I would say,
Speaker 3: that's call nine one One's a choice. Cat's stuck in
Speaker 3: a tree. Now, unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call
Speaker 3: nine one one for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: If you have a question about the speeding ticket you
Speaker 3: got the other day, that's not a call that you
Speaker 3: would place through nine one one.
Speaker 2: Again, you can just call. There's even a number on
Speaker 2: the back of the ticket.
Speaker 3: Don't be dumb. Okay, hey, bring that back just for
Speaker 3: that second. Okay, what else, chuck?
Speaker 1: Oh, of course, anything dealing with your animals, unless well,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna say that. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: if there's an animal attacking someone, yeah, you would call
Speaker 1: call nine one one for that. Come out and shoot
Speaker 1: this dog.
Speaker 3: Basically it could be rabid. It's terrible call hect hate out.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, if the cat in the tree, lost, animals,
Speaker 1: injured animals, noisy neighbors, I love that day. Puts power
Speaker 1: outage in here and in parentheses, call your power company.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's that last one I think is a little It
Speaker 1: kind of opens a can of worms, and that is
Speaker 1: the suspicious person thing, because you know, they say to
Speaker 1: call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person.
Speaker 1: I think the distinction is in what we see and
Speaker 1: we'll get into this later racial biases. You know, people
Speaker 1: in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're black
Speaker 1: and walking down my street, which happens, That is not
Speaker 1: a suspicious person even, I mean if there's nothing going on,
Speaker 1: I know, people try to justify it. But then local
Speaker 1: police say, you know, hey, always call us if you
Speaker 1: think something might be going on. And that's where it
Speaker 1: gets dodgy, because that comes down to a human being's perception.
Speaker 1: So it can be very tilted.
Speaker 3: As Dave puts it, he put it a couple of
Speaker 3: ways that I thought were pretty smart. He said, people
Speaker 3: aren't suspicious. Behavior is suspicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they say specifically to call nine one for
Speaker 1: suspicious activities. But again, these are people, so it's just
Speaker 1: such a weird fine line you're walking there.
Speaker 3: The other little litmus tests that I've seen is stop
Speaker 3: just for a second because of this suspicious behavior. You
Speaker 3: see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody,
Speaker 3: that's beyond suspicious.
Speaker 1: That's like the act, that's the act, it's a crime
Speaker 1: being committed.
Speaker 3: So you have a second when you see a suspicious
Speaker 3: person to stop and think, like would I call nine
Speaker 3: on one if this person were white? Right, if you're
Speaker 3: a black person doing this, say would I call NIME
Speaker 3: one with this person?
Speaker 2: We're black?
Speaker 3: And if the answers no, then maybe you shouldn't call.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just interesting. On these Facebook neighborhood pages, it's
Speaker 1: kind of evenly divided between people saying 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: if it's nine forty five or ten o'clock at night
Speaker 1: and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It seems like suspicious. Maybe you should call.
Speaker 1: The cops and let them work it out. And for
Speaker 1: the cops, they say, you know, call us. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to your home,
Speaker 1: but we might work you through the situation and it's
Speaker 1: all going to be fine. Yes, But this is the
Speaker 1: only one where I thought was a little bit like,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't just say, like, don't call nine one one
Speaker 1: when you see a suspicious person.
Speaker 3: No, you certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time that,
Speaker 3: I think one of the big hesitations for calling nine
Speaker 3: one one these days is like the either the increase
Speaker 3: or the increase in reporting of people innocent people who
Speaker 3: had nine one one called on them being killed by
Speaker 3: the cops exactly that, and that death would not have happened.
Speaker 3: Their death wouldn't have happened had the person been suspicious
Speaker 3: of them and called nine one one. And the fact,
Speaker 3: you know, when when news of something like that gets out,
Speaker 3: it will make you second guess that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: like you're for sure you're It makes you realize you're
Speaker 3: bringing like people who are armed and jumpy out to
Speaker 3: a situation where it's just somebody walking around or wherever.
Speaker 3: And when you look at it from that respect, it
Speaker 3: can make you second guess the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and things can look it can look like potential
Speaker 1: malfeasance that's not you know, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: you see a lot of people saying, well, I think
Speaker 1: someone's kising my house because a car pulled it into
Speaker 1: my driveway and sat there for two minutes.
Speaker 2: They asked me if I want to know more about
Speaker 2: Sierra Corus.
Speaker 1: Or someone stopped and was taking pictures of my house,
Speaker 1: Like you never know, somebody might be taking picture of
Speaker 1: the oak tree that they're trying to learn about, or
Speaker 1: just looking up something on their phone and standing in
Speaker 1: the direction of your house.
Speaker 3: Right, nine times out of ten, they're trying to figure
Speaker 3: out more about the oak tree near your house.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: No, I'm with you anyway.
Speaker 1: It's just that's where it gets a little dodgy, for sure,
Speaker 1: and what we'll have statistics that the thick later on
Speaker 1: about actual racial bias because it's real.
Speaker 3: Sure, Okay, moving on. You want to take a little
Speaker 3: break after that? It seems like a good spot.
Speaker 1: Oh I think I do.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, everybody, we're taking a rare Josh break and
Speaker 3: we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back. That Josh break was invigorating.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing anything. I was just taking a picture
Speaker 1: of oak tree. When you get off my.
Speaker 2: Back, Oh my gosh, what kind.
Speaker 1: Of oak is that?
Speaker 2: Sir?
Speaker 3: There's only one kind of oak. I know there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland is like, no,
Speaker 3: that's not true.
Speaker 1: While we're mentioning calling nine one one though you can
Speaker 1: get arrested. It is a crime to prank call nine
Speaker 1: one one.
Speaker 2: You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Or to swat. It's called swatting.
Speaker 2: That's a bit I think that deserves its own podcast.
Speaker 1: Maybe because there was some some guy got killed right
Speaker 1: from a swating incident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's happened more than once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's serious stuff.
Speaker 3: If you don't know it's swatting is we'll just give
Speaker 3: you the four to one one on this abuse of
Speaker 3: nine one one.
Speaker 2: Man, I love myself. Somethings great.
Speaker 3: So swatting is where you are a hacker, right, and
Speaker 3: you can disguise the number that you're coming you're calling
Speaker 3: from to make it look like you're calling from a
Speaker 3: house that you want the cops to go to, and
Speaker 3: you basically say like I'm in this house and I'm
Speaker 3: holding hostages and what are you going to do about it?
Speaker 2: Johnny law?
Speaker 3: And the law comes out and usually swat that I
Speaker 3: shouldn't say. Usually in some cases the swat team will
Speaker 3: actually enter this house where people who have no idea
Speaker 3: what's going on are and maybe that the people who
Speaker 3: have been swatted, you know, said something mean to to
Speaker 3: the guy who you know, called the swat team out
Speaker 3: on them. But it's basically it's not like saying like
Speaker 3: there's a I think there's a hostage situation in this house.
Speaker 3: It's I'm the guy holding the hostages.
Speaker 2: And here's where I am mean.
Speaker 1: Like in swat teams stick right exactly, the swat team's like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go kill that guy.
Speaker 3: I'll bet you would never in a million years bring
Speaker 3: your swat team out.
Speaker 1: And whatever you do, don't come in guns blazing, right,
Speaker 1: which we're joking about something that's really happened.
Speaker 3: Sure, So, like I really think we need to talk
Speaker 3: at least a short side, I think.
Speaker 2: So we'll look into it a little. First.
Speaker 1: We'll do one on swatting and one on docksing. Okay,
Speaker 1: two weird new things that people do now.
Speaker 3: Right, but but swatting is definitely a crime. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: Also so that you don't make nine on one feel
Speaker 3: like I think this is great. This is almost like
Speaker 3: a public service announcement that we're in the midst of Yeah,
Speaker 3: we do these so you you don't get in trouble
Speaker 3: with the nine on one, so they don't think that
Speaker 3: you're pranking them.
Speaker 2: When you're not.
Speaker 3: If you ever called nine one one accidentally, or say
Speaker 3: your kid does, or whatever, you do not want to
Speaker 3: hang up the phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did that a few years ago. I feel
Speaker 1: like I accidentally called nine one one because I think
Speaker 1: cell phones have a feature that it enacted like an
Speaker 1: automatic call by accident, right, And I saw it and
Speaker 1: I went, oh crap, and I hung up, right and
Speaker 1: I got a call back, like in a second.
Speaker 3: That's great. Ideally you should. Yeah, Umy has a great
Speaker 3: story from when she was a kid. She got scared. Uh,
Speaker 3: I can't remember something about her grandmother who was perfectly fine,
Speaker 3: but she called nine one one and got scared with
Speaker 3: nine one one answered and hung up, and they kept
Speaker 3: calling back and she kept hanging up.
Speaker 1: That's very cute.
Speaker 3: They came out to the house a little welfare checking. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 3: but you don't want to do that. Don't follow the
Speaker 3: UMI model no of nine on one, Like just stay
Speaker 3: on the phone and be like, I'm really sorry, this
Speaker 3: is an accidental call, and I'm definitely not the bad
Speaker 3: guy pretending.
Speaker 2: That this is an accidental call. Make sure you say
Speaker 2: that too.
Speaker 1: My name is Timmy, I'm five. It's all good.
Speaker 2: My name is little boy with brown hair.
Speaker 1: So I think the history is fairly interesting because England
Speaker 1: started nine not nine one one, but their version, which
Speaker 1: is nine nine nine, way back in nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 1: in London.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it either, but they they were the
Speaker 1: first city in the world that created the three digit model. Apparently,
Speaker 1: as the story goes, there was a fire in downtown
Speaker 1: London and people tried to get through the fire department
Speaker 1: and they were put on hold and switched around, and
Speaker 1: so they said the town crier came out and said
Speaker 1: nine nine nine is the answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which so nine nine nine it's easy to remember. Sure,
Speaker 3: I guess no one else was using nine nine nine
Speaker 3: at the time. But this is back in the day
Speaker 3: of rotary phones, right, Oh yeah, so that that's actually
Speaker 3: that was a It was a burden to dial nine
Speaker 3: nine nine with the roadary.
Speaker 2: Should have been for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just thought that was kind of clumsy of them,
Speaker 3: a little bit clumsy of the Brits.
Speaker 1: But let me see here. I think it was a
Speaker 1: twelve mile radius around London at first after World War
Speaker 1: Two and went wider and because you know, Britain liked
Speaker 1: to do a little world conquering. You can find nine
Speaker 1: nine to nine in cities all over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where London has or where England has left their imprint.
Speaker 3: That's a way to put it, for sure. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: the US of course said, well, we're not going to
Speaker 3: let the Brits out do us.
Speaker 2: You're going to do brexit. Hold my beer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna wait twenty something years and do it ourselves.
Speaker 2: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: So, I think in nineteen fifty seven, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry,
Speaker 3: the National Association of Fire Chiefs, I was way off.
Speaker 3: They said, hey, we should come up with the easy
Speaker 3: to remember three digit number for people to report five
Speaker 3: and other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll we'll,
Speaker 3: we'll do that to report emergencies. And the Fire Teams
Speaker 3: Association said no, just fires.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Luckily no one listened to them. Well, they didn't listen
Speaker 3: to the just firepart, that's right. And then a couple
Speaker 3: of years after that or maybe yeah, a few years later,
Speaker 3: the National Academy Assizes said this is actually a really
Speaker 3: good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances too.
Speaker 3: And then finally a Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and
Speaker 3: the Administration of Justice said, no, all emergencies should have
Speaker 3: a three digit, easy to remember number.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So the FCC says, who should we get in touch
Speaker 1: with here?
Speaker 2: How about AT and T?
Speaker 1: Because these were the days of phone monopolies, right or
Speaker 1: phone monopoly? It was just one right? No, I think
Speaker 1: when did they break up the phone companies?
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 3: Before this, okay, because they broke them up into the
Speaker 3: different bells, right, yeah? Were they were all the different
Speaker 3: bells part of one big phone company.
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 1: Which one?
Speaker 2: I just said, two different things?
Speaker 1: The Liberty Bell, the Southern Bell, Yeah, bell from Pacific Bell,
Speaker 1: Pacific Bell, the bell from Beauty and the Beast, Right,
Speaker 1: all the bells, Albuquerque Bell? Sure, why not? You can
Speaker 1: ring my bell.
Speaker 2: That's a good one. That's a good song.
Speaker 3: It's a good one. But I think more and more
Speaker 3: and more by Andrea true connection is far better.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: Virtually the same thing, but just a better, better song.
Speaker 1: Okay, they got in touch with AT and T. And
Speaker 1: they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently
Speaker 1: AT and T is the one that chose nine to
Speaker 1: one one because it hadn't been used yet, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the first stumbling block again.
Speaker 2: The rotary dial.
Speaker 1: Rotary dial that was nine one one's a lot better
Speaker 1: than nine nine nine.
Speaker 2: Way, it's two thirds better.
Speaker 1: It is two thirds better and it was easy to remember.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think they had set up at
Speaker 1: this point already for one one in a lot of areas,
Speaker 1: so they just kind of extended that idea of the
Speaker 1: something one one.
Speaker 3: Right, So the first this really surprised me, the first
Speaker 3: nine one one call that was ever placed in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 2: New York City. You would think, so.
Speaker 1: Washington, d C. No, Chicago, what else you got? Chicago?
Speaker 2: You already said that one. Okay, I don't know. What
Speaker 2: about Los Angeles? Yeah, what not? What about Albuquerque? They're
Speaker 2: doing fine?
Speaker 3: Okay, No, none of those are correct. Haleyville, Alabama was
Speaker 3: the site of the very first nine one one call.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good little trivia question.
Speaker 2: I think that is 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: champions sure run some of the better TV I'd seen
Speaker 1: in a while. Really good. Oh yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: if you're a Jeopardy fan, it was as good as
Speaker 1: it gets. Like they're 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 thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and stuff. Ooh, like it was really tense. Wow, good drama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so cool because I think Ken knew that other guy,
Speaker 1: the Holtzeltzer guy, was a gambler and he made his
Speaker 1: name for really just going all in and kN knew this,
Speaker 1: so he had to do the same.
Speaker 2: Well sure, in order to beat these chumps.
Speaker 3: If you're playing a gambler, you get dragged into gambling.
Speaker 2: Whether you want to gamble or not. Get in there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff anyway, good trivia question. It's probably been
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy. Hayleyville, Alabama, did it was? It was kind
Speaker 1: of a publicity stunt. It sounds like they so.
Speaker 3: The little the little phone company there, the Alabama Telephony.
Speaker 2: Co basically said it's pretty funny at.
Speaker 3: And T is about to do this. You're about to
Speaker 3: launch this nine one one system. We want to jump
Speaker 3: on it and adopt it first. So we're going to
Speaker 3: set this up as fast as we can. Because here's
Speaker 3: the thing. We'll find out more about this in a minute.
Speaker 3: But there's no national nine to one one system.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: All everywhere in the United States, nine one one reaches
Speaker 3: an emergency dispatcher or an emergency operator, but each system
Speaker 3: is local, regional at best. Right, So Hayleyville, Alabama, could
Speaker 3: jump on this and set up their own system and
Speaker 3: get started.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what they did, that's right.
Speaker 1: February of nineteen sixty eight, they had a state senator
Speaker 1: named Rank and fight he dialed nine to one to
Speaker 1: one as a you know, obviously, is this like a
Speaker 1: photo op or video op? In other words, there wasn't
Speaker 1: an emergency. Sure, It's like, man, what a coincidence that
Speaker 1: the state senator had the first emergency.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Ingressman Tom Bevel known as the pork King, really not
Speaker 3: just the Alabama pork King, the pork King of Congress.
Speaker 1: And the state centator said, what are you, pork King?
Speaker 1: What are you doing at the police station? I've got
Speaker 1: an emergency? And he said, are we really going to
Speaker 1: do this?
Speaker 2: Bit? I would force whoever's on the other line to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we did it first. They did it a week later.
Speaker 1: They still have a big festival every year or two,
Speaker 1: sure festival. I wonder if they re enact this famous
Speaker 1: phone call. Oh 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.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: And when I say forget drunk history, I mean we
Speaker 1: very much want to be on it.
Speaker 2: Are we still pursuing that?
Speaker 1: No, I mean just by occasionally yelling out of my
Speaker 1: window every now and then.
Speaker 2: The crickets are deafening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm surprised no one said like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: a natural fit. These guys are great storytellers about history.
Speaker 1: They can get drunk with the best of them.
Speaker 2: We've been saying this for years. No one's change.
Speaker 1: Listen, so Noam, Alaska about a week later did the
Speaker 1: same thing and were the second city. And then throughout
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties it kind of started rolling out.
Speaker 1: But it takes a while to get this kind of
Speaker 1: thing going.
Speaker 3: It does because again it's a local again at best,
Speaker 3: regional system okay, and your local city might not have
Speaker 3: the money to put in a new telecommunications system to
Speaker 3: be used for emergency services. And at first, you know,
Speaker 3: cities that were a little more flush with cash because
Speaker 3: they had a larger tax base had the money to
Speaker 3: roll these out. So as expected, aside from Hayleyville and Nome,
Speaker 3: it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting
Speaker 3: to roll out there the earliest nine to one one systems.
Speaker 3: But the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation
Speaker 3: based on Johnson and Johnson's company, they took an early
Speaker 3: interest in this and started handing out grants to rural
Speaker 3: areas to set up their own nine one one systems.
Speaker 3: So ironically, Hayleyville, Alabama, had it not jumped on, it
Speaker 3: probably still wouldn't have a nine to one one system
Speaker 3: where it not for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling
Speaker 3: out grants to like you know, small towns around the
Speaker 3: country for their own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they're like you know what, people call nine
Speaker 1: one one, they go to the hospital. We're using Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1: Not being overly cynical. I'm sure that you know. Nine
Speaker 1: one one's probably good for the band aid business.
Speaker 2: I would guess so. And baby shampoo, yeah, because if
Speaker 2: you can't get if you can't get an ambulance to
Speaker 2: that person, they're gonna croak. But if you get the
Speaker 2: ambulance to them, right, you don't need band aids when
Speaker 2: you're dead.
Speaker 3: Nope, that's that's just like a fact of death. But
Speaker 3: if you survive, you're gonna need all a lot of
Speaker 3: band aids, depending on what you've done to yourself.
Speaker 2: That's right. Here's some stats for you.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy six, when I was five years old,
Speaker 1: only seventeen percent of the US had nine one one.
Speaker 3: You want to know a surprising fact, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: I was just born.
Speaker 2: Well, you probably weren't covered by nine one one again,
Speaker 2: not until nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Well, by nineteen eighty seven, only fifty percent of the country,
Speaker 1: which is that's kind of that's pretty late. I would
Speaker 1: have thought we would have had a lot more of
Speaker 1: the country covered by.
Speaker 2: Then, for sure, you would think so.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until ninety nine, actually, Chuck, that that
Speaker 3: nine one one officially became the emergency number for everywhere
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about
Speaker 1: nine nine nine? And they went, Bill, Yeah, please, wrong country, Canada.
Speaker 1: Speaking of wrong countries, they are very much the right
Speaker 1: country because they got on board with nine to one
Speaker 1: one as well, that's absolutely true, Check, because they were like,
Speaker 1: why make things too difficult?
Speaker 2: You know, that's a great question, Canada.
Speaker 3: And I think the answer to that is you shouldn't
Speaker 3: make things too difficult, just kind of go with the flow.
Speaker 1: America.
Speaker 2: Should we do some more stuff here?
Speaker 3: I was thinking, maybe another break? Okay, are you okay
Speaker 3: with that?
Speaker 2: Yes? Are you sure? Yes?
Speaker 3: What about you listeners? Okay, good, Well, we'll be right back. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 3: Let's talk about how it actually works.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the early days, obviously it was all landline telephones.
Speaker 1: So when your call got routed to the switchboard, which
Speaker 1: was a nine to one to one switchboard dedicated to that,
Speaker 1: they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated
Speaker 1: to nine to one one to what's called a peace
Speaker 1: app a public safety answering point. And at the time
Speaker 1: they were a lot of times like in the fire
Speaker 1: department or in the police station.
Speaker 3: Right, so they could just turn their chair and be like, serge,
Speaker 3: dispatch some people to this address.
Speaker 1: We got a suspicious person staring at oak trees right again, right.
Speaker 3: And like originally, like today at nine one one dispatcher
Speaker 3: is a highly trained, highly skilled person.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff going on. It's like a
Speaker 2: flight attendant.
Speaker 3: Remember when we've learned like flight attendants are actually trained
Speaker 3: to save your life in an emergency, and they just
Speaker 3: hand out peanuts as like a side thing. This is
Speaker 3: basically the same thing with the nine to eleven operator
Speaker 3: call taker. They knowed how to do a lot of stuff,
Speaker 3: but the earliest ones just knew how to answer the phone,
Speaker 3: take down your info, and then turn around and send
Speaker 3: it off to the fire department or the police department
Speaker 3: or you know, the paramedics or something like that. You know,
Speaker 3: they'd be like, okay, I gotta go all right, I'll
Speaker 3: see you buy right, and then they would get off
Speaker 3: the phone.
Speaker 2: And that evolved to the call center.
Speaker 1: That evolved to what was called enhanced nine to one one,
Speaker 1: which was in the nineteen seventies, again driven by Telecom
Speaker 1: advancing with AT and T with new technologies, they developed
Speaker 1: ANI and ALI Automatic Number Identification and Location Identification.
Speaker 2: ANI is just caller ID. That's what everybody calls caller ID. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Remember those cute little boxes that you could plug your
Speaker 2: phone line into and on your little table.
Speaker 3: Show you in some little terrible readout. Yeah, basically dot
Speaker 3: matrix readout.
Speaker 1: Yep, who was calling? Pretty neat and then it was
Speaker 1: on your handheld cordless phone. Right, you could look at
Speaker 1: it and that was like, whoa, we're living in the future,
Speaker 1: rich or the answering machine now is digital. We don't
Speaker 1: need those tiny tapes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: That was like a big revolution too. That was huge,
Speaker 1: amazing because.
Speaker 2: You could leave as long a message as you wanted.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, but you couldn't get that clever nobody's home.
Speaker 2: Nobody's home.
Speaker 1: Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message, right, you could
Speaker 1: sing it, but they actually had that tape you could
Speaker 1: buy that you could put it.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was one that was like a whole mixtape of.
Speaker 1: Them of just like gag answers. Oh boy, you don't
Speaker 1: remember that, not really.
Speaker 2: There was a very famous ad that.
Speaker 1: Were in It was like delight your friends basically yeah, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny.
Speaker 3: So this enhancenime on one system, the automatic number and
Speaker 3: the automatic locator. That was a big deal because now
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, if you were a call taker
Speaker 3: for a nine to one one and a call came
Speaker 3: up on your little computer screen, it said what the
Speaker 3: number was and what the address was, and because everybody
Speaker 3: was calling from landlines, you knew exactly where that person
Speaker 3: was who needed help.
Speaker 2: That's right. It saved a bunch of time. It was
Speaker 2: a very huge life saving measure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you think about people in an emergency,
Speaker 1: could be everything from crippling fear keeping you from even
Speaker 1: knowing where you are, to having been hit on the
Speaker 1: head and not being able to.
Speaker 2: Say where you are yeah you just can't speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so that really imagine that they spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time sometimes just trying to get through that
Speaker 1: first step of where are you right?
Speaker 3: So this was an enormous leap forward in the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties. It really kind of cemented how helpful in
Speaker 3: life saving, this nine to one one system could be.
Speaker 3: And then cell phones came along and the rest of
Speaker 3: us kind of leap frogged right over nine one one
Speaker 3: because the cell phone carriers didn't.
Speaker 2: Have ANI and ALI.
Speaker 3: When you call nine one one still to this day
Speaker 3: from a cell phone, it does not come up what
Speaker 3: your number is or where you are in any specific way.
Speaker 3: And so Congress or at least the FCC said, hey,
Speaker 3: we need you guys to do something like there's got
Speaker 3: to be something that you just can't be like, you know,
Speaker 3: you have no idea where this person is in the country. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because part of the other thing about the automatic locator
Speaker 3: that they had originally with nine one one in the
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties is it would route you to the
Speaker 3: closest public safety answering point, right, So that would be
Speaker 3: saving time too, because the person you're talking to is
Speaker 3: in the same area as you and knows the area
Speaker 3: you're talking about and can more quickly dispatch people.
Speaker 2: Right, cell phones, it's not the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Dave makes a good point. Even if they
Speaker 1: could have located like where your cell phone plan was
Speaker 1: or your phone was activated, you don't have to live
Speaker 1: in the city where that is right. You have friends
Speaker 1: that have LA numbers that work in the film industry
Speaker 1: here just because that stupid LA three one hour three
Speaker 1: two three makes them look like a more legitimate higher
Speaker 1: just so cool.
Speaker 2: It's so cool and so dumb.
Speaker 1: Right, But yeah, they would be like, you're in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: says you're in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Is this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So so the FCC said, Okay, you guys need
Speaker 3: to do something. So what they did was they came
Speaker 3: up with a triangulation where the closest cell phone towers
Speaker 3: address comes up when you call.
Speaker 1: It's a good start, it is a good start.
Speaker 3: But if you're out in the sticks, the closest cell
Speaker 3: phone tower might be miles and miles and miles away.
Speaker 3: And even if it's not miles away, let's say it's
Speaker 3: a football field away. Well, if you're in a dense,
Speaker 3: densely populated area.
Speaker 1: And you're bleeding out, sure it doesn't help.
Speaker 2: It does not help at all.
Speaker 3: But it gets you a little bit closer, and it
Speaker 3: helps to transfer your caller, to route your call to
Speaker 3: the closest peace app Yeah, okay, And then the other
Speaker 3: thing that they have them do now. Phase two of
Speaker 3: this enhanced wireless enhanced nine one one is it gives
Speaker 3: your GPS coordinates, right, which is so nineties It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It is. And it's like map quest.
Speaker 1: Any when he's ever waited on a ride share that
Speaker 1: thought you were down the street from where you were
Speaker 1: knows how accurate that GPS can be.
Speaker 3: Well, still, it's still great, But that's way more accurate
Speaker 3: than what nine one one's working with.
Speaker 1: Well, they're just working with longitude and latitude points, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the big one of the big qualities. A
Speaker 3: quality to have as a nine to one one operator
Speaker 3: is to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude
Speaker 3: coordinates GPS coordinates into like Google Maps to get an
Speaker 3: address really.
Speaker 1: Fast into smooth sexy voice.
Speaker 3: Sure, like very White with fingers of fury, or like
Speaker 3: halle Berry with Barry White's fingers.
Speaker 1: She did you see that movie The Call? No, She
Speaker 1: played a nine to one to one call specialist in
Speaker 1: a movie, a thriller.
Speaker 2: It was good?
Speaker 1: Was it great?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was good.
Speaker 2: Okay that Brad.
Speaker 1: Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that name, And it seemed like.
Speaker 1: This sort of from what what you're gonna call me
Speaker 1: out on that? I didn't hear you from what?
Speaker 2: From where?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I don't get what you mean from where? Like what other?
Speaker 1: What other movies is he directed? He directed a scary
Speaker 1: movie called Session nine.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, okay, well then this guy is one of
Speaker 3: my favorites of all time.
Speaker 2: That movie, that's what. It's one of the best horror
Speaker 2: movies ever made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has
Speaker 1: a range of genres. Like one of his early movies
Speaker 1: is this kind of spacey rom com called Happy Accidents.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 1: Happy Accident, Yeah, really good with Mercytome and Vincent Dinafrio.
Speaker 1: But it had This was a rom com with a
Speaker 1: sort of a a.
Speaker 2: Bit of a sci fi twist to it.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, And he did Trans Siberian He's he's done.
Speaker 1: He did Next Stop. Wonderland was one of his first
Speaker 1: little indies.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he does.
Speaker 1: It's unusual for a director to tackle all these weird
Speaker 1: or different genres. It's neat disparate genres.
Speaker 2: Well you have me at Session nine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Call Is is a good, you know, popcorn movie.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: Barry's a call center person and that's all I'll say.
Speaker 2: Hey, she's quality, quality actress. She is.
Speaker 3: But the fact that I had never even heard of
Speaker 3: this movie really made me suspicious.
Speaker 1: It did pretty well. Okay, it wasn't a massive hit,
Speaker 1: but it did like sixty million bucks.
Speaker 2: But that's really surprising. Like I'm very aware of movies,
Speaker 2: like I'll know what the movie's about, and I have
Speaker 2: never seen it now, even seen a preview. I'll just
Speaker 2: kind of know. Sure, So I'm surprised. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 2: recommend it. I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's no Black Coat's Daughter, but that's
Speaker 1: a good one too. So where are we now? We
Speaker 1: are now at texting to nine one one.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, hold on, I wanted to drive this home
Speaker 2: real quick. Okay, okay, drive it home.
Speaker 3: The nineteen ninety six FCC rule that says you have
Speaker 3: to have a cell phone tower, tell nine one one
Speaker 3: it's address, the closest one to your cell phone, and
Speaker 3: then give the GPS coordinates. Yeah, for wherever that cell
Speaker 3: phone they think the cell phone is. That's the nine
Speaker 3: to one one system that's in place nationwide today.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That's why they ask you from a cell phone, who
Speaker 1: are you and where are you, just like they did
Speaker 1: in the early days.
Speaker 3: Right, And this is a problem because, like you said earlier,
Speaker 3: eighty percent of nine one one calls in the United
Speaker 3: States are made from cell phones, and nine one one
Speaker 3: does not know where you are unless you tell them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also balanced out by the fact that
Speaker 1: they want to help. Well, you have that cell phone
Speaker 1: right there and immediately, so yeah, yeah, that's remember the
Speaker 1: old days. You're like, let me find a pay phone,
Speaker 1: let me go knock on someone's door and be and
Speaker 1: ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I won't get shot.
Speaker 1: So people are calling right away, So I would think
Speaker 1: that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness.
Speaker 3: Yes, of location. I think you're right, Chuck, we'll see. Well,
Speaker 3: you're really swooped in there, I say.
Speaker 2: We'll see as if there's some report coming out.
Speaker 3: The thing is, though, is people have figured out the people,
Speaker 3: the powers that be who are concerned with nine one
Speaker 3: one in its system are well aware of this major flaw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and our work have figured.
Speaker 3: Out how to update it. It's just now we're in
Speaker 3: the process of rolling out updates.
Speaker 1: Well, and then privacy advocates are going to be like,
Speaker 1: what you're going to like locate every single person with
Speaker 1: the cell phone and know where they are at all times?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And Amazon and Apple are like, dude, we already know that.
Speaker 3: It's just nine one one is the only one who
Speaker 3: doesn't know where you are at all.
Speaker 2: Times, yes, which is a problem. It's funny.
Speaker 3: I saw a Wired article from nineteen ninety eight that
Speaker 3: was like wringing its hands, like, oh, you know, privacy
Speaker 3: advocates are worried that they may be able to track
Speaker 3: the movement of cell phone users based on this information
Speaker 3: that nine one one Now, yeah, they're like, maybe I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to see to the future holds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so texting the nine one one is the latest technology
Speaker 1: about ten years ago, eleven years ago in Iowa and Blackhawk,
Speaker 1: they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service. And
Speaker 1: it's still kind of coming out. I think a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago they all fifty states had text capability.
Speaker 2: But it's not everywhere in each state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, in par it's just text. I love Day
Speaker 1: points out you can't send emojis. I need help emoji,
Speaker 1: but you can't send text and video and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing would be super helpful, I think.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is where we are in the next generation.
Speaker 3: It's literally called next generation nine one one nine one one,
Speaker 3: and it's where nine one one finally catches up to
Speaker 3: every other telecom company, yeah, and device manufacturer already is.
Speaker 3: And it basically uses all the information from the Internet
Speaker 3: of Things that lets people know exactly where you are,
Speaker 3: not just like what you're at, says what floor of
Speaker 3: a building you happen to be sitting on right now.
Speaker 3: All of that information is now going to be funneled
Speaker 3: to nine one one when you call, because nine on
Speaker 3: one is finally abandoning land lines landline Telecom, that's what
Speaker 3: they're dealing with currently. They're going over to VoIP, so
Speaker 3: nine to one will be using a secure Internet connection
Speaker 3: in the near future, and when they get to that point,
Speaker 3: they will be able to accept video photos like this
Speaker 3: is the guy that's that's attacking the lady, hurry up,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And then they'll also be able
Speaker 3: to because they're setting up a separate wireless broadband network
Speaker 3: just for first responders called first net.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's going to be a big deal.
Speaker 3: And so nine one one will be able to say, hey,
Speaker 3: here's a photo of the guy that you're looking for.
Speaker 3: They can't do that now, is mind boggling as it is,
Speaker 3: They cannot do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just to have a dedicated wireless network
Speaker 1: cuts down on I imagine interference and potential hacking.
Speaker 3: Plus in a disaster, if you're out there in the field,
Speaker 3: you are using your own wireless device that's on the
Speaker 3: public broadband right now. And so if the public broadband
Speaker 3: goes down because there's so many people trying to use
Speaker 3: it to find out what's going on in like an
Speaker 3: earthquake or something like, the first responders suffer.
Speaker 2: From that too.
Speaker 3: So this separate broadband network just for first responders won't
Speaker 3: crash in the event of a disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And speaking of first responders, I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of time we join certain people in saying call center
Speaker 1: employees are first responders.
Speaker 2: Are people saying they're not well.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're generally thought of as first responders
Speaker 1: if you work at a call center.
Speaker 2: 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 CPR, Heimlich,
Speaker 1: how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, suicide,
Speaker 1: domestic abuse, if you're a kid and you're scared because
Speaker 1: grandma fell over, like how to handle children. Like they're
Speaker 1: really skilled, And I think it's a shame that, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like the only time you hear about nine
Speaker 1: to one one call center responders is when there's a
Speaker 1: bad one and you release those calls and everyone's horrified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and it is, it's awful. But those are
Speaker 1: clearly like the standouts, I guess, not standouts.
Speaker 2: The standouts are all the good employees. There have been
Speaker 2: some doozies, for sure. Yeah. I read about one where
Speaker 2: somebody called in of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon, sorry Oregon,
Speaker 2: and the nine one one operator said, what you're seeing
Speaker 2: is probably just the play of light on sunlight on
Speaker 2: the fog.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It was like, how would you even know that you're
Speaker 3: in a call center, I'm looking right at this thing.
Speaker 3: It's a wildfire, and like they didn't dispatch anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like a half hour twenty minutes later, somebody else
Speaker 3: called it in, and by this time it was like raging.
Speaker 1: There was the one lady drowning in her car too.
Speaker 1: That one was horrific.
Speaker 2: I didn't hear about that one.
Speaker 1: She was in her car that was going down and
Speaker 1: I think I don't remember exactly what happened, but she
Speaker 1: was freaking out. Yeah, And I think the nine one
Speaker 1: one person was just sort of dismissive and it was
Speaker 1: really and kind of rude even. But you know that
Speaker 1: makes the news, not the six hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: calls a day that go through and our lives are saved.
Speaker 2: Like, no, no, absolutely, it's absolutely true. It's a great point.
Speaker 3: There are plenty of stories of people like of them
Speaker 3: just like straight up.
Speaker 2: Doing hero stuff. Yeah, going above and beyond.
Speaker 1: You should see halle Berry in this movie.
Speaker 3: One of the things that can happen is as hard,
Speaker 3: as much as you're trained to not let it happen,
Speaker 3: you can become emotionally invested in a call totally. And
Speaker 3: I've read that some operators are just fine leaving it
Speaker 3: at the door, at least appearing to leave it at
Speaker 3: the door, but others can suffer burnout PTSD. And one
Speaker 3: of the big things that I saw that's a huge
Speaker 3: psychological problem for nine one one operators is that there
Speaker 3: can very frequently be no resolution. They can be on
Speaker 3: the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage
Speaker 3: and they're trying to talk them down, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the cops come in and the line goes dead.
Speaker 3: They if they're not good friends with the cops who
Speaker 3: came in, they may never find out what happened, Like
Speaker 3: no idea. They're talking someone through who's been shot or
Speaker 3: whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious. They
Speaker 3: have no idea what happened to that person. They have
Speaker 3: to take the next call, and that's a huge problem.
Speaker 2: There's no closure.
Speaker 3: And then sometimes there is closure, Like if you're a
Speaker 3: nine one one operator, you probably have been on the
Speaker 3: phone with somebody when they took their last breath, when
Speaker 3: they were murdered, when they died, very very scared. That
Speaker 3: kind of stuff takes its toll on people, and that's
Speaker 3: a bit. It could be a big problem, and there
Speaker 3: can be pretty frequent turnover among nine to one one dispatchers.
Speaker 2: It's halle Berry movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm telling you, it's all there. Yeah, Because
Speaker 1: 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: I took that call of this murder, yeah or whatever?
Speaker 2: Pretty bad. Sure, not a job for me. I don't
Speaker 2: think I could hack it either.
Speaker 3: And then practically speaking, there's like you have to be
Speaker 3: able to type really really fast with a high level
Speaker 3: of accuracy while somebody's telling you other information. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: you might be taking info in and you have to
Speaker 3: be chatting with you know, a cop on I am
Speaker 3: who you're sending out while you're also taking the description
Speaker 3: from the other person who's just going back and forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to be able to compartmentalize and multitask.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All none of those things are my specialty.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering you pay for nine to one one
Speaker 1: if you have a phone bill, cell phone bills included,
Speaker 1: it's a little search charge there. So that's outrageous to
Speaker 1: scream socialism everybody. And as far as those statistics we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier about the racial bias, of course, if
Speaker 1: you were a fan of Public Enemy, you remember the
Speaker 1: great great song nine to one one is a joke
Speaker 1: flavor flame. There was a study done by the ACLU
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen residents of a Grand Crossing this is Chicago.
Speaker 1: Study African American neighborhood on the South Side waited eleven
Speaker 1: minutes for a cop to come after a priority call,
Speaker 1: two and a half minutes for the predominantly white neighborhood
Speaker 1: of Jefferson Park. In response times in that were four
Speaker 1: and a half times slower in the black community. And
Speaker 1: there's you know, like I mentioned earlier, with the people
Speaker 1: calling nine one one on you know, just an African
Speaker 1: American person living their life. There have been cases where
Speaker 1: people ended up dead because of that after escalation, and
Speaker 1: that's just like a pure tragedy for sure.
Speaker 3: There is a there are like when you have something
Speaker 3: this massive and huge and it's involves people at like
Speaker 3: their worst moment of their life, a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: is going to kind of come out of it. There's
Speaker 3: a lot to nine to one, a lot of legends
Speaker 3: and myths and everything. But one of the things I
Speaker 3: saw that everyone seems to know about is that if
Speaker 3: you call nine one one and pretend you're ordering a pizza,
Speaker 3: they will understand that you are in a position where
Speaker 3: you can't talk, and they'll dispatch the police. Supposedly that's
Speaker 3: a myth, but it makes total sense. Doesn't you've heard
Speaker 3: that before.
Speaker 2: I was just just thinking of Diehard. Oh, I don't
Speaker 2: remember that.
Speaker 1: There was that line where he's calling the nine one
Speaker 1: one dispatcher. Huh, well, I guess I don't even think
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was an actual cop on
Speaker 1: the other end, and she's like, calm downs her and
Speaker 1: you know, it's not an emergency, and he said.
Speaker 2: What do you think I'm doing ordering a pizza? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, And that might have been a reference
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Maybe, So so what are you saying again?
Speaker 3: The urban legend is that if you like, let's say
Speaker 3: there's there's somebody who's got a gun on you, if
Speaker 3: you can somehow get it to the point where you're like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's order a pizza right now, you can call nine
Speaker 3: one one say hey, I'd like to order a pizza. Code,
Speaker 3: there's my address, and then yeah, and that nine one
Speaker 3: one will get what's going on and send the cops out.
Speaker 3: Apparently that's not true, but there there is.
Speaker 2: There's another. There was an urban legend I.
Speaker 3: Saw in the UK with nine nine nine that if
Speaker 3: you call and you don't say anything, that they will
Speaker 3: send someone out. And I think that is kind of
Speaker 3: widely believed over here in the US too. Apparently in
Speaker 3: the UK that is true. But it's going to send
Speaker 3: you through a series of prompts if you don't respond,
Speaker 3: and if you press five to five, it will you
Speaker 3: will be confirming that yes, you there's an emergency and
Speaker 3: you just can't talk right now, and they will send
Speaker 3: people out. If you don't press five to five, then
Speaker 3: they won't. It'll just take it as like an accidental call.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's the big benefit.
Speaker 1: I don't even think we kind of brought up about
Speaker 1: texting to nine to one one because you might think like, ugh,
Speaker 1: because because people want.
Speaker 2: To text millennials.
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of cases where you can't talk.
Speaker 1: You're maybe in a domestic dispute.
Speaker 2: Or if you're hearing you're in.
Speaker 1: A closet, or if you're hearing impaired, or if you've
Speaker 1: been kidnapped and don't want to use your voice out loud,
Speaker 1: or you're a scared child, like, plenty of great cases
Speaker 1: to be made for texting.
Speaker 3: And since text to nine one one isn't everywhere, the
Speaker 3: SEC has a law that if your telecom carrier doesn't
Speaker 3: doesn't have text nine one one, they have an immediate
Speaker 3: bounce back that says like you can't do that.
Speaker 2: You have to call nine one one, Yeah, which is
Speaker 2: that's pretty valuable. It is.
Speaker 3: And one last thing, if you find an old phone
Speaker 3: that has a charge in it, even if it hasn't
Speaker 3: had served us for twenty years, you can dial nine
Speaker 3: on one you will be connected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Every single phone that is that is in operation dials
Speaker 3: nine one one for free.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that. I do too, man, I love
Speaker 2: nine to one one.
Speaker 3: I think Kirvanni gets said there's no uh, no greater
Speaker 3: display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down
Speaker 3: the street with its sirens blazing. Oh really, it sounds
Speaker 3: like something means interesting.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Well, if you want to know more about Kirvannaget, you
Speaker 3: can just type that into the search bar. How stuff
Speaker 3: works and who knows what that will bring up?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Uh? And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 2: for a listener. Man.
Speaker 1: Uh. This is a response when we ask for examples
Speaker 1: of racism in today's military, and we heard from a
Speaker 1: range of people.
Speaker 2: I have to say, from.
Speaker 1: This guy who the other guy to the other guy,
Speaker 1: this guy said, I'll just tell you what this guy
Speaker 1: said a minute. But other people have said that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've seen some pretty bad racist stuff in the military,
Speaker 1: but they're isolated incidences, just like in the real world.
Speaker 1: But this is what Matthew Epplewhite says. Start off, I'm
Speaker 1: a white guy. I can't speak on everyone's experience while
Speaker 1: in the service, but during my four years I saw
Speaker 1: more camaraderie between the mix of races than I ever
Speaker 1: see in my real life.
Speaker 2: It seems like this is the response that we got
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 1: The most.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, they thought us.
Speaker 1: Oh, they taught us from the start in boot camp
Speaker 1: Marine Corps that you're all nothing and you will all
Speaker 1: become Marines, and with that in common, it gives a
Speaker 1: common ground between any race or nationality. They might often
Speaker 1: refer to African American Marines as dark green, implying yes,
Speaker 1: they 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: learn that everyone endures the suck and the hard times
Speaker 1: together and no one is above another. In the end,
Speaker 1: you learn to trust the man to my left and
Speaker 1: right with my life, no matter what his skin color.
Speaker 2: And ladies too. They're female Marines sure, I'm glad you
Speaker 2: said that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, saying all this, some prejudice from other people's upbringing
Speaker 1: do still remain, but most of the time it is
Speaker 1: shot down very fast with harsh repercussions, and it has
Speaker 1: kept to a minimum. I made many friends from all
Speaker 1: walks of life that I would have never even imagined being.
Speaker 2: So close to.
Speaker 1: Without the common ground we stood on are the hard
Speaker 1: times that we endure together. And that is from an
Speaker 1: avid listener named Matthew Applewhite.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Matthew, We appreciate you letting us know.
Speaker 3: Thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know
Speaker 3: virtually the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except for the couple of standouts. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 3: like Matthew did, you can go on to stuff you
Speaker 3: Should Know dot com, and I think our social links
Speaker 3: are there, who knows, but you can always get in
Speaker 3: touch with us via email at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.