Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're
Speaker 1: flying solo today. But that's cool because God is our
Speaker 1: co pilot. This good one. I thought it too, because
Speaker 1: God has nothing to do with you and me, that
Speaker 1: kind of unless he was one of us. What a song,
Speaker 1: What a great song. I can't wait till that comes
Speaker 1: back in five years. Who was that? Oh? I think
Speaker 1: had been a one hit wonder but it was one
Speaker 1: heck of a one hit like I want to say
Speaker 1: tor Amos, but it wasn't. No, it definitely wasn't. It
Speaker 1: was like Diane West or something like story was too
Speaker 1: good for that dribble. She was good. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a pretty good, good little song. I like the message. Sure,
Speaker 1: just a stranger on the bus. Just a slob like
Speaker 1: one of us. That wasn't the player, Yeah, just a
Speaker 1: slab kid, you not my friend boy? Yeah, just a
Speaker 1: slab like all of us. I didn't know that was
Speaker 1: being insulted. When I was grown out to that song
Speaker 1: on the dance floor, you couldn't feel her. Supernumerary finger
Speaker 1: poking you in your chest. I could not so. Um, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I feel like we should stop this chit chat and
Speaker 1: get down to it, because we're talking today about something
Speaker 1: that made up our childhood, and I was very dismayed
Speaker 1: to learn still makes up some kids childhoods. A lot
Speaker 1: of kids childhood's still being taught today. Um, and that
Speaker 1: you could conceivably make the case that it eroded at
Speaker 1: the very fabric of society. A very misguided campaign that
Speaker 1: came about in the very early eighties that had the
Speaker 1: very ge term known as stranger danger. Yeah, it's funny
Speaker 1: when you look at this and you couple it with
Speaker 1: everything else. The eighties had a lot of misguided campaigns.
Speaker 1: Didn't they just say no, break No, They're all over
Speaker 1: the place, satanic panic. It's really weird. I think it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look back, it was clearly like uh,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of factors, like the
Speaker 1: the I think the Reagan era sort of moral majority
Speaker 1: years conspired to kind of just they wanted to scare everybody,
Speaker 1: wait into everything, Yeah, scared you straight straight into their
Speaker 1: political ideology. That's definitely, I mean, that's definitely part of
Speaker 1: it for sure, because there is a there's a definite UM.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just me riffing here, like I saw
Speaker 1: this in multiple places, uh with legit sources even UM
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about legit sources are
Speaker 1: not And I think there's some good examples in here
Speaker 1: of being careful who you listen to. UM. But there,
Speaker 1: but there does seem to be like a kind of
Speaker 1: a general consensus that part of those moral panics in
Speaker 1: the eighties came from UM Christian conservatives who very much
Speaker 1: into their credit are are UM dedicated to the idea
Speaker 1: of protecting children from predation at the hands of adults,
Speaker 1: and that that's where a lot of that stuff came from.
Speaker 1: But that it was really done poorly and probably overblown,
Speaker 1: and in very short order. It was not the Christian
Speaker 1: right that was leading in charging more was everybody. Everybody
Speaker 1: was involved in this kind of stuff. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think you know, if you were a kid in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you knew a few things. You knew that if you
Speaker 1: listen to rock and roll music that you might be
Speaker 1: possessed by the devil. Uh. If you went outside to
Speaker 1: go play by yourself, there was a really good chance
Speaker 1: you might not come home, and that if you travel
Speaker 1: to like in New York City, like the Big City
Speaker 1: or someplace, you stand a really good chance to being murdered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just gonna happen. Statistically speaking, you if you
Speaker 1: went to New York City, you're going to be murdered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and none of those things portry or or if you
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette then you're going to end up, you know,
Speaker 1: like a cocaine fiend, right. Or if you take LSD,
Speaker 1: your children's genes are going to be all sorts of
Speaker 1: messed up and you'll be addicted to LSD for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life and have taken multiple times a
Speaker 1: day flashbacks for the rest of you if only Yeah,
Speaker 1: for real free trip. But we'll go ahead and start
Speaker 1: because this ed the Grabanowski. The Grabster helps to help
Speaker 1: us with this, and he very logically started out with
Speaker 1: some statistics. The National Crime Information Center from the FBI
Speaker 1: have been they kind of good at collecting missing persons stats.
Speaker 1: They've been doing that since the Crime Control Act in
Speaker 1: nine And it's like with anything else when you collect
Speaker 1: statistics on like missing children, Let's say you also have
Speaker 1: to clean up that list every year, right, because a
Speaker 1: lot of kids run away from home, a lot of
Speaker 1: kids come come back home. A lot of kids were
Speaker 1: never lost to begin with that are reported missing, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And in twenty nineteen, I believe once
Speaker 1: they added and then subtracted, they added about six hundred,
Speaker 1: nine thousand, two hundred seventy five missing persons. That is
Speaker 1: eye popping. And that's all missing persons. It's not just
Speaker 1: kids for that year though, that's not over the course
Speaker 1: of a century. That's in two thousand nineteen alone, right,
Speaker 1: But they also purge six hundred and seven thousand, one
Speaker 1: d and four, leaving about two thousand actual missing persons
Speaker 1: remaining in their system, and about a hundred of those
Speaker 1: were juvenile. And then some of those our kids who
Speaker 1: ran away from home more than once, so they're on
Speaker 1: the list more than once. So if you just look
Speaker 1: at naked statistics and actual kidnapping in modern times of
Speaker 1: a child is really really air and even rarer still
Speaker 1: to be kidnapped by a stranger. Exactly. So, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: got my trusty old calculator out, and I got a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff wrong, But I'm going to read what
Speaker 1: I came up with. Okay, does um and just got
Speaker 1: me with that. Uh So out of the let's say
Speaker 1: two thousand people who are two thousand kids who are
Speaker 1: abducted every year, That's what I saw in one place,
Speaker 1: I think from the FBI, two thousand kids were abducted. Um,
Speaker 1: that means that out of the seventy four million kids
Speaker 1: in America in two thousand eleven, each one technically had
Speaker 1: a point zero zero, zero, zero to seven percent chance
Speaker 1: of being abducted. Okay, and that's just abducted. Okay, So
Speaker 1: hating with me for one more second. You have twenty
Speaker 1: you have a quarter of a million of a percent
Speaker 1: of being abducted. Statistically speaking, if or a child in
Speaker 1: the US in two thousand eleven, of that quarter of
Speaker 1: a millionth of a percent chance, you had an additional
Speaker 1: two hundreds of a percent chance of being abducted and
Speaker 1: murdered by a stranger, which is, as anyone will tell you,
Speaker 1: the money fear of being a parent, and that is
Speaker 1: what drove it that there was this irrational fear of
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario. And even though it was the
Speaker 1: chances were vanishingly remote, every single parent in America starting
Speaker 1: in the very early eighties was was staying up awake
Speaker 1: at night for decades, worried that this was going to
Speaker 1: happen to their child. Yeah, and you know, that's we
Speaker 1: were talking nineteen, which is the lowest number since they've
Speaker 1: been keeping track. I think that number peaked in the nineties.
Speaker 1: But even in the eighties it wasn't a common occurrence.
Speaker 1: It's you know, these days with camera doorbells and self
Speaker 1: owns and CCTV and how security cameras like, obviously that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff isn't going to happen as much because
Speaker 1: it's just harder to get away with it. And you
Speaker 1: can make a case that in the eighties it was
Speaker 1: easier and maybe happened a little more for that reason,
Speaker 1: but it still was founded upon parents worse fears and
Speaker 1: and it was never a statistical probability, no, not even remotely.
Speaker 1: And there definitely were more kidnappings in general. I think
Speaker 1: they used to get around a million entries rather than
Speaker 1: the seven hundred thousand or six hundred thousand and change um.
Speaker 1: And so that's definitely gone down, and we'll talk about why.
Speaker 1: And then the recovery rate has actually gone up from
Speaker 1: the sixties of the of from the sixty percentile to
Speaker 1: the ninety percentile, So it definitely has improved. But like
Speaker 1: you're saying, even at its worst, it was driven by fear,
Speaker 1: which makes it the definition of a moral panic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and driven by the media that has the statistic of
Speaker 1: newspaper articles about how to protect kids focus on threats
Speaker 1: from strangers, and only about four percent talk about um
Speaker 1: abuse within the family, which is far and away the
Speaker 1: most common threat to a child or people within the family. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think um something like fifty eight thousand kids were
Speaker 1: abducted by familiar, non family members, like people they already knew,
Speaker 1: and most of the time they were targeted for sex.
Speaker 1: So it's not to say like there isn't a there
Speaker 1: isn't a big problem with child sexual abuse, Like I
Speaker 1: think it's even at the time, it was a hidden
Speaker 1: problem even when everyone was focusing on it, because everyone
Speaker 1: was focusing on the wrong group strangers. Whereas it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you're far more likely if you're going to be sexually abused,
Speaker 1: to have been sexually abused by someone you know or
Speaker 1: even a family member. You know, the stranger picking you up,
Speaker 1: abusing you sexually and then murdering you. Was it just
Speaker 1: almost never happened in the United States. Did you happen
Speaker 1: to to sit through the frustrating experience of Abducted in
Speaker 1: Plain Sight? Was it a documentary? No? I didn't see
Speaker 1: that one. Don't bother I. Well, I kind of like
Speaker 1: those vintage like P s A films. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a remarkable story, but it's on Netflix. It'll it is
Speaker 1: one of the more frustrating things that you will ever
Speaker 1: ever sit through in your life. Do they keep like
Speaker 1: going further and further back in time to give more
Speaker 1: and more backstory and context. No, it's just the story
Speaker 1: of this one family. But I don't want to give
Speaker 1: anything away. If all right, it's just you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to throw your television into the street so frustrated. Abducted
Speaker 1: in Plain Sight? Yeah, I mean it's I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can recommend it. You know, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things it's just like, I mean, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: glad I watched it, but it was just so frustrating,
Speaker 1: like listening to the Shags album or something. Hey, did
Speaker 1: you ever see that one after school special where Helen
Speaker 1: Hunt smokes PCP and jumps out of the second floor
Speaker 1: window or school? That was a great one. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: time So what were you about to start with? Let's
Speaker 1: take a break. Oh, I think that's very appropriate, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll take your break and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the beginnings of the stranger danger
Speaker 1: era in the late seventies right after this. Stop you
Speaker 1: you know, stop stop fearing. You shouldn't you know? No
Speaker 1: you stop you you know, stop stop fearing. Shouldn't you know? Stop?
Speaker 1: You should know? Okay, Chuck. So it's this is one
Speaker 1: of those rare things where you can kind of point
Speaker 1: to a moment in history where society change, there is
Speaker 1: a sea change, And it really happened in May of nine,
Speaker 1: um when a little, cute, cute, little six year old
Speaker 1: boy named Eating pats Um vanished. He he was walking
Speaker 1: for the very first time in his life, uh, by
Speaker 1: himself to the bus stop two blocks away from his
Speaker 1: family's house in in Soho. And by house, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I mean like a two square foot studio apartment. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was the last day of school before summer.
Speaker 1: This was his last chance as a six year old
Speaker 1: to walk by himself like a grown up to the
Speaker 1: bus stop. His mom let him do it because it
Speaker 1: was a hectic Marian and she knew he was really
Speaker 1: wanting to get more independence. He had a dollar in
Speaker 1: his pocket for a soda, his favorite Eastern airlines had
Speaker 1: on and he was never seen again. To this day,
Speaker 1: they have no idea what happened to him. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was a huge, huge news story, um, partially
Speaker 1: as we'll see, because it was a little white boy
Speaker 1: who was very cute and um, media heavily slants their
Speaker 1: news stories towards white people in general, white kids. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like I said, we'll get into that morning minute. Um.
Speaker 1: His dad was a professional photographer, so that definitely helped.
Speaker 1: There were tons of great photos of eating that the
Speaker 1: news could dig into and put all over the place,
Speaker 1: and they did. Um. And you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: this is one of those deals that, uh, it's the
Speaker 1: parents worst nightmare. So when a news story gets run
Speaker 1: like this, every parent in the country is going to
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. These days it would be you know, online,
Speaker 1: but they would pick up the phone and call their
Speaker 1: friends and say, did you seek here? What happened? Did
Speaker 1: you see what happened? Like this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that that we're also scared about, and it's actually happening.
Speaker 1: It does happen. Yeah, and there were some other extenuating
Speaker 1: circumstances to that just made it even worse. Like this
Speaker 1: school didn't bother to call to ask about where he
Speaker 1: was when he didn't show up, because I guess they
Speaker 1: didn't know he was walking by himself the first time ever. Um.
Speaker 1: And so his parents went the whole day without being
Speaker 1: wear it all until he didn't come home from school
Speaker 1: that he had never showed up. Um, there was just
Speaker 1: a there was just a lot going on for something
Speaker 1: about it. It just struck everybody in just the right way.
Speaker 1: It's just heartbreaking and it scared parents to death. And
Speaker 1: that was in May of nineteen seventy nine, and you
Speaker 1: can fast forward to just over two years later, uh,
Speaker 1: this time in Hollywood, Florida, another six year old, another
Speaker 1: cute little white kid named Adam Walsh, was abducted from
Speaker 1: a Sears store while his mom shopped like two miles over.
Speaker 1: He was playing like video games in the store and
Speaker 1: his mom was doing some shopping, something that parents did
Speaker 1: all the time back then. Like it was astounding that
Speaker 1: he was even in the same store at the mall
Speaker 1: as her. He could have been anywhere in the mall,
Speaker 1: like at that time, and he was abducted while she
Speaker 1: was just a few miles over. And then even worse
Speaker 1: than I think eaten and this this really kind of cemented,
Speaker 1: like the Eating Pat's disappearance was in a one off,
Speaker 1: like we're we're dealing with a huge social problem now.
Speaker 1: Is that Adam Walsh's um poor little head was found
Speaker 1: floating in a canal about ten days after he went missing.
Speaker 1: And that that was it. I mean, that was it.
Speaker 1: That didn't just scared parents, that scared everybody. Anyone who
Speaker 1: heard about it was now scared to death of stranger
Speaker 1: danger and abductions and being murdered by some mirando who
Speaker 1: picks you up. Yeah, And uh, if you noticed Josh
Speaker 1: earlier saying we don't know what for sure what happened
Speaker 1: in the Eaton Pats case, his body was never found.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, there was a man named Pedro Hernandez
Speaker 1: who was a store clerk that worked in the same
Speaker 1: neighborhood in New York who confessed to killing him, and
Speaker 1: he was convicted in seventeen. But uh, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty flimsy case and a flimsy confession, and I think
Speaker 1: generally everyone kind of says, you know, it's not case closed.
Speaker 1: We still don't really know for sure what happened, even
Speaker 1: though there was a confession, because there was nobody that
Speaker 1: was ever found. And I don't think the parents ever
Speaker 1: felt closure like they deserved no, no for sure, and
Speaker 1: they I mean they had already previously zeroed in on
Speaker 1: another suspect named Jose Ramos, who was somebody who had
Speaker 1: a relationship with one of Eaton's babysitters and who was
Speaker 1: a peder asked um and I don't know if he
Speaker 1: ever admitted to it or not, but he was never charged,
Speaker 1: but the um pat's has won a civil suit against
Speaker 1: him that saying he was responsible. So to two people
Speaker 1: have been once been convicted and one's been ruled against,
Speaker 1: two different people in the in the murder of him,
Speaker 1: even though they have nothing to do with one another. Right.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to the famous Milk Carton Kids campaign.
Speaker 1: Um not the Amazing Folks Singing Duo? Is that the
Speaker 1: name of a band? Yes, these two guys, they're they're great.
Speaker 1: They they sort of a Simon and Garfunkly Everly Brothers
Speaker 1: type of thing, but there's there. They like, play it straight.
Speaker 1: They're not like they might be giants or something. No,
Speaker 1: I mean they the music is played straight, but they
Speaker 1: there is a lot of humor in their banter. But
Speaker 1: they're not They're not like a joke band. Okay, gotcha, Hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good stuff. I don't know if they might
Speaker 1: be giants, could be considered a joke band. Well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't mean they're a joke band. Right here we
Speaker 1: get with the emails. If you ever heard his reels
Speaker 1: polka stuff, it's great, sure it is. Everybody loves weird out. Hey, man,
Speaker 1: back off. His non parody music is wonderful. Did you
Speaker 1: see the documentary? It was not a good documentary at all,
Speaker 1: but it was still really interesting about the amazing Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I never saw that there. It's it's it's very interesting
Speaker 1: in that it really kind of explores the amazing Jonathan.
Speaker 1: But the documentary itself is not not great, and the
Speaker 1: documentary and even knows it like part of the documentaries
Speaker 1: him struggling with figuring out how to how to do
Speaker 1: this right? You know, so kind of something worse than
Speaker 1: a great documentary subject being made by a C grade commentary.
Speaker 1: I see, I see, there's a chance that this guy
Speaker 1: is listening right now, because he looked to me like
Speaker 1: a stuff you should know listeners. So I'm just gonna say, no,
Speaker 1: give it a shot. Well, I'm not saying this was
Speaker 1: a C great filmmaker, but I've seen plenty of C
Speaker 1: grade documentaries about really great topics, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So the milk carton kids, not the folks thinging duo. Uh.
Speaker 1: This began in Iowa and the miss the disappearance of
Speaker 1: Johnny Gosh in nineteen eighty two and Eugene Wade martin four,
Speaker 1: both twelve year olds, both newspaper boys in Des Moines,
Speaker 1: kind of spurred this campaign. Um, I do love that.
Speaker 1: Ed dear sweet Ed when he he gave credit to
Speaker 1: the Anderson Anderson Ericson Dairy in Iowa for starting this
Speaker 1: in nine eight four, and he said the only source
Speaker 1: I could find was something called quote Uncle John's Bathroom
Speaker 1: Weader Reader in quote, it was like, have you ever
Speaker 1: listened to the podcast before? I just since you going
Speaker 1: like what something called red is going on here? This
Speaker 1: is like I'm in bizarro world or something. Well that's
Speaker 1: good enough for us. Uh, And I think I believe it.
Speaker 1: I think They were probably the first company to put
Speaker 1: kids on the side of a milk carton to raise
Speaker 1: awareness and say, hey, here's a picture of this kid.
Speaker 1: Here's what they look like, how tall they are, when
Speaker 1: their birthday is um, you know some things. They might
Speaker 1: just like little clues how to identify this kid if
Speaker 1: you see them out clue there's like they're like, put
Speaker 1: on your pirate hat because X marks the spot and
Speaker 1: we're gonna go find Johnny Gosh, here are your clues. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean this was this is the best they could
Speaker 1: do pre internet. It's like, what's always sitting on the
Speaker 1: table while you're having your breakfast cereal that you're staring
Speaker 1: at is that milk carton? And I mean great idea.
Speaker 1: All of us have read the milk carton out of
Speaker 1: boredom when you know there's no good cartoons on or
Speaker 1: something like that. You just kind of read this stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it made total sense. And from what I understand, yes,
Speaker 1: Anderson Ericson was the first day to do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it also makes sense that they would be the
Speaker 1: first one because they were in des Moines and Johnny
Speaker 1: Gosh and Eugene martin Um were both abducted from Des
Speaker 1: Moines two years apart, probably by the same person from
Speaker 1: what I read um and they so like this local
Speaker 1: dairy doing this is like part of a get out
Speaker 1: the info campaign makes a lot of sense. I did
Speaker 1: see that a local grocery store chain was actually the
Speaker 1: first to print their images and missing like info on
Speaker 1: their bags, and that Anderson Ericson probably got the idea
Speaker 1: or somebody got the idea and went to Anderson Ericson
Speaker 1: and they said sure. The offshot of this, they were
Speaker 1: the first producers of milk cartons. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people say, well, it was eating Pats who was the
Speaker 1: first kid who was on a milk carton, probably on
Speaker 1: a national level, but on a milk carton. Ever, it
Speaker 1: was two kids. It was Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin,
Speaker 1: and both of them were paper boys, abducted from their
Speaker 1: routes in the early morning. It was just their stories
Speaker 1: are so sad, man, Yeah, super sad. The milk carton
Speaker 1: thing picked up again in Chicago and then California, and then,
Speaker 1: like you said, eventually became a national thing. In the
Speaker 1: National Child Safety Council, which is a nonprofit, they launched
Speaker 1: this nationwide campaign and that's where beaten Pats probably comes
Speaker 1: into play. And then it was on you know a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. It was on grocery bags and pizza boxes,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't around long though, Like I kind of
Speaker 1: thought it might still be a thing even but I
Speaker 1: think it only lasted you know, a handful of years.
Speaker 1: And let in nineties mid nineties, the whole milk carton
Speaker 1: thing had kind of gone away, gone away, with people saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it was successful while it lasted, but it
Speaker 1: just had its run. And then other people, of course,
Speaker 1: now I look back and say, but was it really
Speaker 1: successful in that? Did it lead into you finding some
Speaker 1: of these kids? And I don't necessarily think that is
Speaker 1: the only measure of success, uh if it's an awareness campaign,
Speaker 1: but they definitely can't go back and say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: look at this list of kids that were found because
Speaker 1: of the milk carton campaign. And actually there is I
Speaker 1: saw the number three that there are three named kids
Speaker 1: who were rescued and found and returned based on milk cartons.
Speaker 1: But there's only one actual name I can find, and
Speaker 1: you can find it all over the place. Her name
Speaker 1: is little Bonnie Lowman. I had in the little her
Speaker 1: first name is actually Bonnie, not little, and she has
Speaker 1: one of the most name for a kid, little Bonnie Lowman. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: until you reach in a middle age and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Um. So she has one of the
Speaker 1: most amazing stories you could possibly encounter when it comes
Speaker 1: to kids on milk cartons, don't you think? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean she was kidnapped by her mom and stepdad and
Speaker 1: as the story goes, recognized her own image on a
Speaker 1: milk carton and like kept it, you know, cut it
Speaker 1: out and kept it on our wall. And I guess
Speaker 1: a kid's or a friend's parents saw it and called
Speaker 1: the cops. But is that that's not true though, my friend,
Speaker 1: I would put a significant amount of money on the
Speaker 1: fact that Bonnie Lohman is not a real person, that
Speaker 1: it is the internet legend. Yes, dude, I looked on
Speaker 1: the New York Times website is search for Bonnie Loman
Speaker 1: missing milk carton. I even put quotes around Bonnie Loman.
Speaker 1: Did it on the Washington Post website. I did it
Speaker 1: on the Denver Post website, and Denver is supposedly where
Speaker 1: she was found living, abducted by her mom and stepfather. Nothing,
Speaker 1: Nothing comes up, not even a vague reference. She's an
Speaker 1: internet legend and we figured it out, we think, until
Speaker 1: someone writes us and says, no, no no, no, I knew
Speaker 1: little Bonny Loman, right, And we'd say the Bonnie Loman
Speaker 1: and say, well, I don't know. Actually it was my
Speaker 1: cousin's friends co worker who knew Bonny. But no. Another giveaway, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that this story is repeated almost verbatim around the Internet.
Speaker 1: They don't say where she was abducted from and returned
Speaker 1: to the only the only thing I've seen consistently is
Speaker 1: that the story itself and then that it happened in Colorado,
Speaker 1: And then a lot of the sites that carry this
Speaker 1: story are like Jesus Daley or board game tips dot com,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the most credible sources for like a um
Speaker 1: an actual like child abduction case. So I'm I think
Speaker 1: we may have rooted that one out, all right, So
Speaker 1: what's going on here is panic? Uh, these milk cartons
Speaker 1: come out. It's a good campaign, but all that does
Speaker 1: is sort of reinforced to parents that you know, a
Speaker 1: stranger is lurking outside your home kind of at all times,
Speaker 1: just waiting for your kid to be playing on the
Speaker 1: playground by themselves for just a minute and then they're
Speaker 1: gonna get snatched. And while this panic is going on,
Speaker 1: there are people that were sort of ringing the bell
Speaker 1: for good sense way back in the eighties, even the
Speaker 1: famous pediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock. Uh, he was quoted in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post and five is saying children are bombarded
Speaker 1: by more than photographs. They stand in line at mass
Speaker 1: fingerprinting sessions and shopping malls and watch cartoon characters on TV,
Speaker 1: reminding them to be wary of strange adults. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a little bit more to the quote, but he was
Speaker 1: kind of saying, like we're going overboard a little bit here,
Speaker 1: and we're actually maybe doing harm by raising children in
Speaker 1: this culture of fear. We did you were you fingerprinted
Speaker 1: as a child? I was never fingerprinted, but I certainly
Speaker 1: remember everything else. I mean, I forgot about the Saturday
Speaker 1: Morning cartoons. It was stuff all over those two. Yeah
Speaker 1: McGuff remember the crime Dog to teach you how to
Speaker 1: run away from strangers, And like that's what they would
Speaker 1: teach you, is like you should scream and yell and
Speaker 1: kick and run for your life if a stranger ever
Speaker 1: approached you, Like if they just hit the basic minimum thing.
Speaker 1: We're like, Okay, strangers approaching you, run as fast as
Speaker 1: you can for your little life. Um, And it was like,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely easy to to to buy into the
Speaker 1: idea that that culture of fear had real repercussions on
Speaker 1: us growing up, because I remember I was scared of
Speaker 1: all this and my dad took me to get fingerprinted.
Speaker 1: You were yeah. I was like, why are we doing
Speaker 1: this again? It's like, just in case they find you
Speaker 1: at their head cut off one day, we can identify
Speaker 1: I might have been fingerprinted. Something about that really seems
Speaker 1: familiar to me. Yeah, And I didn't commit a crime
Speaker 1: now now, not a little chuck. Still to this day,
Speaker 1: I'll bet uh no, I've never been arrested. That's good.
Speaker 1: And you know, I realized later that my dad preemptively
Speaker 1: ratted me out to the cops really well, yeah, by
Speaker 1: having me fingerprinted. But that was the level of like,
Speaker 1: my dad took me to a fingerprinting fair for a
Speaker 1: little kid, so that they had your fingerprints in the
Speaker 1: system in case something bad happened to you and you
Speaker 1: turned up, they could identify your body or you even
Speaker 1: if you've just been abducted, but you knew what was
Speaker 1: going on, you knew why you were going there, and
Speaker 1: that that definitely did affect me. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of kids our age, Yeah, Ed has a and
Speaker 1: this is one of those kind of stats that I
Speaker 1: think is a little dumb. But from the early nineties,
Speaker 1: there was a study that found that seventy two percent
Speaker 1: appearance cited abduction is something they worry about. That's just
Speaker 1: a little weird. I mean, I think every parent that
Speaker 1: is deep down worried that it could happen. But it's
Speaker 1: not like I don't know, there's just so many qualifiers there,
Speaker 1: like how how much did they worry about it? They
Speaker 1: sounded like it was one of their chief fears, along
Speaker 1: with like failing their kid, not they're not providing for
Speaker 1: their kids, like like deep down fears, like a big fear.
Speaker 1: That's what it sounded like in the abstract I read.
Speaker 1: I didn't read the whole study, but you know, that's
Speaker 1: how they don't get A prominent fear would be the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for, rather than big fear, because it
Speaker 1: is the biggest fear. But whether or not you think
Speaker 1: it's a reality that you really should worry about a
Speaker 1: lot is a different thing. I don't know. I would
Speaker 1: bet dollars nuts that they there was a prominent fear
Speaker 1: in your definition for sure. All right, Uh, it did
Speaker 1: do some harm, like in actual instances that we can site. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the boy Scouts they still teach danger of danger.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand five, a cub Scout um was
Speaker 1: lost in the woods and actually if they did rescue
Speaker 1: for a few days because people like there were people
Speaker 1: there trying to help him, like, hey, are you lost
Speaker 1: a little boy, and you know, stranger danger would run away.
Speaker 1: And so in that case, like this kid was trying,
Speaker 1: you know, people trying to help him out, and he
Speaker 1: he ran away from him. So that's that's one definite instance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that WAPO article that you mentioned earlier, it was
Speaker 1: just rattling off. This is eight five. This is like
Speaker 1: right in the middle of all this when it was
Speaker 1: kind of rare to question this this mentality, and they
Speaker 1: were rattling off all these instances of kids just like
Speaker 1: losing their minds out of fear. Like they mentioned a
Speaker 1: girl who was got hysterical when it was her time
Speaker 1: to get off the bus because she lived on a
Speaker 1: rural road and she was sure that if she walked
Speaker 1: alone down this rural road, she will be kidnapped. It's
Speaker 1: just a certainty in her mind. And you know, kids
Speaker 1: were like anytime they were parents that said high to
Speaker 1: the little kids, they freaked out, you know, like you
Speaker 1: just couldn't. You couldn't, you couldn't give any attention to
Speaker 1: little kids or else they would be really scared. And
Speaker 1: there's this aspect of the moral panic as far as
Speaker 1: stranger danger goes, where the dangerous group is not Satanists,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not um. It's it's not um witches
Speaker 1: or something like that. It's strangers. And all of us
Speaker 1: are strangers to somebody else. So that means that everybody
Speaker 1: is under suspicion of everyone else at some point in time,
Speaker 1: where a suspicious character to somebody who doesn't know us,
Speaker 1: and possibly a kid, and then that alters how you
Speaker 1: act around kids, and that that has had, over the
Speaker 1: years an impact of how adults deal with kids, and
Speaker 1: it's removed us from that. It takes a village to
Speaker 1: raise a child kind of community where it's like that's
Speaker 1: your kid, I'm not going anywhere near them. I don't
Speaker 1: even want to look at them because I don't want
Speaker 1: somebody to think I'm trying to kidnap them or something.
Speaker 1: And that has had a real impact on how adults
Speaker 1: deal with kids, and that is surely having an impact
Speaker 1: on how children develop in a community in society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't you find a thing where it said that men
Speaker 1: and these are these days men are more reticent to
Speaker 1: like help out a child because of that fear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like sixty seven or seventy said they would not
Speaker 1: help a kid who was who needed help. They would
Speaker 1: like so much smaller percent, but basically most of them said,
Speaker 1: I just keep walking because I'd be so worried that
Speaker 1: that people were wondering why I was approaching a little kid.
Speaker 1: And then a smaller proportion said that they would go
Speaker 1: find a woman to help, or maybe the cops or
Speaker 1: something like that, but they would not step in and
Speaker 1: fulfill their normal social roles an adults helping a kid
Speaker 1: in need, and that that's just that was a UK survey,
Speaker 1: I think, But that's um, you know, that definitely applies
Speaker 1: over here as well too. I didn't know it's the
Speaker 1: UK should told me that this. Did the studies say,
Speaker 1: you know, are men on the way to the pub
Speaker 1: survey and said little humor there trying to light the move.
Speaker 1: I liked it. It worked. It also made me want
Speaker 1: a nice draft beer. Oh boy. I went to this
Speaker 1: great pub in Manchester when we did that show. That
Speaker 1: was just that was one of my great days in England.
Speaker 1: It was so awesome. That place was on a probably
Speaker 1: a one ft slant that floor. It was so old.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I actually found a Topas place in Manchester
Speaker 1: because remember we were there for like a couple of
Speaker 1: days and I ate there probably like three or four
Speaker 1: or five times. It was so good. But I was
Speaker 1: aware that I was eating at a Topas place in Manchester.
Speaker 1: I finally hit a pub in No I did I.
Speaker 1: I hit one in Manchester to kind of buy the venue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're pretty neat, little little places, aren't they. It's a
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, you gotta get back there. Uh. So.
Speaker 1: There's something called the children's independent or called children's independent mobility,
Speaker 1: and it's a measurement of how free your kid is
Speaker 1: to move about your neighborhood and to explore or things
Speaker 1: without supervision, Like sure, walked down to the playground or
Speaker 1: walked down to your friend's house. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And a higher see I am is a really good
Speaker 1: thing that correlates with psychological development, with analytical skills, with
Speaker 1: motor skills. It gives the kid um just sort of
Speaker 1: more um confidence and knowledge about their community. And get this,
Speaker 1: it gives it makes kids more aware of true dangers
Speaker 1: than if you're constantly watching them instead of stranger danger.
Speaker 1: It makes kids more aware of like a real danger
Speaker 1: that might be out there, like they have they have
Speaker 1: done studies and figured this out right. So we talked
Speaker 1: a lot about that in our Free Range Children episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you talked specifically about that that measure,
Speaker 1: but um, I mean, we definitely found that that. Yes,
Speaker 1: your your kid is just more well rounded and developed
Speaker 1: if they're allowed to explore the world on their own terms.
Speaker 1: You know, within reason. Nobody's saying like let your kid
Speaker 1: play with flaming knives or anything like that, but we
Speaker 1: really exactly also known as the swing set um, but
Speaker 1: the the you know, there's a there's a pendulum that
Speaker 1: swings between things like that, and it has swung way
Speaker 1: too far in the other way. If if you guys
Speaker 1: will just allow me to get up on my soapbox
Speaker 1: for a second, please do it. Okay, I just got
Speaker 1: one toe up and then came back. All right, well
Speaker 1: you're off your soapbox. Let's take our final break. We'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the criticism of stranger
Speaker 1: danger and sort of some of the best practices these
Speaker 1: days right after this, you know, stump, No, you know, stump. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we mentioned earlier news stories, uh, as far as
Speaker 1: child abductions covering cute, little white kids, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of always been the case. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: biggest criticisms of media coverage, uh, is it's very much
Speaker 1: disproportionately covers white children in those cases and ignores cases
Speaker 1: of people of color. Um. There's an organization called Black
Speaker 1: and Missing because of this, and they report that thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent of missing kids just a few years ago
Speaker 1: were people of color, which is a much higher percentage
Speaker 1: proportionately than the overall population. But you're not hearing about
Speaker 1: this stuff in the news like you would if it
Speaker 1: was you know, the pageant queen, right exactly. It's just
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just that kind of gets it across
Speaker 1: pretty pretty clearly. Yeah, So what we're not saying is
Speaker 1: that there is no risk to your kid being abducted
Speaker 1: by a stranger. It it obviously happens, because we do
Speaker 1: see it on the news, um and and it is
Speaker 1: every parent's worse nightmare. And I think that's probably why
Speaker 1: it's always been such a thing. It's because it's the
Speaker 1: it's the worst thing you can imagine happening, because not
Speaker 1: only has that happened, and that that is horrific in
Speaker 1: its own right, but that also means that you have
Speaker 1: failed to do your number one job is to protect
Speaker 1: your kid at all costs. Yeah, man, I can't. I
Speaker 1: just it's astounding that people can go on from that,
Speaker 1: they can manage to keep living. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: get it at all, but it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that they do though, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that gives them purpose in life from that point
Speaker 1: on is a lot of parents, especially some of the
Speaker 1: early more prominent national cases like Eating pats as parents,
Speaker 1: the Walshes, Adam Walsh his parents, and Johnny Gash's parents,
Speaker 1: they all threw themselves into like lobbying for social reform,
Speaker 1: and their their lobbying efforts did lead to things like
Speaker 1: the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to be developed
Speaker 1: and um National Missing Kids Day to start to be
Speaker 1: recognized on May which is the anniversary of John of
Speaker 1: Eaton Path's disappearance, and UM, the Walsh's I think set
Speaker 1: up the Adam Walsh Foundation four days after Adam Walsh's funeral,
Speaker 1: like and then John Walsh all is very famous for
Speaker 1: doing that, UM America's most wanted thing, and like has
Speaker 1: has like legitimately dedicated himself to like stopping this, and
Speaker 1: so has UM a lot of other parents. So I
Speaker 1: think that's one way that they've they've put their their
Speaker 1: time and effort and energy into this, imported into doing
Speaker 1: what they can to to make it so that other
Speaker 1: parents don't go through this. Yeah, they're there been quite
Speaker 1: a few of those. Jacob Wetterling Act that created the
Speaker 1: the Sex Offender Registry, and interestingly, his mother eventually on
Speaker 1: a podcast said she she expressed regret about these registries
Speaker 1: that were expanded. UM she felt like overly expanded and
Speaker 1: endlessly punitive basically and saying like you're on this list
Speaker 1: forever and you're never allowed to reintegrate into society. And
Speaker 1: is that fair? Especially when they've expanded those registries to
Speaker 1: include things like if you got caught urinating in public,
Speaker 1: you are registered sex offender, which is really interesting. I've
Speaker 1: I've never been caught, but boy, I've been in public
Speaker 1: plenty of times. I've got a little bladder and sometimes
Speaker 1: I just gotta go. But that happens, and and um,
Speaker 1: apparently again, especially the one where you're having like, um,
Speaker 1: consensual sex as a teenager and like, depending on your state,
Speaker 1: so you're seventeen and the girls sixteen, you can you
Speaker 1: may if you're caught, if the parents prosecute you, um,
Speaker 1: you may be on the sex offender registry for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And apparently that happens just proportionately
Speaker 1: two kids of color. So the whole thing is like, like,
Speaker 1: the sex offender registry is not in and of itself
Speaker 1: a bad thing, Like it's meant to be a tool
Speaker 1: to warn communities, like, hey, there's somebody who has perpetrated
Speaker 1: and more in many cases a crime against a child,
Speaker 1: and you should know that that they live at this apartment.
Speaker 1: But it's not just a cut and dried issue. People
Speaker 1: can be categorized unfairly, get caught up in that dragnet.
Speaker 1: The categories can be far too expanded. And then yeah, like, um,
Speaker 1: Jacob's mom was saying there's no redemption there. In fact,
Speaker 1: like there's only like in most towns because you can't
Speaker 1: live within X number of feet from a bus stop
Speaker 1: or a school or a plate or a park. There's
Speaker 1: like very small pockets where a sex offender can legally live.
Speaker 1: And that means that you've got like these little sex offenders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of sex offenders who are on the sex registry list,
Speaker 1: and they become shunned and outcasts, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them get run out of town or run to go
Speaker 1: live homeless under overpasses and that kind of thing. So, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tinkering that could be done to
Speaker 1: make it more just if. That's kind of where where
Speaker 1: our minds are. But I think when it comes to
Speaker 1: sexual abuse of children, that's justice isn't necessary. Justice for
Speaker 1: the perpetrator isn't isn't where America's mind is typically, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean Jerry Seinfeld is a registered sex offender. On
Speaker 1: his TV show for What what did he do? Pet
Speaker 1: in the barking deck and got caught? I don't remember,
Speaker 1: is there right? Yeah? When they couldn't find their car
Speaker 1: and they're all split up and looking for their car
Speaker 1: and got caught someone else might have to George might
Speaker 1: have pee, but yeah, technically ter sex offender. So like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good example of how it could
Speaker 1: be made better. But the the point of the upshot
Speaker 1: of the whole thing is that there is there is
Speaker 1: a need and a desire to protect kids, and that's
Speaker 1: great and we should be be putting our efforts towards that.
Speaker 1: But we can figure out how to direct it more, yes,
Speaker 1: more smartly, I guess, and in doing so help kids
Speaker 1: more effectively. You know. Yeah. In the UK is a
Speaker 1: good example, they have a campaign um instead of like
Speaker 1: a stranger danger, it's called clever Never Goes, which it
Speaker 1: doesn't jump off the page is self explanatory at first
Speaker 1: as an American, but the point of it is is like,
Speaker 1: not every adult is waiting to kidnap. You go to
Speaker 1: someone with a uniform or a badge, even if that's
Speaker 1: like a store clerk or you know, a nurse. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a cop walk in the beat.
Speaker 1: If you feel like you're in trouble or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can approach responsible adults. And the idea clever never
Speaker 1: goes is in you know, never go anywhere with a
Speaker 1: stranger because that's how they operate, which is, hey, get
Speaker 1: in my car because I have a cool cartoon playing
Speaker 1: at my house, that kind of thing like never ever
Speaker 1: go somewhere with a stranger, clever, never goes. And speaking
Speaker 1: of the UK, I saw something Chuck that I thought
Speaker 1: was a little um surprising. So they had they used
Speaker 1: to have this cartoon p s A for kids called
Speaker 1: Charlie says, and this this cat would keep his little
Speaker 1: human friend out of danger by like going ballistic when
Speaker 1: the kid did something dangerous. And um, there was a
Speaker 1: n p s A about stranger danger, about not going
Speaker 1: with strangers. So this is yeah, almost a full decade
Speaker 1: before the US was even tuned into this stuff, that
Speaker 1: UK were already scaring their kids. Good for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we got to talk about the Amber alert
Speaker 1: because this is sort of the smarter version of the
Speaker 1: milk cart and kid and it actually works. This is
Speaker 1: name for the very said case of Amber Haggerman, who
Speaker 1: was kidnapped and killed. The N and Amber Alerts started
Speaker 1: going out to initially to nearby radio stations and now
Speaker 1: thanks to the A and S the Alert notification system,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get that on your phone you might get
Speaker 1: that on your weather radio. You might get that if
Speaker 1: you're driving down the highway. That's a big one. These
Speaker 1: you know, sort of electronic highway signs, those are huge
Speaker 1: because they can actually say, you know, there is a
Speaker 1: a brown forward tourist with this license plate somewhere on
Speaker 1: this road within the last hour. And I believe they
Speaker 1: have caught close to a thousand or or recovered close
Speaker 1: to a thousand kids thanks to the Amber Alert system.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty effective. And those electronic billboards that they
Speaker 1: have on highways can now flash like their picture too,
Speaker 1: is along with the other stuff. And supposedly from people
Speaker 1: who are in that industry of recovering children who are
Speaker 1: missing or abducted, say that the number one, far and
Speaker 1: away best way to recover kids safely is to get
Speaker 1: their picture out far and wide immediately after they go missing.
Speaker 1: U And that was a big that's now kind of
Speaker 1: a big retroactive criticism of the milk cartons is that,
Speaker 1: you know, um, they're circulating these kids pictures often years
Speaker 1: after the abduction, and they probably don't look anything like
Speaker 1: those pictures anymore, and like the trail has gone cold,
Speaker 1: and um, the idea that that doesn't mean that pictures
Speaker 1: don't work. It's just the timing of the pictures. Is
Speaker 1: is um a paramount? Yeah? I mean, man, nothing is
Speaker 1: more sad than when you read a story of the
Speaker 1: kids that never there's never closure and the parents just
Speaker 1: never know what happened. Never a body, never confession. It's
Speaker 1: just my my kid disappeared thirty seven years ago and
Speaker 1: we don't know anything. It's just man, it's hard to
Speaker 1: even read those stories. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of
Speaker 1: anything much sadder than that. Man. Um. I do have
Speaker 1: one other thing too. I saw also in addition to
Speaker 1: that clever never goes that people are teaching their kids now, Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of focusing more on how like what abuses, like,
Speaker 1: like what sexual abuse is like, so inappropriate touching their
Speaker 1: teaching kids that like they're in charge of their own
Speaker 1: bodies and they don't have to let some Yeah, makes
Speaker 1: total sense because it's more laser focused, um in the
Speaker 1: actual the actual danger that kids can face, which is
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, because apparently we do have an enormous sexual
Speaker 1: abuse problem. The problem is is we've been looking at
Speaker 1: strangers and ignoring the fact that it's almost always a
Speaker 1: family member or somebody that the kid knows. So if
Speaker 1: you can teach the kid what sexual abuses like and
Speaker 1: how to look out for and what to do if
Speaker 1: somebody makes advances on them, then they can trust strangers
Speaker 1: because they can they can trust people in general. They
Speaker 1: can just know that that can come from anywhere and
Speaker 1: if it happens, this is what you do. So I
Speaker 1: can imagine kids learning that today will turn out a
Speaker 1: lot better than a lot, a lot less messed up
Speaker 1: than you and I in our generation. Den we're so broken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the and the body autonomy is not just for uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's obviously great for that, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of for everything. It's about with other kids, like you know,
Speaker 1: they don't want to be pushed that way or played
Speaker 1: with that way. It's like it's their body. You gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta ask them for permission to to do whatever
Speaker 1: you want to their body. And kids, you know, my daughter,
Speaker 1: from the time she was in preschool, they were teaching
Speaker 1: them that. And she'll tell me when she doesn't want
Speaker 1: me doing something, she'll say, no, Daddy, my body, and
Speaker 1: I'll say, you got it. That's great. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: something I saw was like, you really have to back
Speaker 1: them up. So like as comes over and wants to
Speaker 1: plan a big wet kiss on their right and they
Speaker 1: don't want it. Yeah, you have to listen to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or else what is it worth? You know what you
Speaker 1: taught him? So so way to go parents of today.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys are figuring it out. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we could lead by example, right Chuck
Speaker 1: our generation. That's right. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about stranger danger, there's a lot of it on the internet.
Speaker 1: Just be careful to verify what you're reading and where
Speaker 1: it's coming from. Uh. And since I said that, of
Speaker 1: course the s Y s K one of our mottoes.
Speaker 1: That means it's time for listener mail anything. All this
Speaker 1: love from an Army vet. Hey, guys, want to thank
Speaker 1: you both for being such a valuable new addition to
Speaker 1: my routine. I'm currently going through particularly nasty divorce and
Speaker 1: have lost my career in the process. Have been a
Speaker 1: paratrooper and a medic in the Army for about six years,
Speaker 1: but now I must find a new path while bearing
Speaker 1: this incredible loss. Because of this, I've had to travel
Speaker 1: back home to live while I get back on my
Speaker 1: own two feet. I used to listen to your podcast
Speaker 1: in the Army during field ops, and began listening during
Speaker 1: the cross country drive from Colorado back to the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Now that I'm home, I still find myself listening to
Speaker 1: at least one show a day. Sometimes I find myself
Speaker 1: adopting a pessimistic view of humanity, and it's been very
Speaker 1: therapeutic to know that such kind hearted people still exist
Speaker 1: in the world. Your podcast has not only grounded me
Speaker 1: and ignited my fire for curiosity again, but it's also
Speaker 1: refreshing to hear from two people understand the unending beauty
Speaker 1: of the world. Hummingbirds, anyone. I just want to say
Speaker 1: thank you for your for the enormous presence you have
Speaker 1: been keeping in my life, making it fun and beautiful.
Speaker 1: Never underestimate to buy what you do. Uh ps. Is
Speaker 1: there ever been a consensus on how to measure standing
Speaker 1: water in your lawn? Nope? Okay, and chuck b s
Speaker 1: p p S. I also love tiny things. We used
Speaker 1: to get tiny, little one inch Tabasco bottles in our
Speaker 1: m ris in the Army, and everybody complays, but there's
Speaker 1: something about and they still pack a punch, just a
Speaker 1: little bit of it. Sure, I'm gonna keep this anonymous
Speaker 1: because I didn't hear back from the persons. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: thank you, Mr Anonymous, Army back. That was an all
Speaker 1: time great email. Thank you Anonymous. That was really really moving.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we can be doing something to help you
Speaker 1: keep going during this time and keep your chin up.
Speaker 1: Everything gets better, right, Chuck, that's right. Just stay away
Speaker 1: from the strangers, all right, Claire never goes. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with me and Chuck uh
Speaker 1: and Jerry, your Frank the chair anybody guest producer Dave Real,
Speaker 1: producer Dave God who knows you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with us by saying it's an email at stuff podcast
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H