Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey, Brainstuff, Loaur
Speaker 1: and vogelbaumb Here. Losing things is part of being human.
Speaker 1: Your wallet can fall on the floor of a cab.
Speaker 1: Your phone could slip from your pocket as you're walking.
Speaker 1: You might set your umbrella down on a bench and
Speaker 1: forget to pick it back up. If you're very lucky,
Speaker 1: you might be able to track down your misplaced possession.
Speaker 1: If you're in Paris, retrieving it might just be an adventure.
Speaker 1: On the city's Rue des Mourrian, you'll find a massive
Speaker 1: storage facility with a fascinating collection everything that's been lost
Speaker 1: in Paris. The Bureau of Found Objects is a centralized
Speaker 1: lost and found Things misplaced at airports and museums, on
Speaker 1: trains and buses, or simply dropped in the street all
Speaker 1: make their way here to be categorized and stored, waiting
Speaker 1: for their owners to arrive. The office receives more than
Speaker 1: five hundred items every day. The Bureau of Found Objects
Speaker 1: is administered by the Police Prefecture, a part of the
Speaker 1: French Ministry of the Interior. It's a relatively modern operation now,
Speaker 1: but the French have been in the business of reuniting
Speaker 1: people with their stuff. For centuries during the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and under the feudal system that ruled the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: France until the Revolution, a lost objects were to be
Speaker 1: brought to the local lord, who would have the local
Speaker 1: church publicly announced the find three sundays in a row.
Speaker 1: After that, if no one stepped forward to claim the object,
Speaker 1: the lord would keep it. In eighteen oh four, the
Speaker 1: lost and found system was centralized and the police took
Speaker 1: over a found objects were collected in police Commissioner's offices
Speaker 1: and then brought to the prefect of Paris. As Still,
Speaker 1: the service wasn't very well known or widely used until
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, when it moved into a new building near
Speaker 1: the Palace of Justice. It took off, and according to
Speaker 1: the Prefecture, it received nearly ten thousand objects every year.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, the office moved to its current location,
Speaker 1: a huge basement space at thirty six Rue des Marian.
Speaker 1: It's an ornately wood paneled office with heavy wooden furniture
Speaker 1: in a functional but beautiful early twentieth century brick building
Speaker 1: the visitors say feels like a step back in time.
Speaker 1: The guarded back room houses tall stacks of seemingly endless,
Speaker 1: gray metal shelves filled with items tagged, bagged, or rubber
Speaker 1: banded together with an inventory slip back. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, the bureau celebrated its two hundredth birthday. The
Speaker 1: prefecture stops short of calling it the first Lost and
Speaker 1: Found office of its kind, though The New York Times
Speaker 1: called it that in two thousand and five. But certainly
Speaker 1: they say it is one of the oldest in the world.
Speaker 1: But the goal of the office isn't simply to house Paris'
Speaker 1: misplaced items. Their work is much more proactive. The service
Speaker 1: allows people to register lost items and actively attempts to
Speaker 1: identify owners and return their property safe and sound, partially
Speaker 1: through a now automated service where people can register found
Speaker 1: items as well. In the best case scenario, an object
Speaker 1: might be reunited with its owner the very next day
Speaker 1: after arriving at the bureau. The office now receives over
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand items every year, and its
Speaker 1: employees spend a great deal of time and effort reuniting
Speaker 1: people in their things. Items with a return address of
Speaker 1: like wallets containing IDs and driver's licenses are easy enough
Speaker 1: to mail out a some detective work is done for
Speaker 1: precious things, like a golden flute that had a conservatory's
Speaker 1: stamp inside the case. Other lost items are reclaimed by
Speaker 1: owners who come looking, speak to someone at a window,
Speaker 1: fill out a slip describing the thing they've lost, and
Speaker 1: pay eleven euro in custody fees. Although the physical pickup
Speaker 1: process was curtailed during the pandemic, but the office is
Speaker 1: known as a place of joy and wonder. People sometimes
Speaker 1: are so emotional to be reunited with an object that
Speaker 1: they accidentally leave something else there in the process. About
Speaker 1: one in four items that find their way there are
Speaker 1: reunited with their owner. The others are kept for either
Speaker 1: four months or a year, depending on their perceived value. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: if an item's been turned in by an individual, no
Speaker 1: one has come looking for it, and the office has
Speaker 1: been unable to find its original owner, the classic principle
Speaker 1: of finders keepers applies, although not if the object is
Speaker 1: a computer, smartphone, or something else that would contain the
Speaker 1: owner's personal data like a notebook or by extension, a key.
Speaker 1: Unclaimed items like that are eventually destroyed. The bureau sends
Speaker 1: keys to be melted down for scrap and works with
Speaker 1: recycling services for electronic waste, to avoid those items going
Speaker 1: in with regular trash, and if possible, to wipe the
Speaker 1: data and donate the equipment in Other things after a
Speaker 1: certain period of time are auctioned off to help fund
Speaker 1: this and other government programs. New jewelry, cameras and other
Speaker 1: small valuables are the most often auctioned, but they do
Speaker 1: keep a few things to brighten up the stacks. One
Speaker 1: floored ceiling shelf is bursting with unclaimed stuffed animals, and
Speaker 1: there's a small collection of unclaimed things the particularly interesting,
Speaker 1: historically significant, or just plain weird, displayed in a corner
Speaker 1: of the storage area that functions as a small museum
Speaker 1: of sorts, though it's not open to the public. The
Speaker 1: collection includes multiple human skulls, an old prosthetic leg a
Speaker 1: five foot replica of a Parisian street lamp, a Napoleonic
Speaker 1: era saber, legion of honor medals, a helmet from World
Speaker 1: War One, a tripod and telescope from Victorian England, shards
Speaker 1: from the World Trade Center, found along with the New
Speaker 1: York City Transit employees orange safety vest after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: A wedding dress rumored to have been left in the
Speaker 1: cab after a lover's quarrel, a crumbling taxidermid lobster, and
Speaker 1: a boxed set of two hundred blue monarch butterflies. After
Speaker 1: setting up a database online and upgrading their shipping capabilities,
Speaker 1: the office can now accept online claims and mail out
Speaker 1: found objects. Every day, objects lost in Paris are boxed
Speaker 1: up and sent off back to their homes around the world.
Speaker 1: According to the prefecture, the joy of finding your lost
Speaker 1: object is universal. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: From human Skulls to Handguns. The Paris Lost and Found
Speaker 1: has Seen it All on Houstuffworks dot com, written by
Speaker 1: Kate Morgan. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Housetuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klain.
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