Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast about cool people who did cool things. Uh,
Speaker 2: not to be mistaken with our evil nemesis podcast Cool
Speaker 2: People Who Did Cool Things, which is about cool people
Speaker 2: who did cool stuff. That all makes sense and is
Speaker 2: totally a bit that I'm totally going to keep. I'm
Speaker 2: Mardur Kiljoy and I'm the host and my guest is Kavejda. Hi,
Speaker 2: I'm back, I'm back. I know, thank you for having
Speaker 2: me back. I missed you in these two days that
Speaker 2: separate the recordings. I can't believe you actually made me wait.
Speaker 2: I know in that room a lot so hard, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Really uncomfortable, but listen, I'm here to I'm just so
Speaker 3: excited to be here. I'm not going to complain.
Speaker 2: This is right. Yeah, I told him that he's allowed
Speaker 2: to leave the room once we finished recording. I hope
Speaker 2: it never ends. Yeah, that's right. And also here is Sophie.
Speaker 2: Sophie not a doctor, but you are the audience's doctor.
Speaker 2: Are we going to take turns each episode to be
Speaker 2: the doctor? Medical advice would you like to provide free
Speaker 2: of charge to our listeners.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not leaving the house that day. You
Speaker 1: should still wear sunscreen.
Speaker 2: That's like skincare advice that's not bad you just in
Speaker 2: case you mean like in case you leave, or in
Speaker 2: case like the uview lights like penetrate your house.
Speaker 1: I mean all of the above, preferably a mineral sunscreen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say Sophie is someone who taking skincare
Speaker 2: advice from makes sense. It does you have I don't
Speaker 2: know how to say this without sounding like a serial killer.
Speaker 2: That's what I was just thinking.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: I will say it is something that I take care of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like really, it's really really I have like a whole
Speaker 1: cabinet that's just skincare.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I figured out how to control it, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is good for me.
Speaker 2: It's strong work, strong work. It took me a long
Speaker 2: time to actually get into skincare, and I'm a little
Speaker 2: bit sad that I waited so long, but it's it's
Speaker 2: been working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where sunscreen. This podcast was edited by Oh right, Ian, Nope,
Speaker 1: what Oh we already did this, Daniel, Daniel.
Speaker 2: Is it still so new?
Speaker 1: We're totally keeping and we're totally keeping that in Hi
Speaker 1: Ian and Danel.
Speaker 2: Hian and Danel I ever wont to say hi at
Speaker 2: least a Daniel, because Daniel's Danel. I love you, And
Speaker 2: then everyone listening at home you have to stop saying Hi, Ian,
Speaker 2: and you have to start saying Hi, Danel, otherwise Daniel
Speaker 2: will know he does. It's wild.
Speaker 1: Also if you did, if you didn't listen to our
Speaker 1: Q and eight, they just switched around shows, they're both
Speaker 1: they're both still they're both still our best boys, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're both doing fine. Our theme music was
Speaker 2: still written for us by unwoman. And this is part
Speaker 2: two in a two parter about some really I feel
Speaker 2: like this is like such a distilled, cool people who
Speaker 2: did cool stuff episode where it's just it's just some
Speaker 2: people who did really cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you almost feel bad about the fact that's
Speaker 3: so good, like that they're so cool?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like I'm like, there's got to be
Speaker 2: something terrible under the you know, I mean, like everyone has.
Speaker 2: But no, I'm mostly just excited. I'm it's such a
Speaker 2: why I'll just tell you this story and then you
Speaker 2: can also be excited about it. And if for anyone
Speaker 2: who's listening, you should go back and listen to part
Speaker 2: one because otherwise you have no context, and what will
Speaker 2: you do without context? It'll be like you're in school
Speaker 2: all again, but bad. Don't be weird that the first episode.
Speaker 2: Then come back. Don't don't be that person. Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh nineteen sixties, emergency medical services were not so great.
Speaker 2: It was mostly cops in the city proper. And then
Speaker 2: it'll be like a few homes in different areas because
Speaker 2: they have the hearses, and they would be firefighters in
Speaker 2: other areas. But like, mostly cops who are not famously
Speaker 2: good at sanctity of life, right, even the people that
Speaker 2: they like kind of should ostensibly care about, Like the
Speaker 2: rich white guy we're about to talk about, who they
Speaker 2: totally fucking murdered through medical neglect. I wasn't well, I
Speaker 2: just I'll just tell you what happened. There was this
Speaker 2: big deal Democrat guy in Pittsburgh. His name is David Lawrence,
Speaker 2: and he had previously been both the mayor of Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: and the governor of Pennsylvania one point or another. Most
Speaker 2: history remembers David Lawrence very kindly. In nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: he was ranked third in the top ten mayors in
Speaker 2: American history. He was a working class Irish Catholic guy
Speaker 2: who fought in World War One. He lived in Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: during the peak of the anti Catholic era of the Klan.
Speaker 2: So I should like him, but I don't. He was
Speaker 2: the guy who engineered the renaissance, that urban renewal, that
Speaker 2: just like fucked over all the black people who lived
Speaker 2: in the ho So whatever. Anyway to late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: he's not in charge of anything anymore. He's just influential.
Speaker 2: And he is going to go and give this great,
Speaker 2: big speech at a Democrat guy politic thing about why
Speaker 2: Democrats rule and Republicans drool. But instead he decided to
Speaker 2: have a heart attack on stage. Funny choice. I know
Speaker 2: it was a bold choice. It didn't work out for
Speaker 2: the candidate he was trying to endorse. Actually the guy loses,
Speaker 2: But I don't think we can put that on David Lawrence.
Speaker 2: A nurse from the audience ran to the stage and
Speaker 2: started giving him CPR the you stand in character cove
Speaker 2: as you discussed that you like when well, you don't
Speaker 2: like people have heart attacks, but you get to the war. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't want people to be sick. I just want
Speaker 2: to be of use. Yeah, yeah, And so a nurse
Speaker 2: runs up and starts giving CPR, and then the ambulance
Speaker 2: arrives and at the time ambulance and in this case
Speaker 2: met cops. So the cops arrived shoved the nurse out
Speaker 2: of the way, and she's like, uh, I need to
Speaker 2: keep doing emergency breathing and they're like nah, and then
Speaker 2: they're like running him off to the cop car. They're
Speaker 2: using arrest vans what I called paddy wagons, And then
Speaker 2: someone got really mad at me and they're like shoving
Speaker 2: the nurse out of the way. She's like following, trying
Speaker 2: to give emergency breathing because like he's not breathing, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're like showing her off and shit, and they
Speaker 2: throw her in the back. They throw him in the
Speaker 2: back of the cop car and they drive off and
Speaker 2: and no one rides in the back with him whenever
Speaker 2: they do this, so they just like careen through the
Speaker 2: streets with this Oh my god, this person who's unconscious
Speaker 2: and not breathing. Yeah, just flopping around loose in the back.
Speaker 2: So it's not good for him, and.
Speaker 3: That's not great patient care, I can tell you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that was actually the norm. That was actually
Speaker 2: the norm that no one rode in the when the
Speaker 2: cops took you, No one rode in the back with you.
Speaker 2: How terrifying that those are your two options. You either
Speaker 2: have the cops throwing you into.
Speaker 3: The back of one of those arrest vans, or you
Speaker 3: got picked up in a hearse I know where.
Speaker 2: There's like literally still flowers in there. Yeah, like the worst. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I I at that point, I might be like,
Speaker 2: leave me to die on my kitchen floor. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: like if you're just going to die anyway. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: so this guy, it turns out, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you knew this big medical revelation, your brain actually needs oxygen,
Speaker 2: big if true. Yeah, his brain didn't get any because
Speaker 2: there was no one to be an emergency breathing because.
Speaker 3: The one person that was trying to they wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, happened to be a woman, happened to not
Speaker 2: be a cop, like, had all kinds of things going
Speaker 2: against her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when the cops taken to hospital, it's literally Peter
Speaker 2: Saffer at the hospital door there to receive him because
Speaker 2: they get they get a call and they're like, oh fuck,
Speaker 2: this is a big important thing. And the doctors managed
Speaker 2: to restart his heart, but there's no brain activity because
Speaker 2: he had gone too long without oxygen for seventeen days.
Speaker 2: He was medically there's two words here. One of them
Speaker 2: was alive and one of them was dead. He was
Speaker 2: like medically alive but biologically dead or the other way
Speaker 2: around or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like he wasn't having any brain activity.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And eventually his family removed him from life
Speaker 2: support and he died more completely. And this was a
Speaker 2: big deal. And Peter Saffer had been looking for ways
Speaker 2: to improve emergency medical services, but there hadn't been the
Speaker 2: political will for it. Also, even though he's like the
Speaker 2: father of CPR, everywhere he goes people kind of don't
Speaker 2: like him, and for a long time, eventually has enough
Speaker 2: cloud that he gets away with stuff. But like in
Speaker 2: Baltimore and he first shows up, people are like, you're
Speaker 2: just that weird guy with an accent, you know, like
Speaker 2: and you want to do things not the right way.
Speaker 2: We don't really like you very much.
Speaker 3: That seems like a common story in medicine.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. So when mister
Speaker 2: Democrat dies, they literally called David Lawrence mister Democrat. That's
Speaker 2: how important he was to the political machine in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: He dies, and suddenly there's political will to improve emergency
Speaker 2: medical care because it gets out no one's blaming the cops,
Speaker 2: but it gets out that had actual proper medical care
Speaker 2: been provided, he would have survived most likely.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: So people are like, all right, we can have ambulances
Speaker 2: that aren't shitty. And Saffer got together with a nonprofit,
Speaker 2: the Folk Medical Fund, which got together with Freedom House,
Speaker 2: the people who were driving around and you know, selling
Speaker 2: groceries and giving job training and stuff, right, And the
Speaker 2: plan wasn't just put doctors on ambulances. It was to
Speaker 2: put paramedics on ambulances, which is this entirely new word.
Speaker 2: I don't think they invented it for this context, but
Speaker 2: it's like a new word that've been floating around as
Speaker 2: a concept. And he wanted to prove that you could
Speaker 2: train regular folks into the job, not quickly and easily,
Speaker 2: but reliably. Freedom House was like, we will do it
Speaker 2: on one condition, and the ordinary people who are going
Speaker 2: to get trained to serve the black community are going
Speaker 2: to be black people from the black community. And Peter
Speaker 2: Saffer was like, that is literally not a problem. I
Speaker 2: fucking survived Nazi occupation. There's no part of me that's
Speaker 2: excited about racism. That's fine. Yeah, later a bunch of
Speaker 2: people were really into the racism thing, fucked the whole
Speaker 2: thing up. But that's a while later. Yeah, that checks out.
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry. What was Freedom House at this point?
Speaker 2: What were they? Remind me? Like, what were they doing?
Speaker 2: Or so they were a job training center for black
Speaker 2: people looking to learn how to start their own businesses,
Speaker 2: like doing like landscaping and stuff. And they were also
Speaker 2: doing the grocery not delivery. It wasn't like a mutual
Speaker 2: aid project. It was a break the food desert thing
Speaker 2: where they'd drive in and drove the vans, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: And so they were basically like a method of empowerment
Speaker 2: to the neighborhood that ended up being like the most
Speaker 2: appropriate rough infrastructure to build out, you know. And so
Speaker 2: all the first paramedics in the first class were men
Speaker 2: because of sexism, and all the phone operators were and
Speaker 2: this will shock you to hear women whoa yeah, thank
Speaker 2: you history. At least later one of the phone operators
Speaker 2: ends up a paramedic, which is cool. And so when
Speaker 2: they decide to get all these people together to do
Speaker 2: this thing, the nonprofit world, the you know, Freedom House,
Speaker 2: and Saffer. Some cops come to the first meetings. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: we're the we're the ambulance drivers. We should be part
Speaker 2: of it, you know. And then the cops were like, wait,
Speaker 2: hold on, we get paid to do ambulance ride of
Speaker 2: death routine. We don't want black people fucking it up.
Speaker 2: So they were out and they left the coalition immediately,
Speaker 2: which is for the best.
Speaker 3: I don't give a shit, but like, they would have
Speaker 3: made I mean, they would have at least made money, right,
Speaker 3: they may have made a little bit LEAs because someone
Speaker 3: else is doing it, But weren't they still going to
Speaker 3: be couldn't they still be involved if they want it
Speaker 3: to and still be able to make money off it?
Speaker 2: Probably they probably could have figured out a way to
Speaker 2: do that. Yeah. Saffer was like, I can teach a
Speaker 2: class of forty four students, and they were like, okay,
Speaker 2: we need forty four people willing to take three hundred
Speaker 2: hours of job training for a job that has never
Speaker 2: existed in history. That was hard to find people who
Speaker 2: were willing to do that. So the first class of
Speaker 2: forty four students was a lot of them were literally
Speaker 2: kind of off the streets, like they'd go around and
Speaker 2: basically be practically rounded up and dragged off to go learn. Wow.
Speaker 2: They were aged eighteen to sixty. They were high school dropouts,
Speaker 2: they were Vietnam vets on drugs, they were a tenant workers.
Speaker 2: They were felons with records that kept them out of
Speaker 2: most work. They were people who were having a hard
Speaker 2: go of it themselves. One of the recruiters who ended
Speaker 2: up also being one of the paramedics who worked at
Speaker 2: Freedom House, he actually ran an ambulance service, of private
Speaker 2: ambulance service prior to that, just because the neighborhood needed it.
Speaker 2: But it was the old school of style of ambulance service,
Speaker 2: like call us drive you to the hospital, you know,
Speaker 2: and they start a three hundred at this point. Cops
Speaker 2: have like ten hours of medical training if they're on
Speaker 2: the ambulance duty, which is a lot, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean that's probably roughly what you had to do. It
Speaker 2: was about ten hours or something like that. Yeah, total, Yeah,
Speaker 2: or years? Was it years or hours?
Speaker 3: Like decades it feels, but yeah, yeah, it's probably a
Speaker 3: little bit more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so more than ten hours. And the paramedics. Of course,
Speaker 2: we're not training to be become doctors, but they're training
Speaker 2: to become a new thing. It is between EMT emergency
Speaker 2: medical technician and doctor to be able to provide the
Speaker 2: kinds of life saving support that are necessary on the
Speaker 2: street rather than immediately taking people to hospitals. It was
Speaker 2: a grueling schedule for everyone, the teachers and the students alike, days, nights,
Speaker 2: and weekends. They learned far more than any civilian ambulance
Speaker 2: team and probably history. Yeah, everyone without a high school
Speaker 2: degree was like coach through gd programs on the side
Speaker 2: during all of this. Well so cool man, Yeah, they're like,
Speaker 2: it is so cool what they did, and it it
Speaker 2: really proves the point about giving people a chance to
Speaker 2: do good things and save lives and you know, and
Speaker 2: people are taking advantage of it. It's just so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: only twenty four or the forty four of them made
Speaker 2: it through the classroom portion of the training, just because
Speaker 2: it was an incredibly grueling classroom thing, you know. And
Speaker 2: then they after that they did rotations. They did rotations
Speaker 2: at morgues and helped with dissections. They showed up in
Speaker 2: operating rooms, they showed up in emergency rooms they would
Speaker 2: like they had problems where they wanted to show up
Speaker 2: and like help deliver babies. They faced racism everywhere they went.
Speaker 2: Doctors would assume they were orderlies and like hand them
Speaker 2: ups as soon as they walked into the room, and
Speaker 2: a lot of places they were just literally shut out
Speaker 2: of even though they were with one of the most
Speaker 2: important doctors in the city.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I mean, you know, if you talked
Speaker 3: to like black doc is now, you'll still hear. Everyone
Speaker 3: has like a story where they walk in and they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: you can take my tray, I'm done with it, and
Speaker 3: they're like, no, God, I'm not here for the tray.
Speaker 2: I wish that surprised me in any way. And actually
Speaker 2: some of them started off as orderly. There's one, Oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't write down his name, unfortunately. There was one
Speaker 2: guy who later he sticks with us for decades and
Speaker 2: becomes a paramedic and stuff like that. He actually started
Speaker 2: off as an orderly and he saw these first paramedics
Speaker 2: come in. He saw black men come in and take
Speaker 2: charge of a situation and like be treated with respect,
Speaker 2: and he was like, I don't even know what that
Speaker 2: job is, but that's gonna be my job now, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, And so they finished, they finished their
Speaker 2: three hundred hour training and they were they went down
Speaker 2: to Baltimore to do ambulance rides to do to like
Speaker 2: start doing it because Saffar had more connections with fire
Speaker 2: departments in Baltimore than he did with police in Pittsburgh. Right,
Speaker 2: But before they could go these first ambulance rides, and
Speaker 2: so the first paramedics in history weren't in Baltimore because
Speaker 2: some asshole went and killed Martin Luther King Junior, and Pittsburgh,
Speaker 2: among other places, revolted, and so the first time a
Speaker 2: paramedic team in history did medical work was in black
Speaker 2: neighborhoods during the riots after Martin Luther King Junior's assassination.
Speaker 2: And they didn't have their ambulance as yet. So they
Speaker 2: were in borrowed cop vans because the city was on
Speaker 2: we'll talk about the relationship with the city. It wasn't great,
Speaker 2: but it did exist. You know, they used borrowed cop
Speaker 2: vans and so they had to keep the inside lights
Speaker 2: on so that people could see that they were black
Speaker 2: paramedics and not cops. And I don't know, I think
Speaker 2: that rules that that is the birth of the paramedic profession.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is so cool, so cool. It's crazy that
Speaker 3: we don't mean it's someone that sounds so ripe for
Speaker 3: like a movie. I'm surprised and no one made a
Speaker 3: movie of this yet.
Speaker 2: I know there's a short documentary, it's not even a
Speaker 2: feature length documentary. But yeah, no, I would watch the
Speaker 2: shit out of the movie version of this. It even has,
Speaker 2: it has all of the notes we're going to get
Speaker 2: to it. There's even a token white paramedic who is
Speaker 2: literally there as a token white paramedic. So you still yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know what else is good and entertaining and
Speaker 2: created within the confines of a capitalist system because the movie.
Speaker 3: I can guess, I know, I can guess. It's a
Speaker 3: it's ads.
Speaker 2: It is, it is ads. Yeah, pretty smart. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: pretty good at this. This isn't your first rodeo. Here
Speaker 2: they are and we're back. So Freedom House, which is
Speaker 2: still the name it is operating under, is up and running.
Speaker 2: And they had an ambulance service, and it was by
Speaker 2: July nineteen sixty eight. Whenever someone called emergency services, if
Speaker 2: it was a medical call for the Hill Oakland under Downtown,
Speaker 2: three different neighborhoods not Oakland in the Bay but confuses me.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, the call was routed to Freedom House
Speaker 2: and they'd send out an ambulance with actual paramedics. In
Speaker 2: their first year, they responded to six thousand calls and
Speaker 2: saved at least two hundred lives directly. Wow, it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it strong. Yeah, there's like thirty five of well, it
Speaker 2: starts off with twenty four. Soon enough there's thirty five
Speaker 2: of them that new classes are immediately cycling in, you know.
Speaker 2: But it's like not a huge operation. The financing for
Speaker 2: the whole thing was really scant. They managed loans from
Speaker 2: a bunch of foundations and government shit, and soon they
Speaker 2: had a second class in paramedics school. By nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine they had actual ambulances that were purpose built that
Speaker 2: they like designed the first ambulances that look like today's ambulances,
Speaker 2: have a dedicated space in back and a place for
Speaker 2: a medic to sit at the head of the patient.
Speaker 2: And to quote Kevin Hazzard, who wrote that book American Sirens,
Speaker 2: quote Ton Chevy G twenty van the kind of thing
Speaker 2: the ice cream man might drive. The top was painted
Speaker 2: white and bristled, with light sirens and a long whip antenna.
Speaker 2: The sides were orange with a large blue star plastered
Speaker 2: on its sliding door. The words Freedom House jumped out
Speaker 2: in large block letters, and they took a lot of
Speaker 2: pride in their uniforms. They had like really sharp uniforms.
Speaker 2: They'd like walk around with pride through the neighborhood and
Speaker 2: people people joined just to become part of something like that. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: I could see that. It's really inspiring. Yeah, I know
Speaker 2: it's it would be such an easy, feel good movie.
Speaker 3: They really would. I mean I could already, we can
Speaker 3: start casting. Yeah, but like all you have all the bits,
Speaker 3: they have all the right bits.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think I think part of the problem is Hollywood
Speaker 3: had this brief run where it was like they did
Speaker 3: some really interesting kind of ideas like the first like
Speaker 3: all black like airplane squad, and then like the first
Speaker 3: basketball team, and then the first like sw I mean thing,
Speaker 3: And at some point Hollywood was like, Okay, we got
Speaker 3: to move on from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but I'm like this is a good one.
Speaker 2: I said, like an important one. Why why not do
Speaker 2: this one? If you're gonna do some.
Speaker 1: War I know?
Speaker 2: And it's like it's not even the first black paramedics.
Speaker 2: It's the first paramedics. Yeah, right, like you could do
Speaker 2: a movie about the first white paramedics. They come later, right,
Speaker 2: you know, sure they did. I'm sure that's been done. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I'm sure. They charged twenty five dollars for their services,
Speaker 2: which is about two hundred dollars in today's money, which
Speaker 2: is a lot of money. But given the costs of everything,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, the average ambulance ride in
Speaker 2: the US is currently one thousand dollars. Yeah, so five
Speaker 2: times as much as what they were charging. Ye, And
Speaker 2: the twenty five dollars wasn't enough to keep the lights on.
Speaker 2: They needed funding from the city and shit, which makes sense,
Speaker 2: And they got some funding, and that's what taxes should
Speaker 2: use for instead of like genocide overseas. That's my controversial take, hippie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and also primary they're serving the hill and so a
Speaker 2: lot of people just aren't paying their bill, which is
Speaker 2: completely fair. They don't have enough money to they shouldn't
Speaker 2: have to. But in order to keep funding from the
Speaker 2: city and in order to get to like qualify for
Speaker 2: like specific loan thing that happened at one point, they
Speaker 2: needed to hire a white person. They needed one diversity higher. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so they hired one white guy who freaked out
Speaker 2: about being the only white guy and he left, didn't
Speaker 2: even come to his second shift. Oh come on, guy,
Speaker 2: I know. Then they found this like working class kid
Speaker 2: who had been the token white guy in his unit
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, and he was like, I'm happy to reprise
Speaker 2: the role. I don't give a shit. Yeah, And he
Speaker 2: stuck it out to the very end, right on right.
Speaker 2: So he would be the unfortunately main character in the
Speaker 2: Hollywood version of this, But he probably didn't want to
Speaker 2: be the main characteruse he was a decent fucker anyway.
Speaker 3: Timothy shallow May's got that one on lock here.
Speaker 2: I am essentially blind to name of actors and don't.
Speaker 1: Do not know, definitely has no idea who that is?
Speaker 2: No, I know like three and I use them a lot,
Speaker 2: so I seem like I'm hip er and no things.
Speaker 1: But why is that one of the three?
Speaker 2: What's he in? He's in Dune and I like Dune.
Speaker 2: Is he like the main guy in Dune? Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: more ideep. Wait the guy who is also in Star Wars.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, he's the guy that's
Speaker 1: in the new uh unnecessary Walker movie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, that would be Yeah, you're thinking Oscar
Speaker 2: Isaac's who was in the new Star Wars movies and
Speaker 2: in Dune he played Duke a Triades. Yeah, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: take your word for it. Yeah, it's been a while
Speaker 2: since I've seen Dune. Even though the litany against fear
Speaker 2: is like literally a mantra use on a regular basis,
Speaker 2: that's a great line. Yeah, okay, So they got the
Speaker 2: white guy and they're like it's cool because then they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's good, and they don't like move to suddenly being
Speaker 2: you know, they're like, well, this is for a black community,
Speaker 2: so we're going to stick the way we have it.
Speaker 2: You know. By nineteen seventy two, there's thirty five paramedics
Speaker 2: fielding seven thousand calls a year, and the idea starts spreading,
Speaker 2: like all across the country. National standards associations and shit
Speaker 2: start coming together with totally memorable names like the National
Speaker 2: Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. The Freedom House folks start
Speaker 2: inventing like new stretchers and shit that can go around corners.
Speaker 2: And I didn't see any diagrams, so I don't really
Speaker 2: understand them. Paramedics from Freedom House went all over the
Speaker 2: country into Germany to teach their methods because it's not
Speaker 2: just medical. I mean it is medical methods, but it's
Speaker 2: also like how do you run paramedics?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they are the world's experts. And like Saffer
Speaker 2: absolutely did a ton, he came up with the initial thing,
Speaker 2: but these are the people who actually did it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: implemented it, and we're doing it and actually learned how
Speaker 2: to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And they were calling it paramedics at the time. Yes,
Speaker 3: that term they're using now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow. And because Freedom House and Peter Saffer invented
Speaker 2: half the cool shit ever, Saffer and the paramedics started
Speaker 2: using Narcan to reverse heroin overdoses right on. It had
Speaker 2: been previously done to reverse anesthesia. It's possible that other
Speaker 2: I am not one hundred percent certain whether Peter Saffer
Speaker 2: was the first person to start using Narkan to reverse overdoses,
Speaker 2: but Freedom House was absolutely the first organization to start
Speaker 2: doing that on the street.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Very cool, very here, very now, so very important.
Speaker 2: If you had asked me, I would have thought Narcan
Speaker 2: was fifteen years old. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: My friend Ryan Marino is going to give me a
Speaker 3: hard time for this, But I thought it was at
Speaker 3: least fifteen to ten. I didn't think more than that.
Speaker 2: Jeez. Yeah, I thought it could be older than like oxycon,
Speaker 2: like the opioid crisis starting in the right right, you know,
Speaker 2: couldn't be older than me because I'm so young. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and because these guys were so obviously not cops when
Speaker 2: they would show up to calls and they were from
Speaker 2: the neighborhood and they didn't rat anyone out for anything,
Speaker 2: like they just really weren't cops. They could do things
Speaker 2: like go to the overdose victims dealer and find out
Speaker 2: exactly what the person was on so that they could
Speaker 2: treat that and also provide like other you know, provide
Speaker 2: the hospital with like this is what this person is on.
Speaker 2: That's so so so cool, so interesting. Yeah. I just
Speaker 2: got really excited about all that part because I'm just like, God,
Speaker 2: that's that's what a lot of the conversation around emergency
Speaker 2: response stuff is now is like, don't send cops, we
Speaker 2: have someone odine, send an ambulance, you know, yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 2: So the result of all of this patients in Black
Speaker 2: neighborhoods in Pittsburgh ended up with far, far better chances
Speaker 2: of surviving accidents, heart attacks, gunshots, overdoses, all of it
Speaker 2: than people in white neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh wow, that's that's This is where I'm sure
Speaker 3: it gets fascinating. This is probably where they're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what do they have there? We must live there. Let's
Speaker 3: buy that area the hills now ours. They kind of
Speaker 3: do sort of the opposite. They don't go into the hill. Instead,
Speaker 3: they're like, how do we steal their thing? We're like,
Speaker 3: we want the ambulance, but we don't want the ambulance driver.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't want we want the thing that
Speaker 3: black people invented, but we don't want the black people.
Speaker 2: How do we do this?
Speaker 3: But how do we say it make them more I
Speaker 3: don't know, American colored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is almost exactly what ends up
Speaker 2: bringing down Freedom House. But before that, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: some like doctors at the hospital start auditing how different
Speaker 2: ambulance crews, including the cops, were treating different people. Right
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two, doctors found that paramedics provided the
Speaker 2: right care eighty nine percent of the time as compared
Speaker 2: with cops who provided the wrong care sixty two percent
Speaker 2: of the time.
Speaker 3: God, I'm surprised it wasn't higher.
Speaker 2: I know so enemy of all things noble and good.
Speaker 2: The police union starts getting really mad because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we don't want new training. We don't need new training.
Speaker 2: All over the country paramedics are like starting to become
Speaker 2: a thing, But the Pittsburgh cops are like, no, we
Speaker 2: can't do that. They're not going to let some uppity
Speaker 2: paramedics change how they've been doing things and enter the
Speaker 2: main villain of the story. The cops weren't the only
Speaker 2: folks who didn't like Freedom House. There was this new mayor,
Speaker 2: Peter Flaherty. He was elected in nineteen seventy. He was
Speaker 2: not one of the best things ever produced by the
Speaker 2: Irish diaspor He was a populist Democrat who refused to
Speaker 2: align himself strongly with the Democratic Party, which sounds fine.
Speaker 2: He hated labor unions, which is less fine. He claimed
Speaker 2: he hated public slash private partnerships, which seems are right
Speaker 2: on its surface right because he's like, well, all public
Speaker 2: infrastructure should be run by the government, is what he's
Speaker 2: saying he is notably only saying this about Freedom House. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 2: immediately after he takes office, he fires two thousand public
Speaker 2: employees and then he turns his ire on an ambulance
Speaker 2: service that's saving everyone's lives.
Speaker 3: The important thing is getting getting in to the important stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All over the country, Freedom House, like Freedom House
Speaker 2: is changing everything, everything about emergency medicine. Twenty four states
Speaker 2: at this point had instituted better minimum EMS standards. Miami
Speaker 2: started a paramedic class. As soon as Freedomhouse got going.
Speaker 2: They were like, holy shit, that's amazing. But back at
Speaker 2: home in Pittsburgh, he was hated by the city government.
Speaker 2: Peter Flaherty was what you call a racist. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: he And it's funny because it's like all the journalism
Speaker 2: takes are like he was often called a racist, you know,
Speaker 2: because you have to hedge your bets.
Speaker 3: What is being called a healthcare crisis by some in Gaza.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. He opposed desegregating city buses, and folks involved
Speaker 2: in the struggle around Freedomhouse were pretty blunt that the
Speaker 2: main reason that Flaherty opposed Freedom House is because he
Speaker 2: was an overt racist. So he at the very least
Speaker 2: did racist things, but it seems very likely that he
Speaker 2: was literally overtly like just an anti black person racist,
Speaker 2: and he had actually kind of started off not that
Speaker 2: way because he was a Democrat and he was like
Speaker 2: playing to the base and all that shit, and he
Speaker 2: just like shift, he just went further and further right
Speaker 2: once he got in office. Weird again, the past crazy,
Speaker 2: I know totally. I don't live in West Virginia with
Speaker 2: mansion as my you know, anyway, Yeah, betterman? So, oh god,
Speaker 2: he's even Pennsylvania too, isn't he. I think? So I'm
Speaker 2: not a I know them slightly better than I know actors,
Speaker 2: but not a lot better. Yeah, okay, So he cuts
Speaker 2: Freedom House's city budget in half. They were getting one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars a year, which was not enough, and
Speaker 2: he gives starts getting them fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2: And he also says they have to provide just as
Speaker 2: much service, and they somehow don't. Anywhere they don't provide service,
Speaker 2: the cops will take over again. So Freedom House starts
Speaker 2: fundraising everywhere they can, but a lot of grants, most
Speaker 2: of the grants, and there were a ton of grants going
Speaker 2: around for black businesses and stuff around at this time
Speaker 2: required cities to match the funds, and so the city
Speaker 2: wouldn't do it. So they got passed over for all
Speaker 2: these grants, even though they are like setting the standard
Speaker 2: nationwide and worldwide, because Flaherty was like, Freedomhouse has to
Speaker 2: be financially self sufficient, even though he didn't ask that
Speaker 2: of anyone else. Right, he was such a libertarian. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, he won the Democratic primary he was
Speaker 2: already he was the incumbent. He also won the Republican
Speaker 2: primary as a right end candidate and the Constitutional Party primary.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the Constitutional Party is, but I
Speaker 3: don't like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't like it. Yeah. I used to
Speaker 2: know more about them, and now they're all blurred together
Speaker 2: in my head. They're all a bad Yeah. Even though
Speaker 2: he was giving nineteen million dollars a year to the
Speaker 2: cops and he was giving one hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 2: year to the dog catchers, the dog catchers got twice
Speaker 2: as much money as the ambulances. Oh my god. Now
Speaker 2: I love dogs, yeah, but no, I love dogs and
Speaker 2: I love catching them.
Speaker 3: But this is a that's such a that's such an
Speaker 3: amazing jexposition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and paramedics made like nine grand a year and
Speaker 2: cops made like fourteen grand a year. It should be
Speaker 2: about eight times that in modern money. And the ambulances
Speaker 2: were way cheaper to make than the cop cars because
Speaker 2: they were like purpose built and not full of people
Speaker 2: taking the extra money off of shit, so financing the
Speaker 2: whole thing for the whole city. If they had just
Speaker 2: been like Freedom House or even other paramedics built on
Speaker 2: the Freedom House model who aren't cops like, it would
Speaker 2: have been so much cheaper for the city. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it was a it was an ethical thing for him.
Speaker 2: He hated whatever piece of shit.
Speaker 3: Do you get any sense of whether or not there
Speaker 3: was public support for this at the time. Were people
Speaker 3: like upset about it or did people not even notice?
Speaker 2: Was it flying under the radar, Like, oh it was
Speaker 2: a big deal. Yeah, people started making it a big
Speaker 2: deal because the other neighborhoods, including wealthier neighborhoods, were like,
Speaker 2: can Freedom House please come here? I like not dying.
Speaker 2: I'm a really big fan of not dying, like being
Speaker 2: a live rules and cops suck at that particular thing,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, but the funeral home industry at other
Speaker 2: private ambulance services started fighting back against Freedom House too,
Speaker 2: because that was like they treated more of like the
Speaker 2: suburbs and the surrounding areas, you know. Yeah, and so
Speaker 2: basically everyone running the ambulance services was like, no, fuck
Speaker 2: you the private ones, you know, or the not Freedom
Speaker 2: House ones. But yeah, and we'll talk more about the
Speaker 2: activists who defended Freedomhouse in a little bit. So the
Speaker 2: mayor was like, all right, what can we do cutting
Speaker 2: their budget and have didn't destroy Freedomhouse? How do I
Speaker 2: just a Freedom House? Because he's a fucking villain. He's
Speaker 2: very highly remembered and his Wikipedia pages very balanced. The
Speaker 2: budget and blah blah blah blah blah. He banned ambulances
Speaker 2: from using sirens in downtown, so they were like, you know,
Speaker 2: race to go save people and they're in the hill
Speaker 2: and then as soon as they cross into downtown they
Speaker 2: have to turn it off and they're allowed to like honk,
Speaker 2: you know. And because they it was a noise ordinance,
Speaker 2: it didn't want to be disruptive to the business community.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, allowed to use sirens, Yeah yeah, I've heard
Speaker 2: of that happening. Still.
Speaker 3: Actually mean, I don't know if it's common, yeah at all,
Speaker 3: but I have heard of that that is amazing. I'm
Speaker 3: sure like there are like building people like behind real
Speaker 3: estate developers that sort of thing, who pushed for.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing. Yeah, and then he also ran
Speaker 2: into racist patients as a big problem. And this was
Speaker 2: actually part of because they started explanding to a few
Speaker 2: more areas. I read a couple of different things exactly
Speaker 2: about this, But they started going to a few more
Speaker 2: places because people neighborhood councils would be like, we really
Speaker 2: want them to come here. But individual rich white racists
Speaker 2: would be like, what are you talking about. You can't
Speaker 2: treat me that man is black. You know, I want
Speaker 2: an actual doctor, not this black man. And so, and
Speaker 2: especially in downtown, right, you have all this white flight
Speaker 2: from the cities, but people still come into the town
Speaker 2: to work. And so when they're working downtown, a lot
Speaker 2: of their patients are white. And so they just had
Speaker 2: to literally run around all day and save the lives
Speaker 2: of racist who would physically recoil from their presence. Woh,
Speaker 2: what a bummer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean again, like you talked to African American doctors,
Speaker 3: Jewish doctors, lots of doctors of color, they all have
Speaker 3: some story still of you know, treating some patient with
Speaker 3: the swastika or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's very very common.
Speaker 3: But this is, you know, this was just the battle
Speaker 3: days of it even worse. Not great still, yeah, but
Speaker 3: even worse. It's so hard to do your job and
Speaker 3: to be like in to have a tough gig, and
Speaker 3: to have that on top fit is truly heroic efforts
Speaker 3: to help those people.
Speaker 2: It really is. And on top of it all, all
Speaker 2: these rumors started spreading around that they like sold drugs
Speaker 2: and ran dice games and shit like that. And I
Speaker 2: don't believe there's any basis to these particular rumors. That's
Speaker 2: certainly no evidence was provided to back this up that
Speaker 2: I've ever found. Right, cops started trying to beat them
Speaker 2: to calls in order to get the money from having
Speaker 2: you know, thrown someone in the back of the wagon
Speaker 2: and driven them off or whatever. Yeah, And so when
Speaker 2: paramedics would show up and the cops were already there,
Speaker 2: they would like threaten to arrest the paramedics if they
Speaker 2: tried to treat patients. My god, then so far. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four, the mayor did a one to
Speaker 2: eighty he suddenly loved ambulances. Maybe they should be city
Speaker 2: financed after all, as long as there's not Freedom House
Speaker 2: and it's cops. Oh god, so close. Yeah, So the
Speaker 2: city canceled its contract with Freedom House and set up
Speaker 2: a cop run paramedic organization. This is when the activist
Speaker 2: groups were like, are you fucking kidding me? And the
Speaker 2: activist groups were like, we want to be interrupted in
Speaker 2: the middle of like sentences with to be sold things
Speaker 2: that were like, that's what we demand. We demand that
Speaker 2: in the middle of sentences someone comes in and says,
Speaker 2: haven't you tried listening to this podcast or getting mental
Speaker 2: health services through the following product? Because Zach, same thing,
Speaker 2: here's the Zach same thing. Yeah, here's the ads. So
Speaker 2: activist groups, both white and black, fought hard against what
Speaker 2: was happening, which was the destruction of Freedom House and
Speaker 2: the empowerment of the police. The NAACP, various neighborhood associations,
Speaker 2: women organizations, a bunch of different Catholic organizations, youth organizations.
Speaker 2: Even conservative papers were running opinion pieces that were like,
Speaker 2: we already have a good ambulance service. What are you doing?
Speaker 2: You know? Because it was so transparently about race, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's why they kept being They're like, no, it's
Speaker 2: that I hate private public stuff or whatever. You know.
Speaker 2: But these activists might have changed the face of modern
Speaker 2: emergency response across the US because they won cool and
Speaker 2: the racist in charge of the city relented and funded
Speaker 2: Freedom House for two more years. It was like fine,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, nineteen seventy five, you're getting funded again,
Speaker 2: still at the like shitty rate, but they stop the
Speaker 2: cops from being the paramedics, and that rules, and that
Speaker 2: has like reverberating effects throughout history that have saved so
Speaker 2: many people's lives, because even even if cops were fully
Speaker 2: trained as paramedics, you still just run into the conflict
Speaker 2: of interest about law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And you know, absolutely, like for fens andal overdoses the
Speaker 3: last thing. I mean, it's that's a whole im sure
Speaker 3: of itself. Never call them, Yeah, I mean, what would
Speaker 3: happen is one of them would touch like.
Speaker 2: A baggie, have a panic attack, and.
Speaker 3: Then they would add to the sentence of whatever guy
Speaker 3: that they arrested because they would be like, well, this
Speaker 3: person almost kills a cop. Yeah, we had to use
Speaker 3: four narcans to revive him. Which, by the ways, how
Speaker 3: narcan would work. But like it's it.
Speaker 2: Would be terrible the concept. It gives me chills, literal
Speaker 2: chills to think of cops running codes. Yeah. Also, can
Speaker 2: we talk about the fact that, like people accept the
Speaker 2: idea that cops are somehow wildly allergic to fentanyl, where
Speaker 2: if they're in the same room as it, they all
Speaker 2: die because, like it is, I don't do drugs. A
Speaker 2: lot of my friends do drugs. Some of my friends
Speaker 2: do fentanyl on purpose, which I think is not a
Speaker 2: good idea, but the only way they die of it
Speaker 2: is if they owe d on it, like not by
Speaker 2: touching it, correct for being in visual contact with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fentanyl great in the hospital. I don't love it
Speaker 3: use elsewhere. But yeah, I have to let you in
Speaker 3: on a secret. I also understand this process because as
Speaker 3: a doctor, not everyone knows this, but an apple will
Speaker 3: destroy me, and for cops, fentanyl is their apple. An
Speaker 3: apple will keep your doctor away. Sentinyl is the same thing.
Speaker 2: For a cop. I think I know where you're going.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if that was going to work. I
Speaker 2: was just I was like, Okay, you are specifically allergic
Speaker 2: to apples, And I was like, oh no, yeah, I
Speaker 2: realized that. To make that clear. Yeah, yeah, bad, my bad. No, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to start I dehydrate apples and give them
Speaker 2: to people way too often, and I'm just going to
Speaker 2: start calling them a doctor Baine, doctor, yeah, doctor pain. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2: It it the fact that people believe, I mean, the
Speaker 2: fact that people believe cops like full stop is like complicated,
Speaker 2: but the fact that people believe all of these weird
Speaker 2: cop lies about fentanyl is just so. I don't understand
Speaker 2: why we as a society accept the way that cops
Speaker 2: talk about fentanyl, even though again, yeah I love being sober,
Speaker 2: you know, but whatever. Yeah. So the activists save Freedom House,
Speaker 2: and I mean Freedom House also saves itself. They're part
Speaker 2: of this process, you know, and they continue. They're underfunded
Speaker 2: as hell, and they're honestly starting to fall apart from
Speaker 2: the inside from their underfundingness. At this point, their organization
Speaker 2: is starting to collapse. Their ambulance is barely run like physically,
Speaker 2: you know, mechanically. And then they always had this doctor.
Speaker 2: They would have like one doctor who's like their chief
Speaker 2: medical director. It was, you know, a doctor's being everyone
Speaker 2: else's paramedics. And this person I think was always white.
Speaker 2: It was never mentioned otherwise, and I'm not one hundred
Speaker 2: percent sure, but I think it was always a key.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen seventy four they got a white
Speaker 2: Jewish woman named Nancy Caroline who basically slept at the
Speaker 2: office and helped organize the place and bring things back
Speaker 2: together and improve the level of medical training even higher.
Speaker 2: One of the big like things that they didn't do.
Speaker 2: They did all of these different things. They would interpret kgs,
Speaker 2: they would do all these like fairly high level things.
Speaker 2: They didn't intubate patients on the street, And under Nancy
Speaker 2: Caroline's training, they learned how to do that. Wow, were
Speaker 2: they the first people to do that? They were the
Speaker 2: first people. That's so rad Yeah, And I think they
Speaker 2: were like the first people to like use shock paddles
Speaker 2: and go clear and shit and like save people's lives
Speaker 2: that way or whatever. But in the on the street
Speaker 2: on the street, sure, yeah, Wow, that's so cool. And
Speaker 2: that's what I was saying, was like, shit that even
Speaker 2: I've heard of, like intubating and narcan and I call
Speaker 2: them shock padals because I don't know what they're called.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all the shock We'll accept, all right, cool.
Speaker 2: Thanks. So under her training, they're now intubating patients in
Speaker 2: the street, which as hard as fuck and if you
Speaker 2: do it wrong people die, but can be a very
Speaker 2: important life saving thing. There's this like moment where they
Speaker 2: bring in an intubated patient and they're like, Matt. The
Speaker 2: doctor's like, who the fuck intubated is patient? And the
Speaker 2: guy's just like, yeah, I did. I'm a paramedic. And
Speaker 2: they were like, oh, okay, you know wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that must have been mind blowing at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And Nancy was also frustrated by this other
Speaker 2: thing that was defeating the organization that she worked with
Speaker 2: the cops, and somehow she got a hold of a
Speaker 2: police scanner. History does not indicate how she got a
Speaker 2: hold of this police scanner, which means it was not legal.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, I assume either she stole it or
Speaker 2: someone working with the cops stolen and gave it to her.
Speaker 2: And so Freedom House started listening in the police scanner
Speaker 2: and beating cops to medical emergencies to save people's lives.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so cool, yeah, because the cops are already
Speaker 2: doing that to them, yeah, but now they can do
Speaker 2: it in reverse. And they would like tell stories about
Speaker 2: being like, ah, I just was in the neighborhood and
Speaker 2: happened to drive by and saw this person. You know, right,
Speaker 2: that's so cool with their time today.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they got their faster because they probably cared
Speaker 3: more to get their faster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was it. Yeah, And so she actually ends
Speaker 2: up writing the book on street medicine and emergency medical services,
Speaker 2: and Freedom House at this point becomes the official model
Speaker 2: chosen by the Department of Transportation about what ems should
Speaker 2: be in the country. And so this is like they
Speaker 2: have cemented their legacy at this point, not necessarily by
Speaker 2: name and not by memory, but in terms of the
Speaker 2: way that they've learned how to do things over these
Speaker 2: seven years. Yeah. But the mayor, instead of being like, okay,
Speaker 2: I give up, I'll listen to the federal government and
Speaker 2: realize that Freedom House rules, he spent the last two
Speaker 2: years when he gave them like the stay of execution
Speaker 2: for two years. He basically just spent the time figuring
Speaker 2: out how to copy it, expand on the model with
Speaker 2: better funding, and then shut down Freedom House and replace
Speaker 2: it with white paramedics, which is what he did. The
Speaker 2: upside the thing that they won. Is that it wasn't cops. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's huge. Yeah, huge.
Speaker 3: In today's world, we look at like evidence based medicine.
Speaker 3: That's sort of our mantra for everything. We tried to
Speaker 3: have make sure there's evidence for everything. So I have
Speaker 3: to think if that's the case, there's no way that
Speaker 3: it would have held up. But the fact that it
Speaker 3: might have taken an extra fifteen twenty thirty years, yeah,
Speaker 3: to maybe get the police out, and how so many
Speaker 3: people would have been killed in that process, yeah, is
Speaker 3: really startling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's just like an objective body count to
Speaker 2: doing better emergency medical services, you know. Yeah, like yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So these white paramedics who are going to take over,
Speaker 2: basically it's like they're like, all right, we're starting up
Speaker 2: this new city program. Freedom House is a few more
Speaker 2: months to go. And so the white paramedics did their
Speaker 2: training rides on Freedom House ambulances, but the black paramedics
Speaker 2: weren't told that they were training the men who would
Speaker 2: replace them. They thought that they were training guys from
Speaker 2: the suburbs. Who was gross.
Speaker 1: That's fucking gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolute fucking worse.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like more people having medical training, good
Speaker 1: that gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They were like, all right, this guy from the
Speaker 2: suburb is gonna go back from the suburbs where this
Speaker 2: is great, where the teachers were the trainers, you know,
Speaker 2: what a bummer. The city was like, well, we need
Speaker 2: a medical director for this new program, someone with experience. Someone.
Speaker 2: Fortunately Nancy Caroline met those requirements and they offered to
Speaker 2: hire her. And she was like, God, I don't fucking
Speaker 2: know about that. So she went to talk to everyone
Speaker 2: and I think this was like functionally a democratic decision
Speaker 2: of Freedom House, but I'm not She certainly included them
Speaker 2: in her decision making. Yeah, And she came back and
Speaker 2: she said all right, because they knew Freedom House was done,
Speaker 2: she was like, all right, I will do it. I
Speaker 2: will be the medical director for the ambulance program if
Speaker 2: you hire everyone from Freedom House who wants it. And
Speaker 2: the city was like, no, we're good. And then she
Speaker 2: was like okay, then I'm going to the press and
Speaker 2: the city was like, okay, we'll hire everyone from Freedom House.
Speaker 2: Good for her. Yeah. On midnight at midnight on October fifteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, as it turned over to October sixteenth,
Speaker 2: Freedom House shut its doors and actually the token white
Speaker 2: guy like stayed until morning to like lock up. So
Speaker 2: it's like you have the fucking movie moments.
Speaker 3: Every symbolism, there's some symbolism there, know what it means,
Speaker 3: but there's like that's a symbolic sort of like last shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, I don't of you knew this. The
Speaker 2: US government routinely breaks the agreements it makes with people
Speaker 2: who are racially marginalized. What I know, I know that
Speaker 2: was my face when I learned this. One of the paramedics,
Speaker 2: one of the black paramedics, had actually been offered second
Speaker 2: in command of the new Ambulance Corps, but the city
Speaker 2: changed its mind and didn't offer to him, and he
Speaker 2: just was a guy on an ambulance. So none of
Speaker 2: the people, none of the black people from Freedom House,
Speaker 2: had any kind of standing within the new organization, even
Speaker 2: though they are literally the world's first paramedics and they
Speaker 2: have seven years of experience, so this is so wild.
Speaker 2: Most of the Freedom House people took the paramedic jobs
Speaker 2: that were offered, but they were treated like pariahs. They
Speaker 2: would like show up and people be like, oh, your
Speaker 2: Freedom House and would like stay away from them. Even
Speaker 2: the token white guy was treated like shit by the
Speaker 2: new staff for having been part of the quote goon
Speaker 2: squad and for having been quote white only on the outside.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So then the people who had literally invented them,
Speaker 2: which is sort of a compliment that I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, it's sort of a compliment. I like, I'm
Speaker 3: sort of I'm undercover too, I'm off white.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like so I kind of get it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of.
Speaker 3: I think that'd be a cool, like, it's not a
Speaker 3: bad title.
Speaker 2: No, I doubt he had a problem with that, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then the people who had literally invented the profession
Speaker 2: of paramedics had to be mentored by the less trained
Speaker 2: new recruits because they were new to that particular job.
Speaker 2: So they had to be mentored, and the city had
Speaker 2: promised to hire them, the city did not promise to
Speaker 2: keep them on, so the organization set about icing them
Speaker 2: out to get them to quit or finding excuses to
Speaker 2: fire them. They weren't allowed to touch patients, just observe because
Speaker 2: they're the new kids, you know. They had to take
Speaker 2: classes that were beneath their level, that didn't even meet
Speaker 2: national standards which they themselves had set set. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they were like given like constant pass fail tests and
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh, we don't get one hundredercent, you're
Speaker 2: fired just tomorrow, you know. And about half of them
Speaker 2: quit within the first year, including Nancy Caroline. She was like,
Speaker 2: this sucks, fuck you, you so demoralizing, and she she left.
Speaker 2: She went to Israel to set up emergency services there,
Speaker 2: and some of the paramedics, the first paramedics in the world,
Speaker 2: ended up tow truck drivers and taxi drivers and shit.
Speaker 2: At least one ended up homeless soon enough, and Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: paramedics became an overwhelmingly white profession, though a few of
Speaker 2: the original paradomedics rose in the ranks of the new
Speaker 2: organization and became supervisors and stuff eventually, and then the
Speaker 2: history was almost completely forgotten until now, until this episode
Speaker 2: of the podcast. I am the one who's breaking this
Speaker 2: story by having read a very best selling book by
Speaker 2: Kevin Hazard. I will tell you this.
Speaker 3: You are breaking this story to me, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to be sharing this with every medical professional that I
Speaker 3: have contact or range of Yeah, because it is just
Speaker 3: amazing and it's one of the few ones where I
Speaker 3: feel like it's still not too late to give the
Speaker 3: right people their credit.
Speaker 2: Totally or flowers as kids call it.
Speaker 3: Like, I feel like that, like there, I mean, unfortunately
Speaker 3: some of them have probably passed away, and probably some
Speaker 3: of them will never be able to get it, but
Speaker 3: like just I feel like there's still at least a
Speaker 3: little opportunity. And it's funny too because like just like
Speaker 3: with the Tuskegee stuff, Yeah, people assumed that was the distant,
Speaker 3: distant past, right, We're talking about things that ended in
Speaker 3: the sixties seventies, things that people who train people like
Speaker 3: me were alive for and very much like practicing at
Speaker 3: the time. So it is it is so important to discuss.
Speaker 3: I think this is such a good such a good topic,
Speaker 3: and I'm so happy that you did it. I've learned
Speaker 3: so much from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thank you for being the guest you were
Speaker 2: you were, I knew, I was, like I had that.
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to do this for a while ever
Speaker 2: since I found this book because I was blown away
Speaker 2: by the story of it. And yeah, I was like,
Speaker 2: saved it for when I had my when I had
Speaker 2: my doctor, guest.
Speaker 3: That's me so but yeah, and then cool, very cool.
Speaker 2: So the just to shouted out. Kevin Hazzard wrote a
Speaker 2: really good book called American Sirens. I did pull from
Speaker 2: some other sources, but honestly not as many as I
Speaker 2: sometimes do, because he covers contexts better than most people,
Speaker 2: most authors I've read. And it turns out American Sirens
Speaker 2: is not about women in the ocean learning sailors to
Speaker 2: their death. So a little bit of a disappointment there.
Speaker 2: But you you are a writer, Yeah that's true. And
Speaker 2: titles aren't copyrightable. Totally you could you can make like
Speaker 2: Syle with the Z at the end. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: That'll be a totally good thing to do to an
Speaker 2: author I respect. But speaking of podcasters I respect. We're
Speaker 2: here at the end. Do you want to plug anything?
Speaker 3: I would like people to listen to my podcast.
Speaker 2: Go and do that.
Speaker 3: Anywhere you get your podcast. It is called the House
Speaker 3: of pod You will hear all the people from the
Speaker 3: Cool Zone, media world, the universe, the c Z m
Speaker 3: u H and they'll all be there, including Margaret if
Speaker 3: she is willing to come on. And it's going to
Speaker 3: cover a lot of similar stuff. We're going to talk
Speaker 3: about inequality, We're going to talk about equity issues in medicine.
Speaker 3: We're going to cover some random stuff. Too, like where
Speaker 3: the spartans really as cool as everyone makes them out
Speaker 3: to be answers No, So we're kind of all over
Speaker 3: the place. But I think you'll enjoy it. Give it
Speaker 3: a shot. There's something in there you're going to like.
Speaker 3: And thank you so much for having me on. This
Speaker 3: is super fun. I feel like I want some sort
Speaker 3: of contest to get on the show. Its super cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know there was the Golden tickets and
Speaker 2: then everyone else died horribly accidentally.
Speaker 3: I had nothing to do with it, Margaret Ye.
Speaker 2: Interesting thing about working in the medical field and ability
Speaker 2: to understand forensics totally unrelated. Well, if you want to
Speaker 2: know more about I also have a podcast called cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media book Club every Sunday where I read fiction
Speaker 2: and it is on this very feed as well as
Speaker 2: the feed of it could happen here. And you probably
Speaker 2: already know this because if you listen to this you
Speaker 2: probably subscribe. I mean, if you don't, I don't know
Speaker 2: what you're doing with your life. And so every Sunday
Speaker 2: you get a notification about me reading you a new story,
Speaker 2: and what do you got to shout out, Sophie? Just
Speaker 2: follow at.
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media on social media. If you do use
Speaker 1: social media still because we have a lot of upcoming
Speaker 1: projects that were releasing this year that you should look
Speaker 1: at for a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a new Jamie Loft is going to drop nice
Speaker 2: pretty excited there is.
Speaker 1: We're really really really really really excited about that one.
Speaker 2: I've been finally listening to raw Dog on audiobook. Yeah
Speaker 2: it's so good, so fun. Yeah, it's so fun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the book about hot dogs. Yes, Jamie's Jamie's book
Speaker 2: about hot It is about way more than hot dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's secret.
Speaker 1: That's secretly about like labor and you know, health, health
Speaker 1: rights and just.
Speaker 2: Really cool but also just like entertainingly written and about
Speaker 2: the way that Jamie. It's great, but hot dogs are
Speaker 2: in it. Correct, Yes, correct, there's enough hot dogs that
Speaker 2: I as a vegan, I was partly. That was partly
Speaker 2: why I kept putting it off. And you know, and
Speaker 2: then but several points throughout it, Jamie is like, vegans,
Speaker 2: you're right and I'm wrong. Anyway, let me talk more
Speaker 2: about me. That's so I'm like, I feel seen.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll also tell you, as a Gaston trologist, you know,
Speaker 3: when I hear hot Dog the first thing I think
Speaker 3: about is somebody who went to like a barbecue or cookout,
Speaker 3: was in the hot sun, not hydrating, well, eat a
Speaker 3: lot of hot dogs, and they got stuck in their throat,
Speaker 3: and I'm coming into the hospital like three in the
Speaker 3: morning to try and dislodge.
Speaker 2: That's so, that's the thing that pops in my head
Speaker 2: when I hear hot dogs first, even above how delicious
Speaker 2: they are, they are delicious, amazing that. Yeah, I have
Speaker 2: a weird job. My job is so much easier than
Speaker 2: your job in some ways. Yeah, but it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: I got to do some fun stuff. Yeah. No, the
Speaker 2: people who I just described in this episode are fucking heroes,
Speaker 2: and I I'm very grateful for people who do that work.
Speaker 2: All Right, we will see everyone next Monday.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 4: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 4: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 4: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 4: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: You get your podcasts.