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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are partnering up with a Cooperative for

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Speaker 1: Education once again to help raise money for their RISE

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Speaker 1: Youth Development program which sends students to school in Guatemala

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Speaker 1: and they break the cycle of poverty through education.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, kids who otherwise would not have gotten an education

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Speaker 2: get a world class one thanks to co ED, thanks

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Speaker 2: to your donations and so far in our history with

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Speaker 2: co ED, which dates back all the way to two

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Speaker 2: thousand and nine, Stuff you Should Know listeners have given

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Speaker 2: one point four million dollars in donations and helped one

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Speaker 2: hundred and seventy two different RISE students who are sponsored

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Speaker 2: directly by Stuff you Should Know fans. So we're asking

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Speaker 2: you guys to do it again. And if you go

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Speaker 2: to Cooperative for Education dot org and give today as

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Speaker 2: little as twenty dollars to support a RISE student, you

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Speaker 2: will be entered into a raffle to be picked to

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Speaker 2: hang out with us virtually in January.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Set up a recurring gift of twenty dollars

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Speaker 1: a month by December nineteenth, and you can win that

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Speaker 1: raffle and hang out with us in a zoom call.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. We do it every year

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Speaker 1: and it's a great organization to support.

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Speaker 2: So go to Cooperative for Education dot org slash sysk

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Speaker 2: and you'll get all the info you need. And thank you.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's

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Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us. Jerry's on leave right now.

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Speaker 2: She's having a little R and R living it up

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Speaker 2: in the South Seas, falling in love, spending a lot

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Speaker 2: of time on beach writing people's names in the sand

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Speaker 2: for money. Wow, I assume that's what she's doing. Oh okay,

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Speaker 2: she might also just be in New York.

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Speaker 1: It's one of the two, right, unless she could ride

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Speaker 1: on a beach there, Jones beach. I guess, so sure,

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Speaker 1: Coney Island.

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Speaker 2: I guess we should stop all the joking around the

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Speaker 2: horse and around Chuck. This is a very serious episode,

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Speaker 2: so let's just end that now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, what better to chat about over what's

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Speaker 1: probably gonna end up being the holiday season when this

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Speaker 1: is released than hard labor at prisons in that history?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, if you think about prison labor,

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Speaker 2: it's bad enough as it is, but when you really

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Speaker 2: start to get into the nuts and bolts of it,

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Speaker 2: and all the loopholes that are abused, and all of

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Speaker 2: the ways that prisoners are actually treated in exchange for

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Speaker 2: the labor. It's even worse than you would think, it

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Speaker 2: turns out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the good news, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And we'll get into the bad news for sure.

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Speaker 2: But the thing that I was a little surprised about

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Speaker 2: from the outside is that I would have thought that

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Speaker 2: this was ancient, like the Sumerians doing stuff like this,

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Speaker 2: And it turns out no Sumerians forward all the way

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Speaker 2: into the Enlightenment period in Europe, just killed people. They

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Speaker 2: hung you, or they cut your hand off, or put

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Speaker 2: you in the stocks. Maybe the stocks were a non

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Speaker 2: lethal form of punishment, and you would be ridiculed by

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Speaker 2: your neighbors. And then a guy named Thomas Moore wrote

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Speaker 2: a book called Utopia, and he said, there's a better

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Speaker 2: way people, There's an alternative to just killing people or

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Speaker 2: cutting off their hands. What if we just put them

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Speaker 2: to work. There's all sorts of benefits and upsides to this.

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Speaker 2: And they said, well, what are they? Thomas Moore, he said,

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Speaker 2: let me tell you.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, Yeah, he basically, I mean and

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Speaker 1: we'll see this over and over again. The you know,

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Speaker 1: the point has sort of always been one. It can

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Speaker 1: or really threefold. One, it can deter people from committing

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Speaker 1: crime if they see somebody manual laboring, yeah, for probably

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Speaker 1: no money or very little money these days. Right. The

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Speaker 1: second is it can you know, help rehabilitate that person

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Speaker 1: and make them, you know, make them think about what

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Speaker 1: they've done basically, Yeah. And then the most obvious one

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Speaker 1: is we can get them to do stuff for us

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Speaker 1: for nothing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we can really use that labor. Especially if

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Speaker 2: you put a bunch of people together and make them

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Speaker 2: work for free, you can get a lot of stuff done.

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Speaker 2: And that is a fairly new form of punishment. It

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Speaker 2: wasn't like immediately adopted after Thomas Moore wrote Utopia. He

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Speaker 2: wrote it in the sixteenth century. Even into the American

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Speaker 2: Revolution and beyond, there was not like a lot of

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Speaker 2: government enforced punishment using prison labor. They were still crazy

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Speaker 2: for the stocks. But there were things regarding the colonies

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Speaker 2: that did have to do with punishment that did result

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Speaker 2: in your labor. And that would be if you got

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Speaker 2: into trouble, saying in England you would be sentenced to

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Speaker 2: transportation either Australia or the United States, maybe even Canada

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Speaker 2: if you were lucky, and I think sixty thousand people

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Speaker 2: before the American Revolution while America was British colonies or

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Speaker 2: British colonies were sentenced to transportation and showed up there

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Speaker 2: and said, Okay, what do you want me to do?

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Speaker 2: I'm here to work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I doubt if they said that. They were

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Speaker 1: probably more told that, but they were known as the

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Speaker 1: King's passengers, and they you know, the colonies, you know,

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Speaker 1: the people in the colonies, they weren't that wild about this.

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Speaker 1: They were worried about, you know, sending convicted criminals there, obviously,

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Speaker 1: but most of these criminals were you know, maybe not

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Speaker 1: petty crimes, but pretty minor crimes, maybe theft, maybe vagrancy,

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Speaker 1: you know, depending on what the laws were, and whatever

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Speaker 1: weird English village you lived, you might have committed a

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Speaker 1: crime against one of those. But they weren't sending over

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Speaker 1: generally to the colonies. That is like the worst of

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Speaker 1: the worst. Right, if you were a plantation owner or

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Speaker 1: if you were an employer that maybe was near a prison,

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Speaker 1: you were pretty psyched because that was very cheap, meaning

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Speaker 1: usually free labor. Compared to what it cost to you know,

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Speaker 1: trade in the slaved African market.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say this early indentured servitude is

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Speaker 2: what they called it if it was aimed at white

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Speaker 2: people exclusively in the colonies and then later on the

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Speaker 2: early United States, because if the government intervened in a

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Speaker 2: plantation owner enslaved person's dynamic, then and they removed the

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Speaker 2: enslaved person and put them in jail, the poor white

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Speaker 2: plantation owner was the one suffering there, he lost the laborer.

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Speaker 2: So it was left entirely to the plantation owners to

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Speaker 2: basically keep their slaves punish their slaves essentially, And if

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Speaker 2: you've ever have you ever seen twelve years of slave yet.

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Speaker 1: That still shamefully cannot bring myself to see it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I get it. I totally understand your reticence.

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Speaker 2: But it's the way that plantation owners punished slaves is

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Speaker 2: depicted throughout in really brutal, honest fashion, and it's it

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Speaker 2: really drives home like what it was like. But you

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Speaker 2: were left up to the guy that owned you legally

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Speaker 2: doling out punishment based on his whim. Essentially, the state

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Speaker 2: would not intervene. It was just strictly up to white

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Speaker 2: people or it was just strictly directed at white people

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Speaker 2: at first.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what, that's the kind of movie

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Speaker 1: that you got to watch that when it comes out

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Speaker 1: and when it's in the zeitgeist, because that's never the

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Speaker 1: movie when you're like, what do I want to watch tonight?

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Speaker 1: Like Gloomy set several years later, it's just not going

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Speaker 1: to happen, So I need to just you know, it's

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Speaker 1: like a history lesson, So I need to watch it.

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Speaker 1: And I've heard it's it's good, like in an upsetting way,

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Speaker 1: but like a well made film.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely. Everybody does an amazing job. And look

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Speaker 2: at it like a classic novel that you just have

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Speaker 2: to read before you die, because I think that'll be

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Speaker 2: a dad approach to it.

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Speaker 1: You know what, when I start Moby Dick finally, I'll

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Speaker 1: watch Twelve Years of Slave and I'll just I'll just

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Speaker 1: do both at the same time.

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Speaker 2: I remember we talked about reading Mobi Dick and a

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Speaker 2: couple of people wrote in and they're like, Josh, do

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Speaker 2: not waste your time. It is not worth reading. And

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Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go with their interpretation. Oh wow, I

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Speaker 2: like Bartleby the Scrivener, but I'm not sure I could

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Speaker 2: take hundreds and hundreds of pages of that writing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, our mutual friend in front of

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Speaker 1: the show, Joey cr is gonna be very upset to

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Speaker 1: hear that.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Joey.

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Speaker 1: So as far as these laborers, ninety percent of the

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Speaker 1: ones that were of those sixty thousand that were sent

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Speaker 1: to the States, which is I'm surprised it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: ninety percent, they ended up kind of in two places,

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Speaker 1: Maryland Virginia, probably working in you know, industry like you know,

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Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution type stuff, or on the farm, so

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Speaker 1: like tobacco farming obviously in Virginia. And it was terrible work.

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Speaker 1: It was really brutal. You know, you're talking maybe seven

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Speaker 1: to fourteen years as your sentence. After your sentence, maybe

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Speaker 1: you go back to England. Maybe you have a shot

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Speaker 1: at a free life in the New Colonies. But you know,

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Speaker 1: just like getting out of prison these days, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's not an easy transition to make.

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Speaker 2: Right. The ones that went back to England were like,

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Speaker 2: I really missed the tasteless cuisine of home.

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Speaker 1: Right, so back then, maybe sure, it's come a long way.

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Speaker 2: So one of the it has for sure. One of

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Speaker 2: the other things that had to evolve for prison labor

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Speaker 2: to become an actual thing in the United States was

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Speaker 2: prisons themselves. Like at the same time when they were

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Speaker 2: still crazy about the stocks and a dentured servitude, like

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Speaker 2: you had jails, you didn't have prisons, and a jail

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Speaker 2: was just basically where they kept you while you were

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Speaker 2: awaiting trial or sentencing or something like that. And then

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Speaker 2: sure you left the jail. The idea of going to

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Speaker 2: a place to be held as a punishment in and

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Speaker 2: of itself, that is prisons that came later on after

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Speaker 2: the American Revolution. I think it was the Quakers that

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Speaker 2: came up with the idea of the penitentiary, which is

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Speaker 2: meant to give you quiet time to reflect on what

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Speaker 2: terrible things you've done and hopefully find God and come

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Speaker 2: out bit a better person. Of course, it's not how

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Speaker 2: it worked out, but very quickly after penitentiaries became a thing,

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Speaker 2: prison labor became a thing. In early short order, actually

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Speaker 2: like decades maybe.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I never thought about the root word penitent

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Speaker 1: for penitentiaries. It was sort of one of those things

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Speaker 1: where I was today years old, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean, like you, yeah, it's just so

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Speaker 2: easy to look right past it. It's its own thing,

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Speaker 2: yeah for sure.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, redemptive suffering is what they called it. And

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Speaker 1: that was a big part of being in prison and

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Speaker 1: committing well, not committing to hardly like being committed too

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Speaker 1: hard labor. Auburn Prison in New York was one of

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Speaker 1: the sort of leading examples that set the way forward

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Speaker 1: for what was to become the norm where private businesses

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Speaker 1: would lease prison buildings along with the prisoners and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're just gonna You've got this big building over here,

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Speaker 1: You've got lots of free labor. I'm going to bring

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Speaker 1: my machinery into here, and all of a sudden, the

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Speaker 1: prison is part prison in part you know, industrial plant

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Speaker 1: for whatever company worked out whatever deal. And that proved,

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Speaker 1: you know, provided a real model moving forward. I think Auburn,

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Speaker 1: they the prisoners of Auburn ended up building Sing Sing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they use them for that as well. And

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Speaker 2: that I think Sing Sing opened in eighteen twenty eight.

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Speaker 2: So this is going on, like if prisons became a

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Speaker 2: thing around the time of the American Revolution, like this, this,

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Speaker 2: like I said, my point, has proven this transition happened quickly. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: so by the time the Civil War came around, like this,

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Speaker 2: it's called the Northern model or the Auburn prison model,

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Speaker 2: where you can rent a building, rent the inmates, and

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Speaker 2: then set up shop there. That's what prison labor looked like,

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Speaker 2: or else you were working for the prison, like say,

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Speaker 2: building other prisons. That's what the North was doing. In

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Speaker 2: the South, they were still quite hung up on the

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Speaker 2: idea of chattel slavery and h owning a person and

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Speaker 2: making them work until they died. Essentially that that was

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Speaker 2: something that was really ingrained in the culture and was

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Speaker 2: not an easy thing to give up despite having lost

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Speaker 2: the Civil War and the thirteenth Amendment being passed. And

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Speaker 2: I know you've seen thirteenth the Avia de Verne documentary.

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Speaker 1: I have seen that.

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Speaker 2: That's a great one too. That's one of those like

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Speaker 2: life changing, perspective changing, eye opening type documentaries.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and even if I hadn't seen it, I would

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Speaker 1: I would lie to your face right now, okay, and

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Speaker 1: all of our listeners, because there's no way you're gonna

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Speaker 1: double shame me.

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Speaker 2: Well, how about this if you but I did see it,

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Speaker 2: If you, well, if you are lying right now and

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Speaker 2: you go look for it. Do not be infused by

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Speaker 2: the documentary Thirteenth that came out in twenty twenty five, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: which was about the Yeah, it's about the high pressure

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Speaker 2: student exams in India.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure that's upsetting too.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure, But the thirteenth Amendment is kind of what

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Speaker 2: we're talking about here, and that's not only abolished slavery.

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Speaker 2: It abolished involuntary servitude of all kinds except one tiny provision,

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Speaker 2: one little loophole that said that if you're a convicted prisoner,

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Speaker 2: you can be punished with slave labor. That's okay. And

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Speaker 2: not only was it okay, it's enshrined in the Constitution

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Speaker 2: that slave labor is legal in prisons.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it's one of those things where

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Speaker 1: it's hard to go back and imagine what the original

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Speaker 1: framers intended, But I think most people agree that they

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Speaker 1: didn't intend to just have you know, enslavement and another

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Speaker 1: name basically, whereas that's basically what happened for a long

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Speaker 1: long time, you know, through that, through the loophole, and

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Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned loopholes in the beginning. There's been

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Speaker 1: a lot of loopholes over the year, and anytime there's

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Speaker 1: a loophole, somebody's gonna exploit it, like for greedy purposes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, free labor. I saw that. The reason that they

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Speaker 2: included it in that amendment was because it was just

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Speaker 2: such a no brainer that you would want the ability

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Speaker 2: to to to perform hard labor rather than just being

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Speaker 2: punished in other ways. That it was just an accepted

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Speaker 2: thing that, Yeah, the loophole wasn't meant to be there.

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Speaker 2: But in the South, almost immediately they put that to use.

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Speaker 2: We did an episode on the Black Codes back in

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Speaker 2: January of twenty twenty two. Yeah, another very eye opening topic,

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Speaker 2: and those only lasted like a year or two. And

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Speaker 2: it was basically they criminalized being a free black person

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Speaker 2: in the South. Yeah, And so they could pick you

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Speaker 2: up and they could arrest you with something. If you

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Speaker 2: couldn't prove on the spot that, say, you had a job,

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Speaker 2: you'd be arrested for vagrancy. You'd be taken to jail,

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Speaker 2: and then you could be leased out as a slave

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Speaker 2: to a local plantation owner doing the work you were

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Speaker 2: doing before you were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. Legally,

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Speaker 2: because of that loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe to the same plantation where you were previously held, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a lot of times. That's a great episode. People should

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Speaker 1: go back and listen to that creed that you know,

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Speaker 1: the black codes went away with the Civil Rights Act

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Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty six and the Fourteenth Amendment, which is

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Speaker 1: ratified in eighteen sixty eight, made equal rights and protections.

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Speaker 1: You know, you know the law everywhere basically, but you know,

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Speaker 1: there were still ways to make things happen, especially in

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Speaker 1: the South, and especially as it turns out shamefully, in Georgia.

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Speaker 1: Georgia kind of led the way in eighteen sixty eight.

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Speaker 1: That was a provisional governor named Thomas Ruger, and he

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Speaker 1: leased like this is when the kind of the big

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Speaker 1: sort of prisoner trade started, where they were leasing prisoners

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Speaker 1: to different states, kind of back and forth like hey,

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Speaker 1: you got to you've got a farm in your state

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Speaker 1: that needs like a crop tended to, Well, let me

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Speaker 1: lease you some prisoners from our state. And Georgia led

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Speaker 1: the way early on with one hundred black prisoners being

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Speaker 1: leased to William Fort of the Georgia and Alabama Railroad

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Speaker 1: for twenty five hundred bucks, so twenty five twenty five

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Speaker 1: dollars a prisoner. Right, But here's the thing, it's like, hey,

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Speaker 1: you're paying us to lead these prisoners to you, So

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Speaker 1: now not only are we getting money for that, but

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Speaker 1: now they're your responsibility. But your responsibility didn't really mean anything.

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Speaker 1: Like sixteen of those prisoners died in the first year.

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Speaker 1: And as you'll see, a story that you know is

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Speaker 1: going to be repeated over and over, that was you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest problems with all of this is

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Speaker 1: like basic medical care was not provided, and decent food

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Speaker 1: and certainly, like you know, somebody was sick, they would

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Speaker 1: just let them die basically, right.

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Speaker 2: And that still happens today, I mean not quite to

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Speaker 2: that dramatic a degree, but when people die in custody

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Speaker 2: in prison, there's not a lot the prison's held accountable for.

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Speaker 2: So that's that's essentially a long standing thing in the

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Speaker 2: United States. People like prisoners dying even though they haven't

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Speaker 2: been sentenced to death. So I think you said that

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Speaker 2: Georgia was making some pretty good money off of this.

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Speaker 2: Starting in the eighteen sixties, I read this started to

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Speaker 2: like other states were like, oh h that's a really

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Speaker 2: good idea. By eighteen ninety eight, convict leasing made up

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Speaker 2: seventy three percent of Alabama state revenue. Wow, yeah, which

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Speaker 2: is really saying something.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a staggering stat right.

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Speaker 2: And then when reconstruction and did the federal government just

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Speaker 2: basically said, hey, we really just want to be on

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Speaker 2: good terms with the Southern elite against so we're just

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Speaker 2: going to leave you on your own and withdrew from

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Speaker 2: the South. Black people were in really terrible positions, really

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Speaker 2: vulnerable positions, and at that time, prison labor stepped up.

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Speaker 2: Incarcerations stepped up, but prison labor also did it as well,

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Speaker 2: and it was nothing compared to what you would the

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Speaker 2: work you would be put to in the North. It

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Speaker 2: was essentially slavery all over again. But again this time

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Speaker 2: the Fed the Union wasn't going to come down and

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Speaker 2: push anybody around at the end of a bayonet, because

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Speaker 2: this was all agreed upon in the thirteenth Amendment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Up North, if you were working prison labor, you

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Speaker 1: might work an eight or nine hour day. In the

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Speaker 1: South that was routinely twelve to sixteen hours or just

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Speaker 1: however long they felt like you needed to work to

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Speaker 1: get whatever job done. There's anecdotal evidence at least like

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Speaker 1: during the cotton harvest, like before the cotton harvest, that

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Speaker 1: the plantation owners would call up the sheriff and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: why don't you make some more arrests. We need some guys.

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Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of these pretextual arrests were

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Speaker 1: happening where it was just like you know, they would

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Speaker 1: just cook something up and arrest you and you have

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Speaker 1: basically no rights and no representation. So it's just a

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Speaker 1: way to stock the industry or the farm or the

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Speaker 1: field with workers. Right.

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Speaker 2: So that was like plantation owners local plantations. Like you said,

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Speaker 2: you could have been a former slave who was arrested

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Speaker 2: for something as stupid as mischief and put back to

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Speaker 2: work on that same plantation essentially as a slave. They

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Speaker 2: would also, like corporations got in on this as well,

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Speaker 2: like you said the railroad. There was a company in

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Speaker 2: Alabama called the Sloss Sheffield Steel and Iron Company in

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Speaker 2: Jefferson County, Alabama. That's where their minds were. They had

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Speaker 2: a ten percent death rate from the least convict labor

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Speaker 2: that they got from the state. And there was a

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Speaker 2: sugar company, the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugarland, Tennessee, which

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Speaker 2: I guess is an appropriate place for.

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Speaker 1: It to be where else.

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Speaker 2: A lot of people died when Texas leased them every

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Speaker 2: single state prisoner it had in eighteen seventy eight to

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Speaker 2: help in the sugar fields. People were dying of things

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Speaker 2: like malaria. Like you said, they weren't They weren't given

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Speaker 2: any kind of medical care at all. They were fed

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Speaker 2: just the minimum amount to keep them alive and have

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Speaker 2: energy enough to work. And this is just par for

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Speaker 2: the course in the South.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I was bagging on Georgia because that's

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Speaker 1: our home state or my home home state. But Louisiana

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Speaker 1: has kind of from the beginning been one of certainly

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Speaker 1: one of the worst defenders. In the eighteen seventies and eighties,

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Speaker 1: they built the New Orleans specific railway with prison labor.

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Speaker 1: About one hundred and forty people died, and when you

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Speaker 1: look at some of the incarceration rates and especially incarceration

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Speaker 1: rates for black males in the United States today, Louisiana

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Speaker 1: leads the way and also with some of the worst

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Speaker 1: you know, working conditions for forced labor.

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Speaker 2: That's another thing too that you mentioned, like they built

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Speaker 2: the railroad or say they mined something that was turned

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Speaker 2: into a product that people use. They don't think about.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure they didn't think like, oh, this railroad is

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Speaker 2: really nice. The prisoners who built it really did a

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Speaker 2: good job. That actually still carries on today. Like a

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Speaker 2: lot of people don't realize that the stuff they're buying

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Speaker 2: from a big box retailer was made somewhere down the

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Speaker 2: line by a convict who was essentially leased out to

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Speaker 2: that company to make those products. It still goes on today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the chicken on your plate in your

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Speaker 1: house might have come from a chicken farm that had

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Speaker 1: and you know, these are people that are sort of

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Speaker 1: the work release programs we're going to talk about later,

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Speaker 1: where they leave the prison to go work for like

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Speaker 1: a private industry, and a lot of times it might

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Speaker 1: be like a chicken farm, or they may work at

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Speaker 1: a D and B call center or something like that. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the person you talked to on the phone might be

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Speaker 1: you know, incarcerated.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, which is quite surprising, But Chuck, don't call it

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Speaker 2: convict releasing, even though essentially it's so much the same

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Speaker 2: thing that basically just the people's clothes changed. That's what's

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Speaker 2: going on today. Still Supposedly, in the nineteen thirties, thanks

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Speaker 2: to the New Deal, America became enlightened enough that we

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Speaker 2: moved on past convict fleecing. We didn't do that kind

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Speaker 2: of stuff anymore, not at least a private industry. Prison

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Speaker 2: labor working for the prison were working for the state.

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Speaker 1: That was still aokay, yeah, I mean that was you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of fifty years before that is when wage workers

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Speaker 1: started complaining, Like prisoners obviously were complaining. Families might be complaining,

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Speaker 1: but they're not going to get very far. But once

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Speaker 1: wage workers got unions involved, they're like, hey, these you know,

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Speaker 1: we want these jobs. We want to you know, make

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Speaker 1: a little bit of money ourselves. And that's when it

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Speaker 1: finally started to change a little bit. And I think

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Speaker 1: eventually that led to that New Deal era law prohibiting

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Speaker 1: interstate trade and prison made products. But in nineteen thirty four,

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Speaker 1: the Federal Prison Industries was created. It's now known as Unicor,

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Speaker 1: and that is, you know, still a big program at

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Speaker 1: employees people that are incarcerated in our federal system, not

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Speaker 1: state prisons again, and obviously not private prisons are federal.

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Speaker 1: Are any federal prisons private? Or is that just state.

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know the answer that question.

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Speaker 1: I know we never did one on the private prison industry,

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Speaker 1: did we.

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Speaker 2: No, and we really should.

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Speaker 1: It's on the list.

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Speaker 2: They do this too, and they like the idea of

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Speaker 2: them leasing out convicts for before profit prison is just

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Speaker 2: mind boggling.

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Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. But yeah, and with Unicorn, they're making

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Speaker 1: things for the federal government like a lot of times,

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Speaker 1: you know, military fatigues or furniture stuff like that.

435
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,640
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, And if you are a government agency,

436
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:17,479
Speaker 2: you have to go to Unicorp first to see if

437
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 2: they have what you want, then you order for them then.

438
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:24,480
Speaker 2: And so even still today, like companies complain like these

439
00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 2: guys it's unfair competition. You know, they have like unpaid

440
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:31,240
Speaker 2: labor making these products so they can sell it for whatever.

441
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 2: And the Feds are basically like, we can't hear you.

442
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:36,440
Speaker 1: Should we take a break?

443
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 2: I think so?

444
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:39,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, since the Feds can't hear us, right,

445
00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: we might as well.

446
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:41,440
Speaker 2: We might as well.

447
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:43,840
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back with more on prison labor.

448
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 2: Okay, So when we left off, like convict leasing was

449
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 2: dead in the North thanks to labor unions. The South

450
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 2: has long been considered kind of anti worker, so labor

451
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 2: unions never really got a foothold here, so it took

452
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 2: a little longer for convict leasing to go away. But

453
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 2: again that doesn't mean that there was no such thing

454
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 2: as prison labor. They just kind of directed them to

455
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,879
Speaker 2: state owned stuff. A really good example of this is

456
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 2: a Parchment farm in Mississippi, part of Parchment State Penitentiary.

457
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 2: It's a twenty thousand acre farm where in the early

458
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:55,119
Speaker 2: nineteen teens, with a ninety percent black prison population, prisoners

459
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: were put to work on this farm. And one of

460
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 2: the reasons that got so famous very quickly, in addition

461
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 2: to just the scope of what was going on, was

462
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 2: they used a trustee system they spelled it trustee is

463
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,520
Speaker 2: in tr us t Y where some of the worst,

464
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 2: most violent convicted felons that were prisoners there were given

465
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 2: rifles and said, you guys, make sure this other eighty

466
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:22,920
Speaker 2: percent of your fellow prisoners do the work the way

467
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 2: we want them to.

468
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:28,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really interesting system, it really is.

469
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 2: It seems risky, you know.

470
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to look more. I'm going to look

471
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: more into that just for my own edification, but because

472
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 1: I'm curious that that dynamic is I don't know, it

473
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: seems like a would create a really dodgy dynamic.

474
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 2: It would, But it also reminded me of what is

475
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 2: the Quentin Tarantino Antebellum Slavery movie. So, yeah, Jenko, remember

476
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 2: he posed as a black slaver.

477
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: Uh huh.

478
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 2: That's kind of how I took it to kind of be.

479
00:25:56,440 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I think you're probably right. Chain gangs is

480
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:05,679
Speaker 1: something that you know, you've seen in like movies and stuff.

481
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: Like I was watching over other where Thal Again the

482
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: other night, and there was you know, chain gang scenes

483
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 1: in that. And that was another type of sort of

484
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 1: very public penal labor because they were put in place

485
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: to build roads in the South in the nineteen twenties.

486
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: You know, hard laboring all day again in the South,

487
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: out in the hot sun on that black top, tend

488
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: to fifteen hours a day. But they were chained together.

489
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: That's why they were called chain gangs. They were chained

490
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: to their ankle, They stayed chained when they walked to

491
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: the job, they stayed chained as they slept in their

492
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,160
Speaker 1: bunks that were close to one another. And again the

493
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: conditions were abysmal, terrible food. They were beaten, they were tortured.

494
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 1: I think there was this one investigation this was in

495
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: a chain gang, but this was Tucker Farm in Arkansas,

496
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: where they found that the staff stripped prisoners naked at

497
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: the prison hospital and put electric you know, shocks to

498
00:26:59,880 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: the testicles in penis. Women prisoners were also subjected to

499
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: work in the fields. Not as much as men. They were,

500
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: you know, the main labor force, but you know women

501
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: were put to work as well.

502
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 2: Have you ever read beloved Tony Morrison novel, I feel

503
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,360
Speaker 2: like I have to see Yes, you should read that too.

504
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 2: If you have, no, I haven't read that. It's very good,

505
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 2: but there's a it's it's mind bogglingly good actually, but

506
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 2: it's there's a few scenes about a chain gang and

507
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 2: just what it would have been like. One of the

508
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 2: main characters spent time on a chain gang, and I mean,

509
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 2: this is the way you said. It was brutal work.

510
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,439
Speaker 2: And they were building roads. Like a good example of

511
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 2: what chain gangs did. If you were building a road,

512
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 2: you were using like human labor to build roads. This

513
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 2: was before they had machinery, right, like road building machinery,

514
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 2: it just didn't exist, so you used human beings. To

515
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 2: do this stuff. If you ran into say in Georgia,

516
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 2: and you were building a state road, if you ran

517
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 2: into a chunk of stone mountain that was popping up

518
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 2: out of the ground where you wanted your road to go, well,

519
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 2: you would just set a bunch of convicts to work

520
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 2: on it with sledgehammers, and eventually they're gonna wear it

521
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:11,919
Speaker 2: down to nothing if you give them long enough and

522
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 2: work them hard enough. That's what people did on chain gangs.

523
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 2: That's just what life was like. And again, you were

524
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:20,760
Speaker 2: working outside, so you weren't protected in any way, shape

525
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,919
Speaker 2: or form. You were fed meagerly, like you were working

526
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,919
Speaker 2: as hard as anyone's ever worked in their life, with

527
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 2: like the minimum amount of nutrition, the minimum amount of rest.

528
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 2: And if you put all that together, especially if you

529
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 2: think about it accumulating, it's a brutal, brutal form of

530
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 2: prison labor.

531
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, and it was a racist framework.

532
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,360
Speaker 1: I know, we're talking a lot about the racism involved.

533
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: There were white labor camps and stuff like that of

534
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: course too. You know, sometimes they look like Paul Newman even. Yeah,

535
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:00,120
Speaker 1: but it was very much a racist framework wherein the

536
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 1: threat of violence, the threat of torture they felt was

537
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 1: like a necessary component to you know, quote unquote keeping

538
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: guys in line.

539
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the other things, too, is there was

540
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 2: a certain amount of usefulness to letting these chain gangs

541
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 2: get these horrible reputations, because the reach of these things

542
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:24,080
Speaker 2: reached out beyond the inside of prisons into the outside world.

543
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 2: Because if you were black and you were looking for

544
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 2: a job, and you could be arrested for not having

545
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 2: a job and put onto a chain gang, and you

546
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 2: knew it, you would accept all sorts of terrible working

547
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 2: conditions in low pay because at least that was better

548
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 2: than being put on a chain gang, which if you

549
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 2: didn't accept this job and got caught without a job,

550
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 2: you would end up on a chain gang anyway. That's

551
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 2: that was another really kind of insidious effect that they had.

552
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, it's not like this kind of

553
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: thing was being you know, there were no expos's being

554
00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: written in newspapers about chain gangs. You might drive by one,

555
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: and that's how you knew they existed. But little by

556
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: little what went on with these chain gangs started to

557
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: kind of leak out, especially all over the South. There

558
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: are a couple of famous examples In nineteen thirty two,

559
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: there was a white Northern veteran who is a convict,

560
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: obviously named Robert Burns. He published a book called I

561
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: Am a Fugitive from a Georgia chain Gang exclamation point

562
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: That's why I read it that way. That kind of

563
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: got the word out a little bit. There was a

564
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: movie adaptation.

565
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 2: Have you seen that?

566
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, have you?

567
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 2: Yeah?

568
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: Really?

569
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really yeah. For some reason, I don't know

570
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 2: where you me found out about it, but she's one

571
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 2: of her well liked movies. I want to say it's

572
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,000
Speaker 2: one of her favorite. But she showed it to me

573
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 2: and it is.

574
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: What year was that the movie?

575
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're asking when I saw it? Nineteen thirty two,

576
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 2: I believe, or nineteen thirty five, something like that.

577
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: I don't watch a lot of movies from that era.

578
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 2: But Chuck, you should this one. It has eight point

579
00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 2: two on IMDb and that's a pretty high rating. It's

580
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 2: really good. It's a good movie. Well.

581
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty seven, some more news leaked out when

582
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: a black civil rights activist name Bayard Rustin. And I

583
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: know we've talked about Baird Rusting before. He was on

584
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: a chain gang in North Carolina after being arrested for

585
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: civil disobedience, and a series of articles that he wrote

586
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: came out in The New York Post.

587
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 2: Did you read those? Huh?

588
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: I read some of I read, like, you know, snippets

589
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 1: from it, just to sort of get an idea.

590
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 2: Oh, I was just kidding.

591
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: I don't know. I looked into some of it, but

592
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: I didn't like sit around and read him.

593
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah, No, I was trying to get you. Yeah,

594
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 2: I gotcha.

595
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: But the fifties and sixties, like because of the New

596
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: York Post and because of that movie that Umi Loves

597
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: came out, fifties and sixties is kind of when chain

598
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: gangs basically went away. Although you know, if you lived

599
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,719
Speaker 1: in Maricopa County, Arizona in the nineties, you know they

600
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: tried pretty hard. What was that guy's name, the sheriff there,

601
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: Joe Arpaio. Yeah, I'm not sure he pronounced it, but

602
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: he made big news a lot, and he was one

603
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: of the guys trying to push for the reinstatement of

604
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: the chain gangs.

605
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 2: Did not happen though, because again America lost its taste

606
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 2: for chain gangs in the first half of the twentieth century,

607
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 2: and the idea of bringing them back was not something

608
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 2: that you would want to do. Even beyond that, not

609
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 2: bringing back the chain gangs. Prison labor got to be

610
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 2: more and more or I should say less and less brutal.

611
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 2: How about that, because the other way I could have

612
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 2: put it is more and more or less brutal, and

613
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 2: that just doesn't make sense.

614
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: Well, we took a late break, so it wasn't too

615
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: long ago, but I feel like we should go ahead

616
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: and get our second one under our belt. Okay, all right,

617
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: we'll be right back and talk about the modern era

618
00:32:48,240 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 1: of mass incarceration. All Right, we've covered mass incarceration quite

619
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: a bit, certainly in our Prisons episode. But here's a

620
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: stat for you. Over a thirty six year period from

621
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy to two thousand and eight, the population of

622
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: the United States rose by about fifty percent and the

623
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: population of incarcerated prisoners rose by seven hundred percent. So

624
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 1: we entered the mass incarceration era big time over about

625
00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: a thirty six year period, thanks to well, thanks to

626
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: a lot, but namely thanks to Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

627
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nixon's war on drugs, Reagan tough on crime thing

628
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 2: Clinton trying to wrestle the tough on crime. I guess

629
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 2: Moniker away from the GOP, and I guess it was

630
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 2: part of the Democrats platform every year until two thousand

631
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:19,359
Speaker 2: and eight and when it was quietly removed and not coincidentally,

632
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight is the year that the peak

633
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 2: incarceration happened.

634
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: Like you said, yeah, now we're about that went from

635
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 1: one point six to two thousand and eight to about

636
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 1: one point three million incarcerated individuals in the United States.

637
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, because America has become softer and.

638
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: Gentler, About six hundred of every one hundred thousand people

639
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: in the US are incarcerated. That is a higher rate

640
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: than any other country in the world except Cuba, Rwanda,

641
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,439
Speaker 1: and El Salvador and Louisiana once again leads the way

642
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: at a one thousand per one hundred thousand, and the

643
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: rate of for Black Americans is nine hundred per one

644
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 1: hundred thousand.

645
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 2: Can I talk about Al Salvador first second, because I

646
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:02,240
Speaker 2: looked into their incredibly high incarceration rates.

647
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: Sure do they do prison labor?

648
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 2: I didn't check that out, but I got this other

649
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 2: stuff about it? How about that?

650
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: Sure?

651
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 2: So they have essentially established an authoritarian crackdown on gangs,

652
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 2: and in twenty fifteen, their murder rate was one hundred

653
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:24,879
Speaker 2: and three people per hundred thousand population, which means every

654
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 2: year more than one percent of their population was murdered.

655
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 2: So they cracked down on gangs and just started throwing

656
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:37,359
Speaker 2: everybody in jail, and between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty two,

657
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 2: their murder rate went from one hundred and three per

658
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 2: hundred thousand to seven point eight per one hundred thousand,

659
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 2: which you're like, okay, that's actually I mean, authoritarian crackdowns

660
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 2: on gangs and prisons is not very tasteful, but at

661
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 2: least they got results. Here in the United States, we

662
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 2: don't have the same excuse for that level of rise

663
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:02,400
Speaker 2: in incarceration. Our hamas rate in nineteen fifty five was

664
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:08,280
Speaker 2: four point five. In twenty twenty four it was like five.

665
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:12,240
Speaker 2: It's remained relatively flat, give or take a few points

666
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,400
Speaker 2: like here or there, over the years. So there's no

667
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:19,240
Speaker 2: reason why our prison population should have increased seven hundred percent.

668
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 2: It just there's no reason for it. Yeah, unless you

669
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 2: expand crimes, especially non violent crimes like drug possession and

670
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 2: really throw the book at people, which is what happened

671
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 2: during that time.

672
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: Right exactly. As far as prison labor goes, most of

673
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: the people in state and federal prison these days do

674
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: some kind of prison labor. I think out of the

675
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: one point three million ish, it's about eight hundred thousand

676
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: as of a few years ago. The ones who don't

677
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: are probably either too old or have some sort of

678
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: disability or health problem that won't allow them to. About

679
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 1: eighty percent of those workers are working for the prison,

680
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: so you know, when you were in the cafeteria, you

681
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:03,959
Speaker 1: work in the laundry or something like that. That's about

682
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 1: eighty percent of it, and most of the rest are

683
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:10,359
Speaker 1: kind of what we were talking about earlier, government run operations.

684
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: Maybe you do laundry for a public hospital, maybe work

685
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,400
Speaker 1: in that DMB call center. About two percent of total

686
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 1: prison workers in the federal prison system work for unicorse still,

687
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: And I was curious about the whole license plate thing,

688
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: you know that, oh yeah, sort of trope, But most

689
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: of that doesn't happen at prisons anymore because it's just

690
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: cheaper to have, you know, robot machinery do that kind

691
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: of thing. But it's still a thing in some states.

692
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:41,919
Speaker 1: And I know, Utah is one of them. It's called

693
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 1: the UCI operation, and they call themselves plate busters and

694
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: they make them all, even the specialty like ski Utah

695
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,359
Speaker 1: plates and the Olympic plates and stuff like that. They're

696
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: making them all.

697
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 2: Still, I saw that there's like a long standing kind

698
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 2: of jokey observation that prisoners in New Hampshire make their

699
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 2: license plate and on the license plate it says live

700
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 2: free or die, right, And that's actually true and they

701
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 2: still do today at the state prison and conquered the

702
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 2: prisoners in New Hampshire make those license plates.

703
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine making those and making ski Utah plates

704
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: or I don't know, adds a little salt to them

705
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:20,400
Speaker 1: to the situation.

706
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 2: You know, for sure. I like that.

707
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: That's saying a little salt to the situation. Well, I

708
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: didn't want to say wound. That's no. One likes that word.

709
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,440
Speaker 2: No, it's not a very pleasant word. Uh.

710
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: Some of these prisoners do dangerous work too, though. You

711
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,280
Speaker 1: know it's not all just like sort of hourly easy stuff.

712
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 2: No. No, I mean like again, you're you're engaged in

713
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 2: forced unpaid labor. So you go where they tell you

714
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 2: to go. I know in California, you might end up

715
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,280
Speaker 2: fighting wildfires, and this is one of the highest paying jobs,

716
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:53,720
Speaker 2: as we'll see. If you get two to five dollars

717
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 2: a day plus one dollar an hour when you're actively

718
00:38:56,719 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 2: fighting wildfires in California, that's something they can make you

719
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 2: do if you're a prisoner.

720
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, saving the saving the houses at the wealthy. Yeah,

721
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:09,919
Speaker 1: but not always wealthy to be fair.

722
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, but there are a lot of wealthy people

723
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 2: in California to be sure.

724
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only firefighting, disaster recovery sometimes lead paint removal.

725
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: I think there's around five percent of the incarcerated workforce,

726
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: which is about forty thousand people work for private industry still, right,

727
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 1: and that a lot of times is like the work

728
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 1: camp that I was talking about. So they they may

729
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: work at a food fast food restaurant, or may be

730
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: like a work on the custodial staff at a well

731
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: known hotel chain.

732
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of these bigger businesses have policies

733
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 2: where they don't use least convict labor like rice, but

734
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,319
Speaker 2: they also sometimes can't do a thing about it, like

735
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 2: if their supplier part of the supply chain is that,

736
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 2: like companies don't know who's painting the patio furniture that

737
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 2: they're selling like they just I don't know, and that

738
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 2: the company painting the furniture might be using least convict labor,

739
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:09,440
Speaker 2: or they their franchisees can use least convict labor, and

740
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 2: the corporate office can't do anything about it because they

741
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:15,879
Speaker 2: don't own those stores. So it still does happen. Even

742
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 2: though large corporations in the US tend to have policies

743
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,879
Speaker 2: against that, and in fact have policies that they put

744
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 2: in place two higher felons, like preferential hiring of felons.

745
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 2: Still it washes out to where there's plenty of least

746
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 2: convict labor today in private businesses. Yeah.

747
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: And you know, we've talked about money a little bit

748
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: here and there, like you know, no pay, and you know,

749
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: sometimes there is pay, sometimes there isn't. There's no federal

750
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: law that says that someone has to be paid for

751
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,760
Speaker 1: work if they're a prisoner. Right on the state level.

752
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: It depends on the state, but you know, a lot

753
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: of them pay nothing at all. I think the average

754
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: pay for a prisoner in the US is fifty two

755
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:00,839
Speaker 1: cents an hour, and that was like three years ago.

756
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 1: So I doubt if it's gone up that much, who knows,

757
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:06,640
Speaker 1: maybe it's gone down. Almost always under a dollar an hour.

758
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: You may get like minimum wage if you work one

759
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,840
Speaker 1: of the really hazardous jobs in a pretty forward thinking state.

760
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:18,399
Speaker 1: But then the prison can turn around and say, yeah,

761
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: but we're gonna take most of that paycheck to cover

762
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: like room and board, or maybe to provide restitution to

763
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: your victims if it was a financial thing exactly.

764
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 2: So, like even if you're off making federal minimum wage

765
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:34,319
Speaker 2: at KFC, as you know as a prisoner, as part

766
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:39,279
Speaker 2: of your prison labor, you're ending up with pennies on

767
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 2: the dollar per hour after they deduct all that stuff

768
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 2: from you. So that's why that average for all prison

769
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 2: workers was fifty two cents an hour because they deduct

770
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 2: so many things. That's why it's essentially convict leasing. That

771
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 2: person goes out works, they get paid, and the prison says,

772
00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 2: we're taking this x amount of your pay our own use.

773
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: That has to go into the private prison like financial

774
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: success rate.

775
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 2: Right precisely that private prisons are able to do that,

776
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 2: they probably deduct way more. But the other problem with

777
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,400
Speaker 2: it too is that they're at the same time getting

778
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,920
Speaker 2: tax breaks for leasing out their contracts to use in

779
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:25,360
Speaker 2: the outside world. So they're getting like fees and tax breaks.

780
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 2: It's quite a racket from what I can tell.

781
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, while the basic needs a lot of times that

782
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: these prisoners aren't even being met. Still some pretty bad

783
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 1: conditions as far as medical treatment goes and food. I

784
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: think Olivia helped us with this. She did a great job.

785
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 1: But she found one woman named Carla Simmons who is

786
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:47,839
Speaker 1: an incarcerated in a woman's prison, and she wrote last year,

787
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: and this is right here in Georgia, that prisoners aren't paid.

788
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 1: And she said the food is so bad that they

789
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: people try to get work assignments where they can dig

790
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:00,840
Speaker 1: through the trash to eat the guards meals like the

791
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: portions that they threw away, good God in twenty twenty four.

792
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the other things too is that I

793
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 2: mean people point to this and say, like, Okay, yes,

794
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 2: we agree that prison labor is in and of itself

795
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 2: a good thing. Like Thomas Moore was right, like there

796
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 2: is redemption in labor. So we're not saying do away

797
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 2: with it, but it needs a lot of reforms. These

798
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 2: are the people who are like, well, reform minded about

799
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 2: the whole thing. There's Basically, no one saying we should

800
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 2: do away with prison labor, but they say it should

801
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 2: be the kind of labor that's going to help them

802
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 2: get jobs on the outside, where they learn valuable skills.

803
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,240
Speaker 2: They should be paid fairly federal minimum wage at least

804
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:46,240
Speaker 2: for the labor that they're doing, and they should also

805
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 2: get protections that any worker gets in the United States.

806
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 2: This to me is mind blowing. We have workers protections

807
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 2: out the yin Yang. Here in the US, we have OSHA,

808
00:43:57,239 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 2: we have the Fair Labor Standards Act. All of these

809
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 2: are meant to protect workers physically from injury and also

810
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 2: protect them from being screwed over by their employers. And

811
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 2: court after court after court has ruled that prison laborers

812
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 2: do not count for these protections. They're not classified as

813
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 2: employees because, as I saw it put, the prison owns

814
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 2: the prisoner's labor. The laborer doesn't own their own labor,

815
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 2: So how can an employee be in that situation? They can't.

816
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 2: Therefore they don't get any of these protections.

817
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there was a lawsuit brought in Alabama

818
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four that was dismissed because they basically

819
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:39,360
Speaker 1: were like, oh, this isn't forced labor. These are mandatory chores.

820
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: So it's just like depends on what you want to

821
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 1: call it. I guess. In twenty twenty one, there's an

822
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 1: international anti slavery nonprofit called walk Free in Australia who

823
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 1: produces what's called the Global Slavery Index. And the United

824
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: States is one of seventeen countries that use stadium posed

825
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 1: force labor, along with China and Russia and some other places.

826
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:07,480
Speaker 1: And the United States is one of only six UN

827
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: member states that hasn't ratified the Forced Labor Convention of

828
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, which we considered. The Senate considered that nineteen

829
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 1: ninety one, like hey, maybe we should sign on to

830
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: this thing, and they said no, it really really conflicts

831
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:25,160
Speaker 1: with subcontracting these prisoners out to private companies. So like,

832
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 1: let's not foul that.

833
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll just we'll walk past that one.

834
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

835
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 2: And like I think you mentioned Europe in the UN,

836
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 2: there's in Europe essentially the way that they treat prison labors.

837
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 2: What I was saying that in the US prison labor

838
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 2: reformed people are calling for and you mentioned Alabama in

839
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 2: that lawsuit about mandatory chores not prison labor. The reason

840
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 2: that lawsuit even came up is because Alabama, surprisingly is

841
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 2: one of seven states that in the last few years

842
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 2: has passed in their state constitution a ban on prison labor.

843
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to You can't force prisoners to work.

844
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,360
Speaker 2: They can. You can use prison labor, but you have

845
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:13,919
Speaker 2: to pay them, and you can't coerce them with punishments.

846
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,720
Speaker 2: Some of the punishments that prisoners face if they refuse

847
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 2: to work, they might be transferred to a higher security prison,

848
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 2: which is not what you want to happen to you.

849
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:26,840
Speaker 2: Their family visits may get cut. There's all sorts of

850
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 2: punishments that can be meted out legally except in these

851
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 2: states under their constitution. But like you said, that lawsuit

852
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 2: where they were like, these aren't This isn't involuntary servitude.

853
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 2: It's mandatory chores. Yeah, they don't have any teeth right now.

854
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:47,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tennessee was in there too, sort of surprising. In Nebraska,

855
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: here's finally some numbers for you. And I love it

856
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 1: when they kind of put numbers like this, which is like, hey,

857
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 1: if you actually spent this in the long run, it

858
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 1: would be better for everybody. I love those stats, and

859
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 1: this is one of those incarcerated workers saves prison. Saves

860
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: prison is about fifteen billion dollars a year and produces

861
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: another two billion dollars in goods and services. And so

862
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:15,840
Speaker 1: the Edgeworth Economics Group did a study a cost benefit

863
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: analysis last year and found that, hey, if they actually

864
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: use that money to pay incarcerated workers like an okay wage,

865
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: like maybe even just minimum wage, it would reduce a

866
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 1: burden on families to send money, which they don't have

867
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 1: a lot of money to begin with. Maybe they could

868
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: pay child support from prison and improve their earnings like

869
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 1: once they get out. And so they did the math

870
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: and they found out in the end, every dollar spent

871
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: on prisoners' wages would add up to a society wide

872
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 1: return of two dollars and forty cents to three dollars

873
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: and sixteen cents.

874
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 2: Man, that's pretty pretty good, ROI just for paying prisoners.

875
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 2: I know. I can't think of any better way to

876
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 2: end this one, can you?

877
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?

878
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:04,720
Speaker 2: I thought I heard you drop from Mike.

879
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:06,759
Speaker 1: Even No, No, it's still up.

880
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since Chuck said is Mike's still good to go,

881
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:10,879
Speaker 2: I guess it's time for listener mail.

882
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:14,839
Speaker 1: It's hard to drop the Mike in a studio because

883
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: you got to unscrew it. I've got like a windscreen.

884
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,240
Speaker 1: Two things have to get unplugged, and by that time

885
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:22,319
Speaker 1: everyone's left the room.

886
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 2: You know they gave you a Wins screen. I didn't

887
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 2: get a Wins screen.

888
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: I bought my own.

889
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:27,800
Speaker 2: I brought this from home.

890
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 1: So who is this from? This is from Kimberly. Hey, guys,

891
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: thanks for keeping me company on long work trips, during chores,

892
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: and throughout my day to day life. I feel like

893
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:39,360
Speaker 1: I'm listening to old friends. Like a lot of people

894
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:41,720
Speaker 1: have said before, I appreciate how my worldview is challenged

895
00:48:42,080 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 1: and enlightened when I listened to the show. My weekly

896
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 1: trivia team also appreciates how I can answer some of

897
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: the most random questions thanks to the random facts, and

898
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:56,399
Speaker 1: Kimberly sent in a great recommendation how crowds work. I'd

899
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: love to know more about how humans move through crowds.

900
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:00,120
Speaker 1: How do we manage to avoid bumping into each each

901
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 1: other at airport, stadiums and other crowded places. How do

902
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:05,759
Speaker 1: we avoid crowd crushes? I feel like we touched on

903
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 1: that now we have.

904
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 2: On our Black Friday episode. In a couple I guess

905
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 2: we talked about crowd crushes.

906
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think maybe just crowds would be a pretty

907
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:14,399
Speaker 1: good idea.

908
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, really we could work in standing in line. Where

909
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 2: that came from.

910
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 1: Is that is that? Do people do that? I don't

911
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 1: stand in lines.

912
00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 2: A lot of people do surprisingly and wait for their turn,

913
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:29,280
Speaker 2: I think is what they call it their turn.

914
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:32,799
Speaker 1: I'm a line jumper, you know. People love those guys.

915
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, All the key is to just not pay

916
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,799
Speaker 2: attention to anyone behind you, pretend like they're not there.

917
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: I had a guy at the airport recently, and you know,

918
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: boarding an airplane in the United States is just one

919
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: of the worst things that can happen, especially after I've

920
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:48,640
Speaker 1: seen how they do it in Australia, which is to

921
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: say sybil and friendly. And this guy was standing behind us,

922
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 1: Me and Emily and Ruby like in the line really

923
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:58,320
Speaker 1: to get like to get on not the crowd that

924
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,560
Speaker 1: huh goes before they now, and he just like all

925
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: of a sudden just walked right around us and jumped

926
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: in front or tried to and I like sort of

927
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: just bodied up a little bit. Yeah, and you want

928
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: to see and in sense human is I don't know

929
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 1: if it's all ten year olds, but my daughter when

930
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: someone tries to jump a line, she was furious. Did

931
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: you see that guy try to break in line? It

932
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:25,720
Speaker 1: was like the almost no worse offense at that age.

933
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:27,920
Speaker 2: Was he in your side? Did he hear say that?

934
00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: Wow? I don't think so, but I repeated it loudly,

935
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:33,319
Speaker 1: so Emily could hear. Did you hear what Ruby just said?

936
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 1: She's calling out this guy behind us?

937
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 2: Man, why would you do that?

938
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's just I don't know.

939
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 2: I don't know, Josh. I mean, I get the drive

940
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 2: to get on board as fast as possible, to get

941
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: some overhead space, so they don't check your carry on

942
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 2: bag because it's all you have, and you don't want

943
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 2: to stand around waiting for it because you got to

944
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 2: get out of the airport as soon as possible. But

945
00:50:56,480 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 2: you still don't walk around people that you're in my mind.

946
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:02,560
Speaker 1: I know, And we were in that sort of you know,

947
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: whether they do zones now, I think we were zone

948
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 1: one or two, so it wasn't like we were at

949
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: the back of the plane and it was going to

950
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: be dog eat dog for that space.

951
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe he just could not wait to get some pretzels.

952
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, the mustard anyways, Sorry rant over?

953
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 2: Was that the end of Kimberly's email too? Yeah, great idea, Kimberly.

954
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 2: I think we will do one on crowds eventually and

955
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 2: we will try like heck to remember to credit you

956
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 2: with the idea because it was one hundred percent yours.

957
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:31,719
Speaker 1: That's right.

958
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Kimberly and give us

959
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 2: a great idea, we love that kind of thing, you

960
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 2: can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.

961
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

962
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

963
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,800
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

964
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:00,120
Speaker 2: M