911 Is Not a Joke

Josh and Chuck delve into the world of 911 in today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do do do do. Attention Pacific Northwest, both the Canadian
side and the American side. Stuff you Should Know is
coming to you live. That's right. And this combined with
Seattle in San Francisco, which we have just completed, will
be our I would say, our only true West Coast
dates this year. So true. So if you are anywhere

(00:21):
near Portland or Vancouver, then come on out and see us. Yep.
So we're going to be in Vancouver at the Chain
Center on Sunday, March twenty nine, and then the next
night we're going to go on down to Portland, and
this time we're going to be at the Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall, which is a beautiful room, will be there
for the first time, and that's going to be on

(00:41):
Monday March. That's right. We have stepped it up in
viny side. So don't make fools of us, please, right,
So you can go get tickets and all the info
you need at s y s K live dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

(01:07):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
there's guest producer Josh t rocking it out and this
is stuff you should know. Take to a dish. Yeah,
one of the rare second takes. We lost a whole
fourteen seconds of try number one. Right. It wasn't any

(01:29):
good anyway, that's what it was. Josh turned into like
Elvis Custel was like, no, no, stop, stop, I don't
look at that reference SNL call back. Yeah it was nice.
So um, as you can tell, Chuck, I'm pretty excited
about this episode, which is kind of surprising because talking
about nine one one seems like it might be the

(01:49):
most boring thing we could talk about. You think, untrue
what with all the people dying and well cats stuck
in trees? Sure, what else? That should name everything you
shouldn't call nine one one four? Let's see neighbors playing
his music too loud? That one exactly. Uh Yeah, there's
a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call nine one one four,

(02:12):
which we'll talk about. But um one thing, like I
am familiar with nine one one. I remember growing up
as a child in the eighties and I was like,
I remember hearing about this new system that was coming
around when I was growing up in Toledo and I
was like, that doesn't make any sense because nine one one,
it turns out, has been around at least since nineteen
sixty eight in the US. It's been around way longer

(02:35):
than parts in UK. True, but I like to think
of Toledo is kind of a happening spot. Toledo didn't
get a fully functional nine one one system until nineteen nine.
Did you look it up? Yeah? So you you guys
resorted to the previous method, which was run down the
street screaming for neighbors, just swinging a cat by tail. Yeah,

(02:59):
that was siren. Yeah. I seem to remember. I don't
know exactly when we got it, but I think I
remember it happening like because if I if I remember correctly,
when I was a kid, we had one of those
little cards next to the kitchen phone that had police
fire and whatever else. So that had to have been
pre nine one one or else we wouldn't have had
that dumb thing, right, Yeah, that would just confuse the children.

(03:22):
Call these numbers first, right, and if they don't answer,
then did the super easy thing that will rout it
to the correct person child. Your parents have just taken
out a substantial life insurance policy on you. Yeah, for
that's a long that's a long game, right, there is
so chuck as new as nine one one as even
though it seems old, right, especially for younger listeners, I

(03:45):
would guess that it seems pretty They probably think it's
been around since you know, of course some buggy days. Yeah,
since rotary phone days. Yeah right. So um, as as
as old as it is or as new as it is,
it's gotten pretty uh robust, very robust. Yeah, every year.
These are some stats that are Buddy Dave Russe helped

(04:07):
us compile two hundred forty million calls in the US.
That is six hundred and fifty thousand calls a day. Yeah,
that's like nine hundred thousand calls a minute. No, sure,
I just did that back of the m uh. And
another important thing here is that of calls these days

(04:30):
are from your wireless phone. That's a big deal, it is,
which we'll get to. But um, that changed things. Yeah.
The big spoiler is is that the nine one one
system that we currently currently use in the United States
is hopelessly antiquated, and they're working on improving it. And
nothing that we should say about how antiquated is should

(04:50):
keep you from calling nine one one is still generally works,
but it's having troubler. It's had trouble traditionally keeping pace
with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications. Yeah, has has
gone on in the last couple of decades. Yeah, because
telecom is always trying to move forward and they don't
think like, but maybe we should slid the pace for

(05:10):
nine one one, right, exactly know and plus I mean
nine one one was we'll see those systems are built
alongside the other system, so when the other system leads forward,
they have to go through and rebuild this this system
that's just for nine one one, because you can't get
rid of an old system because people, well we'll get
to that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it.
But uh, we were laughing earlier about things that you

(05:34):
should and should not call for. Um, some of these
are debatable, I think, Oh yeah, I think so, says
who says me, We'll get to the last one really
is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if if
there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire,
where there's smoke, there's fire, medical emergency and you can't

(05:54):
you know, obviously getting an ambulance or get in a
get in your car and run some one of the
emergency room if you can. If it's quicker and you
can do so safely, it's quicker and cheaper cost the
gas maybe a couple of tolls, who knows, compared to
like an ambulance ride. No, that's a that's a good point.
But I mean imagine if your home just loaded and
your kid gets hurt, you should probably call nine one one,

(06:18):
Call nine one Uh. Car accidents, of course, um, if
they are major enough and like have injuries, yeah, called
call nine one one. You should be able to tell,
like if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck,
you don't have to call nine one one. You could
call Here's the other thing. If we're saying don't call
nine on one, that doesn't mean like don't alert anybody.
But there are there's a your police have their own

(06:40):
phone number, Your local police have their own phone number.
Look it up and call that the non emergency number, right. Uh.
And then obviously the last category is some sort of
crime being committed, violence being committed, call nine one one. Yeah.
So that's like no one's going to argue with that,
I think. So Okay, there are plenty of instances where

(07:02):
you shouldn't call nine one one, and yet people reliably
call nine one one for stuff like this, And I
think that's because it's been drilled into everyone's head. It's
kind of a double edged sword. You can't drill that
into everyone's head. One one one, one one one. All
you gotta do is call nine one one and then
not expect to get some cats stuck in the tree calls.
You keep going back to that, Well, we actually had

(07:23):
did that when I was a kid. Did you call
nine one one for that? Well, you know the funny story.
It's not very funny, my dad, but we had a
cat stuck in a tree. My dad went up and
he got stuck in the tree and he just climbed
up too high. Yeah, and you got freaked out, I
think so. I mean, I was a kid, so you
know they weren't saying your father is very afraid and

(07:44):
he's screwed up. I was just a kid kind of like, well,
now dad's up there, and now there's fireman here helping
my dad out of a tree. Cats and Dad's get
stuck in tree. Yeah, And looking back, I think that's
totally probably what happened. He got way up there. It
was freaked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. I have
to ask him about that one day. Um. Okay, so
your dad's stuck in a tree, I would say, that's

(08:06):
call nine one on cats stuck in a tree. Now,
unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call nine one one
for that. Um. If you have a question about the
speeding ticket you got the other day, that's not a
call that you would place through nine on one Again,
you can just call there's even a number on the
back of the ticket. Dumb. Okay, hey, bringing that back

(08:28):
just for that second. Okay, what else? Oh, of course,
anything dealing with your animals unless well, I'm not gonna
even gonna say that. I was gonna say, if there's
an animal attacking someone, yeah, you would call tell nine
one one for that. Come out and shoot this dog.
Basically it could be rabid. It's terrible call. Heckt hat out? Uh.

(08:49):
But otherwise, if the cat in the tree, lost, animals, injured, animals,
noisy neighbors, I love that day. Puts power outage in
here and in parentheses, call your power company, right, It's
that last one I think is a little it kind
of opens a can of worms, and that is the
suspicious person thing, because uh, you know, they they say

(09:14):
to call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person.
I think the distinction is uh and what we see
and we'll get into this later racial biases. You know,
people in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're
black and walking down my street, which happens, that is

(09:35):
not a suspicious person um even I mean, if there's
nothing going on, I know, people try to justify it.
But then local police say, you know, hey, always call
us if you think something might be going on. And
that's where it gets dodgy, because that comes down to
a human beings perception. So it can be very tilted.

(09:56):
As Dave put it. He put it a couple of
ways I thought were pretty smart. He said, people aren't suspicious.
Behavior is suspicious. Yeah, and they say specifically to call
nine one for suspicious activities. But again, these are people,
so it's just such a weird fine line you're walking there.
The other little litmus tests that I've seen is stop

(10:17):
just for a second, because this is suspicious behavior. You
see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody
that's that's beyond suspicious. That's like the act. That's the
act um, that's a crime being committed. So you have
a second when you see a suspicious person to stop
and think, like what I what I call nine on one?
If this person were white, or if you're a black
person doing this, say what I called nim one with

(10:39):
this person were black, And if the answers no, then
maybe you shouldn't call. Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously. Yeah,
it's just interesting. On these Facebook neighborhood pages, it's kind
of evenly divided between people saying, uh, don't call nine
one one for this, This is just a guy going
door to door perhaps other people saying, no, you know what,

(10:59):
it's it's nine or ten o'clock at night and someone's
knocking on your door in our neighborhood. Semious, maybe you
should call the cops and let them work it out.
And for the cops, they say, you know, call us.
That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to
your home, but we might work you through the situation
and it's all going to be fine. Yes, But this

(11:20):
is the only one where I thought was a little
bit like you shouldn't just say, like, don't call nine
one one when you see a suspicious person. No, you
certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time that, I
think one of the big hesitations for calling nine one
one these days is like the either the increase or
the increase in reporting of people innocent people who had

(11:42):
nine one one called on him being killed by the cops.
That and that death would not have happened. Their death
wouldn't have happened had a person been suspicious of them
and called nine one one. And the fact, you know,
when when news of something like that gets out, it
will make you second guess that kind of thing, like
you're for sure you're It makes you realize you're bringing

(12:06):
like people who are armed and jumpy out to a
situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever. And
when you look at it from that respect, it can
make you second guess the whole thing. Yeah, And things
can look it can look like potential malfeasance that's not
you know, like a lot of people, you see a
lot of people saying, well, I think someone's chasing my house, um,

(12:29):
because a car pulled it into my driveway and sat
there for two minutes. They asked me if I wanted
to know more about syrac or someone stopped and was
taking pictures of my house, Like, you never know, somebody
might be taking picture of the oak tree that they're
trying to learn about, or or just looking up something
on their phone and standing in the direction of your house.

(12:49):
Nine times out of ten they're trying to figure out
at the oak tree near your house. I'm trying to
give people the benefit of the doubt, you know. No,
I'm with you anyway. It's just that's where it gets
a little dodgy and what we'll have statistics later on
about actual racial bias, because it's real. Okay, moving on,

(13:12):
you want to take a little break after that. It
seems like a good spot. I think I do. Okay, well, everybody,
we're taking a rare Josh break and we'll be right back. Okay,

(13:37):
we're back. That Josh break was invigorating. I wasn't doing anything.
I was just taking a picture of oak tree. We'd
get off my back. What kind of oak is that, sir?
There's only one kind of oak. I know, there's a
bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland's like, no, that's
not true. Uh, while we're mentioning calling one though, um,

(14:00):
you can get arrested. It is a crime to prank
call nine one one. Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Or to swat. It's called swatting. That's a I think
that deserves its own podcast. Maybe because there was some
some guy got killed right from a swatting incident. Yeah,
I think it's happened more than once. Yeah, that's serious stuff.
If you don't know it's swatting as well, just give
you the four one one on this abuse of nine

(14:23):
one one man, I love myself something great. Um. So,
swatting is where you are a hacker, right, and you
can disguise the number that you're coming you're calling from, uh,
to make it look like you're calling from a house
that you want the cops to go to, and you
basically say like, I'm in this house and I'm holding

(14:45):
hostages and what are you going to do about it?
Johnny law? And the law comes out and usually swat
that I shouldn't say. Usually in some cases the swat
team will actually enter this house where people who have
no idea what's going on are and maybe the the
people who have been swatted, you know, said something mean
to the to the guy who you know, called the

(15:06):
swat team out on them. But it's basically it's not
like saying, like there's a I think there's a hostage
situation in this house. It's I'm the guy holding the hostages.
And here's where I mean, like and swat teams stick
right exactly, the swat teams like we're gonna go kill
that guy. I'll bet you would never in a million
years bring your swat team out, and whatever you do,

(15:28):
don't come in guns blazing, right, which we're joking about
something that's really happened. Sure, So like I really think
we need to talk at least the short we'll look
into it a little first, one on swatting and one
on dockx inga two weird new things that people do now, right,
But but swatting is definitely a crime. Yes, okay. Also

(15:51):
so that you don't make nine on one feel like
I think this is great. This is almost like a
public service announcement that we're in the midstup. So you, um,
you don't get in trouble with the nine one one,
so they don't think that you're pranking them when you're not.
If you ever call nine one one accidentally, or say
your kid does or whatever. You do not want to
hang up the phone. Yeah, I did that a few

(16:13):
years ago. I feel like I accidentally called nine one
one because I think cell phones have a feature that
it enacted like an automatic call by accident. And I
saw it and I went, oh crap, and I hung
up right and I got a call back, like in
a second. That's great. Ideally you should. Yeah. Umi has
a great story from when she was a kid. She

(16:34):
um got scared. Uh, I can't remember something about her
grandmother who was perfectly fine, but she called nine on
one and I got scared with nine on one answer
and hung up and they kept calling back and she
kept hanging up. They came out to the cast a
little welfare check. Yeah, basically, Um, but you don't want
to do that. Don't follow the Umi model of nine

(16:56):
on one, Like just stay on the phone and be like,
I'm really sorry. This is an act sentental call and
I'm definitely not the bad guy pretending that this is
an accidental call. Make sure you say that to. My
name is Timmy, I'm five, It's all good. My name
is little boy with brown hair. So I think the
history is fairly interesting. Um because England started nine, not

(17:20):
nine one one, but their version, which is way back
in n seven in London. I didn't know it either,
but they they were the first city in the world
that created the three digit model. Apparently, as the story goes,
there was a fire in downtown London and people tried
to get through the fire department and they were put

(17:40):
on hold and switched around, and so they said. The
town crier came out and said nine is the answer, yeah,
which so easy to remember. Um, I guess no one
else was using at the time. But this is back
in the day of rotary phones, right. Oh yeah, well,
so that that's actually that was. It was a burden

(18:03):
to dial with a rotary dial. One should have been
for sure. I just thought that was kind of clumsy
of them, a little bit clumsy of the Brits. But
let me see here. I think it was a twelve
mile radius around London at first after World War Two
and went wider. Uh And because you know, Britain like

(18:25):
to do a little world conquering. You can find in
cities all over the world where London has or where
England has left there. Uh. Imprint that's a way to
put it, for sure. Yeah. Um. And the US of
course said, well, we're not gonna let the Brits outdo us.
You're you're gonna do brexit. Hold my beer. Yeah, we're

(18:46):
gonna wait twenty something years and do it ourselves, right exactly. So, um,
I think in nineteen fifty seven, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry,
the National Association of Fire Chiefs I was way off. Um.
They said, hey, we should come up with an easy
to remember three digit number for people to report fires.
And other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll we'll,

(19:09):
we'll do that to report emergencies, and the Fire Teach's
Association said no, just fires, right. Luckily no one listened
to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just firepart,
that's right. Um. And then a couple of years after
that or maybe uh yeah, a few years later, the
National Academy of Scizees said, this is actually a really
good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances to

(19:31):
And then finally, um Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and
the Administration of Justice said no, all emergencies should have
a three digit, easy to remember number. That's right. So
the FCC says, who should be get in touch with here?
How about a T and T? Because these were the
days of phone monopolies, right or phone monopoly it's just

(19:55):
one right? Uh No, I think when did they break
up the phone cup niece. I think it was before this,
because they broke them up into the different bells, right, yeah,
where they were all the different bells part of one
big phone company. That's right? Which one? I just said,
two different things? Liberty Bell, the Southern Belle bell from

(20:18):
Pacific Bell, Pacific Bell, the bell from Beauty and the Beast,
all the bells, Albuquerque Bell. Sure, why not? You can
ring my bell. That's a good one. That's a good song.
It's a good one. But I think more and more
and more by Andrea true connection is far better. What's that?
Virtually the same thing, but just a better, better song. Okay,

(20:40):
they got in touch with a T and T and
they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently
a T and T is the one that chose because
it hadn't been used yet, which is kind of the
first stumbling block again. The rotary dial. Rotary dial that
was nine one ones a lot better way. It's it's
two words better. It is, sure, it's better and it

(21:02):
was easy to remember. And you know, I think they
had set up at this point already four one one
in a lot of areas, so they just kind of
extended that idea of the something one one right. So, um,
the first this really surprised me. The first um on
one call that was ever placed in the United States.

(21:23):
New York City. You would think, so, Washington, d C, Chicago,
what else you got? Chicago? You already said that one. Okay,
I don't know. What about Los Angeles? Yeah, why not?
What about Albuquerque? They're doing fun? Okay, No, none of
those are correct. Haileyville, Alabama was the site of the
very first nine one one call. Yeah, that's a good

(21:45):
little tribute question. I think that pedal to the metal.
By the way, I recently watched I had recorded all
those Jeopardy shows with the Ken Jennings on there. The
Champion run some of the better TV I've seen in
a while, really good stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, if

(22:06):
you're a Jeopardy fan that it was as good as
it gets, like the smartest competitors and like big time
drama because they you know, they had to bring it
on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show
like they were daily doubling on like twenty dollars and
stuff like. It was really tense, good drama. Yeah, so
cool because I think Kid knew that other guy, the

(22:28):
whole Celtzer guy was a as a gambler and he
made his name for really just going all in, and
Ken knew this, so he had to do the same
in order to beat these chumps. If you're playing a gambler,
you get dragged into gambling, whether you want to gamble
or not. Get in there. You know. That's good stuff. Anyway,
good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Hayley Bill
Alabama did it was It was kind of a publicity stunt.

(22:51):
It sounds like they so the little uh, the little
phone company there, the Alabama Telephone he co um basically said,
it's pretty a T and T is is about to
do this. We're about to launch this nine one one system.
We want to jump on it and adopt it first.
So we're going to set this up as fast as
we can. Because here's the thing. We'll find out more
about this in a minute, but there's no national nine

(23:15):
one one system all everywhere in the United States. Nine
one one reaches an emergency dispatcher or an emergency operator,
but each system is local, regional at best. Um so
hailey Ville, Alabama could jump on this and set up
their own system and get started. And that's exactly what
they did. That's right. February they had a state senator

(23:38):
named Rank and fight he dialede as a you know, obviously,
is this like a photo op or video op? In
other words, there wasn't an emergency. It's like, man, what
a coincidence that the state senator had the first emergency
and happened to be standing next to the special phone.
That's right. They had a special bat phone, a red phone,

(24:00):
and I think an Alabama congressman was on the other
end at the police station, Congressman Tom Bevill, known as
the pork King really not just the Alabama pork King,
the poor King of Congress. And the state senator said,
what are you, pork King? What are you doing at
the police station? I've got an emergency? And he said,
are we really going to do this? Bit? I would

(24:23):
force whoever is on the other line to do it.
So yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey,
we did it first. Uh, they did it a week later.
They still have a big festival every year too, a
nine one one festival. I wonder if they re enacted
this famous phone man, if we could play those two parts,
I'm the pork King. How great would that be? Forget
drunk history. Just put us up there. That's cool, um.

(24:47):
And when I say forget drunk history, I mean we
very much want to be on it. Are we still
pursuing that? No, I mean just by occasionally yelling out
of my window every now and then. Why not the
crickets are deafening. Yeah, I'm surprised no one said like, hey,
this is a natural fit. These guys are great storytellers
about history. They can get drunk with the best of them.

(25:09):
And we've been saying this for years. So uh No.
M Alaska about a week later did the same thing,
and we're the second city. And then throughout the seventies
and eighties it kind of started rolling out. But it
takes a while to get this kind of thing going.
It does because again, it's a local again at best,

(25:29):
regional system okay, and your local um city might not
have the money to put in a new telecommunications system
to be used for emergency services. UM and at first,
you know, cities that were a little more flush with
cash because they had a larger tax base had the
money to roll these out. So as expected, aside from

(25:52):
hailey Ville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan
areas that were starting to roll out there the nine
the earliest nine one one systems, but the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation based on Johnson and
Johnson's company, UM, they took early interest in this and

(26:12):
started handing out grants to rural areas to set up
their own nine one one systems. So ironically, hailey Ville, Alabama,
had it not jumped on it probably still wouldn't have
a nine one one system where it not for the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to like, you know,
small towns around the country for their own Yeah, because

(26:32):
they're like you know what people call nine one one,
they go to the hospital. We're using Johnson and Johnson products. Yeah,
I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that you know,
nine one one is probably good for the band aid business,
I would guess so. And baby shampoo, Yeah, because if
you can't get if you can't get an ambulance to

(26:52):
that person, they're gonna croak. But if you get the
ambulance to them, right, you don't need band aids when
you're dead, No, that's it's just like a fact of death.
But if you survive, you're gonna need a lot of
band aids depending on what you've done to yourself. That's right.
Here's some stats for you. By nineteen seventy six, when
I was five years old, only seventent of the US

(27:14):
had nine one one. You want to know a surprising fact.
Nineteen seventy six, I was just born, Well, you probably
weren't covered by nine one one. Again, not until nine Well,
by seven, only fifty percent of the country, which is uh,
that's kind of that's pretty late. I would have thought
we would have had a lot more of the country
cover by then, for sure, you would think so. And

(27:36):
it wasn't until ninety nine, actually, chuck that um the
that nine one one officially became the emergency number for
everywhere in America. Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said,
what about nine nine nine? And they went, Bill, please,

(27:56):
wrong country, Canada. Speaking of wrong countries, they are very
much the right country because they got on board within
one as well. That's absolutely true, because they were like, why,
why make things too difficult? You know, that's a great
question Canada, And I think the answer to that is
you shouldn't make things too difficult, just kind of go
with the flow, should do some more stuff. Here, I

(28:19):
was thinking, maybe another break. Okay, are you okay with that?
Are you sure? Yes? What about you listeners? Well, we'll
be right back, Okay, Chuck, Let's talk about how it

(28:46):
actually works. Yeah, in the early days, obviously it was
all landline telephones. So when your call got routed to
the switchboard, which was one switchboard that kidded to that,
they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated
to nine one one to what's called a peace app

(29:06):
a public safety answering point. And at the time they
were a lot of times like in the fire department
or in the police station. Right, so they could just
turn their chair and be like, Sarge, dispatch some people
to this address. We've got a suspicious person staring at
oak trees right again? Right? And um, like originally, like today,

(29:29):
at nine on one, dispatcher is a highly trained, highly
skilled person. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's
like a flight attendant. Remember when we've learned like flight
attendants are actually trained to save your life in an emergency,
and they just hand out peanuts is like a side thing. Um,
this is basically the same thing with the nine eleven
operator call taker. They know how to do a lot

(29:51):
of stuff, but the earliest ones just knew how to
answer the phone, take down your info and then turn
around and send it off to the fire department or
the police department or you know, the paramedics or something
like that. You know, they'd be like, okay, I gotta
go all right, I'll see you buy right, and then
they would get off the phone, and that of all
to the call center. Um. That evolved to what was

(30:12):
called enhanced nine one one, which was in the nineteen seventies,
again driven by telecom advancing with A T and T
with new technologies. They developed a N I and a
L I automatic number identification and location identification A and
I just caller I D. That's what everybody calls caller
I D. Yeah. Remember those cute little boxes that you

(30:35):
can plug your phone line into it on your little
table show you in some little terrible readout. Basically dot
matrix readout yep, who was calling? Pretty neat and then
it was on your handheld cordless phone. Right, you could
look at it, and that was like, whoa, we're living
in the future, rich or the answering machine now is digital.

(30:56):
We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That
was like a big revolution too. That was huge, amazing
because you could leave as long a message as you
wanted now, but you couldn't get that clever nobody's home.
Nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message, right,
you could sing it, but they actually had that tape
you could buy that you could put. Yeah, there was

(31:18):
one that was like a whole mixtape of them, just
like gag answers. Boy, you don't remember that, not really.
There was a very famous ad that ran. It was
like delight your friends basically yeah, wow, yeah, it's pretty funny. Um.
So this enhanced nine in one system, the automatic number

(31:38):
and the automatic locator. That was a big deal because
now all of a sudden, if you were a call
taker for and a call came up on your little
computer screen, it said what the number was and what
the address was, and because everybody was calling from land lines,
you knew exactly where that person was who needed help.

(32:00):
It's right, saved a bunch of time. It was a
very huge life saving measure. Yeah. I mean when you
think about people in an emergency, could be everything from
crippling fear keeping you from even knowing where you are too,
haven't been hit on the head and not being able
to say where you are yeah, or you just can't
speak yeah. And so that really imagined that they spend

(32:21):
a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through
that first step of where are you right? So this
was an enormous leap forward, and in the seventies and
eighties it really kind of cemented how helpful in life
saving this nine one one system could be. And then
cell phones came along and the rest of us kind
of leapfrogged right over nine one one because the cell

(32:43):
phone carriers didn't have an I and a L I
when when you call nine one one still to this
day from a cell phone, it does not come up
what your number is or where you are in any
specific way. And so Congress, or at least that c
C said, um, hey, we need you guys to do

(33:03):
something like there's got to be something that you just
can't be like, you know, you have no idea where
this person is in the country. Because part of the
other thing about the automatic locator uh that that they
had originally with nine one one in the seventies and
eighties is it would route you to the closest um
public safety answering point, right, So that would be saving

(33:24):
time too, because the person you're talking to is in
the same area as you and knows the area you're
talking about and can more quickly dispatch people cell phones.
Is not the case. Yeah, And Dave makes a good point.
Even if they could have located like where your cell
phone plan was or your phone was activated, you don't
have to live in the city where that is, right.

(33:45):
You can friends to have l A numbers that work
in the film industry here just because that stupid l
A three one O or three to three makes them
look like a more legitimate higher just so cool. It's
so cool and so dumb. But yeah, it would be
like you're in Atlanta, says you're in Los Angeles. Is
this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah? So um,

(34:07):
the so the FCC said, Okay, you guys need to
do something. So what they did was they came up
with UM, a triangulation where the closest cell phone towers
address comes up when you call. It's a start, it
is a good start. But if you're out in the sticks,
the closest cell phone tower might be miles and miles

(34:27):
and miles away. And even if it's not miles away,
let's say it's a football field a way. Well, if
you're in a dense um densely populated area and you're
bleeding out, sure it doesn't help. It does not help
at all, but it gets you a little bit closer,
and it helps to to transfer your collar to rout
your call to the closest peace app Okay, And then
the other thing that they have them do now, Phase

(34:48):
two of this enhanced wireless, enhanced nine on one is UM.
It gives your GPS coordinates, which is so nineties it's
ridiculous and it's like map quest. When who's ever waited
on a ride share, uh that thought you were down
the street from where you were knows how accurate that

(35:08):
GPS can be. Well, still, it's still great, but that's
way more accurate than what nine one ones working with. Well,
they're just working with longitude and latitude points. Right. Yeah.
One of the big, one of the big qualities. A
quality to have as a nine one one operator is
to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude coordinates

(35:29):
GPS coordinates into like Google Maps to get an address
really fast and it smooth, sexy voice like Berry White
with fingers of fury, or like halle Berry with fingers
she uh. Did you see that movie The Call? She
played a call uh specialist in a movie, a thriller.

(35:51):
It was good, It wasn't great. Yeah, it was good. Okay.
Brad Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director. Yeah,
I know that name, and it seems like this sort
of from what you're gonna call me out on that.
I didn't hear you from what? From where? Oh, I
don't get what you mean from what? Like what other
what other movies is he directed? He directed a scary

(36:13):
movie called Session nine. Oh yes, okay, well, then this
guy is one of my favorites of all time. That's what.
It's one of the best horror movies ever made. Yeah,
I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a
range of genres. Like one of his early movies is
this kind of spacey rom com called Happy Accidents. That
was great. Happy Accident, Yeah, really good with Mercy Thoma

(36:37):
and Vincent dina Frio. But it had This was a
rom com with a sort of a bit of a
sci fi twist to it. And he did Trans Siberian.
He's he's done. He did Next Stop. Wonderland was one
of his first little indies. But yeah, he does. It's
unusual for a director to tackle all these weird are
different genres, it's disparate genres. Well, you have me at

(36:58):
Session nine. Yeah. The Call Is is a good, you know,
Puckcorn movie. I highly recommend it. Okay, I'll check it out.
Halle Berry is a call center person. No, no, that's
all I'll say. Hey, she's quality quality actress. She is.
But the fact that I had never even heard of
this movie really made me suspicious. It did pretty well.
It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like sixty
million bucks. But that's really surprising. Like I'm very aware

(37:23):
of movies, like I'll know what the movie is about,
and I have never seen it, not a preview. I'll
just kind of no, So I'm I'm surprised. Okay, I
recommend it I'll check it out. Yeah, I mean it's
no black coat's daughter, but that's a good one too.
So where are we now? We are now at texting

(37:44):
to oh wait, hold on, I wanted to drive this
home real quick. Okay, okay, drive it home. The FCC
rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower,
tell one it's address, the closest one to your cell phone,
and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell

(38:05):
phone they think the cell phone is. That's the nine
one one system that's in place nationwide today. That's why
they ask you from a cell phone, who are you
and where are you, just like they did in the
early days, right, And this is a problem because, like
you said earlier, of nine one one calls in the
United States are made from cell phones, and nine one

(38:25):
one does not know where you are unless you tell them. Yeah,
but it's also um balanced out by the fact that
you have they want to help, well, you have that
cell phone right there and immediately. So yeah, yeah that
remember the old days, You're like, let me find a
pay phone, let me go knock on someone's door and
be and ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I

(38:46):
won't get shot Um, so people are calling right away,
So I would think that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness,
yes of location. I think you're right, Chuck. We'll see,
well you really swooped in there, I say, we'll see
as if there's some report coming out. And the thing is, though,
is there there people have figured out the people, the
powers that be who are concerned with nine one one

(39:08):
in its system are well aware of this major flaw,
and our work have figured out how to how to
update it. It's just now we're in the process of
rolling out updates. Well, and then privacy advocates are going
to be like, what you're gonna like locate every single
person with the cell phone and know where they are
at all times. And Amazon and Apple are like, dude,

(39:29):
we already know that. It's just one is the only
one who doesn't know where you are at all top,
which is a problem. It's funny. I saw um a
Wired article from that was like wringing its hands, like, oh,
you know, privacy advocates are worried that they may be
able to track the movement of cell phone users based
on this information that now yeah, they're like, maybe I

(39:52):
don't know, we'll have to see the future holds. Yeah,
so texting the one is the latest technology about ten
years ago, eleven years ago in Iowa in black Hawk,
they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service and
it's still kind of coming out. I think. Um, a

(40:13):
couple of years ago they all fifty states had text capability,
but UM, it's not everywhere in each state. Yeah, exactly,
and it's just text. I love day points out you
can't send emojis. Um, I can need help emogi, but
you can't send text and video and that kind of

(40:33):
thing would be super helpful, I think. Right, So this
is where we are in the next generation. It's literally
called next generation, and it's where nine one one finally
catches up to every other UM telecom company and device

(40:53):
manufacturer already is. And it basically uses all the information
from the Internet of Things that lets people know exactly
where you are, not just like what your addresses, what
floor of a building you happen to be sitting on
right now. UM, all of that information is now going
to be funnel to nine one one when you call,
because ninmon one is finally abandoning land lines landline telecom.

(41:18):
That's what they they're dealing with Currently they're going over
to v O I P so nine one will be
using a secure internet connection in the near future. And
when they get to that point, um, they will be
able to accept video photos like this is the guy
that's that's attacking the lady, hurry up, that kind of thing.
And then they'll also be able to because they're setting

(41:39):
up a separate wireless broadband network just for first responders
called first net. Yeah, that's going to be a big deal,
and so nine one one will be able to say, hey,
here's a photo of the guy that there that you're
looking for. Um, And they can't do that now is
mind boggling as it is. They cannot do that. Yeah,
I mean, just to have a dedicated wireless network cuts

(42:00):
down on I imagine interference and potential hacking. Plus in
a disaster, if you're out there in the field, you
are using your own wireless device that's on the public
broadband right now. And so if the public broadband goes
down because there's so many people trying to use it
to find out what's going on in like an earthquake
or something like, the first responders suffer from that too.

(42:23):
So this separate broadband network just for first responders won't
crash in the event of a disaster. Yeah, And speaking
of first responders, uh, I think it's kind of time
we join certain people and saying call center employees are
first responders, are people saying they're not well. I don't
think they're generally thought of as first responders if you

(42:45):
work at a call center, because they just sit around maybe,
but they are literally the first and most important first
thing that happens in an emergency. And like you said earlier,
they are trained to and walk people through epr Heimlich,
how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, uh, suicide,

(43:06):
domestic abuse, um, if you're a kid and you're scared
because grandma fell over, like how to handle children? Like
they're really skilled. And I think it's a shame that,
Like I feel like the only time you hear about
call center responders is when there's a bad one and
you release those calls and everyone's horrified, you know, and

(43:30):
it is, it's awful. But those are clearly like the standouts,
I guess not standouts. The standouts are all the good employees.
There have been some doozies, for sure. Yeah, I've read
about one where somebody called in um of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon,
sorry Oregon, and uh, the nine one one operator said,

(43:52):
what you're seeing is probably just the play of light
on sunlight on the fog. It was like, how would
you even know that you're in a all center. I'm
looking right at this thing. It's a wildfire, and like
they didn't dispatch anybody, and um, like a half hour
twenty minutes later, somebody else called it in and by
this time it was like raging. Um. There was the

(44:12):
one lady drowning in her car too. That one was horrific.
I didn't hear about that one. She was in her
car that was going down and I think I don't
remember exactly what happened, but she was freaking out, and
I think the person was just sort of dismissive and
it was really kind of rude even But you know,
that makes the news, not the six and fifty thousand

(44:35):
calls a day that go through and our lives are saved. Like, no, no, absolutely,
it's absolutely true. It's a great point. Um. There are
plenty of stories of people like of them just like
straight up doing hero stuff, going above and beyond. You
should see halle Berry in this movie. One of the
things that can happen is as hard as much as

(44:57):
your trained to not let it happen. UH, you can
become emotionally invested in a call totally. And I've read
that some some operators are just find it leaving it
at the door, at least appearing to leave it at
the door. But others can suffer UM burnout PTSD UM.
And one of the big things that I saw that's

(45:17):
a huge psychological problem for nine one operators is that
there can very frequently be no resolution. They can be
on the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage,
and they're trying to talk them down, and all of
a sudden, the cops come in. The line goes dead.
They if they're not good friends with the cops who

(45:38):
came in, UM, they may never find out what happened,
like no idea. UM, they're talking someone through who's been
shot or whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious.
They have no idea what happened to that person. They
have to take the next call, and that's a huge problem.
There's no closure. And then sometimes there is closure, like
if you're a nine one one operator, you probably have

(46:00):
been on the phone with somebody when they took their
last breath, when they were murdered, when they died, very
very scared. That kind of stuff takes its toll on people,
and that's a big It could be a big problem,
and there could be pretty frequent turnover among dispatchers' halle
Berry movie, Oh yeah, I'm it's all there. Uh yeah,
because even if they don't get closure on the work site,

(46:21):
they could see it on the news that night be like, man,
that I took that call of this murder or whatever.
Pretty bad. Sure, not a job for me. I don't
think I could hack it either. And then practically speaking,
there's like you have to be able to type really
really fast with a high level of accuracy while somebody's

(46:42):
telling you other information, like you might be taking info
in and you have to be chatting with you know,
a cop on I am who you're sending out while
you're also taking the description from the other person who's
going back and forth. Yeah, you gotta be able to
compartmentalize and multitask all. None of those things are my
special team though. If you're wondering, you pay for one.

(47:04):
If you have a phone bill cell phone bills included.
It's a little little surcharge there. So Uh, that's outrageous
to scream socialism everybody. Uh. And as far as those
statistics we talked about earlier about the racial bias, Um,
of course, if you were a fan of Public Enemy,
you remember the Great Great Song is a joke. Flavor flavor. Uh.

(47:27):
There was a study done by the a c l
U in two thousand thirteen, residents of Grand Crossing this
is Chicago study, Uh, African American neighborhood on the South
Side waited eleven minutes for a cop to come after
a priority call. Um two and a half minutes for
the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. Um in response

(47:50):
times in that were four and a half time slower
in the black community. And there's you know, like I
mentioned earlier with the people calling on one on you know,
just an African American person living their life. There have
been cases where people ended up dead because of that
after escalation, and that's just like a pure tragedy for sure. Um.

(48:16):
There is there like when you have something this massive
and huge and it's involves people at like their worst
moment of their life. A lot of stuff is going
to kind of come out of it. There's a lot
to nine one one, a lot of legends and myths
and everything. But one of the things I saw that
everyone seems to know about is that if you call

(48:36):
nine one one and pretend you're ordering a pizza, they
will understand that you were in a position where you
can't talk, and they'll dispatch the police. Supposedly that's a myth,
but it makes total sense. Doesn't you've heard that before?
I was just just thinking of die Hard. Oh, I
don't remember that. There was that line where he's calling
the nine one one dispatcher. Well, I guess I don't

(48:57):
even think it was. I think it was an actual
cop on the other end, and she's like, calm down, sir,
and you know, it's not an emergency whatever, And he said,
what do you think I'm doing ordering a pizza? Yeah,
And that might have been a reference to that maybe,
So so what are you saying again? The urban legend
is that if you like, let's say there's there's somebody
who's got a gun on you, if you can somehow

(49:19):
get it to the point where you're like, hey, let's
order a pizza, right, now you call nine on one
say hey, I'd like to order a pizzas my address
and then yeah, and then nine one one will get
what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's
not true, okay, but there there is. There's another. There
was an urban legend I saw in the UK with

(49:40):
that if you um call and you don't say anything,
that they will send someone out, and I think that
is kind of widely believed over here in the US too.
Apparently in the UK that is true, but it's going
to send you through a series of prompts if you
don't respond um, and if you press five five it

(50:04):
will you will be confirming that yes, you there's an
emergency and you just can't talk right now, and they
will send people out. If you don't press five five,
then they won't. It'll just take it as like an
accidental call. Well, and that's the big benefit. I don't
even think we kind of brought up about texting to
nine one because you might think, like because because people
want to text, But there are plenty of cases where

(50:27):
you can't talk. You're maybe in a domestic dispute, or
if you're hearing you're hiding in a closet, or if
you're hearing impaired, or if you've been kidnapped and don't
want to use your voice out loud, or you're scared
child like, plenty of great cases to be made for texting.
And since text to nine one one isn't everywhere, the
FEC has a law that if you're telecom carrier doesn't

(50:50):
UM doesn't have text nine one one, they have an
immediate bounce back that says like, you can't do that,
you have to call nine one. Yeah, which is that's
pretty valuable. It is. And one last thing, if you
find an old phone that has a charge in it,
even if it hasn't been had service for twenty years,
you can dial nine one you will be connected. That
is pretty cool. Every single phone that is that is

(51:12):
in operation dials nine and one for free. Yeah. I
like that. I do too, man, I love nine one one.
I think Kurvanni gets said there's no uh, no greater
display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down
the street with its sirens blazing. Really it sounds like
something it's interesting. Uh. Well, if you want to know

(51:32):
more about curvanning get you can just type that into
the search bar how stuff works and who knows what
that will bring up. Uh. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener. Man, this is a response.
When we asked for examples of racism in today's military,
and we heard from a range of people. I have
to say, from this guy who the other guy to

(51:57):
the other guy. This guy said, I'll just tell you
what this guy said a minute. But other people have
said that, yeah, they've seen some pretty bad racist stuff
in the military, but they're isolated incidences, just like in
the real world. But this is what Matthew apple White says. Uh.
Start off, I'm a white guy. I can't speak on
everyone's experience while in the service, but during my four

(52:17):
years I saw more camaraderie between a mix of races
than I ever see in my real life. It seems
like this is the response that we got the most
the most. I think you're right. They thought us. Oh,
they taught us from the start in boot camp Marine
Corps that you're all nothing and you will all become Marines.
And with that in common, it gives the common ground
between any race or nationality. Uh. They might often refer

(52:40):
to African American Marines as dark green implying, yes, they
may have a different skin tone, but they're still green.
And over the years, in and out of training, you
learned that everyone endures the suck and the hard times together. Uh,
and no one is above another. In the end, you
learn to trust the man to my left and right
with my life, no matter what his skin color. And

(53:03):
ladies too, there are female marines. Uh. I'm glad you
said that. Yeah. Now saying all this, some some prejudice
from other people's upbringing do still remain, but most of
the time it is shot down very fast with harsh repercussions,
and it has kept to a minimum. I made many
friends from all walks of life that I would have
never even imagined being so close to. Without the common

(53:23):
ground we stood on are the hard times that we
endured together. And that is from an avid listener named
Matthew apple White. Thanks a lot, Matthew. Um, we appreciate
you letting us know. Thanks to everybody who wrote in
to let us know. Virtually the same thing. Yeah, except
for the couple of standouts. Yeah. Um. Well, if you
want to get in touch with us, like Matthew did,
you can go on to stuff you should know dot com.

(53:44):
And I think our social links are there. Who knows,
but you can always get in touch with us via
email at stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart
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