November 26, 2009 • 28 mins
In this episode, Josh and Chuck explain the finer points of hostage negotiation, including the symbolism of hostages, the negotiator's goals and tactics, Stockholm syndrome -- and what happens when people refuse to negotiate.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
(00:20):
Punkin Bryant. Yeah, doing his cheeks. How you know I'm
in the heavy That's that's why he's right there? Coolio.
This is double good luck. Okay, well good then this
should probably be a pretty good podcast, which means we
are doomed. Yes, Josh, Before we get going, can I
just mentioned a little TV show coming up, uh, the
(00:42):
Road to Punkin Chunkin and Punkin Chunking itself naturally? Yeah? Yeah,
and that, Josh is Thanksgiving Night your board after your
Turkey o on the Science Channel eight Eastern time. Right,
So insert clever intro chunck. Have you ever been a hostage? No?
(01:03):
Nor have I. I I would remember that, I think, but
you would. Have you ever seen Inside Man? Uh? No?
Is that which one was at Denzel? No? I didn't
see that, Clive Owen, I wanted to dude, that is
in my opinion, I haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon, but
I think it's the greatest hostage movie ever made. You
haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon. No, Chuck, I'm not seventy
(01:23):
like you. Oh, I forgot that they burned all the
copies in nineteen when you were born in the Great
Fire started by a who. Dog Afternoon was gold. You
should check it out. I will check it up. You
know a hundred year old movie. No, I'm sure it's good.
It was Paccino, it is prom sure, yeah, before he
just went absolutely nuts. Um, well, okay, neither one of
(01:46):
us has been a hostage or seeing each other's movies, right,
But no, we must seen war games. But I can
imagine that if either one of us were a hostage,
there would be a hostage negotiator outside. Right, I would
be dead pretty soon. I think if I were a hostage,
has a pizza delivery person could have delivered that that
(02:08):
segway better than me? Yeah? Yeah, in thirty minutes or less.
Yeah uh so, Yeah, Josh, let's talk about hostage and negotiation.
I can't say that word negotiations. Yes, Chuck, let's it is.
There's a few things going on. Usually the hostage taker
is want something, yeah, money, or they want to free
their brothers that are political prisoners or um, they want
(02:32):
safe passage or something like that, right, or they want
you know, some country to stop some policy at and uh,
usually the target of the hostage shaker is not the
hostage but some other third party. Yeah and yeah, but
we'll we'll get to the exception on that. And I was,
I was chomping at the bit, right, I know, finally
(02:53):
they are hostages are usually only bargaining chips that have
symbolic value, right, Like for example, the nineteen seventy two
Olympic Games in Munich, the hostages there had some serious
symbolic value. They were, um, Israeli athletes and uh what
kind of what kind of terrorists? Well, the target was
(03:16):
the Israeli government clearly, not the athletes. They were the pawn,
the symbolic pawn. Much like in the nineteen seventy two
Olympics in Munich, the hostage crisis that happened there over
what a twenty four period, Um, a bunch of Palestinian
terrorists took some Israeli athletes hostage, and they were targeting Israel.
(03:38):
So these were very symbolic pawns. I guess, as you'd
put them, right, did you see Munich did you say,
my god, it's a good movie. Man, that's a good one. Uh.
And so Josh, now we can move on to the
phases of a hostage situation. Okay, the initial phase, so Chuck, yes,
all right, let's let's dramatize this a little bit. Okay,
the initial phase. Yeah, we're just a group of people
(03:58):
hanging out and say a bank. Sure, we'll do a bank.
And then all of a sudden, a bunch of guys
come through the door, kicking off what's known as the
initial phase, right, like you said, already, right, And what's
the initial phase, Chuck? It is a initial stage of
panic and violence where they subdue the hostages and uh,
it's it's very um. So during the initial phase they
(04:20):
come in, everybody get on the floor, right, right, and
then they barred the doors, and uh, the initial phase
is very brief. Did he like my machine gun? Yeah?
That's good. Then comes the negotiation phase, and that's when
Johnny Law comes on the scene, and that's generally called
the standoff phase. Right, And this is almost always the
longest phase of a hostage situation. This is when all
(04:42):
the negotiation is taking place, when they send in pizza
boxes with little cameras and people have to pee, and
the negotiators saying, if there's a pregnant woman in their
letter out stuff just when people have to pee. Yeah,
that's a good one. And then the final phases that
the ter a nation phase. And uh, you've got a
few different results that can happen here. Um, either the
(05:04):
hostage takers surrender and they're arrested, or the police uh
kind of mountain assault and kill them or arrest them,
or their demands are granted and they get away. Uh. Yeah,
and the second one is actually what happened. Actually, combination
of two and three is what happened in Munich. As
(05:25):
anybody who's seen the movie knows. Um, the West German
police are like, we can't take these guys that, we
need to let them think that they're actually going to
escape and get them to the airport. All the hostages
were killed, along with a pilot and a police officer.
Uh and uh the rest of the um, the hostage takers,
the Palestinian terrorists were killed except for three who were
(05:47):
captured right there. It was a blood bath, basically, Well,
I thought they were hunted down later, didn't that What
Munich was about the people who engineered it. Okay, we're
supposedly hunted down later by the massad bright Eric Bannah,
who is just clearly most solid material the Australian massade. Um.
So yeah, those are the three phases. And um during
(06:08):
the second phases when the negotiator comes on the scene,
right and UM, if you've ever seen the movie Negotiator,
the negotiators clearly disappointed. Um. But there was something that
is very characteristic of hostage negotiation, and that is it's
a very important point that the hostage negotiator not be
(06:29):
the league commander on the scene. And why Chuck well
because um, Well, for a couple of reasons. One is
that the negotiator doesn't need to be multitasking right then,
they need to have all their focus on talking to
and talking down the hostage taker. This one reason that's
part of it. They also, um, one of the one
of the great tactics that hostage negotiators use is um
(06:54):
to stall and they prolonged the situation. That seems like
the main tactic, right, it's just by time. One of
the one of the tactics they use to create that tactic,
UM is to say, well, I can't make that call
I've got to talk to somebody else. Um, And if
it's common knowledge that the hostage negotiator actually is commanding
the scene, then that doesn't really work. Right. They'll say, well,
(07:15):
you can pull the trigger on that because you're the
boss exactly, and they're like, no, no, no, don't use
that phrase. Right. That's in every movie, every single hostage
movie is that scene where they go, well, I just
can't give you a seven forty seven full of gold bars, dude.
I gotta get clearance from Fort Knox and I'm gonna
take at least a day, so you might want to
lower your demands, which is actually another reason they stalled
(07:35):
to try and chip away at the demands. So the
negotiators on the scene and he's trying to prolong the situation.
Like you said, um, they're trying to lessen the demands.
They're also um, but they also stall and prolong the
situation by um, getting the hostage takers to focus on
some minute and really unimportant details. Yeah, I like this.
(07:56):
They try to derail them, so like the seven forty seven,
what kind of seven forty seven do you want? It?
Is it okay if it was built before? Because we've
got some that are built after that. But then they
have this seating arrangement that might be a problem for you,
And and all of a sudden, you're distracting the hostage
taker from the crisis at hand, and he's thinking about
(08:17):
what kind of seven seven he wants? You know, I
could just see the guy putting his hand over the
thing and going, what kind of plane do we want?
He's asking about seek configurations. I have no idea, right exactly.
It's also they hang up, and then you've bought some time,
right And and not only um, not every hostage taker
once a seven forty seven, but this can also be
applied to even more minute details, like what do you
(08:40):
want on your pizza? You know? Well, I mean, do
you really want bell pepper because you're getting onion already
and sometimes it's too crunchy. I imagine there's a point
where if you're talking to a hostage taker and you
try the bell Pepper onion combo, because all they're gonna
pick up on what you're doing, or if they've read
this article or ever ever seen a hostage movie, be
sure that's another good they would probably be wise to
(09:02):
say it. It sounds to me like you're trying to
buy some time here, bang bang, indeed, which is what
the hostage negotiator does not want to happen. No, that's
number two on their list. One is to prolong it.
And while while they're prolonging it, we should mention that
there trying to get information as much information as possible
on who the person is, how many there are, what's
(09:23):
frame of mind they're in, if they're unstable, if they're violent, um,
any kind of clue that can that can help him out, right,
Because a hostage negotiator is going to talk differently. They're
not going to try that Bell pepper onion thing on
like a very cool, calculated Clive Owens type, but they
might on somebody who's like just out of his mind
crazy because his wife is leaving him. Right, which is
(09:44):
actually the most common hostage situation is a domestic dispute
that's turned into some guy with the gun barricading he
and his family in their home. Yeah, you usually think
of the big movie scenario with some foreign enemy taking
all these people hot stage, but it's usually just a
regular domestic scene. And the worst ones, man, the worst
(10:05):
ones of those you see on the news where you
see some dudes got a baby acting as a human shield.
Who does that? You've never seen that? No, Oh man,
it's it's the worst watching those cop shows, that those
true crime shows. A baby is a human shield. Guys.
It's like the dad is out of his mind and
uh on drugs or something and he'll have his baby
(10:26):
and it's just it's the worst thing in the world
to watch unfold, very disturbing. Well bet in fact, don't
go see that, Joshua. That'll keep you up at night.
I bet it will. So that is the most common
type of things domestic. But back to the safety of
the hostages. That's number two on the list of the
negotiators to keep everyone in there alive, right, I would
think could technically be number one. Well, prolonging the situation
(10:49):
I think leads to number one. So it's the kind
of tied right. So, um, what you want to do
if you're a negotiator and you are chipping away at demands.
First of all, you're trying to get the seven forty
seven out the window or the gold bars from Fort Knox,
But you're really trying to get to the heart of
what what does this guy want? He wants the seven
forty seven and he wants gold bars. Well, he wants
to escape and he wants some money, So maybe it
(11:11):
can be dealt with on a lesser level. But first,
let's get you some food in there. But to get
you some food, I need a hostage. To get as
many hostages out as possible. Number one, to ensure the
safety of the hostages, as you said, but number two
for if when when an assault comes, if it does come,
there's a lot fewer hostages in there that the police
need to not shoot, you know, Plus the hostage did
(11:33):
you just say this, The hostage can turn if they
release someone who's like ill or pregnant, they can give
them information, insider information, right, like, even to create an
even more distinct psychological profile. That kind of right, right, Yeah.
I like the fact that you were talking about the
lessening the demands, like we can't get your seven forty
seven and gold bars, and it really could. I could
see that throwing the hostage taker into a tizzy. If
(11:54):
all of a sudden there have to decide, well, will
you take a helicopter in a cash years chat? That
kind of well, actually I hadn't thought it before, but
will you endorse it before him right, Yeah, let's go
to the bank. Oh I'm in a bank. Awesome, Yes,
bring me that cast. Here's check please. So number three
on their list is to keep everything calm. You don't
(12:16):
want to upset a hostage taker. No, you're gonna keep
everything nice and chill, especially following the initial phase, that
initial assault. The guys all jacked up on like adrenaline.
He's a little crazy. All of a sudden, it's starting
to sink in if he accidentally took hostages, starting to
sinking like, oh my god, I'm I am a hostage taker.
Now this is a little nuts. So you want to
(12:39):
keep the guy calm, or the guys or the gals calm,
especially if it was a biter mine Hoff experiment. No
idea what that is. It's actually the there's a movie
out called the Body mine Hoff Complex, I think um.
And they actually introduced terrorism to the Western world where
was a group of Germans, German radicals, Kevin Space, basically
(13:02):
board kids that introduced things like skyjacking and stuff like that.
They were crazy crazy, uh so, Josh. The fourth thing,
and this was my favorite one. Actually, one of the
goals of the hostage negotiator is to um, get the
hostage taker and the hostages to work together to give
them some task where they have to interact, like delivering
(13:26):
the pizza. So send out, um, you're you're most agreeable
hostage that you trust the most to get the pizza
and bring it in. So all of a sudden, the
hostage taker has to talk to the hostages and say, hey,
we need you to go and get the pizza because
we can't go within the sniper range. And the more
you get them interacting, the more chance that the hostage
taker sees the hostage as a human instead of just
(13:49):
blind phoning them and putting them in the corner right
or in shooting them in the head. There was actually
a very famous case of that in some hostage takers
took over a subway train or a train in Holland
and a guy named Robert de Groot was about to
be executed Chuck, and apparently they allowed him to pray first,
(14:11):
and they heard him praying for his wife and children,
and they got them so bad that they just couldn't
execute the guy, so they actually fake executed him. Uh,
the standoff continued, and when it came time to execute
more hostages, they didn't give him a chance to pray
and just actually executed him. And I'm sure they pushed
him off the train and he rolled down the hill
and like faked like he was dead. And I'm sure
(14:32):
the rest of the hostages were like, thanks, Bob, you
right now we don't even not only can we not pray,
but we're getting a bullet in the head. Yeah, And
I was thinking about that, like this is you feel
so removed from it. The weird thing about being a
hostage is like, no one plans on being a hostage.
It just happens all of a sudden. And imagine dying
on a train on some track in halland by being
(14:55):
executed by some hostage taker during a standoff. What a
crap way to die. You ride on the money there, brother, Yeah,
so Chuck, I think I think it's pretty damn pretentious
of us to have not brought up Stockholm syndrome yet,
don't you. Yeah, go ahead identifying with your captor. Yeah,
it actually came out of a bank robbery and I
think nineteen eighty one um in Stockholm appropriately enough, and uh,
(15:21):
this this bank robbers plan just kind of went to crap.
And I've been like using pseudo bad words all day,
stupid and weird. This bank robbers plan kind of went
to pot and all of a sudden he was a
hostage taker. Right, Well, this standoff continued, and strangely enough,
(15:41):
the hostage just started helping him. They were serving his lookouts.
They were giving him advice on how to escape and
how to deal with the negotiator and all that. And
that's kind of odd if you think about it. So
why would why would people suffer this what they call
Stockholm syndrome. Well, there's a lot of psychological reasons for it. Yeah,
defense mechanism, coping, coping type of thing. Well, yeah, if
(16:05):
you feel powerless in a situation like that, you go
to whoever has the power, and when you're a hostage,
your hostage taker has the power. Yeah. And the other
thing I mentioned too, is that if you're not killed
and there are other hostages are killed, you feel such
a sense of relief that can actually morph into sympathy.
It's kind of like I remember we did the brainwashing
(16:25):
Uh yeah podcast? Yeah, good one. Uh you want to
talk about countries and some famous non negotiating countries. Yeah,
do you remember the eighties, it was like planes were
getting hijacked everywhere all over the body Mine Hoff. Yes,
the the United States, Russia, and Israel are all very
well known for having a non negotiating policy with hostage
(16:50):
takers and terrorists. France had the opposite didn't work out
for him, though, No, it didn't. France became very quickly
a target um for hostage to a king because France
would apparently be like, what do you want? Ha ha ha. Right,
And apparently sometimes, and this doesn't surprise me, the countries
that refused quote unquote refused to negotiate, there might be
(17:12):
some secret negotiations that happened that they never let out
because that would destroy their front that they won't negotiate, right.
And France also apparently had a little problem with um
forming agreements with hostage takers, and then the hostage takers
would break the agreements, which is crazy, can you believe it?
With a bunch of So there is a there's an equilibrium,
(17:33):
Chuck loves equilibrium. But there's an equilibrium between not negotiating
at all and over negotiating. And I think that's what
you're talking about. It's kind of like negotiating on the
download and never talking about it and then hunting the
people down who did this and murdering them. Right, So, Chuck,
let's talk about what happens when you just absolutely refused
to negotiate, as we've seen actually in the twenty one century,
(17:55):
sadly enough twice in Russia. Yeah, a couple of famous
occurrences there with the Muslim Chechen separatists. In two thousand two,
they took over a theater in Russia, threatened to blow
it up, and so the Russians go in and wonder
who who was it putin? You think the guy who
(18:16):
wrestles tigers with his shirt off in front of news cameras,
don't you don't bear his hallmark? Yeah, they decided to
storm the theater and uh send in some knockout gas
instead of negotiating, and they ended up killing all. I
don't know if it's all of them, but a hundred
and twenty nine hostages died from the knockout knockout gas.
That's not knockout, guess that's death gass. I think that's
(18:36):
what you mean by knockout. I don't think they just
don't want to call it death gass. Maybe. So my
eyes are open now because I didn't realize that was
a euphemism. The other one, Josh, was really really sad.
I remember this one while in oh four when the
same Chechen separatists invaded an elementary school with guns and
bombs and locked themselves up in a gym and Russia
(18:59):
would not Negotia eight and three of the hostages that
were killed. Yeah, that was awful. And half of them
were kids. When they blew up the gymnasium, it was terrible.
Listen up Putin. Yeah, but you maintain your toughness and
we're not gonna negotiate. Just kill the kids. Okay, so
chuck you you okay there, Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.
(19:19):
Let's talk about a hostage situation that actually went relatively well,
at least compared to UM Russia. I know what you're
gonna talk about. Well, there's a very famous incident at
Prince's Gate UH in London in April UM members of
the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan changed
(19:40):
that name. It's a mouthful, isn't it. Basically Arabistan is
an Iranian province UH, and the group wanted to liberate
it clearly UM. And they were Democrats I guess. But
they were. They were I think twenty of them and
they took no, there were six of them and they
took twenty six hostages at the US Embassy in London
(20:01):
at Prince's Gate. So there was a uh standoff that
lasted quite a while. Um. The hostage negotiator did this.
By the book, UH kept the hostage takers focused on
details like what kind of food do you want? That
kind of thing. Um, Yeah, I'm in the mood for time.
I could go for a nice um curry bunha. Yeah,
(20:24):
that sounds good. That's Indian though. That's good stuff, by
the way, if you've ever had it. Um. They actually
did execute one hostage, but the other hostages apparently reported
that this guy UM decided to get into a debate
over Islam with Iranian terrorists, which you don't do in
a hostage situation if you hostage. The negotiator actually did
(20:48):
manage to get the release of two ill hostages. Um.
Maybe one of them is pregnant. Sometimes when you replaced
ill with pregnant, which I don't understand, And they got
info from them. Yeah. And so basically the one thing
that really wasn't by the book was that the the
s a. Yes, got the which is the Special Forces
in Great Britain. They are bad. I have a friend
(21:09):
who's in that. Yeah, I can't say his name here, okay. Um,
they got the hostage negotiator to talk to the hostage
takers on the phone right before the assault, knowing the
assault was coming as a distraction. Right. That doesn't happen much,
not usually. And why because they don't let the negotiator
(21:30):
in on this kind of information, because they think that
they would compromise the job just through maybe even inflection
or tone of their voice. They would give it away
right on purpose. Of course, No, no, certainly not. Very
few hostage negotiators experienced Stockholm syndrome negotiation. Definitely just mentally
crumble at the first time. But this it actually paid off.
(21:53):
The hostage negotiator cut the um lead guy away from
the window and the s A S storm the bill
boom too tap. I imagine five of the guys and
arrest the sixth. Ye not bad. And I think they
only lost one other hostage, uh twenty six, which is
not bad. No, but I mean if your storm of
building in the hostage situation, it's like, well, yeah, that
(22:15):
guy lost his life and another guy lost his life.
But it's like, yeah, but that's actually really good percentage,
I would image. I mean, I wonder what well I
would guess the two thousand four Russian standoff is probably
a bit as bad as it can get. Yeah, I
would say so. One thing we mentioned there that I
thought was pretty interesting was you mentioned the Stockholm syndrome.
But that is actually a tactic that the negotiator will use,
(22:38):
sort of sort of a good cop bad cop thing. Uh.
They'll get on the phone or what however they're communicating
and say, yeah, you know I actually they'll try and
relate to them. I kind of see where you're coming from.
I understand this police captain does not understand where you're
coming from, and he wants to mow you down. To
talk to me, man, and we'll work it out between us. Chuck,
you would make it excellent hostage negotiated. I just realized
(23:01):
I wish I had a hostage I could give to
you right now. That was good. Oh, I just offer
you a six pack and you throw it down, your
gun all over pretty much and some smokes. But that's
a pretty cool trick there. I like that. Of course, again,
this is straight out of the movie. So if any
Hotches Staker has ever seen any of these films and
they should be one step ahead of the negotiator, I
would think so. Um there's another um example of not
(23:25):
going by the book that I wanted to mention. Uh
in in nineteen seventy five of the U. S Consulate
and Kuala Lumpoor, Malaysia, UM, there was there was a
hostage situation and uh apparently the Japanese Red Army, members
of the Japanese Red Army UM attacked the consulate and
took hostages. So the terrorists actually called the the authorities
(23:49):
to tell them that they had the hostages, and some
junior officer at the at the embassy elsewhere in the
embassy picked up the phone and from that point on,
for the rest of the standoff, they wouldn't talk to
anybody else but this junior officer. Wow, yeah, who was
not a trained hostage to negotiate it. And it's just like, oh, god,
well he probably has an eating Well, no, there was
(24:12):
a negotiator on the scene, like coaching, coaching the junior officer.
But yeah, yeah. I also saw in the article where
there's um, there's always a second, a secondary negotiator on
the hand, because sometimes, because you're basically improving, you gotta
be quick on your feet, and if all of a
sudden you're going ah, had that, you need someone to
(24:33):
step in and say tell them that will send them pizza.
That first one sounded exactly like Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator.
I didn't see that. When there's some stupid twist where
he was in fact the in on it or something
who I don't remember. I blocked it out of my memory.
That might have been spoiler. Of course you're supposed to
say spoiler beforehand. But whatever. Yeah, well, we are pretty
(24:53):
much done here with hostage negotiation. We're gonna leave a
whole section untouched on becoming a hostage negotiator. You can
find that in the article how hostage Negotiation Works. You
can type in hostage I imagine on the handy search
bar at how stuffworks dot com, which means it's time
for listener mail. No, no, Josh, not today, Okay, no
(25:16):
listener mail. We're gonna do a little Kiva update like
we are wont to do. Okay, so you want to
go ahead and give the plug? Yeah, man, we started
a Kiva team Keeva dot org k I v A.
Dot org is a micro lending website, socially responsible one
which means you don't make any interest on your loans.
You can loan as little as twenty five bucks to
(25:36):
people in developing countries and now the US um entrepreneurs
who are trying to become self sufficient through their businesses.
They're little, tiny loans that make a huge difference elsewhere
in the in the world. Indeed, uh, and we are
kicking bottom on this. We are man, and I'm proud
of the stuff you should know Army, because you guys
are responding and this is really really cool. We challenge
(25:58):
the Colbert Rapport or I like to call it the
Colbert Report, and we actually made a video where we
chastised him. Yeah, what you probably never see, but just
if you watch the Colbert Report, scoff while you watch
it thinking of Chuck and I and the stuff you
should know Army. People are responding in a big way
(26:19):
and it's going great. And hopefully the Colbert Report will
take notice because that will make even more money for
Kiva and it might get us on his show. Chuck
is just chomping at the bit again on the show,
so well, if you want to join the Stuff you
Should Know, keep the team, please do, please do. Um.
You can go to www dot kiva dot org slash
(26:39):
team slash Stuff you Should Know, and that will take
you right there. A plus, there's a pretty picture chuck
on there. Yeah, me and Emily. Actually it's a picture
of U. We have you know, she's on my team.
I was talking about our picture. Oh no, no, no.
On the member page though. If you're curious of what
my wife and I look like together, then you can
(27:00):
surf through the member page. And is that the one
that's your screensaver in your iPhone too? Yeah, it's It's
one of the best pictures I heard of us. It's
very nice. Thank you. Uh and how about the blogs?
Real quick? Yeah, we both run a blog, and I'm
gonna I've been lazy with it lately. I'm gonna get
back on off the schneid Um. You can access the
blog on the blogs page on which you can find
on the right side of the house Stuff Works dot
(27:22):
dot com home page. I just barely split that out,
so that's where you can find it. Yeah. Go interact, Yes,
go interact. That's a pretty cool blog. We like it
a lot. If you have an email, or if your
name is Aisha Tyler and you have never listened this
far before in a podcast, you can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(27:49):
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reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
(00:20):
Punkin Bryant. Yeah, doing his cheeks. How you know I'm
in the heavy That's that's why he's right there? Coolio.
This is double good luck. Okay, well good then this
should probably be a pretty good podcast, which means we
are doomed. Yes, Josh, Before we get going, can I
just mentioned a little TV show coming up, uh, the
(00:42):
Road to Punkin Chunkin and Punkin Chunking itself naturally? Yeah? Yeah,
and that, Josh is Thanksgiving Night your board after your
Turkey o on the Science Channel eight Eastern time. Right,
So insert clever intro chunck. Have you ever been a hostage? No?
(01:03):
Nor have I. I I would remember that, I think, but
you would. Have you ever seen Inside Man? Uh? No?
Is that which one was at Denzel? No? I didn't
see that, Clive Owen, I wanted to dude, that is
in my opinion, I haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon, but
I think it's the greatest hostage movie ever made. You
haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon. No, Chuck, I'm not seventy
(01:23):
like you. Oh, I forgot that they burned all the
copies in nineteen when you were born in the Great
Fire started by a who. Dog Afternoon was gold. You
should check it out. I will check it up. You
know a hundred year old movie. No, I'm sure it's good.
It was Paccino, it is prom sure, yeah, before he
just went absolutely nuts. Um, well, okay, neither one of
(01:46):
us has been a hostage or seeing each other's movies, right,
But no, we must seen war games. But I can
imagine that if either one of us were a hostage,
there would be a hostage negotiator outside. Right, I would
be dead pretty soon. I think if I were a hostage,
has a pizza delivery person could have delivered that that
(02:08):
segway better than me? Yeah? Yeah, in thirty minutes or less.
Yeah uh so, Yeah, Josh, let's talk about hostage and negotiation.
I can't say that word negotiations. Yes, Chuck, let's it is.
There's a few things going on. Usually the hostage taker
is want something, yeah, money, or they want to free
their brothers that are political prisoners or um, they want
(02:32):
safe passage or something like that, right, or they want
you know, some country to stop some policy at and uh,
usually the target of the hostage shaker is not the
hostage but some other third party. Yeah and yeah, but
we'll we'll get to the exception on that. And I was,
I was chomping at the bit, right, I know, finally
(02:53):
they are hostages are usually only bargaining chips that have
symbolic value, right, Like for example, the nineteen seventy two
Olympic Games in Munich, the hostages there had some serious
symbolic value. They were, um, Israeli athletes and uh what
kind of what kind of terrorists? Well, the target was
(03:16):
the Israeli government clearly, not the athletes. They were the pawn,
the symbolic pawn. Much like in the nineteen seventy two
Olympics in Munich, the hostage crisis that happened there over
what a twenty four period, Um, a bunch of Palestinian
terrorists took some Israeli athletes hostage, and they were targeting Israel.
(03:38):
So these were very symbolic pawns. I guess, as you'd
put them, right, did you see Munich did you say,
my god, it's a good movie. Man, that's a good one. Uh.
And so Josh, now we can move on to the
phases of a hostage situation. Okay, the initial phase, so Chuck, yes,
all right, let's let's dramatize this a little bit. Okay,
the initial phase. Yeah, we're just a group of people
(03:58):
hanging out and say a bank. Sure, we'll do a bank.
And then all of a sudden, a bunch of guys
come through the door, kicking off what's known as the
initial phase, right, like you said, already, right, And what's
the initial phase, Chuck? It is a initial stage of
panic and violence where they subdue the hostages and uh,
it's it's very um. So during the initial phase they
(04:20):
come in, everybody get on the floor, right, right, and
then they barred the doors, and uh, the initial phase
is very brief. Did he like my machine gun? Yeah?
That's good. Then comes the negotiation phase, and that's when
Johnny Law comes on the scene, and that's generally called
the standoff phase. Right, And this is almost always the
longest phase of a hostage situation. This is when all
(04:42):
the negotiation is taking place, when they send in pizza
boxes with little cameras and people have to pee, and
the negotiators saying, if there's a pregnant woman in their
letter out stuff just when people have to pee. Yeah,
that's a good one. And then the final phases that
the ter a nation phase. And uh, you've got a
few different results that can happen here. Um, either the
(05:04):
hostage takers surrender and they're arrested, or the police uh
kind of mountain assault and kill them or arrest them,
or their demands are granted and they get away. Uh. Yeah,
and the second one is actually what happened. Actually, combination
of two and three is what happened in Munich. As
(05:25):
anybody who's seen the movie knows. Um, the West German
police are like, we can't take these guys that, we
need to let them think that they're actually going to
escape and get them to the airport. All the hostages
were killed, along with a pilot and a police officer.
Uh and uh the rest of the um, the hostage takers,
the Palestinian terrorists were killed except for three who were
(05:47):
captured right there. It was a blood bath, basically, Well,
I thought they were hunted down later, didn't that What
Munich was about the people who engineered it. Okay, we're
supposedly hunted down later by the massad bright Eric Bannah,
who is just clearly most solid material the Australian massade. Um.
So yeah, those are the three phases. And um during
(06:08):
the second phases when the negotiator comes on the scene,
right and UM, if you've ever seen the movie Negotiator,
the negotiators clearly disappointed. Um. But there was something that
is very characteristic of hostage negotiation, and that is it's
a very important point that the hostage negotiator not be
(06:29):
the league commander on the scene. And why Chuck well
because um, Well, for a couple of reasons. One is
that the negotiator doesn't need to be multitasking right then,
they need to have all their focus on talking to
and talking down the hostage taker. This one reason that's
part of it. They also, um, one of the one
of the great tactics that hostage negotiators use is um
(06:54):
to stall and they prolonged the situation. That seems like
the main tactic, right, it's just by time. One of
the one of the tactics they use to create that tactic,
UM is to say, well, I can't make that call
I've got to talk to somebody else. Um, And if
it's common knowledge that the hostage negotiator actually is commanding
the scene, then that doesn't really work. Right. They'll say, well,
(07:15):
you can pull the trigger on that because you're the
boss exactly, and they're like, no, no, no, don't use
that phrase. Right. That's in every movie, every single hostage
movie is that scene where they go, well, I just
can't give you a seven forty seven full of gold bars, dude.
I gotta get clearance from Fort Knox and I'm gonna
take at least a day, so you might want to
lower your demands, which is actually another reason they stalled
(07:35):
to try and chip away at the demands. So the
negotiators on the scene and he's trying to prolong the situation.
Like you said, um, they're trying to lessen the demands.
They're also um, but they also stall and prolong the
situation by um, getting the hostage takers to focus on
some minute and really unimportant details. Yeah, I like this.
(07:56):
They try to derail them, so like the seven forty seven,
what kind of seven forty seven do you want? It?
Is it okay if it was built before? Because we've
got some that are built after that. But then they
have this seating arrangement that might be a problem for you,
And and all of a sudden, you're distracting the hostage
taker from the crisis at hand, and he's thinking about
(08:17):
what kind of seven seven he wants? You know, I
could just see the guy putting his hand over the
thing and going, what kind of plane do we want?
He's asking about seek configurations. I have no idea, right exactly.
It's also they hang up, and then you've bought some time,
right And and not only um, not every hostage taker
once a seven forty seven, but this can also be
applied to even more minute details, like what do you
(08:40):
want on your pizza? You know? Well, I mean, do
you really want bell pepper because you're getting onion already
and sometimes it's too crunchy. I imagine there's a point
where if you're talking to a hostage taker and you
try the bell Pepper onion combo, because all they're gonna
pick up on what you're doing, or if they've read
this article or ever ever seen a hostage movie, be
sure that's another good they would probably be wise to
(09:02):
say it. It sounds to me like you're trying to
buy some time here, bang bang, indeed, which is what
the hostage negotiator does not want to happen. No, that's
number two on their list. One is to prolong it.
And while while they're prolonging it, we should mention that
there trying to get information as much information as possible
on who the person is, how many there are, what's
(09:23):
frame of mind they're in, if they're unstable, if they're violent, um,
any kind of clue that can that can help him out, right,
Because a hostage negotiator is going to talk differently. They're
not going to try that Bell pepper onion thing on
like a very cool, calculated Clive Owens type, but they
might on somebody who's like just out of his mind
crazy because his wife is leaving him. Right, which is
(09:44):
actually the most common hostage situation is a domestic dispute
that's turned into some guy with the gun barricading he
and his family in their home. Yeah, you usually think
of the big movie scenario with some foreign enemy taking
all these people hot stage, but it's usually just a
regular domestic scene. And the worst ones, man, the worst
(10:05):
ones of those you see on the news where you
see some dudes got a baby acting as a human shield.
Who does that? You've never seen that? No, Oh man,
it's it's the worst watching those cop shows, that those
true crime shows. A baby is a human shield. Guys.
It's like the dad is out of his mind and
uh on drugs or something and he'll have his baby
(10:26):
and it's just it's the worst thing in the world
to watch unfold, very disturbing. Well bet in fact, don't
go see that, Joshua. That'll keep you up at night.
I bet it will. So that is the most common
type of things domestic. But back to the safety of
the hostages. That's number two on the list of the
negotiators to keep everyone in there alive, right, I would
think could technically be number one. Well, prolonging the situation
(10:49):
I think leads to number one. So it's the kind
of tied right. So, um, what you want to do
if you're a negotiator and you are chipping away at demands.
First of all, you're trying to get the seven forty
seven out the window or the gold bars from Fort Knox,
But you're really trying to get to the heart of
what what does this guy want? He wants the seven
forty seven and he wants gold bars. Well, he wants
to escape and he wants some money, So maybe it
(11:11):
can be dealt with on a lesser level. But first,
let's get you some food in there. But to get
you some food, I need a hostage. To get as
many hostages out as possible. Number one, to ensure the
safety of the hostages, as you said, but number two
for if when when an assault comes, if it does come,
there's a lot fewer hostages in there that the police
need to not shoot, you know, Plus the hostage did
(11:33):
you just say this, The hostage can turn if they
release someone who's like ill or pregnant, they can give
them information, insider information, right, like, even to create an
even more distinct psychological profile. That kind of right, right, Yeah.
I like the fact that you were talking about the
lessening the demands, like we can't get your seven forty
seven and gold bars, and it really could. I could
see that throwing the hostage taker into a tizzy. If
(11:54):
all of a sudden there have to decide, well, will
you take a helicopter in a cash years chat? That
kind of well, actually I hadn't thought it before, but
will you endorse it before him right, Yeah, let's go
to the bank. Oh I'm in a bank. Awesome, Yes,
bring me that cast. Here's check please. So number three
on their list is to keep everything calm. You don't
(12:16):
want to upset a hostage taker. No, you're gonna keep
everything nice and chill, especially following the initial phase, that
initial assault. The guys all jacked up on like adrenaline.
He's a little crazy. All of a sudden, it's starting
to sink in if he accidentally took hostages, starting to
sinking like, oh my god, I'm I am a hostage taker.
Now this is a little nuts. So you want to
(12:39):
keep the guy calm, or the guys or the gals calm,
especially if it was a biter mine Hoff experiment. No
idea what that is. It's actually the there's a movie
out called the Body mine Hoff Complex, I think um.
And they actually introduced terrorism to the Western world where
was a group of Germans, German radicals, Kevin Space, basically
(13:02):
board kids that introduced things like skyjacking and stuff like that.
They were crazy crazy, uh so, Josh. The fourth thing,
and this was my favorite one. Actually, one of the
goals of the hostage negotiator is to um, get the
hostage taker and the hostages to work together to give
them some task where they have to interact, like delivering
(13:26):
the pizza. So send out, um, you're you're most agreeable
hostage that you trust the most to get the pizza
and bring it in. So all of a sudden, the
hostage taker has to talk to the hostages and say, hey,
we need you to go and get the pizza because
we can't go within the sniper range. And the more
you get them interacting, the more chance that the hostage
taker sees the hostage as a human instead of just
(13:49):
blind phoning them and putting them in the corner right
or in shooting them in the head. There was actually
a very famous case of that in some hostage takers
took over a subway train or a train in Holland
and a guy named Robert de Groot was about to
be executed Chuck, and apparently they allowed him to pray first,
(14:11):
and they heard him praying for his wife and children,
and they got them so bad that they just couldn't
execute the guy, so they actually fake executed him. Uh,
the standoff continued, and when it came time to execute
more hostages, they didn't give him a chance to pray
and just actually executed him. And I'm sure they pushed
him off the train and he rolled down the hill
and like faked like he was dead. And I'm sure
(14:32):
the rest of the hostages were like, thanks, Bob, you
right now we don't even not only can we not pray,
but we're getting a bullet in the head. Yeah, And
I was thinking about that, like this is you feel
so removed from it. The weird thing about being a
hostage is like, no one plans on being a hostage.
It just happens all of a sudden. And imagine dying
on a train on some track in halland by being
(14:55):
executed by some hostage taker during a standoff. What a
crap way to die. You ride on the money there, brother, Yeah,
so Chuck, I think I think it's pretty damn pretentious
of us to have not brought up Stockholm syndrome yet,
don't you. Yeah, go ahead identifying with your captor. Yeah,
it actually came out of a bank robbery and I
think nineteen eighty one um in Stockholm appropriately enough, and uh,
(15:21):
this this bank robbers plan just kind of went to crap.
And I've been like using pseudo bad words all day,
stupid and weird. This bank robbers plan kind of went
to pot and all of a sudden he was a
hostage taker. Right, Well, this standoff continued, and strangely enough,
(15:41):
the hostage just started helping him. They were serving his lookouts.
They were giving him advice on how to escape and
how to deal with the negotiator and all that. And
that's kind of odd if you think about it. So
why would why would people suffer this what they call
Stockholm syndrome. Well, there's a lot of psychological reasons for it. Yeah,
defense mechanism, coping, coping type of thing. Well, yeah, if
(16:05):
you feel powerless in a situation like that, you go
to whoever has the power, and when you're a hostage,
your hostage taker has the power. Yeah. And the other
thing I mentioned too, is that if you're not killed
and there are other hostages are killed, you feel such
a sense of relief that can actually morph into sympathy.
It's kind of like I remember we did the brainwashing
(16:25):
Uh yeah podcast? Yeah, good one. Uh you want to
talk about countries and some famous non negotiating countries. Yeah,
do you remember the eighties, it was like planes were
getting hijacked everywhere all over the body Mine Hoff. Yes,
the the United States, Russia, and Israel are all very
well known for having a non negotiating policy with hostage
(16:50):
takers and terrorists. France had the opposite didn't work out
for him, though, No, it didn't. France became very quickly
a target um for hostage to a king because France
would apparently be like, what do you want? Ha ha ha. Right,
And apparently sometimes, and this doesn't surprise me, the countries
that refused quote unquote refused to negotiate, there might be
(17:12):
some secret negotiations that happened that they never let out
because that would destroy their front that they won't negotiate, right.
And France also apparently had a little problem with um
forming agreements with hostage takers, and then the hostage takers
would break the agreements, which is crazy, can you believe it?
With a bunch of So there is a there's an equilibrium,
(17:33):
Chuck loves equilibrium. But there's an equilibrium between not negotiating
at all and over negotiating. And I think that's what
you're talking about. It's kind of like negotiating on the
download and never talking about it and then hunting the
people down who did this and murdering them. Right, So, Chuck,
let's talk about what happens when you just absolutely refused
to negotiate, as we've seen actually in the twenty one century,
(17:55):
sadly enough twice in Russia. Yeah, a couple of famous
occurrences there with the Muslim Chechen separatists. In two thousand two,
they took over a theater in Russia, threatened to blow
it up, and so the Russians go in and wonder
who who was it putin? You think the guy who
(18:16):
wrestles tigers with his shirt off in front of news cameras,
don't you don't bear his hallmark? Yeah, they decided to
storm the theater and uh send in some knockout gas
instead of negotiating, and they ended up killing all. I
don't know if it's all of them, but a hundred
and twenty nine hostages died from the knockout knockout gas.
That's not knockout, guess that's death gass. I think that's
(18:36):
what you mean by knockout. I don't think they just
don't want to call it death gass. Maybe. So my
eyes are open now because I didn't realize that was
a euphemism. The other one, Josh, was really really sad.
I remember this one while in oh four when the
same Chechen separatists invaded an elementary school with guns and
bombs and locked themselves up in a gym and Russia
(18:59):
would not Negotia eight and three of the hostages that
were killed. Yeah, that was awful. And half of them
were kids. When they blew up the gymnasium, it was terrible.
Listen up Putin. Yeah, but you maintain your toughness and
we're not gonna negotiate. Just kill the kids. Okay, so
chuck you you okay there, Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.
(19:19):
Let's talk about a hostage situation that actually went relatively well,
at least compared to UM Russia. I know what you're
gonna talk about. Well, there's a very famous incident at
Prince's Gate UH in London in April UM members of
the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan changed
(19:40):
that name. It's a mouthful, isn't it. Basically Arabistan is
an Iranian province UH, and the group wanted to liberate
it clearly UM. And they were Democrats I guess. But
they were. They were I think twenty of them and
they took no, there were six of them and they
took twenty six hostages at the US Embassy in London
(20:01):
at Prince's Gate. So there was a uh standoff that
lasted quite a while. Um. The hostage negotiator did this.
By the book, UH kept the hostage takers focused on
details like what kind of food do you want? That
kind of thing. Um, Yeah, I'm in the mood for time.
I could go for a nice um curry bunha. Yeah,
(20:24):
that sounds good. That's Indian though. That's good stuff, by
the way, if you've ever had it. Um. They actually
did execute one hostage, but the other hostages apparently reported
that this guy UM decided to get into a debate
over Islam with Iranian terrorists, which you don't do in
a hostage situation if you hostage. The negotiator actually did
(20:48):
manage to get the release of two ill hostages. Um.
Maybe one of them is pregnant. Sometimes when you replaced
ill with pregnant, which I don't understand, And they got
info from them. Yeah. And so basically the one thing
that really wasn't by the book was that the the
s a. Yes, got the which is the Special Forces
in Great Britain. They are bad. I have a friend
(21:09):
who's in that. Yeah, I can't say his name here, okay. Um,
they got the hostage negotiator to talk to the hostage
takers on the phone right before the assault, knowing the
assault was coming as a distraction. Right. That doesn't happen much,
not usually. And why because they don't let the negotiator
(21:30):
in on this kind of information, because they think that
they would compromise the job just through maybe even inflection
or tone of their voice. They would give it away
right on purpose. Of course, No, no, certainly not. Very
few hostage negotiators experienced Stockholm syndrome negotiation. Definitely just mentally
crumble at the first time. But this it actually paid off.
(21:53):
The hostage negotiator cut the um lead guy away from
the window and the s A S storm the bill
boom too tap. I imagine five of the guys and
arrest the sixth. Ye not bad. And I think they
only lost one other hostage, uh twenty six, which is
not bad. No, but I mean if your storm of
building in the hostage situation, it's like, well, yeah, that
(22:15):
guy lost his life and another guy lost his life.
But it's like, yeah, but that's actually really good percentage,
I would image. I mean, I wonder what well I
would guess the two thousand four Russian standoff is probably
a bit as bad as it can get. Yeah, I
would say so. One thing we mentioned there that I
thought was pretty interesting was you mentioned the Stockholm syndrome.
But that is actually a tactic that the negotiator will use,
(22:38):
sort of sort of a good cop bad cop thing. Uh.
They'll get on the phone or what however they're communicating
and say, yeah, you know I actually they'll try and
relate to them. I kind of see where you're coming from.
I understand this police captain does not understand where you're
coming from, and he wants to mow you down. To
talk to me, man, and we'll work it out between us. Chuck,
you would make it excellent hostage negotiated. I just realized
(23:01):
I wish I had a hostage I could give to
you right now. That was good. Oh, I just offer
you a six pack and you throw it down, your
gun all over pretty much and some smokes. But that's
a pretty cool trick there. I like that. Of course, again,
this is straight out of the movie. So if any
Hotches Staker has ever seen any of these films and
they should be one step ahead of the negotiator, I
would think so. Um there's another um example of not
(23:25):
going by the book that I wanted to mention. Uh
in in nineteen seventy five of the U. S Consulate
and Kuala Lumpoor, Malaysia, UM, there was there was a
hostage situation and uh apparently the Japanese Red Army, members
of the Japanese Red Army UM attacked the consulate and
took hostages. So the terrorists actually called the the authorities
(23:49):
to tell them that they had the hostages, and some
junior officer at the at the embassy elsewhere in the
embassy picked up the phone and from that point on,
for the rest of the standoff, they wouldn't talk to
anybody else but this junior officer. Wow, yeah, who was
not a trained hostage to negotiate it. And it's just like, oh, god,
well he probably has an eating Well, no, there was
(24:12):
a negotiator on the scene, like coaching, coaching the junior officer.
But yeah, yeah. I also saw in the article where
there's um, there's always a second, a secondary negotiator on
the hand, because sometimes, because you're basically improving, you gotta
be quick on your feet, and if all of a
sudden you're going ah, had that, you need someone to
(24:33):
step in and say tell them that will send them pizza.
That first one sounded exactly like Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator.
I didn't see that. When there's some stupid twist where
he was in fact the in on it or something
who I don't remember. I blocked it out of my memory.
That might have been spoiler. Of course you're supposed to
say spoiler beforehand. But whatever. Yeah, well, we are pretty
(24:53):
much done here with hostage negotiation. We're gonna leave a
whole section untouched on becoming a hostage negotiator. You can
find that in the article how hostage Negotiation Works. You
can type in hostage I imagine on the handy search
bar at how stuffworks dot com, which means it's time
for listener mail. No, no, Josh, not today, Okay, no
(25:16):
listener mail. We're gonna do a little Kiva update like
we are wont to do. Okay, so you want to
go ahead and give the plug? Yeah, man, we started
a Kiva team Keeva dot org k I v A.
Dot org is a micro lending website, socially responsible one
which means you don't make any interest on your loans.
You can loan as little as twenty five bucks to
(25:36):
people in developing countries and now the US um entrepreneurs
who are trying to become self sufficient through their businesses.
They're little, tiny loans that make a huge difference elsewhere
in the in the world. Indeed, uh, and we are
kicking bottom on this. We are man, and I'm proud
of the stuff you should know Army, because you guys
are responding and this is really really cool. We challenge
(25:58):
the Colbert Rapport or I like to call it the
Colbert Report, and we actually made a video where we
chastised him. Yeah, what you probably never see, but just
if you watch the Colbert Report, scoff while you watch
it thinking of Chuck and I and the stuff you
should know Army. People are responding in a big way
(26:19):
and it's going great. And hopefully the Colbert Report will
take notice because that will make even more money for
Kiva and it might get us on his show. Chuck
is just chomping at the bit again on the show,
so well, if you want to join the Stuff you
Should Know, keep the team, please do, please do. Um.
You can go to www dot kiva dot org slash
(26:39):
team slash Stuff you Should Know, and that will take
you right there. A plus, there's a pretty picture chuck
on there. Yeah, me and Emily. Actually it's a picture
of U. We have you know, she's on my team.
I was talking about our picture. Oh no, no, no.
On the member page though. If you're curious of what
my wife and I look like together, then you can
(27:00):
surf through the member page. And is that the one
that's your screensaver in your iPhone too? Yeah, it's It's
one of the best pictures I heard of us. It's
very nice. Thank you. Uh and how about the blogs?
Real quick? Yeah, we both run a blog, and I'm
gonna I've been lazy with it lately. I'm gonna get
back on off the schneid Um. You can access the
blog on the blogs page on which you can find
on the right side of the house Stuff Works dot
(27:22):
dot com home page. I just barely split that out,
so that's where you can find it. Yeah. Go interact, Yes,
go interact. That's a pretty cool blog. We like it
a lot. If you have an email, or if your
name is Aisha Tyler and you have never listened this
far before in a podcast, you can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(27:49):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
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Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!