July 20, 2021 • 48 mins
If you grew up in the 1980s, you thought you had a 50% chance of getting kidnapped every time you left your house. But like with the Satanic Panic and other 80s hysteria, it was much ado about (almost) nothing.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're
flying solo today. But that's cool because God is our
co pilot. This good one. I thought it too, because
(00:28):
God has nothing to do with you and me, that
kind of unless he was one of us. What a song,
What a great song. I can't wait till that comes
back in five years. Who was that? Oh? I think
had been a one hit wonder but it was one
heck of a one hit like I want to say
(00:48):
tor Amos, but it wasn't. No, it definitely wasn't. It
was like Diane West or something like story was too
good for that dribble. She was good. I thought that
was a pretty good, good little song. I like the message. Sure,
just a stranger on the bus. Just a slob like
one of us. That wasn't the player, Yeah, just a
(01:10):
slab kid, you not my friend boy? Yeah, just a
slab like all of us. I didn't know that was
being insulted. When I was grown out to that song
on the dance floor, you couldn't feel her. Supernumerary finger
poking you in your chest. I could not so. Um, Chuck,
I feel like we should stop this chit chat and
(01:31):
get down to it, because we're talking today about something
that made up our childhood, and I was very dismayed
to learn still makes up some kids childhoods. A lot
of kids childhood's still being taught today. Um, and that
you could conceivably make the case that it eroded at
(01:51):
the very fabric of society. A very misguided campaign that
came about in the very early eighties that had the
very ge term known as stranger danger. Yeah, it's funny
when you look at this and you couple it with
everything else. The eighties had a lot of misguided campaigns.
(02:11):
Didn't they just say no, break No, They're all over
the place, satanic panic. It's really weird. I think it was.
I mean, when you look back, it was clearly like uh,
I think there are a lot of factors, like the
the I think the Reagan era sort of moral majority
years conspired to kind of just they wanted to scare everybody,
(02:36):
wait into everything, Yeah, scared you straight straight into their
political ideology. That's definitely, I mean, that's definitely part of
it for sure, because there is a there's a definite UM.
And this isn't just me riffing here, like I saw
this in multiple places, uh with legit sources even UM
and we'll talk a little bit about legit sources are
not And I think there's some good examples in here
(02:57):
of being careful who you listen to. UM. But there,
but there does seem to be like a kind of
a general consensus that part of those moral panics in
the eighties came from UM Christian conservatives who very much
into their credit are are UM dedicated to the idea
(03:17):
of protecting children from predation at the hands of adults,
and that that's where a lot of that stuff came from.
But that it was really done poorly and probably overblown,
and in very short order. It was not the Christian
right that was leading in charging more was everybody. Everybody
was involved in this kind of stuff. Yeah, because I
(03:39):
think you know, if you were a kid in the eighties,
you knew a few things. You knew that if you
listen to rock and roll music that you might be
possessed by the devil. Uh. If you went outside to
go play by yourself, there was a really good chance
you might not come home, and that if you travel
to like in New York City, like the Big City
or someplace, you stand a really good chance to being murdered. Yeah,
(04:01):
it was just gonna happen. Statistically speaking, you if you
went to New York City, you're going to be murdered. Yeah,
and none of those things portry or or if you
smoke a cigarette then you're going to end up, you know,
like a cocaine fiend, right. Or if you take LSD,
your children's genes are going to be all sorts of
messed up and you'll be addicted to LSD for the
rest of your life and have taken multiple times a
(04:22):
day flashbacks for the rest of you if only Yeah,
for real free trip. But we'll go ahead and start
because this ed the Grabanowski. The Grabster helps to help
us with this, and he very logically started out with
some statistics. The National Crime Information Center from the FBI
(04:43):
have been they kind of good at collecting missing persons stats.
They've been doing that since the Crime Control Act in
nine And it's like with anything else when you collect
statistics on like missing children, Let's say you also have
to clean up that list every year, right, because a
lot of kids run away from home, a lot of
kids come come back home. A lot of kids were
(05:06):
never lost to begin with that are reported missing, that
kind of thing. And in twenty nineteen, I believe once
they added and then subtracted, they added about six hundred,
nine thousand, two hundred seventy five missing persons. That is
eye popping. And that's all missing persons. It's not just
kids for that year though, that's not over the course
of a century. That's in two thousand nineteen alone, right,
(05:29):
But they also purge six hundred and seven thousand, one
d and four, leaving about two thousand actual missing persons
remaining in their system, and about a hundred of those
were juvenile. And then some of those our kids who
ran away from home more than once, so they're on
the list more than once. So if you just look
(05:51):
at naked statistics and actual kidnapping in modern times of
a child is really really air and even rarer still
to be kidnapped by a stranger. Exactly. So, Chuck, I
got my trusty old calculator out, and I got a
lot of stuff wrong, But I'm going to read what
I came up with. Okay, does um and just got
(06:18):
me with that. Uh So out of the let's say
two thousand people who are two thousand kids who are
abducted every year, That's what I saw in one place,
I think from the FBI, two thousand kids were abducted. Um,
that means that out of the seventy four million kids
in America in two thousand eleven, each one technically had
(06:41):
a point zero zero, zero, zero to seven percent chance
of being abducted. Okay, and that's just abducted. Okay, So
hating with me for one more second. You have twenty
you have a quarter of a million of a percent
of being abducted. Statistically speaking, if or a child in
the US in two thousand eleven, of that quarter of
(07:05):
a millionth of a percent chance, you had an additional
two hundreds of a percent chance of being abducted and
murdered by a stranger, which is, as anyone will tell you,
the money fear of being a parent, and that is
what drove it that there was this irrational fear of
(07:25):
the worst case scenario. And even though it was the
chances were vanishingly remote, every single parent in America starting
in the very early eighties was was staying up awake
at night for decades, worried that this was going to
happen to their child. Yeah, and you know, that's we
were talking nineteen, which is the lowest number since they've
(07:47):
been keeping track. I think that number peaked in the nineties.
But even in the eighties it wasn't a common occurrence.
It's you know, these days with camera doorbells and self
owns and CCTV and how security cameras like, obviously that
kind of stuff isn't going to happen as much because
it's just harder to get away with it. And you
(08:08):
can make a case that in the eighties it was
easier and maybe happened a little more for that reason,
but it still was founded upon parents worse fears and
and it was never a statistical probability, no, not even remotely.
And there definitely were more kidnappings in general. I think
they used to get around a million entries rather than
(08:30):
the seven hundred thousand or six hundred thousand and change um.
And so that's definitely gone down, and we'll talk about why.
And then the recovery rate has actually gone up from
the sixties of the of from the sixty percentile to
the ninety percentile, So it definitely has improved. But like
you're saying, even at its worst, it was driven by fear,
(08:50):
which makes it the definition of a moral panic. Yeah,
and driven by the media that has the statistic of
newspaper articles about how to protect kids focus on threats
from strangers, and only about four percent talk about um
abuse within the family, which is far and away the
most common threat to a child or people within the family. Yeah, yeah,
(09:15):
I think um something like fifty eight thousand kids were
abducted by familiar, non family members, like people they already knew,
and most of the time they were targeted for sex.
So it's not to say like there isn't a there
isn't a big problem with child sexual abuse, Like I
think it's even at the time, it was a hidden
(09:36):
problem even when everyone was focusing on it, because everyone
was focusing on the wrong group strangers. Whereas it's like, no,
you're far more likely if you're going to be sexually abused,
to have been sexually abused by someone you know or
even a family member. You know, the stranger picking you up,
abusing you sexually and then murdering you. Was it just
almost never happened in the United States. Did you happen
(09:59):
to to sit through the frustrating experience of Abducted in
Plain Sight? Was it a documentary? No? I didn't see
that one. Don't bother I. Well, I kind of like
those vintage like P s A films. I mean, it's
a remarkable story, but it's on Netflix. It'll it is
one of the more frustrating things that you will ever
ever sit through in your life. Do they keep like
(10:22):
going further and further back in time to give more
and more backstory and context. No, it's just the story
of this one family. But I don't want to give
anything away. If all right, it's just you're gonna want
to throw your television into the street so frustrated. Abducted
in Plain Sight? Yeah, I mean it's I don't know
if I can recommend it. You know, it's one of
(10:42):
those things it's just like, I mean, I'm kind of
glad I watched it, but it was just so frustrating,
like listening to the Shags album or something. Hey, did
you ever see that one after school special where Helen
Hunt smokes PCP and jumps out of the second floor
window or school? That was a great one. Yeah, all
time So what were you about to start with? Let's
(11:04):
take a break. Oh, I think that's very appropriate, man. Yeah,
we'll take your break and we'll come back and talk
a little bit about the beginnings of the stranger danger
era in the late seventies right after this. Stop you
(11:37):
you know, stop stop fearing. You shouldn't you know? No
you stop you you know, stop stop fearing. Shouldn't you know? Stop?
You should know? Okay, Chuck. So it's this is one
of those rare things where you can kind of point
to a moment in history where society change, there is
(11:58):
a sea change, And it really happened in May of nine,
um when a little, cute, cute, little six year old
boy named Eating pats Um vanished. He he was walking
for the very first time in his life, uh, by
himself to the bus stop two blocks away from his
family's house in in Soho. And by house, I'm sure,
(12:20):
I mean like a two square foot studio apartment. Um. Yeah.
And it was the last day of school before summer.
This was his last chance as a six year old
to walk by himself like a grown up to the
bus stop. His mom let him do it because it
was a hectic Marian and she knew he was really
wanting to get more independence. He had a dollar in
his pocket for a soda, his favorite Eastern airlines had
(12:42):
on and he was never seen again. To this day,
they have no idea what happened to him. Really. Yeah,
and this was a huge, huge news story, um, partially
as we'll see, because it was a little white boy
who was very cute and um, media heavily slants their
news stories towards white people in general, white kids. Uh.
(13:06):
And like I said, we'll get into that morning minute. Um.
His dad was a professional photographer, so that definitely helped.
There were tons of great photos of eating that the
news could dig into and put all over the place,
and they did. Um. And you know, like you said,
this is one of those deals that, uh, it's the
parents worst nightmare. So when a news story gets run
(13:27):
like this, every parent in the country is going to
pick up the phone. These days it would be you know, online,
but they would pick up the phone and call their
friends and say, did you seek here? What happened? Did
you see what happened? Like this is the kind of
thing that that we're also scared about, and it's actually happening.
It does happen. Yeah, and there were some other extenuating
circumstances to that just made it even worse. Like this
(13:48):
school didn't bother to call to ask about where he
was when he didn't show up, because I guess they
didn't know he was walking by himself the first time ever. Um.
And so his parents went the whole day without being
wear it all until he didn't come home from school
that he had never showed up. Um, there was just
a there was just a lot going on for something
about it. It just struck everybody in just the right way.
(14:10):
It's just heartbreaking and it scared parents to death. And
that was in May of nineteen seventy nine, and you
can fast forward to just over two years later, uh,
this time in Hollywood, Florida, another six year old, another
cute little white kid named Adam Walsh, was abducted from
(14:30):
a Sears store while his mom shopped like two miles over.
He was playing like video games in the store and
his mom was doing some shopping, something that parents did
all the time back then. Like it was astounding that
he was even in the same store at the mall
as her. He could have been anywhere in the mall,
like at that time, and he was abducted while she
(14:51):
was just a few miles over. And then even worse
than I think eaten and this this really kind of cemented,
like the Eating Pat's disappearance was in a one off,
like we're we're dealing with a huge social problem now.
Is that Adam Walsh's um poor little head was found
floating in a canal about ten days after he went missing.
And that that was it. I mean, that was it.
(15:12):
That didn't just scared parents, that scared everybody. Anyone who
heard about it was now scared to death of stranger
danger and abductions and being murdered by some mirando who
picks you up. Yeah, And uh, if you noticed Josh
earlier saying we don't know what for sure what happened
in the Eaton Pats case, his body was never found.
In twenty twelve, there was a man named Pedro Hernandez
(15:35):
who was a store clerk that worked in the same
neighborhood in New York who confessed to killing him, and
he was convicted in seventeen. But uh, it was a
pretty flimsy case and a flimsy confession, and I think
generally everyone kind of says, you know, it's not case closed.
We still don't really know for sure what happened, even
(15:56):
though there was a confession, because there was nobody that
was ever found. And I don't think the parents ever
felt closure like they deserved no, no for sure, and
they I mean they had already previously zeroed in on
another suspect named Jose Ramos, who was somebody who had
a relationship with one of Eaton's babysitters and who was
a peder asked um and I don't know if he
(16:17):
ever admitted to it or not, but he was never charged,
but the um pat's has won a civil suit against
him that saying he was responsible. So to two people
have been once been convicted and one's been ruled against,
two different people in the in the murder of him,
even though they have nothing to do with one another. Right.
So that brings us to the famous Milk Carton Kids campaign.
(16:42):
Um not the Amazing Folks Singing Duo? Is that the
name of a band? Yes, these two guys, they're they're great.
They they sort of a Simon and Garfunkly Everly Brothers
type of thing, but there's there. They like, play it straight.
They're not like they might be giants or something. No,
I mean they the music is played straight, but they
(17:03):
there is a lot of humor in their banter. But
they're not They're not like a joke band. Okay, gotcha, Hey, yeah,
it's it's good stuff. I don't know if they might
be giants, could be considered a joke band. Well no, no, no,
I don't mean they're a joke band. Right here we
get with the emails. If you ever heard his reels
polka stuff, it's great, sure it is. Everybody loves weird out. Hey, man,
(17:24):
back off. His non parody music is wonderful. Did you
see the documentary? It was not a good documentary at all,
but it was still really interesting about the amazing Jonathan.
I never saw that there. It's it's it's very interesting
in that it really kind of explores the amazing Jonathan.
But the documentary itself is not not great, and the
(17:46):
documentary and even knows it like part of the documentaries
him struggling with figuring out how to how to do
this right? You know, so kind of something worse than
a great documentary subject being made by a C grade commentary.
I see, I see, there's a chance that this guy
is listening right now, because he looked to me like
a stuff you should know listeners. So I'm just gonna say, no,
(18:08):
give it a shot. Well, I'm not saying this was
a C great filmmaker, but I've seen plenty of C
grade documentaries about really great topics, That's all I'm saying.
So the milk carton kids, not the folks thinging duo. Uh.
This began in Iowa and the miss the disappearance of
Johnny Gosh in nineteen eighty two and Eugene Wade martin four,
(18:29):
both twelve year olds, both newspaper boys in Des Moines,
kind of spurred this campaign. Um, I do love that.
Ed dear sweet Ed when he he gave credit to
the Anderson Anderson Ericson Dairy in Iowa for starting this
in nine eight four, and he said the only source
I could find was something called quote Uncle John's Bathroom
(18:52):
Weader Reader in quote, it was like, have you ever
listened to the podcast before? I just since you going
like what something called red is going on here? This
is like I'm in bizarro world or something. Well that's
good enough for us. Uh, And I think I believe it.
I think They were probably the first company to put
(19:14):
kids on the side of a milk carton to raise
awareness and say, hey, here's a picture of this kid.
Here's what they look like, how tall they are, when
their birthday is um, you know some things. They might
just like little clues how to identify this kid if
you see them out clue there's like they're like, put
on your pirate hat because X marks the spot and
(19:36):
we're gonna go find Johnny Gosh, here are your clues. Well,
I mean this was this is the best they could
do pre internet. It's like, what's always sitting on the
table while you're having your breakfast cereal that you're staring
at is that milk carton? And I mean great idea.
All of us have read the milk carton out of
boredom when you know there's no good cartoons on or
something like that. You just kind of read this stuff.
So yeah, it made total sense. And from what I understand, yes,
(19:58):
Anderson Ericson was the first day to do that. Uh.
And it also makes sense that they would be the
first one because they were in des Moines and Johnny
Gosh and Eugene martin Um were both abducted from Des
Moines two years apart, probably by the same person from
what I read um and they so like this local
dairy doing this is like part of a get out
(20:19):
the info campaign makes a lot of sense. I did
see that a local grocery store chain was actually the
first to print their images and missing like info on
their bags, and that Anderson Ericson probably got the idea
or somebody got the idea and went to Anderson Ericson
and they said sure. The offshot of this, they were
the first producers of milk cartons. And a lot of
(20:40):
people say, well, it was eating Pats who was the
first kid who was on a milk carton, probably on
a national level, but on a milk carton. Ever, it
was two kids. It was Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin,
and both of them were paper boys, abducted from their
routes in the early morning. It was just their stories
are so sad, man, Yeah, super sad. The milk carton
(21:02):
thing picked up again in Chicago and then California, and then,
like you said, eventually became a national thing. In the
National Child Safety Council, which is a nonprofit, they launched
this nationwide campaign and that's where beaten Pats probably comes
into play. And then it was on you know a
lot of stuff. It was on grocery bags and pizza boxes,
(21:24):
and it wasn't around long though, Like I kind of
thought it might still be a thing even but I
think it only lasted you know, a handful of years.
And let in nineties mid nineties, the whole milk carton
thing had kind of gone away, gone away, with people saying,
you know, it was successful while it lasted, but it
just had its run. And then other people, of course,
(21:44):
now I look back and say, but was it really
successful in that? Did it lead into you finding some
of these kids? And I don't necessarily think that is
the only measure of success, uh if it's an awareness campaign,
but they definitely can't go back and say, well, yeah,
look at this list of kids that were found because
of the milk carton campaign. And actually there is I
(22:05):
saw the number three that there are three named kids
who were rescued and found and returned based on milk cartons.
But there's only one actual name I can find, and
you can find it all over the place. Her name
is little Bonnie Lowman. I had in the little her
first name is actually Bonnie, not little, and she has
one of the most name for a kid, little Bonnie Lowman. Yeah. Um,
(22:27):
until you reach in a middle age and you're like,
oh my god. Um. So she has one of the
most amazing stories you could possibly encounter when it comes
to kids on milk cartons, don't you think? Yeah? I
mean she was kidnapped by her mom and stepdad and
as the story goes, recognized her own image on a
milk carton and like kept it, you know, cut it
(22:50):
out and kept it on our wall. And I guess
a kid's or a friend's parents saw it and called
the cops. But is that that's not true though, my friend,
I would put a significant amount of money on the
fact that Bonnie Lohman is not a real person, that
it is the internet legend. Yes, dude, I looked on
(23:11):
the New York Times website is search for Bonnie Loman
missing milk carton. I even put quotes around Bonnie Loman.
Did it on the Washington Post website. I did it
on the Denver Post website, and Denver is supposedly where
she was found living, abducted by her mom and stepfather. Nothing,
Nothing comes up, not even a vague reference. She's an
internet legend and we figured it out, we think, until
(23:36):
someone writes us and says, no, no no, no, I knew
little Bonny Loman, right, And we'd say the Bonnie Loman
and say, well, I don't know. Actually it was my
cousin's friends co worker who knew Bonny. But no. Another giveaway, Chuck,
is that this story is repeated almost verbatim around the Internet.
They don't say where she was abducted from and returned
to the only the only thing I've seen consistently is
(23:58):
that the story itself and then that it happened in Colorado,
And then a lot of the sites that carry this
story are like Jesus Daley or board game tips dot com,
not necessarily the most credible sources for like a um
an actual like child abduction case. So I'm I think
we may have rooted that one out, all right, So
what's going on here is panic? Uh, these milk cartons
(24:22):
come out. It's a good campaign, but all that does
is sort of reinforced to parents that you know, a
stranger is lurking outside your home kind of at all times,
just waiting for your kid to be playing on the
playground by themselves for just a minute and then they're
gonna get snatched. And while this panic is going on,
there are people that were sort of ringing the bell
for good sense way back in the eighties, even the
(24:45):
famous pediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock. Uh, he was quoted in
the Washington Post and five is saying children are bombarded
by more than photographs. They stand in line at mass
fingerprinting sessions and shopping malls and watch cartoon characters on TV,
reminding them to be wary of strange adults. Uh. There's
a little bit more to the quote, but he was
kind of saying, like we're going overboard a little bit here,
(25:07):
and we're actually maybe doing harm by raising children in
this culture of fear. We did you were you fingerprinted
as a child? I was never fingerprinted, but I certainly
remember everything else. I mean, I forgot about the Saturday
Morning cartoons. It was stuff all over those two. Yeah
McGuff remember the crime Dog to teach you how to
(25:28):
run away from strangers, And like that's what they would
teach you, is like you should scream and yell and
kick and run for your life if a stranger ever
approached you, Like if they just hit the basic minimum thing.
We're like, Okay, strangers approaching you, run as fast as
you can for your little life. Um, And it was like,
it's it's definitely easy to to to buy into the
(25:51):
idea that that culture of fear had real repercussions on
us growing up, because I remember I was scared of
all this and my dad took me to get fingerprinted.
You were yeah. I was like, why are we doing
this again? It's like, just in case they find you
at their head cut off one day, we can identify
I might have been fingerprinted. Something about that really seems
familiar to me. Yeah, And I didn't commit a crime
(26:11):
now now, not a little chuck. Still to this day,
I'll bet uh no, I've never been arrested. That's good.
And you know, I realized later that my dad preemptively
ratted me out to the cops really well, yeah, by
having me fingerprinted. But that was the level of like,
my dad took me to a fingerprinting fair for a
(26:32):
little kid, so that they had your fingerprints in the
system in case something bad happened to you and you
turned up, they could identify your body or you even
if you've just been abducted, but you knew what was
going on, you knew why you were going there, and
that that definitely did affect me. And I think a
lot of kids our age, Yeah, Ed has a and
this is one of those kind of stats that I
(26:54):
think is a little dumb. But from the early nineties,
there was a study that found that seventy two percent
appearance cited abduction is something they worry about. That's just
a little weird. I mean, I think every parent that
is deep down worried that it could happen. But it's
not like I don't know, there's just so many qualifiers there,
(27:15):
like how how much did they worry about it? They
sounded like it was one of their chief fears, along
with like failing their kid, not they're not providing for
their kids, like like deep down fears, like a big fear.
That's what it sounded like in the abstract I read.
I didn't read the whole study, but you know, that's
how they don't get A prominent fear would be the
word I'm looking for, rather than big fear, because it
(27:38):
is the biggest fear. But whether or not you think
it's a reality that you really should worry about a
lot is a different thing. I don't know. I would
bet dollars nuts that they there was a prominent fear
in your definition for sure. All right, Uh, it did
do some harm, like in actual instances that we can site. Uh,
in the boy Scouts they still teach danger of danger.
(28:01):
And in two thousand five, a cub Scout um was
lost in the woods and actually if they did rescue
for a few days because people like there were people
there trying to help him, like, hey, are you lost
a little boy, and you know, stranger danger would run away.
And so in that case, like this kid was trying,
you know, people trying to help him out, and he
(28:22):
he ran away from him. So that's that's one definite instance. Yeah.
And that WAPO article that you mentioned earlier, it was
just rattling off. This is eight five. This is like
right in the middle of all this when it was
kind of rare to question this this mentality, and they
were rattling off all these instances of kids just like
losing their minds out of fear. Like they mentioned a
(28:44):
girl who was got hysterical when it was her time
to get off the bus because she lived on a
rural road and she was sure that if she walked
alone down this rural road, she will be kidnapped. It's
just a certainty in her mind. And you know, kids
were like anytime they were parents that said high to
the little kids, they freaked out, you know, like you
just couldn't. You couldn't, you couldn't give any attention to
(29:06):
little kids or else they would be really scared. And
there's this aspect of the moral panic as far as
stranger danger goes, where the dangerous group is not Satanists,
you know, it's not um. It's it's not um witches
or something like that. It's strangers. And all of us
are strangers to somebody else. So that means that everybody
(29:28):
is under suspicion of everyone else at some point in time,
where a suspicious character to somebody who doesn't know us,
and possibly a kid, and then that alters how you
act around kids, and that that has had, over the
years an impact of how adults deal with kids, and
it's removed us from that. It takes a village to
(29:49):
raise a child kind of community where it's like that's
your kid, I'm not going anywhere near them. I don't
even want to look at them because I don't want
somebody to think I'm trying to kidnap them or something.
And that has had a real impact on how adults
deal with kids, and that is surely having an impact
on how children develop in a community in society. Yeah,
didn't you find a thing where it said that men
(30:12):
and these are these days men are more reticent to
like help out a child because of that fear. Yeah,
something like sixty seven or seventy said they would not
help a kid who was who needed help. They would
like so much smaller percent, but basically most of them said,
I just keep walking because I'd be so worried that
that people were wondering why I was approaching a little kid.
(30:33):
And then a smaller proportion said that they would go
find a woman to help, or maybe the cops or
something like that, but they would not step in and
fulfill their normal social roles an adults helping a kid
in need, and that that's just that was a UK survey,
I think, But that's um, you know, that definitely applies
over here as well too. I didn't know it's the
(30:54):
UK should told me that this. Did the studies say,
you know, are men on the way to the pub
survey and said little humor there trying to light the move.
I liked it. It worked. It also made me want
a nice draft beer. Oh boy. I went to this
great pub in Manchester when we did that show. That
was just that was one of my great days in England.
(31:16):
It was so awesome. That place was on a probably
a one ft slant that floor. It was so old.
That's awesome. I actually found a Topas place in Manchester
because remember we were there for like a couple of
days and I ate there probably like three or four
or five times. It was so good. But I was
aware that I was eating at a Topas place in Manchester.
(31:37):
I finally hit a pub in No I did I.
I hit one in Manchester to kind of buy the venue. Yeah.
They're pretty neat, little little places, aren't they. It's a
good time. Yeah, you gotta get back there. Uh. So.
There's something called the children's independent or called children's independent mobility,
and it's a measurement of how free your kid is
(31:58):
to move about your neighborhood and to explore or things
without supervision, Like sure, walked down to the playground or
walked down to your friend's house. That kind of thing.
And a higher see I am is a really good
thing that correlates with psychological development, with analytical skills, with
motor skills. It gives the kid um just sort of
(32:19):
more um confidence and knowledge about their community. And get this,
it gives it makes kids more aware of true dangers
than if you're constantly watching them instead of stranger danger.
It makes kids more aware of like a real danger
that might be out there, like they have they have
done studies and figured this out right. So we talked
(32:42):
a lot about that in our Free Range Children episode.
I don't know if you talked specifically about that that measure,
but um, I mean, we definitely found that that. Yes,
your your kid is just more well rounded and developed
if they're allowed to explore the world on their own terms.
You know, within reason. Nobody's saying like let your kid
play with flaming knives or anything like that, but we
(33:04):
really exactly also known as the swing set um, but
the the you know, there's a there's a pendulum that
swings between things like that, and it has swung way
too far in the other way. If if you guys
will just allow me to get up on my soapbox
for a second, please do it. Okay, I just got
one toe up and then came back. All right, well
(33:26):
you're off your soapbox. Let's take our final break. We'll
talk a little bit more about the criticism of stranger
danger and sort of some of the best practices these
days right after this, you know, stump, No, you know, stump. Alright,
(34:13):
So we mentioned earlier news stories, uh, as far as
child abductions covering cute, little white kids, and that's kind
of always been the case. And that's one of the
biggest criticisms of media coverage, uh, is it's very much
disproportionately covers white children in those cases and ignores cases
(34:33):
of people of color. Um. There's an organization called Black
and Missing because of this, and they report that thirty
seven percent of missing kids just a few years ago
were people of color, which is a much higher percentage
proportionately than the overall population. But you're not hearing about
this stuff in the news like you would if it
(34:54):
was you know, the pageant queen, right exactly. It's just
I mean, it's just that kind of gets it across
pretty pretty clearly. Yeah, So what we're not saying is
that there is no risk to your kid being abducted
by a stranger. It it obviously happens, because we do
see it on the news, um and and it is
(35:16):
every parent's worse nightmare. And I think that's probably why
it's always been such a thing. It's because it's the
it's the worst thing you can imagine happening, because not
only has that happened, and that that is horrific in
its own right, but that also means that you have
failed to do your number one job is to protect
your kid at all costs. Yeah, man, I can't. I
(35:37):
just it's astounding that people can go on from that,
they can manage to keep living. You know, I don't
get it at all, but it's one of the things
that they do though, and I think one of the
things that gives them purpose in life from that point
on is a lot of parents, especially some of the
early more prominent national cases like Eating pats as parents,
(35:58):
the Walshes, Adam Walsh his parents, and Johnny Gash's parents,
they all threw themselves into like lobbying for social reform,
and their their lobbying efforts did lead to things like
the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to be developed
and um National Missing Kids Day to start to be
recognized on May which is the anniversary of John of
(36:20):
Eaton Path's disappearance, and UM, the Walsh's I think set
up the Adam Walsh Foundation four days after Adam Walsh's funeral,
like and then John Walsh all is very famous for
doing that, UM America's most wanted thing, and like has
has like legitimately dedicated himself to like stopping this, and
so has UM a lot of other parents. So I
(36:40):
think that's one way that they've they've put their their
time and effort and energy into this, imported into doing
what they can to to make it so that other
parents don't go through this. Yeah, they're there been quite
a few of those. Jacob Wetterling Act that created the
the Sex Offender Registry, and interestingly, his mother eventually on
(37:04):
a podcast said she she expressed regret about these registries
that were expanded. UM she felt like overly expanded and
endlessly punitive basically and saying like you're on this list
forever and you're never allowed to reintegrate into society. And
is that fair? Especially when they've expanded those registries to
(37:27):
include things like if you got caught urinating in public,
you are registered sex offender, which is really interesting. I've
I've never been caught, but boy, I've been in public
plenty of times. I've got a little bladder and sometimes
I just gotta go. But that happens, and and um,
apparently again, especially the one where you're having like, um,
(37:48):
consensual sex as a teenager and like, depending on your state,
so you're seventeen and the girls sixteen, you can you
may if you're caught, if the parents prosecute you, um,
you may be on the sex offender registry for the
rest of your life. And apparently that happens just proportionately
two kids of color. So the whole thing is like, like,
the sex offender registry is not in and of itself
(38:10):
a bad thing, Like it's meant to be a tool
to warn communities, like, hey, there's somebody who has perpetrated
and more in many cases a crime against a child,
and you should know that that they live at this apartment.
But it's not just a cut and dried issue. People
can be categorized unfairly, get caught up in that dragnet.
The categories can be far too expanded. And then yeah, like, um,
(38:33):
Jacob's mom was saying there's no redemption there. In fact,
like there's only like in most towns because you can't
live within X number of feet from a bus stop
or a school or a plate or a park. There's
like very small pockets where a sex offender can legally live.
And that means that you've got like these little sex offenders. Yeah,
(38:56):
of sex offenders who are on the sex registry list,
and they become shunned and outcasts, and a lot of
them get run out of town or run to go
live homeless under overpasses and that kind of thing. So, um,
there's a lot of tinkering that could be done to
make it more just if. That's kind of where where
our minds are. But I think when it comes to
sexual abuse of children, that's justice isn't necessary. Justice for
(39:19):
the perpetrator isn't isn't where America's mind is typically, you know,
I mean Jerry Seinfeld is a registered sex offender. On
his TV show for What what did he do? Pet
in the barking deck and got caught? I don't remember,
is there right? Yeah? When they couldn't find their car
and they're all split up and looking for their car
and got caught someone else might have to George might
(39:42):
have pee, but yeah, technically ter sex offender. So like,
I mean, that's a good example of how it could
be made better. But the the point of the upshot
of the whole thing is that there is there is
a need and a desire to protect kids, and that's
great and we should be be putting our efforts towards that.
But we can figure out how to direct it more, yes,
(40:05):
more smartly, I guess, and in doing so help kids
more effectively. You know. Yeah. In the UK is a
good example, they have a campaign um instead of like
a stranger danger, it's called clever Never Goes, which it
doesn't jump off the page is self explanatory at first
as an American, but the point of it is is like,
(40:28):
not every adult is waiting to kidnap. You go to
someone with a uniform or a badge, even if that's
like a store clerk or you know, a nurse. It
doesn't even have to be a cop walk in the beat.
If you feel like you're in trouble or something like that,
you can approach responsible adults. And the idea clever never
goes is in you know, never go anywhere with a
(40:50):
stranger because that's how they operate, which is, hey, get
in my car because I have a cool cartoon playing
at my house, that kind of thing like never ever
go somewhere with a stranger, clever, never goes. And speaking
of the UK, I saw something Chuck that I thought
was a little um surprising. So they had they used
to have this cartoon p s A for kids called
Charlie says, and this this cat would keep his little
(41:14):
human friend out of danger by like going ballistic when
the kid did something dangerous. And um, there was a
n p s A about stranger danger, about not going
with strangers. So this is yeah, almost a full decade
before the US was even tuned into this stuff, that
UK were already scaring their kids. Good for them. Yeah,
(41:35):
I think we got to talk about the Amber alert
because this is sort of the smarter version of the
milk cart and kid and it actually works. This is
name for the very said case of Amber Haggerman, who
was kidnapped and killed. The N and Amber Alerts started
going out to initially to nearby radio stations and now
thanks to the A and S the Alert notification system,
(41:58):
you're gonna get that on your phone you might get
that on your weather radio. You might get that if
you're driving down the highway. That's a big one. These
you know, sort of electronic highway signs, those are huge
because they can actually say, you know, there is a
a brown forward tourist with this license plate somewhere on
this road within the last hour. And I believe they
(42:21):
have caught close to a thousand or or recovered close
to a thousand kids thanks to the Amber Alert system.
So it's pretty effective. And those electronic billboards that they
have on highways can now flash like their picture too,
is along with the other stuff. And supposedly from people
who are in that industry of recovering children who are
missing or abducted, say that the number one, far and
(42:44):
away best way to recover kids safely is to get
their picture out far and wide immediately after they go missing.
U And that was a big that's now kind of
a big retroactive criticism of the milk cartons is that,
you know, um, they're circulating these kids pictures often years
after the abduction, and they probably don't look anything like
(43:05):
those pictures anymore, and like the trail has gone cold,
and um, the idea that that doesn't mean that pictures
don't work. It's just the timing of the pictures. Is
is um a paramount? Yeah? I mean, man, nothing is
more sad than when you read a story of the
kids that never there's never closure and the parents just
(43:25):
never know what happened. Never a body, never confession. It's
just my my kid disappeared thirty seven years ago and
we don't know anything. It's just man, it's hard to
even read those stories. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of
anything much sadder than that. Man. Um. I do have
one other thing too. I saw also in addition to
that clever never goes that people are teaching their kids now, Um,
(43:48):
they're they're kind of focusing more on how like what abuses, like,
like what sexual abuse is like, so inappropriate touching their
teaching kids that like they're in charge of their own
bodies and they don't have to let some Yeah, makes
total sense because it's more laser focused, um in the
actual the actual danger that kids can face, which is
(44:10):
sexual abuse, because apparently we do have an enormous sexual
abuse problem. The problem is is we've been looking at
strangers and ignoring the fact that it's almost always a
family member or somebody that the kid knows. So if
you can teach the kid what sexual abuses like and
how to look out for and what to do if
somebody makes advances on them, then they can trust strangers
because they can they can trust people in general. They
(44:34):
can just know that that can come from anywhere and
if it happens, this is what you do. So I
can imagine kids learning that today will turn out a
lot better than a lot, a lot less messed up
than you and I in our generation. Den we're so broken. Yeah,
and the and the body autonomy is not just for uh,
you know, it's obviously great for that, but it's kind
(44:54):
of for everything. It's about with other kids, like you know,
they don't want to be pushed that way or played
with that way. It's like it's their body. You gotta
you gotta ask them for permission to to do whatever
you want to their body. And kids, you know, my daughter,
from the time she was in preschool, they were teaching
them that. And she'll tell me when she doesn't want
me doing something, she'll say, no, Daddy, my body, and
(45:15):
I'll say, you got it. That's great. Yeah, that was
something I saw was like, you really have to back
them up. So like as comes over and wants to
plan a big wet kiss on their right and they
don't want it. Yeah, you have to listen to them. Yeah,
or else what is it worth? You know what you
taught him? So so way to go parents of today.
I'm glad you guys are figuring it out. Um and uh,
(45:37):
I'm glad that we could lead by example, right Chuck
our generation. That's right. If you want to know more
about stranger danger, there's a lot of it on the internet.
Just be careful to verify what you're reading and where
it's coming from. Uh. And since I said that, of
course the s Y s K one of our mottoes.
That means it's time for listener mail anything. All this
(46:00):
love from an Army vet. Hey, guys, want to thank
you both for being such a valuable new addition to
my routine. I'm currently going through particularly nasty divorce and
have lost my career in the process. Have been a
paratrooper and a medic in the Army for about six years,
but now I must find a new path while bearing
this incredible loss. Because of this, I've had to travel
back home to live while I get back on my
(46:22):
own two feet. I used to listen to your podcast
in the Army during field ops, and began listening during
the cross country drive from Colorado back to the Midwest.
Now that I'm home, I still find myself listening to
at least one show a day. Sometimes I find myself
adopting a pessimistic view of humanity, and it's been very
therapeutic to know that such kind hearted people still exist
in the world. Your podcast has not only grounded me
(46:44):
and ignited my fire for curiosity again, but it's also
refreshing to hear from two people understand the unending beauty
of the world. Hummingbirds, anyone. I just want to say
thank you for your for the enormous presence you have
been keeping in my life, making it fun and beautiful.
Never underestimate to buy what you do. Uh ps. Is
there ever been a consensus on how to measure standing
(47:05):
water in your lawn? Nope? Okay, and chuck b s
p p S. I also love tiny things. We used
to get tiny, little one inch Tabasco bottles in our
m ris in the Army, and everybody complays, but there's
something about and they still pack a punch, just a
little bit of it. Sure, I'm gonna keep this anonymous
because I didn't hear back from the persons. Okay, good,
(47:27):
thank you, Mr Anonymous, Army back. That was an all
time great email. Thank you Anonymous. That was really really moving.
I'm glad we can be doing something to help you
keep going during this time and keep your chin up.
Everything gets better, right, Chuck, that's right. Just stay away
from the strangers, all right, Claire never goes. If you
want to get in touch with me and Chuck uh
(47:49):
and Jerry, your Frank the chair anybody guest producer Dave Real,
producer Dave God who knows you can get in touch
with us by saying it's an email at stuff podcast
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(48:11):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're
flying solo today. But that's cool because God is our
co pilot. This good one. I thought it too, because
(00:28):
God has nothing to do with you and me, that
kind of unless he was one of us. What a song,
What a great song. I can't wait till that comes
back in five years. Who was that? Oh? I think
had been a one hit wonder but it was one
heck of a one hit like I want to say
(00:48):
tor Amos, but it wasn't. No, it definitely wasn't. It
was like Diane West or something like story was too
good for that dribble. She was good. I thought that
was a pretty good, good little song. I like the message. Sure,
just a stranger on the bus. Just a slob like
one of us. That wasn't the player, Yeah, just a
(01:10):
slab kid, you not my friend boy? Yeah, just a
slab like all of us. I didn't know that was
being insulted. When I was grown out to that song
on the dance floor, you couldn't feel her. Supernumerary finger
poking you in your chest. I could not so. Um, Chuck,
I feel like we should stop this chit chat and
(01:31):
get down to it, because we're talking today about something
that made up our childhood, and I was very dismayed
to learn still makes up some kids childhoods. A lot
of kids childhood's still being taught today. Um, and that
you could conceivably make the case that it eroded at
(01:51):
the very fabric of society. A very misguided campaign that
came about in the very early eighties that had the
very ge term known as stranger danger. Yeah, it's funny
when you look at this and you couple it with
everything else. The eighties had a lot of misguided campaigns.
(02:11):
Didn't they just say no, break No, They're all over
the place, satanic panic. It's really weird. I think it was.
I mean, when you look back, it was clearly like uh,
I think there are a lot of factors, like the
the I think the Reagan era sort of moral majority
years conspired to kind of just they wanted to scare everybody,
(02:36):
wait into everything, Yeah, scared you straight straight into their
political ideology. That's definitely, I mean, that's definitely part of
it for sure, because there is a there's a definite UM.
And this isn't just me riffing here, like I saw
this in multiple places, uh with legit sources even UM
and we'll talk a little bit about legit sources are
not And I think there's some good examples in here
(02:57):
of being careful who you listen to. UM. But there,
but there does seem to be like a kind of
a general consensus that part of those moral panics in
the eighties came from UM Christian conservatives who very much
into their credit are are UM dedicated to the idea
(03:17):
of protecting children from predation at the hands of adults,
and that that's where a lot of that stuff came from.
But that it was really done poorly and probably overblown,
and in very short order. It was not the Christian
right that was leading in charging more was everybody. Everybody
was involved in this kind of stuff. Yeah, because I
(03:39):
think you know, if you were a kid in the eighties,
you knew a few things. You knew that if you
listen to rock and roll music that you might be
possessed by the devil. Uh. If you went outside to
go play by yourself, there was a really good chance
you might not come home, and that if you travel
to like in New York City, like the Big City
or someplace, you stand a really good chance to being murdered. Yeah,
(04:01):
it was just gonna happen. Statistically speaking, you if you
went to New York City, you're going to be murdered. Yeah,
and none of those things portry or or if you
smoke a cigarette then you're going to end up, you know,
like a cocaine fiend, right. Or if you take LSD,
your children's genes are going to be all sorts of
messed up and you'll be addicted to LSD for the
rest of your life and have taken multiple times a
(04:22):
day flashbacks for the rest of you if only Yeah,
for real free trip. But we'll go ahead and start
because this ed the Grabanowski. The Grabster helps to help
us with this, and he very logically started out with
some statistics. The National Crime Information Center from the FBI
(04:43):
have been they kind of good at collecting missing persons stats.
They've been doing that since the Crime Control Act in
nine And it's like with anything else when you collect
statistics on like missing children, Let's say you also have
to clean up that list every year, right, because a
lot of kids run away from home, a lot of
kids come come back home. A lot of kids were
(05:06):
never lost to begin with that are reported missing, that
kind of thing. And in twenty nineteen, I believe once
they added and then subtracted, they added about six hundred,
nine thousand, two hundred seventy five missing persons. That is
eye popping. And that's all missing persons. It's not just
kids for that year though, that's not over the course
of a century. That's in two thousand nineteen alone, right,
(05:29):
But they also purge six hundred and seven thousand, one
d and four, leaving about two thousand actual missing persons
remaining in their system, and about a hundred of those
were juvenile. And then some of those our kids who
ran away from home more than once, so they're on
the list more than once. So if you just look
(05:51):
at naked statistics and actual kidnapping in modern times of
a child is really really air and even rarer still
to be kidnapped by a stranger. Exactly. So, Chuck, I
got my trusty old calculator out, and I got a
lot of stuff wrong, But I'm going to read what
I came up with. Okay, does um and just got
(06:18):
me with that. Uh So out of the let's say
two thousand people who are two thousand kids who are
abducted every year, That's what I saw in one place,
I think from the FBI, two thousand kids were abducted. Um,
that means that out of the seventy four million kids
in America in two thousand eleven, each one technically had
(06:41):
a point zero zero, zero, zero to seven percent chance
of being abducted. Okay, and that's just abducted. Okay, So
hating with me for one more second. You have twenty
you have a quarter of a million of a percent
of being abducted. Statistically speaking, if or a child in
the US in two thousand eleven, of that quarter of
(07:05):
a millionth of a percent chance, you had an additional
two hundreds of a percent chance of being abducted and
murdered by a stranger, which is, as anyone will tell you,
the money fear of being a parent, and that is
what drove it that there was this irrational fear of
(07:25):
the worst case scenario. And even though it was the
chances were vanishingly remote, every single parent in America starting
in the very early eighties was was staying up awake
at night for decades, worried that this was going to
happen to their child. Yeah, and you know, that's we
were talking nineteen, which is the lowest number since they've
(07:47):
been keeping track. I think that number peaked in the nineties.
But even in the eighties it wasn't a common occurrence.
It's you know, these days with camera doorbells and self
owns and CCTV and how security cameras like, obviously that
kind of stuff isn't going to happen as much because
it's just harder to get away with it. And you
(08:08):
can make a case that in the eighties it was
easier and maybe happened a little more for that reason,
but it still was founded upon parents worse fears and
and it was never a statistical probability, no, not even remotely.
And there definitely were more kidnappings in general. I think
they used to get around a million entries rather than
(08:30):
the seven hundred thousand or six hundred thousand and change um.
And so that's definitely gone down, and we'll talk about why.
And then the recovery rate has actually gone up from
the sixties of the of from the sixty percentile to
the ninety percentile, So it definitely has improved. But like
you're saying, even at its worst, it was driven by fear,
(08:50):
which makes it the definition of a moral panic. Yeah,
and driven by the media that has the statistic of
newspaper articles about how to protect kids focus on threats
from strangers, and only about four percent talk about um
abuse within the family, which is far and away the
most common threat to a child or people within the family. Yeah, yeah,
(09:15):
I think um something like fifty eight thousand kids were
abducted by familiar, non family members, like people they already knew,
and most of the time they were targeted for sex.
So it's not to say like there isn't a there
isn't a big problem with child sexual abuse, Like I
think it's even at the time, it was a hidden
(09:36):
problem even when everyone was focusing on it, because everyone
was focusing on the wrong group strangers. Whereas it's like, no,
you're far more likely if you're going to be sexually abused,
to have been sexually abused by someone you know or
even a family member. You know, the stranger picking you up,
abusing you sexually and then murdering you. Was it just
almost never happened in the United States. Did you happen
(09:59):
to to sit through the frustrating experience of Abducted in
Plain Sight? Was it a documentary? No? I didn't see
that one. Don't bother I. Well, I kind of like
those vintage like P s A films. I mean, it's
a remarkable story, but it's on Netflix. It'll it is
one of the more frustrating things that you will ever
ever sit through in your life. Do they keep like
(10:22):
going further and further back in time to give more
and more backstory and context. No, it's just the story
of this one family. But I don't want to give
anything away. If all right, it's just you're gonna want
to throw your television into the street so frustrated. Abducted
in Plain Sight? Yeah, I mean it's I don't know
if I can recommend it. You know, it's one of
(10:42):
those things it's just like, I mean, I'm kind of
glad I watched it, but it was just so frustrating,
like listening to the Shags album or something. Hey, did
you ever see that one after school special where Helen
Hunt smokes PCP and jumps out of the second floor
window or school? That was a great one. Yeah, all
time So what were you about to start with? Let's
(11:04):
take a break. Oh, I think that's very appropriate, man. Yeah,
we'll take your break and we'll come back and talk
a little bit about the beginnings of the stranger danger
era in the late seventies right after this. Stop you
(11:37):
you know, stop stop fearing. You shouldn't you know? No
you stop you you know, stop stop fearing. Shouldn't you know? Stop?
You should know? Okay, Chuck. So it's this is one
of those rare things where you can kind of point
to a moment in history where society change, there is
(11:58):
a sea change, And it really happened in May of nine,
um when a little, cute, cute, little six year old
boy named Eating pats Um vanished. He he was walking
for the very first time in his life, uh, by
himself to the bus stop two blocks away from his
family's house in in Soho. And by house, I'm sure,
(12:20):
I mean like a two square foot studio apartment. Um. Yeah.
And it was the last day of school before summer.
This was his last chance as a six year old
to walk by himself like a grown up to the
bus stop. His mom let him do it because it
was a hectic Marian and she knew he was really
wanting to get more independence. He had a dollar in
his pocket for a soda, his favorite Eastern airlines had
(12:42):
on and he was never seen again. To this day,
they have no idea what happened to him. Really. Yeah,
and this was a huge, huge news story, um, partially
as we'll see, because it was a little white boy
who was very cute and um, media heavily slants their
news stories towards white people in general, white kids. Uh.
(13:06):
And like I said, we'll get into that morning minute. Um.
His dad was a professional photographer, so that definitely helped.
There were tons of great photos of eating that the
news could dig into and put all over the place,
and they did. Um. And you know, like you said,
this is one of those deals that, uh, it's the
parents worst nightmare. So when a news story gets run
(13:27):
like this, every parent in the country is going to
pick up the phone. These days it would be you know, online,
but they would pick up the phone and call their
friends and say, did you seek here? What happened? Did
you see what happened? Like this is the kind of
thing that that we're also scared about, and it's actually happening.
It does happen. Yeah, and there were some other extenuating
circumstances to that just made it even worse. Like this
(13:48):
school didn't bother to call to ask about where he
was when he didn't show up, because I guess they
didn't know he was walking by himself the first time ever. Um.
And so his parents went the whole day without being
wear it all until he didn't come home from school
that he had never showed up. Um, there was just
a there was just a lot going on for something
about it. It just struck everybody in just the right way.
(14:10):
It's just heartbreaking and it scared parents to death. And
that was in May of nineteen seventy nine, and you
can fast forward to just over two years later, uh,
this time in Hollywood, Florida, another six year old, another
cute little white kid named Adam Walsh, was abducted from
(14:30):
a Sears store while his mom shopped like two miles over.
He was playing like video games in the store and
his mom was doing some shopping, something that parents did
all the time back then. Like it was astounding that
he was even in the same store at the mall
as her. He could have been anywhere in the mall,
like at that time, and he was abducted while she
(14:51):
was just a few miles over. And then even worse
than I think eaten and this this really kind of cemented,
like the Eating Pat's disappearance was in a one off,
like we're we're dealing with a huge social problem now.
Is that Adam Walsh's um poor little head was found
floating in a canal about ten days after he went missing.
And that that was it. I mean, that was it.
(15:12):
That didn't just scared parents, that scared everybody. Anyone who
heard about it was now scared to death of stranger
danger and abductions and being murdered by some mirando who
picks you up. Yeah, And uh, if you noticed Josh
earlier saying we don't know what for sure what happened
in the Eaton Pats case, his body was never found.
In twenty twelve, there was a man named Pedro Hernandez
(15:35):
who was a store clerk that worked in the same
neighborhood in New York who confessed to killing him, and
he was convicted in seventeen. But uh, it was a
pretty flimsy case and a flimsy confession, and I think
generally everyone kind of says, you know, it's not case closed.
We still don't really know for sure what happened, even
(15:56):
though there was a confession, because there was nobody that
was ever found. And I don't think the parents ever
felt closure like they deserved no, no for sure, and
they I mean they had already previously zeroed in on
another suspect named Jose Ramos, who was somebody who had
a relationship with one of Eaton's babysitters and who was
a peder asked um and I don't know if he
(16:17):
ever admitted to it or not, but he was never charged,
but the um pat's has won a civil suit against
him that saying he was responsible. So to two people
have been once been convicted and one's been ruled against,
two different people in the in the murder of him,
even though they have nothing to do with one another. Right.
So that brings us to the famous Milk Carton Kids campaign.
(16:42):
Um not the Amazing Folks Singing Duo? Is that the
name of a band? Yes, these two guys, they're they're great.
They they sort of a Simon and Garfunkly Everly Brothers
type of thing, but there's there. They like, play it straight.
They're not like they might be giants or something. No,
I mean they the music is played straight, but they
(17:03):
there is a lot of humor in their banter. But
they're not They're not like a joke band. Okay, gotcha, Hey, yeah,
it's it's good stuff. I don't know if they might
be giants, could be considered a joke band. Well no, no, no,
I don't mean they're a joke band. Right here we
get with the emails. If you ever heard his reels
polka stuff, it's great, sure it is. Everybody loves weird out. Hey, man,
(17:24):
back off. His non parody music is wonderful. Did you
see the documentary? It was not a good documentary at all,
but it was still really interesting about the amazing Jonathan.
I never saw that there. It's it's it's very interesting
in that it really kind of explores the amazing Jonathan.
But the documentary itself is not not great, and the
(17:46):
documentary and even knows it like part of the documentaries
him struggling with figuring out how to how to do
this right? You know, so kind of something worse than
a great documentary subject being made by a C grade commentary.
I see, I see, there's a chance that this guy
is listening right now, because he looked to me like
a stuff you should know listeners. So I'm just gonna say, no,
(18:08):
give it a shot. Well, I'm not saying this was
a C great filmmaker, but I've seen plenty of C
grade documentaries about really great topics, That's all I'm saying.
So the milk carton kids, not the folks thinging duo. Uh.
This began in Iowa and the miss the disappearance of
Johnny Gosh in nineteen eighty two and Eugene Wade martin four,
(18:29):
both twelve year olds, both newspaper boys in Des Moines,
kind of spurred this campaign. Um, I do love that.
Ed dear sweet Ed when he he gave credit to
the Anderson Anderson Ericson Dairy in Iowa for starting this
in nine eight four, and he said the only source
I could find was something called quote Uncle John's Bathroom
(18:52):
Weader Reader in quote, it was like, have you ever
listened to the podcast before? I just since you going
like what something called red is going on here? This
is like I'm in bizarro world or something. Well that's
good enough for us. Uh, And I think I believe it.
I think They were probably the first company to put
(19:14):
kids on the side of a milk carton to raise
awareness and say, hey, here's a picture of this kid.
Here's what they look like, how tall they are, when
their birthday is um, you know some things. They might
just like little clues how to identify this kid if
you see them out clue there's like they're like, put
on your pirate hat because X marks the spot and
(19:36):
we're gonna go find Johnny Gosh, here are your clues. Well,
I mean this was this is the best they could
do pre internet. It's like, what's always sitting on the
table while you're having your breakfast cereal that you're staring
at is that milk carton? And I mean great idea.
All of us have read the milk carton out of
boredom when you know there's no good cartoons on or
something like that. You just kind of read this stuff.
So yeah, it made total sense. And from what I understand, yes,
(19:58):
Anderson Ericson was the first day to do that. Uh.
And it also makes sense that they would be the
first one because they were in des Moines and Johnny
Gosh and Eugene martin Um were both abducted from Des
Moines two years apart, probably by the same person from
what I read um and they so like this local
dairy doing this is like part of a get out
(20:19):
the info campaign makes a lot of sense. I did
see that a local grocery store chain was actually the
first to print their images and missing like info on
their bags, and that Anderson Ericson probably got the idea
or somebody got the idea and went to Anderson Ericson
and they said sure. The offshot of this, they were
the first producers of milk cartons. And a lot of
(20:40):
people say, well, it was eating Pats who was the
first kid who was on a milk carton, probably on
a national level, but on a milk carton. Ever, it
was two kids. It was Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin,
and both of them were paper boys, abducted from their
routes in the early morning. It was just their stories
are so sad, man, Yeah, super sad. The milk carton
(21:02):
thing picked up again in Chicago and then California, and then,
like you said, eventually became a national thing. In the
National Child Safety Council, which is a nonprofit, they launched
this nationwide campaign and that's where beaten Pats probably comes
into play. And then it was on you know a
lot of stuff. It was on grocery bags and pizza boxes,
(21:24):
and it wasn't around long though, Like I kind of
thought it might still be a thing even but I
think it only lasted you know, a handful of years.
And let in nineties mid nineties, the whole milk carton
thing had kind of gone away, gone away, with people saying,
you know, it was successful while it lasted, but it
just had its run. And then other people, of course,
(21:44):
now I look back and say, but was it really
successful in that? Did it lead into you finding some
of these kids? And I don't necessarily think that is
the only measure of success, uh if it's an awareness campaign,
but they definitely can't go back and say, well, yeah,
look at this list of kids that were found because
of the milk carton campaign. And actually there is I
(22:05):
saw the number three that there are three named kids
who were rescued and found and returned based on milk cartons.
But there's only one actual name I can find, and
you can find it all over the place. Her name
is little Bonnie Lowman. I had in the little her
first name is actually Bonnie, not little, and she has
one of the most name for a kid, little Bonnie Lowman. Yeah. Um,
(22:27):
until you reach in a middle age and you're like,
oh my god. Um. So she has one of the
most amazing stories you could possibly encounter when it comes
to kids on milk cartons, don't you think? Yeah? I
mean she was kidnapped by her mom and stepdad and
as the story goes, recognized her own image on a
milk carton and like kept it, you know, cut it
(22:50):
out and kept it on our wall. And I guess
a kid's or a friend's parents saw it and called
the cops. But is that that's not true though, my friend,
I would put a significant amount of money on the
fact that Bonnie Lohman is not a real person, that
it is the internet legend. Yes, dude, I looked on
(23:11):
the New York Times website is search for Bonnie Loman
missing milk carton. I even put quotes around Bonnie Loman.
Did it on the Washington Post website. I did it
on the Denver Post website, and Denver is supposedly where
she was found living, abducted by her mom and stepfather. Nothing,
Nothing comes up, not even a vague reference. She's an
internet legend and we figured it out, we think, until
(23:36):
someone writes us and says, no, no no, no, I knew
little Bonny Loman, right, And we'd say the Bonnie Loman
and say, well, I don't know. Actually it was my
cousin's friends co worker who knew Bonny. But no. Another giveaway, Chuck,
is that this story is repeated almost verbatim around the Internet.
They don't say where she was abducted from and returned
to the only the only thing I've seen consistently is
(23:58):
that the story itself and then that it happened in Colorado,
And then a lot of the sites that carry this
story are like Jesus Daley or board game tips dot com,
not necessarily the most credible sources for like a um
an actual like child abduction case. So I'm I think
we may have rooted that one out, all right, So
what's going on here is panic? Uh, these milk cartons
(24:22):
come out. It's a good campaign, but all that does
is sort of reinforced to parents that you know, a
stranger is lurking outside your home kind of at all times,
just waiting for your kid to be playing on the
playground by themselves for just a minute and then they're
gonna get snatched. And while this panic is going on,
there are people that were sort of ringing the bell
for good sense way back in the eighties, even the
(24:45):
famous pediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock. Uh, he was quoted in
the Washington Post and five is saying children are bombarded
by more than photographs. They stand in line at mass
fingerprinting sessions and shopping malls and watch cartoon characters on TV,
reminding them to be wary of strange adults. Uh. There's
a little bit more to the quote, but he was
kind of saying, like we're going overboard a little bit here,
(25:07):
and we're actually maybe doing harm by raising children in
this culture of fear. We did you were you fingerprinted
as a child? I was never fingerprinted, but I certainly
remember everything else. I mean, I forgot about the Saturday
Morning cartoons. It was stuff all over those two. Yeah
McGuff remember the crime Dog to teach you how to
(25:28):
run away from strangers, And like that's what they would
teach you, is like you should scream and yell and
kick and run for your life if a stranger ever
approached you, Like if they just hit the basic minimum thing.
We're like, Okay, strangers approaching you, run as fast as
you can for your little life. Um, And it was like,
it's it's definitely easy to to to buy into the
(25:51):
idea that that culture of fear had real repercussions on
us growing up, because I remember I was scared of
all this and my dad took me to get fingerprinted.
You were yeah. I was like, why are we doing
this again? It's like, just in case they find you
at their head cut off one day, we can identify
I might have been fingerprinted. Something about that really seems
familiar to me. Yeah, And I didn't commit a crime
(26:11):
now now, not a little chuck. Still to this day,
I'll bet uh no, I've never been arrested. That's good.
And you know, I realized later that my dad preemptively
ratted me out to the cops really well, yeah, by
having me fingerprinted. But that was the level of like,
my dad took me to a fingerprinting fair for a
(26:32):
little kid, so that they had your fingerprints in the
system in case something bad happened to you and you
turned up, they could identify your body or you even
if you've just been abducted, but you knew what was
going on, you knew why you were going there, and
that that definitely did affect me. And I think a
lot of kids our age, Yeah, Ed has a and
this is one of those kind of stats that I
(26:54):
think is a little dumb. But from the early nineties,
there was a study that found that seventy two percent
appearance cited abduction is something they worry about. That's just
a little weird. I mean, I think every parent that
is deep down worried that it could happen. But it's
not like I don't know, there's just so many qualifiers there,
(27:15):
like how how much did they worry about it? They
sounded like it was one of their chief fears, along
with like failing their kid, not they're not providing for
their kids, like like deep down fears, like a big fear.
That's what it sounded like in the abstract I read.
I didn't read the whole study, but you know, that's
how they don't get A prominent fear would be the
word I'm looking for, rather than big fear, because it
(27:38):
is the biggest fear. But whether or not you think
it's a reality that you really should worry about a
lot is a different thing. I don't know. I would
bet dollars nuts that they there was a prominent fear
in your definition for sure. All right, Uh, it did
do some harm, like in actual instances that we can site. Uh,
in the boy Scouts they still teach danger of danger.
(28:01):
And in two thousand five, a cub Scout um was
lost in the woods and actually if they did rescue
for a few days because people like there were people
there trying to help him, like, hey, are you lost
a little boy, and you know, stranger danger would run away.
And so in that case, like this kid was trying,
you know, people trying to help him out, and he
(28:22):
he ran away from him. So that's that's one definite instance. Yeah.
And that WAPO article that you mentioned earlier, it was
just rattling off. This is eight five. This is like
right in the middle of all this when it was
kind of rare to question this this mentality, and they
were rattling off all these instances of kids just like
losing their minds out of fear. Like they mentioned a
(28:44):
girl who was got hysterical when it was her time
to get off the bus because she lived on a
rural road and she was sure that if she walked
alone down this rural road, she will be kidnapped. It's
just a certainty in her mind. And you know, kids
were like anytime they were parents that said high to
the little kids, they freaked out, you know, like you
just couldn't. You couldn't, you couldn't give any attention to
(29:06):
little kids or else they would be really scared. And
there's this aspect of the moral panic as far as
stranger danger goes, where the dangerous group is not Satanists,
you know, it's not um. It's it's not um witches
or something like that. It's strangers. And all of us
are strangers to somebody else. So that means that everybody
(29:28):
is under suspicion of everyone else at some point in time,
where a suspicious character to somebody who doesn't know us,
and possibly a kid, and then that alters how you
act around kids, and that that has had, over the
years an impact of how adults deal with kids, and
it's removed us from that. It takes a village to
(29:49):
raise a child kind of community where it's like that's
your kid, I'm not going anywhere near them. I don't
even want to look at them because I don't want
somebody to think I'm trying to kidnap them or something.
And that has had a real impact on how adults
deal with kids, and that is surely having an impact
on how children develop in a community in society. Yeah,
didn't you find a thing where it said that men
(30:12):
and these are these days men are more reticent to
like help out a child because of that fear. Yeah,
something like sixty seven or seventy said they would not
help a kid who was who needed help. They would
like so much smaller percent, but basically most of them said,
I just keep walking because I'd be so worried that
that people were wondering why I was approaching a little kid.
(30:33):
And then a smaller proportion said that they would go
find a woman to help, or maybe the cops or
something like that, but they would not step in and
fulfill their normal social roles an adults helping a kid
in need, and that that's just that was a UK survey,
I think, But that's um, you know, that definitely applies
over here as well too. I didn't know it's the
(30:54):
UK should told me that this. Did the studies say,
you know, are men on the way to the pub
survey and said little humor there trying to light the move.
I liked it. It worked. It also made me want
a nice draft beer. Oh boy. I went to this
great pub in Manchester when we did that show. That
was just that was one of my great days in England.
(31:16):
It was so awesome. That place was on a probably
a one ft slant that floor. It was so old.
That's awesome. I actually found a Topas place in Manchester
because remember we were there for like a couple of
days and I ate there probably like three or four
or five times. It was so good. But I was
aware that I was eating at a Topas place in Manchester.
(31:37):
I finally hit a pub in No I did I.
I hit one in Manchester to kind of buy the venue. Yeah.
They're pretty neat, little little places, aren't they. It's a
good time. Yeah, you gotta get back there. Uh. So.
There's something called the children's independent or called children's independent mobility,
and it's a measurement of how free your kid is
(31:58):
to move about your neighborhood and to explore or things
without supervision, Like sure, walked down to the playground or
walked down to your friend's house. That kind of thing.
And a higher see I am is a really good
thing that correlates with psychological development, with analytical skills, with
motor skills. It gives the kid um just sort of
(32:19):
more um confidence and knowledge about their community. And get this,
it gives it makes kids more aware of true dangers
than if you're constantly watching them instead of stranger danger.
It makes kids more aware of like a real danger
that might be out there, like they have they have
done studies and figured this out right. So we talked
(32:42):
a lot about that in our Free Range Children episode.
I don't know if you talked specifically about that that measure,
but um, I mean, we definitely found that that. Yes,
your your kid is just more well rounded and developed
if they're allowed to explore the world on their own terms.
You know, within reason. Nobody's saying like let your kid
play with flaming knives or anything like that, but we
(33:04):
really exactly also known as the swing set um, but
the the you know, there's a there's a pendulum that
swings between things like that, and it has swung way
too far in the other way. If if you guys
will just allow me to get up on my soapbox
for a second, please do it. Okay, I just got
one toe up and then came back. All right, well
(33:26):
you're off your soapbox. Let's take our final break. We'll
talk a little bit more about the criticism of stranger
danger and sort of some of the best practices these
days right after this, you know, stump, No, you know, stump. Alright,
(34:13):
So we mentioned earlier news stories, uh, as far as
child abductions covering cute, little white kids, and that's kind
of always been the case. And that's one of the
biggest criticisms of media coverage, uh, is it's very much
disproportionately covers white children in those cases and ignores cases
(34:33):
of people of color. Um. There's an organization called Black
and Missing because of this, and they report that thirty
seven percent of missing kids just a few years ago
were people of color, which is a much higher percentage
proportionately than the overall population. But you're not hearing about
this stuff in the news like you would if it
(34:54):
was you know, the pageant queen, right exactly. It's just
I mean, it's just that kind of gets it across
pretty pretty clearly. Yeah, So what we're not saying is
that there is no risk to your kid being abducted
by a stranger. It it obviously happens, because we do
see it on the news, um and and it is
(35:16):
every parent's worse nightmare. And I think that's probably why
it's always been such a thing. It's because it's the
it's the worst thing you can imagine happening, because not
only has that happened, and that that is horrific in
its own right, but that also means that you have
failed to do your number one job is to protect
your kid at all costs. Yeah, man, I can't. I
(35:37):
just it's astounding that people can go on from that,
they can manage to keep living. You know, I don't
get it at all, but it's one of the things
that they do though, and I think one of the
things that gives them purpose in life from that point
on is a lot of parents, especially some of the
early more prominent national cases like Eating pats as parents,
(35:58):
the Walshes, Adam Walsh his parents, and Johnny Gash's parents,
they all threw themselves into like lobbying for social reform,
and their their lobbying efforts did lead to things like
the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to be developed
and um National Missing Kids Day to start to be
recognized on May which is the anniversary of John of
(36:20):
Eaton Path's disappearance, and UM, the Walsh's I think set
up the Adam Walsh Foundation four days after Adam Walsh's funeral,
like and then John Walsh all is very famous for
doing that, UM America's most wanted thing, and like has
has like legitimately dedicated himself to like stopping this, and
so has UM a lot of other parents. So I
(36:40):
think that's one way that they've they've put their their
time and effort and energy into this, imported into doing
what they can to to make it so that other
parents don't go through this. Yeah, they're there been quite
a few of those. Jacob Wetterling Act that created the
the Sex Offender Registry, and interestingly, his mother eventually on
(37:04):
a podcast said she she expressed regret about these registries
that were expanded. UM she felt like overly expanded and
endlessly punitive basically and saying like you're on this list
forever and you're never allowed to reintegrate into society. And
is that fair? Especially when they've expanded those registries to
(37:27):
include things like if you got caught urinating in public,
you are registered sex offender, which is really interesting. I've
I've never been caught, but boy, I've been in public
plenty of times. I've got a little bladder and sometimes
I just gotta go. But that happens, and and um,
apparently again, especially the one where you're having like, um,
(37:48):
consensual sex as a teenager and like, depending on your state,
so you're seventeen and the girls sixteen, you can you
may if you're caught, if the parents prosecute you, um,
you may be on the sex offender registry for the
rest of your life. And apparently that happens just proportionately
two kids of color. So the whole thing is like, like,
the sex offender registry is not in and of itself
(38:10):
a bad thing, Like it's meant to be a tool
to warn communities, like, hey, there's somebody who has perpetrated
and more in many cases a crime against a child,
and you should know that that they live at this apartment.
But it's not just a cut and dried issue. People
can be categorized unfairly, get caught up in that dragnet.
The categories can be far too expanded. And then yeah, like, um,
(38:33):
Jacob's mom was saying there's no redemption there. In fact,
like there's only like in most towns because you can't
live within X number of feet from a bus stop
or a school or a plate or a park. There's
like very small pockets where a sex offender can legally live.
And that means that you've got like these little sex offenders. Yeah,
(38:56):
of sex offenders who are on the sex registry list,
and they become shunned and outcasts, and a lot of
them get run out of town or run to go
live homeless under overpasses and that kind of thing. So, um,
there's a lot of tinkering that could be done to
make it more just if. That's kind of where where
our minds are. But I think when it comes to
sexual abuse of children, that's justice isn't necessary. Justice for
(39:19):
the perpetrator isn't isn't where America's mind is typically, you know,
I mean Jerry Seinfeld is a registered sex offender. On
his TV show for What what did he do? Pet
in the barking deck and got caught? I don't remember,
is there right? Yeah? When they couldn't find their car
and they're all split up and looking for their car
and got caught someone else might have to George might
(39:42):
have pee, but yeah, technically ter sex offender. So like,
I mean, that's a good example of how it could
be made better. But the the point of the upshot
of the whole thing is that there is there is
a need and a desire to protect kids, and that's
great and we should be be putting our efforts towards that.
But we can figure out how to direct it more, yes,
(40:05):
more smartly, I guess, and in doing so help kids
more effectively. You know. Yeah. In the UK is a
good example, they have a campaign um instead of like
a stranger danger, it's called clever Never Goes, which it
doesn't jump off the page is self explanatory at first
as an American, but the point of it is is like,
(40:28):
not every adult is waiting to kidnap. You go to
someone with a uniform or a badge, even if that's
like a store clerk or you know, a nurse. It
doesn't even have to be a cop walk in the beat.
If you feel like you're in trouble or something like that,
you can approach responsible adults. And the idea clever never
goes is in you know, never go anywhere with a
(40:50):
stranger because that's how they operate, which is, hey, get
in my car because I have a cool cartoon playing
at my house, that kind of thing like never ever
go somewhere with a stranger, clever, never goes. And speaking
of the UK, I saw something Chuck that I thought
was a little um surprising. So they had they used
to have this cartoon p s A for kids called
Charlie says, and this this cat would keep his little
(41:14):
human friend out of danger by like going ballistic when
the kid did something dangerous. And um, there was a
n p s A about stranger danger, about not going
with strangers. So this is yeah, almost a full decade
before the US was even tuned into this stuff, that
UK were already scaring their kids. Good for them. Yeah,
(41:35):
I think we got to talk about the Amber alert
because this is sort of the smarter version of the
milk cart and kid and it actually works. This is
name for the very said case of Amber Haggerman, who
was kidnapped and killed. The N and Amber Alerts started
going out to initially to nearby radio stations and now
thanks to the A and S the Alert notification system,
(41:58):
you're gonna get that on your phone you might get
that on your weather radio. You might get that if
you're driving down the highway. That's a big one. These
you know, sort of electronic highway signs, those are huge
because they can actually say, you know, there is a
a brown forward tourist with this license plate somewhere on
this road within the last hour. And I believe they
(42:21):
have caught close to a thousand or or recovered close
to a thousand kids thanks to the Amber Alert system.
So it's pretty effective. And those electronic billboards that they
have on highways can now flash like their picture too,
is along with the other stuff. And supposedly from people
who are in that industry of recovering children who are
missing or abducted, say that the number one, far and
(42:44):
away best way to recover kids safely is to get
their picture out far and wide immediately after they go missing.
U And that was a big that's now kind of
a big retroactive criticism of the milk cartons is that,
you know, um, they're circulating these kids pictures often years
after the abduction, and they probably don't look anything like
(43:05):
those pictures anymore, and like the trail has gone cold,
and um, the idea that that doesn't mean that pictures
don't work. It's just the timing of the pictures. Is
is um a paramount? Yeah? I mean, man, nothing is
more sad than when you read a story of the
kids that never there's never closure and the parents just
(43:25):
never know what happened. Never a body, never confession. It's
just my my kid disappeared thirty seven years ago and
we don't know anything. It's just man, it's hard to
even read those stories. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of
anything much sadder than that. Man. Um. I do have
one other thing too. I saw also in addition to
that clever never goes that people are teaching their kids now, Um,
(43:48):
they're they're kind of focusing more on how like what abuses, like,
like what sexual abuse is like, so inappropriate touching their
teaching kids that like they're in charge of their own
bodies and they don't have to let some Yeah, makes
total sense because it's more laser focused, um in the
actual the actual danger that kids can face, which is
(44:10):
sexual abuse, because apparently we do have an enormous sexual
abuse problem. The problem is is we've been looking at
strangers and ignoring the fact that it's almost always a
family member or somebody that the kid knows. So if
you can teach the kid what sexual abuses like and
how to look out for and what to do if
somebody makes advances on them, then they can trust strangers
because they can they can trust people in general. They
(44:34):
can just know that that can come from anywhere and
if it happens, this is what you do. So I
can imagine kids learning that today will turn out a
lot better than a lot, a lot less messed up
than you and I in our generation. Den we're so broken. Yeah,
and the and the body autonomy is not just for uh,
you know, it's obviously great for that, but it's kind
(44:54):
of for everything. It's about with other kids, like you know,
they don't want to be pushed that way or played
with that way. It's like it's their body. You gotta
you gotta ask them for permission to to do whatever
you want to their body. And kids, you know, my daughter,
from the time she was in preschool, they were teaching
them that. And she'll tell me when she doesn't want
me doing something, she'll say, no, Daddy, my body, and
(45:15):
I'll say, you got it. That's great. Yeah, that was
something I saw was like, you really have to back
them up. So like as comes over and wants to
plan a big wet kiss on their right and they
don't want it. Yeah, you have to listen to them. Yeah,
or else what is it worth? You know what you
taught him? So so way to go parents of today.
I'm glad you guys are figuring it out. Um and uh,
(45:37):
I'm glad that we could lead by example, right Chuck
our generation. That's right. If you want to know more
about stranger danger, there's a lot of it on the internet.
Just be careful to verify what you're reading and where
it's coming from. Uh. And since I said that, of
course the s Y s K one of our mottoes.
That means it's time for listener mail anything. All this
(46:00):
love from an Army vet. Hey, guys, want to thank
you both for being such a valuable new addition to
my routine. I'm currently going through particularly nasty divorce and
have lost my career in the process. Have been a
paratrooper and a medic in the Army for about six years,
but now I must find a new path while bearing
this incredible loss. Because of this, I've had to travel
back home to live while I get back on my
(46:22):
own two feet. I used to listen to your podcast
in the Army during field ops, and began listening during
the cross country drive from Colorado back to the Midwest.
Now that I'm home, I still find myself listening to
at least one show a day. Sometimes I find myself
adopting a pessimistic view of humanity, and it's been very
therapeutic to know that such kind hearted people still exist
in the world. Your podcast has not only grounded me
(46:44):
and ignited my fire for curiosity again, but it's also
refreshing to hear from two people understand the unending beauty
of the world. Hummingbirds, anyone. I just want to say
thank you for your for the enormous presence you have
been keeping in my life, making it fun and beautiful.
Never underestimate to buy what you do. Uh ps. Is
there ever been a consensus on how to measure standing
(47:05):
water in your lawn? Nope? Okay, and chuck b s
p p S. I also love tiny things. We used
to get tiny, little one inch Tabasco bottles in our
m ris in the Army, and everybody complays, but there's
something about and they still pack a punch, just a
little bit of it. Sure, I'm gonna keep this anonymous
because I didn't hear back from the persons. Okay, good,
(47:27):
thank you, Mr Anonymous, Army back. That was an all
time great email. Thank you Anonymous. That was really really moving.
I'm glad we can be doing something to help you
keep going during this time and keep your chin up.
Everything gets better, right, Chuck, that's right. Just stay away
from the strangers, all right, Claire never goes. If you
want to get in touch with me and Chuck uh
(47:49):
and Jerry, your Frank the chair anybody guest producer Dave Real,
producer Dave God who knows you can get in touch
with us by saying it's an email at stuff podcast
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(48:11):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
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!