Stuff You Should Know - 911 Is Not a Joke

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Josh and Chuck delve into the world of 911 in today's episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention Pacific Northwest, both the Canadian side and the American side, stuff you should know is coming to you live. That's right. And this combined with Seattle and San Francisco,

which we've just completed, will be our, I would say our only true West Coast dates this year. So true. So if you are anywhere near Portland or Vancouver, then come on out and see us. Yep, so we're going to be in Vancouver at the Chan Center on Sunday, March 29th. And then the next night,

we're going to go on down to Portland. And this time we're going to be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, which is a beautiful room. We'll be there for the first time. And that's going to be on Monday, March 30th. That's right. We've stepped it up in venue size,

so don't make fools of us, please. Right. So you can go get tickets and all the info you need at S-Y-S-K-Live.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. There's guest producer Josh T. Rockin' it out. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Take to a dish. Yeah, one of the rare second takes. That's right. We lost a whole 14 seconds of try number one.

Right. It wasn't any good anyway. That's what it was. Josh turned into Elvis Castel. He was like, no, no, stop, stop. I don't know. Look at that reference. Little SNL callback.

Yeah, it was. Nice. So as you can tell, Chuck, I'm pretty excited about this episode, which is kind of surprising because talking about 9-1-1 seems like it might be the most boring thing we could talk about. Oh, you think?

Untrue. What, with all the people dying and cats stuck in trees? Sure. What else? I should name everything you shouldn't call 9-1-1-4. Let's see. Neighbors playing his music too loud, that's one.

Exactly. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call 9-1-1-4, which we'll talk about. Sure. But one thing, like I am familiar with 9-1-1. I remember growing up as a child in the 80s. And I was like, I remember hearing about this new system that was coming around

when I was growing up in Toledo. Yeah. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense because 9-1-1, it turns out, has been around at least since 1968 in the US. It's been around way longer in the UK. Yeah. True, but I like to think of Toledo

as kind of a happening spot. Sure. Toledo didn't get a fully functional 9-1-1 system until 1989. Did you look it up? Yeah. So you guys resorted to the previous method, which was run down the street screaming for neighbors.

Just swinging your cat by its tail. Yeah. That was your siren. Yeah, I seem to remember, I don't know exactly when we got it, but I think I remember it happening. Like, if I remember correctly, when I was a kid, we had one of those little cards next to the kitchen phone that had police, fire, and whatever else.

So that had to have been pre-9-1-1, or else we wouldn't have had that dumb thing. Right. Yeah. That would just confuse the children. Right. Call these numbers first, and then if they don't answer, call 9-1-1.

Yeah, then do the super easy thing that will route it to the correct person, child. Your parents are just taking on a substantial life insurance policy on you. Yeah, for us. That's a long game right there. It is. So Chuck, as new as 9-1-1 is, even though it seems old,

right, especially for younger listeners, I would guess that it seems pretty. They probably think it's been around since, you know. Of course, in buggy days. Yeah. Since rotary phone days. Yeah. Right.

So as old as it is, or as new as it is, it's gotten pretty. Robust. Very robust. Yeah, every year, these are some stats that our buddy, Dave Ruse, helped us compile. 240 million calls in the US. That is 650,000 calls a day.

Yeah, that's like 900,000 calls a minute. No. Are you sure? I just did that back of the envelope. You made me double take though. I noticed. And another important thing here is that 80% of calls these days are from your wireless phone.

That's a big deal. It is, which we'll get to. But that changed things. Yeah, the big spoiler is that the 911 system that we currently use in the United States is hopelessly antiquated. And they're working on improving it. And nothing that we should say about how antiquated it is

should keep you from calling 911. It still generally works. But it's having trouble, or it's had trouble traditionally, keeping pace with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications that has gone on in the last couple of decades. Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward. And they don't think like, oh, but maybe we

should slow the pace for 911. Right, exactly. And plus, I mean, 911, we'll see those systems are built alongside the other system. So when the other system leads forward, they have to go through and rebuild the system that's just for 911. Because you can't get rid of an old system because people,

well, we'll get to that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it. But we were laughing earlier about things that you should and should not call for. Some of these are debatable, I think. Oh, yeah? I think so.

Says who? Says me. OK. We'll get to the last one, really, is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire. Whether there's smoke, there's fire.

Medical emergency. And you can't obviously get in an ambulance, or get in your car and run someone to the emergency room if you can. If it's quicker, and you can do so safely. It's quicker and cheaper. Oh, well, sure. Costs of gas, maybe a couple of tolls,

who knows, compared to an ambulance ride? No, that's a good point. But I mean, I imagine if your home just loaded and your kid gets hurt, you should probably call 911. Yeah, call 911. Car accidents, of course, if they are major enough and have injuries, call 911. You should be able to tell.

Like if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck. You don't have to call 911. You could call. Here's the other thing. If we're saying don't call 911, that doesn't mean don't alert anybody. But there are, your police have their own phone number. Your local police have their own phone number.

Look it up and call that, the non-emergency number. Right. And then obviously, the last category is some sort of crime being committed, violence being committed. Call 911. Yeah, so that's like no one's going to argue with that. I think so.

OK. There are plenty of instances where you shouldn't call 911. And yet people reliably call 911 for stuff like this. And I think that's because it's been drilled into everyone's head. It's kind of a double-edged sword. You can't drill that into everyone's head. 911, 911, all you got to do is call 911

and then not expect to get some cats stuck in the tree calls. You keep going back to that well. We actually did that when I was a kid. Did you call 911 for that? Well, you know the funny story. It's not very funny to my dad, but we had a cat stuck in a tree. My dad went up and he got stuck in the tree.

He just climbed up too high? Yeah. And he got freaked out? I think so. That's right. I mean, I was a kid, so they weren't saying, your father's very afraid and has screwed up. I was just a kid kind of like, well, now dad's up there

and now there's firemen here helping my dad out of a tree. Cats and dads get stuck in trees. Yeah, and looking back, I think that's totally probably what happened. Sure. Like he got way up there and was freaked out. Yeah. Yeah, that's cute.

I have to ask him about that one day. OK, so your dad's stuck in a tree. I would say that's call 911 situation. Cats stuck in a tree now. Unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call 911 for that. Yeah, that's true. If you have a question about the speeding ticket you

got the other day, that's not a call that you would place through 911. Again, you can just call. There's even a number on the back of the ticket. Double dumb, OK? Hey, bringing that back? Just for that second. OK.

What else, Chuck? Oh, of course, anything dealing with your animals unless, well, I'm not going to even going to say that. I was going to say if there's an animal attacking someone. Yeah, you would call 911 for that. Come out and shoot this dog. Basically, it could be rabid. It's terrible.

Call hectate out. But otherwise, if the cat and the tree lost animals, injured animals, noisy neighbors, I love that Dave puts power outage in here. And in parentheses, call your power company, right? It's that last one, I think, is a little, it kind of opens a can of worms. And that is the suspicious person thing.

Because they say to call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person. I think the distinction is in what we see and we'll get into this later racial biases, people in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're black and walking down my street, which happens. That is not a suspicious person. If there's nothing going on, I know people try to justify it.

But then local police say, hey, always call us if you think something might be going on. And that's where it gets dodgy, because that comes down to a human being's perception, which can be very tilted. As Dave puts it, he put it a couple of ways that I thought were pretty smart. He said, people aren't suspicious. Behavior is suspicious.

Yeah, and they say specifically to call 911 for suspicious activities. But again, these are people. So it's just such a weird, fine line you're walking there. The other little litmus tests that I've seen is stop just for a second, because it's a suspicious behavior. You see somebody breaking into a car, assaulting somebody, that's beyond suspicious.

That's the act. That's the act. That's a crime being committed. So you have a second when you see a suspicious person to stop and think, would I call 911 if this person were white? Or if you're a black person doing this, say, would I call 911 if this person were black?

And if the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't call. Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously. Yeah, it's just interesting on these Facebook neighborhood pages. It's kind of evenly divided between people saying, don't call 911 for this. This is just a guy going door to door, perhaps. Other people saying, no, you know what?

If it's 9.45 or 10 o'clock at night and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood, maybe you should call the cops and let them work it out. And for the cops, they say, call us. That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to your home. But we might work you through the situation and it's all going to be fine.

Yes. But this is the only one where I thought was a little bit like, you shouldn't just say, don't call 911 when you see a suspicious person. No, you certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time, though, I think one of the big hesitations for calling 911 these days is either the increase or the increase in reporting of innocent people

who had 911 called on them being killed by the cops. Exactly. And that death would not have happened. Their death wouldn't have happened had a person been suspicious of them and called 911. And the fact, when news of something like that gets out, it will make you second guess that kind of thing. For sure.

It makes you realize you're bringing people who are armed and jumpy out to a situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever. And when you look at it from that perspective, it can make you second guess the whole thing. Yeah, and things can look like potential malfeasance that's not, you know, like a lot of people, you see a lot of people saying,

well, I think someone's casing my house because a car pulled it into my driveway and sat there for two minutes. They asked me if I wanted to know more about Sierra Claus. Right. Or someone stopped and was taking pictures of my house. Like, you never know, somebody might be taking picture of the oak tree that they're trying to learn about

or just looking up something on their phone and standing in the direction of your house. Right, nine times out of 10, they're trying to figure out more about the oak tree near your house. Oh, I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, you know. No, I'm with you.

Anyway, it's just, that's where it gets a little dodgy. For sure. And we'll have statistics later on about actual racial bias, because it's real. Sure. Okay, moving on. You want to take a little break after that? It seems like a good spot.

Oh, I think I do. Okay, well, everybody, we're taking a rare Josh break and we'll be right back. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, step you should know. Okay, we're back. That Josh break was invigorating. I wasn't doing anything. I was just taking a picture of your oak tree. Will you get off my back?

Right. Oh, my gosh. What kind of oak is that, sir? And there's only one kind of oak. No, I know there's a bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland's like, no, that's not true. While we're mentioning calling 911 though, you can get arrested.

It is a crime to prank call 911. Yeah, you don't wanna do that. Or to swat. It's called swatting. I think that deserves its own podcast. Maybe because there was some, some guy got killed, right, from a swatting incident. Yeah, I think it's happened more than once.

Yeah, that's serious stuff. If you don't know it's swatting, we'll just give you the 411 on this abuse of 911. Man, I love myself sometimes. That's great. So, swatting is where you are a hacker, right? Mm-hmm. And you can disguise the number that you're coming,

you're calling from to make it look like you're calling from a house that you want the cops to go to. Right. And you basically say like, I'm in this house and I'm holding hostages and what are you gonna do about it, Johnny Law? Yeah.

It comes out and usually swat, I shouldn't say usually. In some cases, the swat team will actually enter this house where people who have no idea what's going on are. And maybe that the people who have been swatted, said something mean to the guy who called the swat team out on them. But it's basically, it's not like saying like,

there's a, I think there's a hostage situation in this house. It's I'm the guy holding the hostages and here's where I am. It's something to mean like, and swat teams stink. Right, exactly. So the swat team's like, we're gonna go kill that guy. I'll bet you would never in a million years bring your swat team out.

And whatever you do, don't come in guns blazing. Right. Which we're joking about something that's really happened. Sure. So like, I really think we need to talk, at least the short stuff. I think so. We'll look into it a little further.

We'll do one on swatting and one on doxing. Okay. The two weird new things that people do now. Right. But swatting is definitely a crime. Yes. Okay. Also, so that you don't make 911 feel like,

I think this is great. This is almost like a public service announcement that we're in the midst of. Yeah, we do these. So you don't get in trouble with the 911. So they don't think that you're pranking them when you're not. If you ever call 911 accidentally or say your kid does or whatever,

you do not wanna hang up the phone. Yeah, I did that a few years ago, I feel like, I accidentally called 911 because I think cell phones have a feature that enacted like an automatic call by accident. Right. And I saw it and I went, oh crap and I hung up. Right.

And I got a call back like in a second. That's great. Ideally you should. Yeah. Yumi has a great story from when she was a kid. She got scared, I can't remember something about her grandmother who was perfectly fine, but she called 911 and got scared

but 911 answered and hung up and they kept calling back and she kept hanging up. That's very cute. So they came out to the house. Yeah. A little welfare check. Yeah, basically. But you don't wanna do that.

Don't follow the Yumi model of 911. Like just stay on the phone and be like, I'm really sorry, this is an accidental call and I'm definitely not the bad guy pretending that this is an accidental call. Make sure you say that too. My name is Timmy, I'm five, it's all good. My name is Little Boy with brown hair.

So I think the history is fairly interesting because England started nine, not 911, but their version, which is 999. Way back in 1937 in London. I didn't know this. I didn't know it either, but they were the first city in the world that created the three digit model. Apparently as the story goes, there was a fire

in downtown London and people tried to get through the fire department and they were put on hold and switched around and so they said, the town crier came out and said 999 is the answer. Yeah, which, so 999, it's easy to remember. Sure, I guess no one else was using 999 at the time, but this is back in the day of rotary phones, right? Oh yeah.

So that's actually, it was a burden to dial 999 with a rotary dial phone. Should have been for sure. I just thought that was kind of clumsy of them. A little bit. Clumsy of the Brits. But let me see here, I think it was a 12 mile radius around London at first after World War II

and went wider and because, you know, Britain liked to do a little world conquering, you can find 999 in cities all over the world. Where England has left their imprint. That's a way to put it for sure. And the US of course said, well, we're not gonna let the Brits out, do us. You're gonna do Brexit, hold my beer.

Yeah, we're gonna wait 20 something years and do it ourselves. Right, exactly. So I think in 1957, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry, the National Association of Fire Chiefs, I was way off. They said, hey, we should come up with an easy to remember three digit number for people to report fires.

And other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll do that to report emergencies. And the Fire Chiefs Association said, no, just fires. Yeah, right. Luckily, no one listened to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just fire part. That's right. And then a couple of years after that,

or maybe a few years later, the National Academy of Sciences said, this is actually a really good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances too. And then finally, a presidential commission on law enforcement and the administration of justice said, no, all emergencies should have a three digit easy to remember number.

That's right. So the FCC says, who should we get in touch with here? How about AT&T? Because these were the days of phone monopolies. Right. Or phone monopoly was just one, right? No, I think... When did they break up the phone companies?

I think it was before this. Okay. Because they broke them up into the different bells, right? Yeah. Where all the different bells part of one big phone company. That's right. The Liberty Bell.

Which one? I just said two different things. The Liberty Bell, the Southern Bell. Yeah. Bell from... Pacific Bell. Pacific Bell, the Bell from Beauty and the Beast. Right.

All the bells. Albuquerque Bell. Sure, why not? You can ring my bell. That's a good one. That's a good song. It's a good one. But I think more and more and more

by Andrea True Connection is far better. What's that? Virtually the same thing, but just a better song. Oh, okay. They got in touch with AT&T and they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently AT&T is the one that chose 911 because it hadn't been used yet,

which is kind of the first stumbling block. Again, the rotary dial. Rotary dial? That was 911's a lot better, 999. Wait, it's two thirds better. It is two thirds better. And it was easy to remember. And I think they had set up at this point

already 411 in a lot of areas. So they just kind of extended that idea of the something 1-1. Right. So the first, this really surprised me, the first 911 call that was ever placed in the United States. New York City.

You would think so. Washington DC. No. Chicago. What else you got? Chicago. You already said that one. Okay, I don't know. What about Los Angeles?

Yeah, why not? What about Albuquerque? They're doing fine. Okay. No, none of those are correct. Haleyville, Alabama was the site of the very first 911 call. Yeah, that's a good little trivia question, I think.

That is pedal to the metal. By the way, I recently watched, I had recorded all those Jeopardy shows with Ken Jennings on there, the champions run. That was some of the better TV I'd seen in a while. Really good stuff. Oh yeah? Well, I mean, if you're a Jeopardy fan,

it was as good as it gets. Like the smartest competitors and like big time drama. Cause they, you know, they had to bring it on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show. Like they were daily doubling on like $20,000 and stuff. Ooh. Like it was really tense.

Wow. Like good drama. Yeah. It was so cool. Cause I think Ken knew that other guy, the Holtshoutzer guy was a gambler and he made his name for really just going all in and Ken knew this.

So he had to do the same. Well sure. In order to beat these chumps. If you're playing a gambler, you get dragged into gambling whether you want to gamble or not. Bring it in there. You know.

That's good stuff. Anyway, good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Haleyville, Alabama did. It was kind of a publicity stunt. It sounds like. So the little phone company there, the Alabama Telephone ECO, basically said.

That's pretty funny. AT&T is about to launch this 911 system. We want to jump on it and adopt it first. So we're going to set this up as fast as we can because here's the thing. We'll find out more about this in a minute. But there's no national 911 system. All, everywhere in the United States,

911 reaches an emergency dispatcher. We're an emergency operator. But each system is local, regional at best. Right. So Haleyville, Alabama could jump on this and set up their own system and get started. And that's exactly what they did. That's right.

February of 1968, they had a state senator named Rankin Fight. He dialed 911 as a, you know, obviously, is this like a photo op or video op? In other words, there wasn't an emergency. Sure. It's like, man, what a coincidence that the state senator had the first emergency. And happened to be standing next to the special phone.

That's right. They had a special bat phone, a red phone, and I think an Alabama congressman was on the other end at the police station. Congressman Tom Bevel, known as the Pork King. Really? Not just the Alabama Pork King. The Pork King of Congress.

And the state senator said, what are you, Pork King, what are you doing at the police station? I've got an emergency. And he said, are we really going to do this bit? I would force whoever's on the other line to do it. So yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey, we did it first. They did it a week later.

They still have a big festival every year too. Sure. A 911 festival. I wonder if they reenact this famous phone call. Oh, man, if we could play those two parts. I'm the Pork King. How great would that be? Forget drunk history.

Just put us up there. That's cool. And when I say forget drunk history, I mean, we very much want to be on it. Are we still pursuing that? No, I mean, just by occasionally yelling out of my window every now and then. OK.

Why not us? The crickets are deafening. I'm surprised no one said like, hey, this is a natural fit. These guys are great storytellers about history. They can get drunk with the best of them. Well, we've been saying this for years. No one's listening. So Noam, Alaska about a week later

did the same thing, and we're the second city. And then throughout the 70s and 80s, it kind of started rolling out. But it takes a while to get this kind of thing going. It does, because again, it's a local, again, at best, regional system. And your local city might not have the money to put in a new telecommunications system

to be used for emergency services. And at first, cities that were a little more flush with cash because they had a larger tax base had the money to roll these out. So as expected, aside from Haleyville and Noam, it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting to roll out the earliest 9-1-1 systems. But the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,

which was the foundation based on Johnson and Johnson's company, they took an early interest in this and started handing out grants to rural areas to set up their own 9-1-1 systems. So ironically, Haleyville, Alabama had it not jumped on it, probably still wouldn't have a 9-1-1 system where it not for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to small towns around the country

for their own. Yeah, because they're like, you know what, people call 9-1-1, they go to the hospital, we're using Johnson and Johnson products. Yeah. I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that 9-1-1 is probably good for the Band-Aid business.

I would guess so. And Baby Shampoo? Yeah, because if you can't get an ambulance to that person, they're gonna croak, but if you get the ambulance to them, right, you don't need Band-Aids when you're dead, that's just like a fact of death. But if you survive, you're gonna need a lot of Band-Aids

depending on what you've done to yourself. That's right. Here's some stats for you. By 1976, when I was five years old, only 17% of the US had 9-1-1. You wanna know a surprising fact? 1976, I was just born. Well, you probably weren't covered by 9-1-1.

Again, not until 1989. Well, by 1987, only 50% of the country, which is, that's pretty late. I would've thought we would've had a lot more of the country covered by then. For sure, you would think so. And it wasn't until 99, actually, Chuck, that 9-1-1 officially became the emergency number

for everywhere in America. 1999. Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about 9-9-9? And they went, Bill. Yeah, please. Wrong country. Canada, speaking of wrong countries,

they are very much the right country because they got on board with 9-1-1 as well. That's absolutely true, Chuck. Because they were like, why make things too difficult? You know, that's a great question, Canada. And I think the answer to that is you shouldn't make things too difficult. Just kind of go with the flow.

Go with the American flow. Should we do some more stuff here? I was thinking maybe another break. Okay. Are you okay with that? Yes. Are you sure? Yes.

What about you listeners? Yeah. Okay, good. Well, we'll be right back. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's vapor, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Who's that you should know? Okay, Chuck, let's talk about how it actually works. Yeah, in the early days, obviously, it was all landline telephones.

So when your call got routed to this switchboard, which was a 911 switchboard dedicated to that, they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated to 911, to what's called a PSAP, a public safety answering point. And at the time, they were, a lot of times, like in the fire department or in the police station. Right, so they could just turn in their chair

and be like, Sarge, dispatch some people to this address. We got a suspicious person staring at oak trees. Right, again. Right, and like today, a 911 dispatcher is a highly trained, highly skilled person. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's like a flight attendant. Remember when we've learned like flight attendants

are actually trained to save your life in an emergency and they just hand out peanuts as like a side thing. This is basically the same thing with the 911 operator or call taker. They know how to do a lot of stuff, but the earliest ones just knew how to answer the phone, take down your info and then turn around and send it off to the fire department

or the police department or the paramedics or something like that. They'd be like, okay, I gotta go, all right, I'll see you, bye. You're right. And then they would get off the phone. And that evolved to the call center. That evolved to what was called Enhanced 911,

which was in the 1970s, again, driven by Telecom advancing with AT&T with new technologies. They developed ANI and ALI, Automatic Number Identification and Location Identification. ANI is just caller ID. That's what everybody calls caller ID. Remember those cute little boxes that you could plug your phone line into

and it would show you in some little terrible readout? Basically dot matrix readout. Yep, who was calling? Pretty neat. And then it was on your handheld cordless phone. You could look at it and that was like, whoa, we're living in the future. Rich.

Or the answering machine now is digital. We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That was like a big revolution too. That was huge. Amazing. Because you could leave as long a message as you wanted now.

Yeah. But you couldn't get that clever nobody's home, nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message. Right, you could sing it, but they actually had that tape you could buy that you could put in there. Oh, really?

Yeah. There was one that was like a whole mix tape of them. Of just like gag answers. Oh boy. You don't remember that? Not really. There was a very famous ad that we had. Really?

It was like delight your friends. Basically, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty funny. So this enhanced 911 system, the automatic number and the automatic locator, that was a big deal because now all of a sudden,

if you were a call taker for 911 and a call came up on your little computer screen, it said what the number was and what the address was. And because everybody was calling from landlines, you knew exactly where that person was who needed help. That's right. Saved a bunch of time. It was a very huge life-saving measure.

Yeah. I mean, when you think about people in an emergency, could be everything from crippling fear, keeping you from even knowing where you are, to having been hit on the head and not being able to say where you are. Yeah, or you just can't speak. Yeah, and so that really,

imagine that they spend a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through that first step of where are you? Right. So this was an enormous leap forward. And in the 70s and 80s, it really kind of cemented how helpful and life-saving this 911 system could be. And then cell phones came along

and the rest of us kind of leapfrogged right over 911 because the cell phone carriers didn't have ANI and ALI. When you call 911, still to this day, from a cell phone, it does not come up what your number is or where you are in any specific way. And so Congress or at least the FCC said, hey, we need you guys to do something. Like there's gotta be something.

It just can't be like, you have no idea where this person is in the country. Because part of the other thing about the automatic locator that they had originally with 911 in the 70s and 80s is it would route you to the closest public safety answering point. Right. So that would be saving time too

because the person you're talking to is in the same area as you and knows the area you're talking about and can more quickly dispatch people. Right. The cell phones, that's not the case. Yeah, and Dave makes a good point. Even if they could have located

like where your cell phone plan was or your phone was activated, you don't have to live in the city where that is. Right, you can be calling for me. I have friends that have LA numbers that work in the film industry here just because that stupid LA 3-1-0 or 3-2-3 makes them look like a more legitimate hire.

Just so cool. So cool and so dumb. Right. But yeah, they would be like, you're in Atlanta? It says you're in Los Angeles. Is this a prank? Are you swatting me?

Yeah. Yeah, so the FCC said, okay, you guys need to do something. So what they did was they came up with a triangulation where the closest cell phone towers address comes up when you call. Yeah, it's a good start. It is a good start,

but if you're out in the sticks, the closest cell phone tower might be miles and miles and miles away. That's true. And even if it's not miles away, let's say it's a football field away. Well, if you're in a densely populated area and you're bleeding out.

Sure. That doesn't help. It does not help at all. It gets you a little bit closer and it helps to transfer your caller to route your call to the closest PSAP. Yeah. Okay.

And then the other thing that they have them do now, phase two of this enhanced wireless enhanced 911 is it gives your GPS coordinates. Right. Which is so 90s, it's ridiculous. It is. It's like map quest. Anyone who's ever waited on a rideshare

that thought you were down the street from where you were knows how accurate that GPS can be. It's still great, but. That's way more accurate than what 911's working with. Well, they're just working with longitude and latitude points, right? Yeah. One of the big qualities,

a quality to have as a 911 operator is to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude coordinates, GPS coordinates into like Google maps to get an address really fast. And a smooth, sexy voice. Sure. Like Barry White with fingers of fury. Or like Halle Berry with Barry White's fingers.

She, did you see that movie, The Call? No. She played a 911 call specialist in a movie, a thriller, it was good. Was it? It wasn't great. Yeah, it was good. Okay.

But Brad Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director. Yeah, I know that name. And it seemed like this sort of from what? You gonna call me out on that? I didn't hear you from what? From where? Oh, I don't get what you mean.

From what? Like what other? Oh, what other movies is he directed? He directed a scary movie called Session Nine. Oh, yes, okay. Well, then this guy's one of my favorites of all time. You know that movie? That's what, it's one of the best horror movies ever made.

Yeah, I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a range of genres. Like one of his early movies is this kind of spacey rom-com called Happy Accidents that was great. Happy Accidents? Yeah, really good with Mercitome and Vincent Donafrio, but it had this, it was a rom-com with a sort of a, a bit of a sci-fi twist to it.

Oh, okay. And he did Trans-Siberian. He's done, he did Next Stop Wonderland was one of his first little indies. But yeah, he does, it's unusual for a director to tackle all these weird or different genres. That's neat. Disparate genres.

Well, you had me at session nine. Yeah, the call is a good, you know, popcorn movie. I highly recommend it. Okay, I'll check it out. Halle Berry's a call center person and that's all I'll say. Hey, she's quality, she's quality actress. She is. But the fact that I had never even heard of this movie

really made me suspicious. It did pretty well. Okay. It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like 60 million bucks. But that's really surprising. Like I'm very aware of movies. Like I'll know what the movie's about and I'll have never seen it.

The call. Maybe I'll just kind of know. Sure. So I'm surprised. Yeah. Okay. I recommend it. I'll check it out.

Yeah. I mean, it's no Black Coat's daughter, but. Yeah, that's a good one too. So where are we now? We are now at texting to 911. Oh wait, hold on. I wanted to drive this home real quick. Okay.

Okay. Drive it home. The 1996 FCC rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower, tell 911 its address, the closest one to your cell phone, and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell phone, they think the cell phone is. That's the 911 system that's in place nationwide today

in 2020. That's why they ask you from a cell phone, who are you and where are you? Just like they did in the early days. Right. And this is a problem because like you said earlier, 80% of 911 calls in the United States are made from cell phones and 911 does not know where you are

unless you tell them. Yeah, but it's also balanced out by the fact that. They really want to help. Well, you have that cell phone right there immediately. So remember the old days, you're like, let me find a pay phone. Let me go knock on someone's door. That's true.

And be, and ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I won't get shot. Right. So people are calling right away. So I would think that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness of location. I think you're right, Chuck. We'll see.

Well, you're really swooped in there. I say we'll see as if there's some report coming out. The thing is though is that people have figured out the people, the powers that be who are concerned with 911 and its system are well aware of this major flaw. And our work have figured out how to update it. It's just now we're in the process of rolling out updates. Well, then privacy advocates are going to be like, what?

You're going to locate every single person with the cell phone and know where they are at all times? Right. And Amazon and Apple are like, dude, we already know that. It's just 911 is the only one who doesn't know where you are at all times, which is a problem. It's funny. I saw a wired article from 1998 that was ringing its hands

like, oh, privacy advocates are worried that they may be able to track the movement of cell phone users based on this information that 911 gets now. Yeah. They're like, maybe. I don't know. We'll have to see for the future holds. So texting the 911 is the latest technology.

About 10 years ago, 11 years ago in Iowa in Blackhawk, they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service. And it's still kind of coming out. I think a couple of years ago, all 50 states had text capability, but it's not everywhere in each state. Yeah, exactly. It's very sparse. And it's just text.

I love day points out. You can't send emojis when you need help emoji. But you can't send text and video, and that kind of thing would be super helpful, I think. Right. So this is where we are in the next generation. It's literally called Next Generation 911, NG911. And it's where 911 finally catches up

to every other telecom company and device manufacturer already is. And it basically uses all the information from the internet of things that lets people know exactly where you are. Not just what your address is, what floor of a building you happen to be sitting on right now. All of that information is now going

to be funneled to 911 when you call, because 911 is finally abandoning landlines. Landline telecom. That's what they're dealing with currently. They're going over to VOIP. So 911 will be using a secure internet connection in the near future. And when they get to that point, they

will be able to accept video photos. This is the guy that's attacking the lady, hurry up, that kind of thing. And then they'll also be able to, because they're setting up a separate wireless broadband network just for first responders called FirstNet. Yeah, that's going to be a big deal. And so 911 will be able to say, hey,

here's a photo of the guy that you're looking for. They can't do that now. As mind-boggling as it is, they cannot do that. Yeah, just to have a dedicated wireless network cuts down on, I imagine, interference and potential hacking. Plus in a disaster, if you're out there in the field, you are using your own wireless device that's on the public broadband right now.

And so if the public broadband goes down, because there's so many people trying to use it to find out what's going on in an earthquake or something, the first responders suffer from that too. So this separate broadband network just for first responders won't crash in the event of a disaster. Yeah, and speaking of first responders, I think it's time we join certain people

in saying call center employees are first responders. Are people saying they're not? Well, I don't think they're generally thought of as first responders if you work at a call center. Because they just sit around? Maybe, but they are literally the first and most important first thing that happens in an emergency. And like you said earlier, they are trained to walk people

through CPR, Heimlich, how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, suicide, domestic abuse. If you're a kid and you're scared because grandma fell over, like how to handle children, like they're really skilled. And I think it's a shame that like, I feel like the only time you hear about 911 call center responders is when there's a bad one and you release those calls and everyone's horrified.

And it is, it's awful, but those are clearly like the standouts, I guess not standouts, the standouts for all the good employees. There have been some doozies for sure. I've read about one where somebody called in of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon, sorry, Oregon. And the 911 operator said, what you're seeing is probably just the play of light,

sunlight on the fog. It was like, how would you even know that? You're in a call center. I'm looking right at this thing, it's a wildfire. And like they didn't dispatch anybody. And like a half hour or 20 minutes later, somebody else called it in and by this time, it was like raging.

There was the one lady drowning in her car too. That one was horrific. I didn't hear about that one. She was in her car that was going down. And I think, I don't remember exactly what happened, but she was freaking out. And I think the 911 person was just sort of dismissive and it was really in kind of rude even.

But that makes the news, not the 650,000 calls a day that go through and our lives are saved. No, no, absolutely, that's absolutely true. It's a great point. There are plenty of stories though, people like of them just straight up doing hero stuff. Going above and beyond.

You should see Halle Berry in this movie. One of the things that can happen is as much as you're trained to not let it happen, you can become emotionally invested in a call. Totally. And I've read that some operators are just fine at leaving it at the door, at least appearing to leave it at the door,

but others can suffer burnout, PTSD. And one of the big things that I saw that's a huge psychological problem for 911 operators is that there can very frequently be no resolution. They can be on the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage and they're trying to talk them down. And all of a sudden the cops come in and the line goes dead.

If they're not good friends with the cops who came in, they may never find out what happened. Like no idea. They're talking someone through who's been shot or whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious. They have no idea what happened to that person. They have to take the next call. And that's a huge problem.

There's no closure. And then sometimes there is closure. Like if you're a 911 operator, you probably have been on the phone with somebody when they took their last breath. When they were murdered, when they died, very, very scared. That kind of stuff takes its toll on people. And that's a big, it can be a big problem.

And there can be pretty frequent turnover among 911 dispatchers. It's Halle Berry movie. Oh yeah. I'm telling you, it's all there. Yeah, cause even if they don't get closure on the work site, they could see it on the news that night. Be like, man, I took that call of this murder or whatever.

Pretty bad. Sure. Not a job for me. I don't think I could hack it either. And then practically speaking, there's like you have to be able to type really, really fast with a high level of accuracy while somebody's telling you other information.

Yeah, I would. Like you might be taking info in and you have to be chatting with a cop on IM who you're sending out while you're also taking the description from the other person who's just going back and forth. Yeah, you gotta be able to compartmentalize and multitask. All, none of those things are my specialty.

No. If you're wondering, you pay for 911 if you have a phone bill, cell phone bills included. That's a little surcharge there. So. That's outrageous. To scream socialism, everybody. Yeah.

And as far as those statistics we talked about earlier about the racial bias, of course, if you were a fan of public enemy, you remember the great, great song 911 is a joke. Is a good one. Flavor Flav. Yeah. There was a study done by the ACLU in 2013,

residents of Grand Crossing, this is a Chicago study, African-American neighborhood on the south side waited 11 minutes for a cop to come after a priority call, two and a half minutes for the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. And response times were four and a half times slower in the black community. And there's, you know, like I mentioned earlier

with the people calling 911 on, you know, just an African-American person living their life. There have been cases where people ended up dead because of that after escalation. And that's just like a pure tragedy. For sure. There is like, when you have something this massive and huge and it involves people at like their worst moment

of their life, a lot of stuff is gonna kind of come out of it. There's a lot to 911, a lot of legends and myths and everything. But one of the things I saw that everyone seems to know about is that if you call 911 and pretend you're ordering a pizza, they will understand that you are in a position where you can't talk and they'll dispatch the police.

Supposedly that's a myth, but it makes total sense. Doesn't you've heard that before? I was just thinking of Die Hard. Oh, I don't remember that. There was that line where he's calling the 911 dispatcher. Well, I guess, I don't even think it was. I think it was an actual cop on the other end. And she's like, calm down sir.

And you know, it's not an emergency, whatever. And he says, what do you think I'm doing ordering a pizza? Oh yeah, that's right. And that might have been a reference to that. Maybe so. So what are you saying again? The urban legend is that if you, like let's say there's somebody who's got a gun on you.

If you can somehow get it to the point where you're like, hey, let's order a pizza right now. You can call 911 and say, hey, I'd like to order a pizza. And that's code for our address. And then yeah, and then 911 will get what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's not true. But there is another, there was an urban legend I saw

in the UK with 999 that if you call and you don't say anything, that they will send someone out. And I think that is kind of widely believed over here in the US too. Apparently in the UK, that is true, but it's gonna send you through a series of prompts if you don't respond. And if you press 5-5, you will be confirming

that yes, there's an emergency and you just can't talk right now and they will send people out. If you don't press 5-5, then they won't. It'll just take it as like a accidental call. Well, and that's the big benefit. I don't even think we kind of brought up about texting to 911,

because you might think like, ugh, because people want to text. Millennials. But there are plenty of cases where you can't talk. You're maybe in a domestic dispute. Or if you're hearing impaired. And you're hiding in a closet, or if you're hearing impaired,

or if you've been kidnapped and don't want to use your voice out loud, or you're a scared child, like plenty of great cases to be made for texting. And since text to 911 isn't everywhere, the FCC has a law that if your telecom carrier doesn't have text 911, they have an immediate bounce back that says,

like you can't do that, you have to call 911. Yeah, which is, that's pretty valuable. It is. And one last thing. If you find an old phone that has a charge in it, even if it hasn't had service for 20 years, you can dial 911, you will be connected. Yeah, that is pretty cool.

Every single phone that is in operation, dials 911 for free. Yeah, I like that. I do too, man. I love 911. I think Kervani said there's no greater display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down the street with its sirens blazing.

Oh, really? That sounds like something he's saying. Interesting. Well, if you want to know more about Kervani get, you can just type that into the search bar, how stuff works, and who knows what that will bring up. Who knows? And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail.

This is a response when we asked for examples of racism in today's military. And we heard from a range of people, I have to say, from this guy who- To the other guy. To the other guy. This guy, I'll just tell you what this guy said in a minute, but other people have said that, yeah, they've seen

some pretty bad racist stuff in the military, but they're isolated incidences just like in the real world. Gotcha. But this is what Matthew Applewhite says. Start off, I'm a white guy. I can't speak on everyone's experience while in the service. But during my four years, I saw more camaraderie between a mix of races than I ever see in my real life.

It seems like this is the response that we got the most. The most, I think you're right. They thought us- they taught us from the start in boot camp, Marine Corps, that you're all nothing, and you will all become Marines. And with that in common, it gives a common ground between any race or nationality. They might often refer to African-American Marines

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

And ladies, too, they're female Marines. Sure. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Now saying all this, some prejudice from other people's upbringing do still remain. But most of the time, it is shot down very fast with harsh repercussions, and it is kept to a minimum.

I made many friends from all walks of life that I would have never even imagined being so close to without the common ground we stood on are the hard times that we endure together. And that is from an avid listener named Matthew Applewhite. Thanks a lot, Matthew. We appreciate you letting us know. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know.

Virtually the same thing. Yeah, except for the couple of standouts. Yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Matthew did, you can go on to stuffyshouldknow.com. And I think our social links are there. Who knows? But you can always get in touch with us via email

at stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Stuffyshouldknow is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.