911 Is Not a Joke

So we're going to be in Vancouver at the Chain Center on Sunday, March twenty nine, and then the next night we're going to go on down to Portland, and this time we're going to be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, which is a beautiful room, will be there for the first time, and that's going to be on Monday March. That's right. We have stepped it up in viny side. So don't make fools of us, please, right, So you can go get tickets and all the info you need at s y s K live dot com.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, there's guest producer Josh t rocking it out and this is stuff you should know. Take to a dish. Yeah, one of the rare second takes. We lost a whole fourteen seconds of try number one. Right. It wasn't any good anyway, that's what it was. Josh turned into like Elvis Custel was like, no, no, stop, stop, I don't

look at that reference SNL call back. Yeah it was nice. So um, as you can tell, Chuck, I'm pretty excited about this episode, which is kind of surprising because talking about nine one one seems like it might be the most boring thing we could talk about. You think, untrue what with all the people dying and well cats stuck in trees? Sure, what else? That should name everything you shouldn't call nine one one four? Let's see neighbors playing

his music too loud? That one exactly. Uh Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call nine one one four, which we'll talk about. But um one thing, like I am familiar with nine one one. I remember growing up as a child in the eighties and I was like, I remember hearing about this new system that was coming around when I was growing up in Toledo and I was like, that doesn't make any sense because nine one one, it turns out, has been around at least since nineteen

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

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

Call these numbers first, right, and if they don't answer, then did the super easy thing that will rout it to the correct person child. Your parents have just taken out a substantial life insurance policy on you. Yeah, for that's a long that's a long game, right, there is so chuck as new as nine one one as even though it seems old, right, especially for younger listeners, I would guess that it seems pretty They probably think it's been around since you know, of course some buggy days. Yeah,

since rotary phone days. Yeah right. So um, as as as old as it is or as new as it is, it's gotten pretty uh robust, very robust. Yeah, every year. These are some stats that are Buddy Dave Russe helped us compile two hundred forty million calls in the US. That is six hundred and fifty thousand calls a day. Yeah, that's like nine hundred thousand calls a minute. No, sure, I just did that back of the m uh. And another important thing here is that of calls these days

are from your wireless phone. That's a big deal, it is, which we'll get to. But um, that changed things. Yeah. The big spoiler is is that the nine one one system that we currently currently use in the United States is hopelessly antiquated, and they're working on improving it. And nothing that we should say about how antiquated is should keep you from calling nine one one is still generally works, but it's having troubler. It's had trouble traditionally keeping pace

with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications. Yeah, has has

gone on in the last couple of decades. Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward and they don't think like, but maybe we should slid the pace for nine one one, right, exactly know and plus I mean nine one one was we'll see those systems are built alongside the other system, so when the other system leads forward, they have to go through and rebuild this this system that's just for nine one one, because you can't get rid of an old system because people, well we'll get

to that stuff. We'll get to that. Let's not spoil it. But uh, we were laughing earlier about things that you should and should not call for. Um, some of these are debatable, I think, Oh yeah, I think so, says who says me, We'll get to the last one really

is the only one that's debatable. But obviously, if if there's a fire or smoke that you think is a fire, where there's smoke, there's fire, medical emergency and you can't you know, obviously getting an ambulance or get in a get in your car and run some one of the emergency room if you can. If it's quicker and you can do so safely, it's quicker and cheaper cost the gas maybe a couple of tolls, who knows, compared to like an ambulance ride. No, that's a that's a good point.

But I mean imagine if your home just loaded and your kid gets hurt, you should probably call nine one one, Call nine one Uh. Car accidents, of course, um, if they are major enough and like have injuries, yeah, called call nine one one. You should be able to tell, like if somebody's like, oh, that kind of hurt my neck, you don't have to call nine one one. You could call Here's the other thing. If we're saying don't call nine on one, that doesn't mean like don't alert anybody.

But there are there's a your police have their own phone number, Your local police have their own phone number. Look it up and call that the non emergency number, right. Uh. And then obviously the last category is some sort of crime being committed, violence being committed, call nine one one. Yeah. So that's like no one's going to argue with that,

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

did that when I was a kid. Did you call nine one one for that? Well, you know the funny story. It's not very funny, my dad, but we had a cat stuck in a tree. My dad went up and he got stuck in the tree and he just climbed up too high. Yeah, and you got freaked out, I think so. I mean, I was a kid, so you know they weren't saying your father is very afraid and he's screwed up. I was just a kid kind of like, well, now dad's up there, and now there's fireman here helping

my dad out of a tree. Cats and Dad's get stuck in tree. Yeah, And looking back, I think that's totally probably what happened. He got way up there. It was freaked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. I have to ask him about that one day. Um. Okay, so your dad's stuck in a tree, I would say, that's call nine one on cats stuck in a tree. Now, unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call nine one one

for that. Um. If you have a question about the speeding ticket you got the other day, that's not a call that you would place through nine on one Again, you can just call there's even a number on the back of the ticket. Dumb. Okay, hey, bringing that back just for that second. Okay, what else? Oh, of course, anything dealing with your animals unless well, I'm not gonna even gonna say that. I was gonna say, if there's an animal attacking someone, yeah, you would call tell nine

one one for that. Come out and shoot this dog. Basically it could be rabid. It's terrible call. Heckt hat out? Uh. But otherwise, if the cat in the tree, lost, animals, injured, animals,

noisy neighbors, I love that day. Puts power outage in here and in parentheses, call your power company, right, It's that last one I think is a little it kind of opens a can of worms, and that is the suspicious person thing, because uh, you know, they they say to call for suspicious activity, which theoretically is a suspicious person. I think the distinction is uh and what we see

and we'll get into this later racial biases. You know, people in neighborhoods calling the cops on someone because they're black and walking down my street, which happens, that is not a suspicious person um even I mean, if there's nothing going on, I know, people try to justify it. But then local police say, you know, hey, always call us if you think something might be going on. And that's where it gets dodgy, because that comes down to a human beings perception. So it can be very tilted.

As Dave put it. He put it a couple of ways I thought were pretty smart. He said, people aren't suspicious. Behavior is suspicious. Yeah, and they say specifically to call nine one for suspicious activities. But again, these are people, so it's just such a weird fine line you're walking there. The other little litmus tests that I've seen is stop just for a second, because this is suspicious behavior. You see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody

that's that's beyond suspicious. That's like the act. That's the act um, that's a crime being committed. So you have a second when you see a suspicious person to stop and think, like what I what I call nine on one? If this person were white, or if you're a black person doing this, say what I called nim one with this person were black, And if the answers no, then maybe you shouldn't call. Maybe they're not acting that suspiciously. Yeah,

it's just interesting. On these Facebook neighborhood pages, it's kind of evenly divided between people saying, uh, don't call nine one one for this, This is just a guy going door to door perhaps other people saying, no, you know what, it's it's nine or ten o'clock at night and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood. Semious, maybe you should call the cops and let them work it out. And for the cops, they say, you know, call us.

That doesn't mean we're going to dispatch eight cars to your home, but we might work you through the situation and it's all going to be fine. Yes, But this is the only one where I thought was a little bit like you shouldn't just say, like, don't call nine one one when you see a suspicious person. No, you

certainly shouldn't say that. At the same time that, I think one of the big hesitations for calling nine one one these days is like the either the increase or the increase in reporting of people innocent people who had nine one one called on him being killed by the cops. That and that death would not have happened. Their death wouldn't have happened had a person been suspicious of them

and called nine one one. And the fact, you know, when when news of something like that gets out, it will make you second guess that kind of thing, like you're for sure you're It makes you realize you're bringing like people who are armed and jumpy out to a situation where it's just somebody walking around or whatever. And when you look at it from that respect, it can

make you second guess the whole thing. Yeah, And things can look it can look like potential malfeasance that's not you know, like a lot of people, you see a lot of people saying, well, I think someone's chasing my house, um, because a car pulled it into my driveway and sat

there for two minutes. They asked me if I wanted to know more about syrac or someone stopped and was taking pictures of my house, Like, you never know, somebody might be taking picture of the oak tree that they're trying to learn about, or or just looking up something on their phone and standing in the direction of your house. Nine times out of ten they're trying to figure out at the oak tree near your house. I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, you know. No,

I'm with you anyway. It's just that's where it gets a little dodgy and what we'll have statistics later on about actual racial bias, because it's real. Okay, moving on, you want to take a little break after that. It seems like a good spot. I think I do. Okay, well, everybody, we're taking a rare Josh break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. That Josh break was invigorating. I wasn't doing anything. I was just taking a picture of oak tree. We'd

get off my back. What kind of oak is that, sir? There's only one kind of oak. I know, there's a bunch of different oaks. Everyone in Ireland's like, no, that's not true. Uh, while we're mentioning calling one though, um, you can get arrested. It is a crime to prank call nine one one. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Or to swat. It's called swatting. That's a I think that deserves its own podcast. Maybe because there was some some guy got killed right from a swatting incident. Yeah,

I think it's happened more than once. Yeah, that's serious stuff. If you don't know it's swatting as well, just give you the four one one on this abuse of nine

one one man, I love myself something great. Um. So, swatting is where you are a hacker, right, and you can disguise the number that you're coming you're calling from, uh, to make it look like you're calling from a house that you want the cops to go to, and you basically say like, I'm in this house and I'm holding hostages and what are you going to do about it? Johnny law? And the law comes out and usually swat

that I shouldn't say. Usually in some cases the swat team will actually enter this house where people who have no idea what's going on are and maybe the the people who have been swatted, you know, said something mean to the to the guy who you know, called the swat team out on them. But it's basically it's not like saying, like there's a I think there's a hostage situation in this house. It's I'm the guy holding the hostages.

And here's where I mean, like and swat teams stick right exactly, the swat teams like we're gonna go kill that guy. I'll bet you would never in a million years bring your swat team out, and whatever you do, don't come in guns blazing, right, which we're joking about something that's really happened. Sure, So like I really think we need to talk at least the short we'll look into it a little first, one on swatting and one on dockx inga two weird new things that people do now, right,

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

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

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

I'm really sorry. This is an act sentental call and I'm definitely not the bad guy pretending that this is an accidental call. Make sure you say that to. My name is Timmy, I'm five, It's all good. My name is little boy with brown hair. So I think the history is fairly interesting. Um because England started nine, not nine one one, but their version, which is way back in n seven in London. I didn't know it either, but they they were the first city in the world

that created the three digit model. Apparently, as the story goes, there was a fire in downtown London and people tried to get through the fire department and they were put on hold and switched around, and so they said. The town crier came out and said nine is the answer, yeah, which so easy to remember. Um, I guess no one else was using at the time. But this is back in the day of rotary phones, right. Oh yeah, well, so that that's actually that was. It was a burden

to dial with a rotary dial. One should have been for sure. I just thought that was kind of clumsy of them, a little bit clumsy of the Brits. But let me see here. I think it was a twelve mile radius around London at first after World War Two and went wider. Uh And because you know, Britain like to do a little world conquering. You can find in cities all over the world where London has or where England has left there. Uh. Imprint that's a way to

put it, for sure. Yeah. Um. And the US of course said, well, we're not gonna let the Brits outdo us. You're you're gonna do brexit. Hold my beer. Yeah, we're gonna wait twenty something years and do it ourselves, right exactly. So, um, I think in nineteen fifty seven, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry, the National Association of Fire Chiefs I was way off. Um. They said, hey, we should come up with an easy to remember three digit number for people to report fires.

And other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll we'll, we'll do that to report emergencies, and the Fire Teach's Association said no, just fires, right. Luckily no one listened to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just firepart, that's right. Um. And then a couple of years after that or maybe uh yeah, a few years later, the National Academy of Scizees said, this is actually a really

good idea. We should do this for calling ambulances to And then finally, um Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice said no, all emergencies should have a three digit, easy to remember number. That's right. So the FCC says, who should be get in touch with here? How about a T and T? Because these were the days of phone monopolies, right or phone monopoly it's just one right? Uh No, I think when did they break

up the phone cup niece. I think it was before this, because they broke them up into the different bells, right, yeah, where they were all the different bells part of one big phone company. That's right? Which one? I just said, two different things? Liberty Bell, the Southern Belle bell from Pacific Bell, Pacific Bell, the bell from Beauty and the Beast, all the bells, Albuquerque Bell. Sure, why not? You can ring my bell. That's a good one. That's a good song.

It's a good one. But I think more and more and more by Andrea true connection is far better. What's that? Virtually the same thing, but just a better, better song. Okay, they got in touch with a T and T and they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently a T and T is the one that chose because it hadn't been used yet, which is kind of the first stumbling block again. The rotary dial. Rotary dial that was nine one ones a lot better way. It's it's

two words better. It is, sure, it's better and it was easy to remember. And you know, I think they had set up at this point already four one one in a lot of areas, so they just kind of extended that idea of the something one one right. So, um, the first this really surprised me. The first um on one call that was ever placed in the United States. New York City. You would think, so, Washington, d C, Chicago, what else you got? Chicago? You already said that one. Okay,

I don't know. What about Los Angeles? Yeah, why not? What about Albuquerque? They're doing fun? Okay, No, none of those are correct. Haileyville, Alabama was the site of the very first nine one one call. Yeah, that's a good little tribute question. I think that pedal to the metal. By the way, I recently watched I had recorded all those Jeopardy shows with the Ken Jennings on there. The Champion run some of the better TV I've seen in

a while, really good stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're a Jeopardy fan that it was as good as it gets, like the smartest competitors and like big time drama because they you know, they had to bring it on those daily doubles. It wasn't like a regular show like they were daily doubling on like twenty dollars and

stuff like. It was really tense, good drama. Yeah, so cool because I think Kid knew that other guy, the whole Celtzer guy was a as a gambler and he made his name for really just going all in, and Ken knew this, so he had to do the same in order to beat these chumps. If you're playing a gambler, you get dragged into gambling, whether you want to gamble or not. Get in there. You know. That's good stuff. Anyway,

good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Hayley Bill Alabama did it was It was kind of a publicity stunt. It sounds like they so the little uh, the little phone company there, the Alabama Telephone he co um basically said, it's pretty a T and T is is about to do this. We're about to launch this nine one one system. We want to jump on it and adopt it first. So we're going to set this up as fast as

we can. Because here's the thing. We'll find out more about this in a minute, but there's no national nine one one system all everywhere in the United States. Nine one one reaches an emergency dispatcher or an emergency operator, but each system is local, regional at best. Um so hailey Ville, Alabama could jump on this and set up their own system and get started. And that's exactly what

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

That's right. They had a special bat phone, a red phone, and I think an Alabama congressman was on the other end at the police station, Congressman Tom Bevill, known as the pork King really not just the Alabama pork King, the poor King of Congress. And the state senator said, what are you, pork King? What are you doing at the police station? I've got an emergency? And he said, are we really going to do this? Bit? I would force whoever is on the other line to do it.

So yeah, it was all just a big show to say, hey, we did it first. Uh, they did it a week later. They still have a big festival every year too, a nine one one festival. I wonder if they re enacted this famous phone man, if we could play those two parts, I'm the pork King. How great would that be? Forget drunk history. Just put us up there. That's cool, um. And when I say forget drunk history, I mean we very much want to be on it. Are we still

pursuing that? No, I mean just by occasionally yelling out of my window every now and then. Why not the crickets are deafening. Yeah, I'm surprised no one said like, hey, this is a natural fit. These guys are great storytellers about history. They can get drunk with the best of them. And we've been saying this for years. So uh No. M Alaska about a week later did the same thing, and we're the second city. And then throughout the seventies

and eighties it kind of started rolling out. But it takes a while to get this kind of thing going. It does because again, it's a local again at best, regional system okay, and your local um city might not have the money to put in a new telecommunications system to be used for emergency services. UM and at first, you know, cities that were a little more flush with cash because they had a larger tax base had the

money to roll these out. So as expected, aside from hailey Ville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting to roll out there the nine the earliest nine one one systems, but the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which was the foundation based on Johnson and Johnson's company, UM, they took early interest in this and started handing out grants to rural areas to set up

their own nine one one systems. So ironically, hailey Ville, Alabama, had it not jumped on it probably still wouldn't have a nine one one system where it not for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doling out grants to like, you know, small towns around the country for their own Yeah, because they're like you know what people call nine one one, they go to the hospital. We're using Johnson and Johnson products. Yeah,

I'm not being overly cynical. I'm sure that you know, nine one one is probably good for the band aid business, I would guess so. And baby shampoo, Yeah, because if you can't get if you can't get an ambulance to that person, they're gonna croak. But if you get the ambulance to them, right, you don't need band aids when you're dead, No, that's it's just like a fact of death. But if you survive, you're gonna need a lot of band aids depending on what you've done to yourself. That's right.

Here's some stats for you. By nineteen seventy six, when I was five years old, only seventent of the US had nine one one. You want to know a surprising fact. Nineteen seventy six, I was just born, Well, you probably weren't covered by nine one one. Again, not until nine Well, by seven, only fifty percent of the country, which is uh, that's kind of that's pretty late. I would have thought we would have had a lot more of the country

cover by then, for sure, you would think so. And it wasn't until ninety nine, actually, chuck that um the that nine one one officially became the emergency number for everywhere in America. Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about nine nine nine? And they went, Bill, please, wrong country, Canada. Speaking of wrong countries, they are very much the right country because they got on board within one as well. That's absolutely true, because they were like, why,

why make things too difficult? You know, that's a great question Canada, And I think the answer to that is you shouldn't make things too difficult, just kind of go with the flow, should do some more stuff. Here, I was thinking, maybe another break. Okay, are you okay with that? Are you sure? Yes? What about you listeners? Well, we'll be right back, Okay, Chuck, Let's talk about how it actually works. Yeah, in the early days, obviously it was

all landline telephones. So when your call got routed to the switchboard, which was one switchboard that kidded to that, they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated to nine one one to what's called a peace app a public safety answering point. And at the time they were a lot of times like in the fire department or in the police station. Right, so they could just turn their chair and be like, Sarge, dispatch some people to this address. We've got a suspicious person staring at

oak trees right again? Right? And um, like originally, like today, at nine on one, dispatcher is a highly trained, highly skilled person. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's like a flight attendant. Remember when we've learned like flight attendants are actually trained to save your life in an emergency, and they just hand out peanuts is like a side thing. Um, this is basically the same thing with the nine eleven

operator call taker. They know how to do a lot of stuff, but the earliest ones just knew how to answer the phone, take down your info and then turn around and send it off to the fire department or the police department or you know, the paramedics or something like that. You know, they'd be like, okay, I gotta go all right, I'll see you buy right, and then they would get off the phone, and that of all

to the call center. Um. That evolved to what was called enhanced nine one one, which was in the nineteen seventies, again driven by telecom advancing with A T and T with new technologies. They developed a N I and a L I automatic number identification and location identification A and I just caller I D. That's what everybody calls caller I D. Yeah. Remember those cute little boxes that you can plug your phone line into it on your little

table show you in some little terrible readout. Basically dot matrix readout yep, who was calling? Pretty neat and then it was on your handheld cordless phone. Right, you could look at it, and that was like, whoa, we're living in the future, rich or the answering machine now is digital. We don't need those tiny tapes. Yeah, it's true. That

was like a big revolution too. That was huge, amazing because you could leave as long a message as you wanted now, but you couldn't get that clever nobody's home. Nobody's home. Sure, you're still recording your outgoing message, right, you could sing it, but they actually had that tape you could buy that you could put. Yeah, there was one that was like a whole mixtape of them, just like gag answers. Boy, you don't remember that, not really. There was a very famous ad that ran. It was

like delight your friends basically yeah, wow, yeah, it's pretty funny. Um. So this enhanced nine in one system, the automatic number and the automatic locator. That was a big deal because now all of a sudden, if you were a call taker for and a call came up on your little computer screen, it said what the number was and what the address was, and because everybody was calling from land lines, you knew exactly where that person was who needed help. It's right, saved a bunch of time. It was a

very huge life saving measure. Yeah. I mean when you think about people in an emergency, could be everything from crippling fear keeping you from even knowing where you are too, haven't been hit on the head and not being able to say where you are yeah, or you just can't speak yeah. And so that really imagined that they spend a lot of time sometimes just trying to get through

that first step of where are you right? So this was an enormous leap forward, and in the seventies and eighties it really kind of cemented how helpful in life saving this nine one one system could be. And then cell phones came along and the rest of us kind of leapfrogged right over nine one one because the cell phone carriers didn't have an I and a L I when when you call nine one one still to this day from a cell phone, it does not come up what your number is or where you are in any

specific way. And so Congress, or at least that c C said, um, hey, we need you guys to do something like there's got to be something that you just can't be like, you know, you have no idea where

this person is in the country. Because part of the other thing about the automatic locator uh that that they had originally with nine one one in the seventies and eighties is it would route you to the closest um public safety answering point, right, So that would be saving time too, because the person you're talking to is in the same area as you and knows the area you're talking about and can more quickly dispatch people cell phones. Is not the case. Yeah, And Dave makes a good point.

Even if they could have located like where your cell phone plan was or your phone was activated, you don't have to live in the city where that is, right. You can friends to have l A numbers that work in the film industry here just because that stupid l A three one O or three to three makes them look like a more legitimate higher just so cool. It's so cool and so dumb. But yeah, it would be like you're in Atlanta, says you're in Los Angeles. Is

this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah? So um, the so the FCC said, Okay, you guys need to do something. So what they did was they came up with UM, a triangulation where the closest cell phone towers address comes up when you call. It's a start, it is a good start. But if you're out in the sticks, the closest cell phone tower might be miles and miles and miles away. And even if it's not miles away,

let's say it's a football field a way. Well, if you're in a dense um densely populated area and you're bleeding out, sure it doesn't help. It does not help at all, but it gets you a little bit closer, and it helps to to transfer your collar to rout your call to the closest peace app Okay, And then the other thing that they have them do now, Phase two of this enhanced wireless, enhanced nine on one is UM. It gives your GPS coordinates, which is so nineties it's

ridiculous and it's like map quest. When who's ever waited on a ride share, uh that thought you were down the street from where you were knows how accurate that GPS can be. Well, still, it's still great, but that's way more accurate than what nine one ones working with. Well, they're just working with longitude and latitude points. Right. Yeah.

One of the big, one of the big qualities. A quality to have as a nine one one operator is to be able to quickly translate longitude and latitude coordinates GPS coordinates into like Google Maps to get an address really fast and it smooth, sexy voice like Berry White with fingers of fury, or like halle Berry with fingers she uh. Did you see that movie The Call? She played a call uh specialist in a movie, a thriller. It was good, It wasn't great. Yeah, it was good. Okay.

Brad Anderson directed it. He's like a really quality director. Yeah, I know that name, and it seems like this sort of from what you're gonna call me out on that. I didn't hear you from what? From where? Oh, I don't get what you mean from what? Like what other what other movies is he directed? He directed a scary movie called Session nine. Oh yes, okay, well, then this guy is one of my favorites of all time. That's what.

It's one of the best horror movies ever made. Yeah, I'm a fan of Brad Anderson because he has a range of genres. Like one of his early movies is this kind of spacey rom com called Happy Accidents. That was great. Happy Accident, Yeah, really good with Mercy Thoma and Vincent dina Frio. But it had This was a rom com with a sort of a bit of a sci fi twist to it. And he did Trans Siberian. He's he's done. He did Next Stop. Wonderland was one

of his first little indies. But yeah, he does. It's unusual for a director to tackle all these weird are different genres, it's disparate genres. Well, you have me at Session nine. Yeah. The Call Is is a good, you know, Puckcorn movie. I highly recommend it. Okay, I'll check it out. Halle Berry is a call center person. No, no, that's all I'll say. Hey, she's quality quality actress. She is. But the fact that I had never even heard of this movie really made me suspicious. It did pretty well.

It wasn't a massive hit, but it did like sixty million bucks. But that's really surprising. Like I'm very aware of movies, like I'll know what the movie is about, and I have never seen it, not a preview. I'll just kind of no, So I'm I'm surprised. Okay, I recommend it I'll check it out. Yeah, I mean it's no black coat's daughter, but that's a good one too. So where are we now? We are now at texting to oh wait, hold on, I wanted to drive this

home real quick. Okay, okay, drive it home. The FCC rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower, tell one it's address, the closest one to your cell phone, and then give the GPS coordinates for wherever that cell phone they think the cell phone is. That's the nine

one one system that's in place nationwide today. That's why they ask you from a cell phone, who are you and where are you, just like they did in the early days, right, And this is a problem because, like you said earlier, of nine one one calls in the United States are made from cell phones, and nine one one does not know where you are unless you tell them. Yeah, but it's also um balanced out by the fact that you have they want to help, well, you have that

cell phone right there and immediately. So yeah, yeah that remember the old days, You're like, let me find a pay phone, let me go knock on someone's door and be and ask about their oak tree, and hopefully I won't get shot Um, so people are calling right away, So I would think that kind of counterbalances the clumsiness, yes of location. I think you're right, Chuck. We'll see, well you really swooped in there, I say, we'll see

as if there's some report coming out. And the thing is, though, is there there people have figured out the people, the powers that be who are concerned with nine one one in its system are well aware of this major flaw, and our work have figured out how to how to update it. It's just now we're in the process of rolling out updates. Well, and then privacy advocates are going to be like, what you're gonna like locate every single person with the cell phone and know where they are

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

don't know, we'll have to see the future holds. Yeah, so texting the one is the latest technology about ten years ago, eleven years ago in Iowa in black Hawk, they were the first jurisdiction to offer this service and it's still kind of coming out. I think. Um, a couple of years ago they all fifty states had text capability, but UM, it's not everywhere in each state. Yeah, exactly, and it's just text. I love day points out you

can't send emojis. Um, I can need help emogi, but you can't send text and video and that kind of thing would be super helpful, I think. Right, So this is where we are in the next generation. It's literally called next generation, and it's where nine one one finally catches up to every other UM telecom company and device

manufacturer already is. And it basically uses all the information from the Internet of Things that lets people know exactly where you are, not just like what your addresses, what floor of a building you happen to be sitting on right now. UM, all of that information is now going to be funnel to nine one one when you call, because ninmon one is finally abandoning land lines landline telecom. That's what they they're dealing with Currently they're going over to v O I P so nine one will be

using a secure internet connection in the near future. And when they get to that point, um, they will be able to accept video photos like this is the guy that's that's attacking the lady, hurry up, that kind of thing. And then they'll also be able to because they're setting up a separate wireless broadband network just for first responders called first net. Yeah, that's going to be a big deal, and so nine one one will be able to say, hey, here's a photo of the guy that there that you're

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

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

first responders, are people saying they're not well. I don't think they're generally thought of as first responders if you work at a call center, because they just sit around maybe, but they are literally the first and most important first thing that happens in an emergency. And like you said earlier, they are trained to and walk people through epr Heimlich, how to deliver a baby, how to handle an active shooter, uh, suicide, domestic abuse, um, if you're a kid and you're scared

because grandma fell over, like how to handle children? Like they're really skilled. And I think it's a shame that, Like I feel like the only time you hear about call center responders is when there's a bad one and you release those calls and everyone's horrified, you know, and it is, it's awful. But those are clearly like the standouts, I guess not standouts. The standouts are all the good employees.

There have been some doozies, for sure. Yeah, I've read about one where somebody called in um of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon, sorry Oregon, and uh, the nine one one operator said, what you're seeing is probably just the play of light on sunlight on the fog. It was like, how would you even know that you're in a all center. I'm looking right at this thing. It's a wildfire, and like they didn't dispatch anybody, and um, like a half hour twenty minutes later, somebody else called it in and by

this time it was like raging. Um. There was the one lady drowning in her car too. That one was horrific. I didn't hear about that one. She was in her car that was going down and I think I don't remember exactly what happened, but she was freaking out, and I think the person was just sort of dismissive and it was really kind of rude even But you know, that makes the news, not the six and fifty thousand calls a day that go through and our lives are saved. Like, no, no, absolutely,

it's absolutely true. It's a great point. Um. There are plenty of stories of people like of them just like straight up doing hero stuff, going above and beyond. You should see halle Berry in this movie. One of the things that can happen is as hard as much as your trained to not let it happen. UH, you can become emotionally invested in a call totally. And I've read that some some operators are just find it leaving it at the door, at least appearing to leave it at

the door. But others can suffer UM burnout PTSD UM. And one of the big things that I saw that's a huge psychological problem for nine one operators is that there can very frequently be no resolution. They can be on the phone with somebody who is like holding someone hostage, and they're trying to talk them down, and all of a sudden, the cops come in. The line goes dead. They if they're not good friends with the cops who came in, UM, they may never find out what happened,

like no idea. UM, they're talking someone through who's been shot or whatever to try to keep them alive and conscious. They have no idea what happened to that person. They have to take the next call, and that's a huge problem. There's no closure. And then sometimes there is closure, like if you're a nine one one operator, you probably have been on the phone with somebody when they took their last breath, when they were murdered, when they died, very

very scared. That kind of stuff takes its toll on people, and that's a big It could be a big problem, and there could be pretty frequent turnover among dispatchers' halle Berry movie, Oh yeah, I'm it's all there. Uh yeah, because even if they don't get closure on the work site, they could see it on the news that night be like, man, that I took that call of this murder or whatever. Pretty bad. Sure, not a job for me. I don't

think I could hack it either. And then practically speaking, there's like you have to be able to type really really fast with a high level of accuracy while somebody's telling you other information, like you might be taking info in and you have to be chatting with you know, a cop on I am who you're sending out while you're also taking the description from the other person who's going back and forth. Yeah, you gotta be able to compartmentalize and multitask all. None of those things are my

special team though. If you're wondering, you pay for one. If you have a phone bill cell phone bills included. It's a little little surcharge there. So Uh, that's outrageous to scream socialism everybody. Uh. And as far as those statistics we talked about earlier about the racial bias, Um, of course, if you were a fan of Public Enemy,

you remember the Great Great Song is a joke. Flavor flavor. Uh. There was a study done by the a c l U in two thousand thirteen, residents of Grand Crossing this is Chicago study, Uh, African American neighborhood on the South Side waited eleven minutes for a cop to come after a priority call. Um two and a half minutes for the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. Um in response times in that were four and a half time slower

in the black community. And there's you know, like I mentioned earlier with the people calling on one on you know, just an African American person living their life. There have been cases where people ended up dead because of that after escalation, and that's just like a pure tragedy for sure. Um. There is there like when you have something this massive and huge and it's involves people at like their worst moment of their life. A lot of stuff is going

to kind of come out of it. There's a lot to nine one one, a lot of legends and myths and everything. But one of the things I saw that everyone seems to know about is that if you call nine one one and pretend you're ordering a pizza, they will understand that you were in a position where you can't talk, and they'll dispatch the police. Supposedly that's a myth, but it makes total sense. Doesn't you've heard that before? I was just just thinking of die Hard. Oh, I

don't remember that. There was that line where he's calling the nine one one dispatcher. Well, I guess I don't even think it was. I think it was an actual cop on the other end, and she's like, calm down, sir, and you know, it's not an emergency whatever, And he said, what do you think I'm doing ordering a pizza? Yeah, And that might have been a reference to that maybe,

So so what are you saying again? The urban legend is that if you like, let's say there's there's somebody who's got a gun on you, if you can somehow get it to the point where you're like, hey, let's order a pizza, right, now you call nine on one say hey, I'd like to order a pizzas my address and then yeah, and then nine one one will get what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's

not true, okay, but there there is. There's another. There was an urban legend I saw in the UK with that if you um call and you don't say anything, that they will send someone out, and I think that is kind of widely believed over here in the US too.

Apparently in the UK that is true, but it's going to send you through a series of prompts if you don't respond um, and if you press five five it will you will be confirming that yes, you there's an emergency and you just can't talk right now, and they will send people out. If you don't press five five, then they won't. It'll just take it as like an

accidental call. Well, and that's the big benefit. I don't even think we kind of brought up about texting to nine one because you might think, like because because people want to text, But there are plenty of cases where you can't talk. You're maybe in a domestic dispute, or if you're hearing you're hiding in a closet, or if you're hearing impaired, or if you've been kidnapped and don't want to use your voice out loud, or you're scared child like, plenty of great cases to be made for texting.

And since text to nine one one isn't everywhere, the FEC has a law that if you're telecom carrier doesn't UM doesn't have text nine one one, they have an immediate bounce back that says like, you can't do that, you have to call nine one. Yeah, which is that's pretty valuable. It is. And one last thing, if you find an old phone that has a charge in it, even if it hasn't been had service for twenty years, you can dial nine one you will be connected. That

is pretty cool. Every single phone that is that is in operation dials nine and one for free. Yeah. I like that. I do too, man, I love nine one one. I think Kurvanni gets said there's no uh, no greater display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down the street with its sirens blazing. Really it sounds like something it's interesting. Uh. Well, if you want to know more about curvanning get you can just type that into the search bar how stuff works and who knows what

that will bring up. Uh. And since I said that, it's time for a listener. Man, this is a response. When we asked for examples of racism in today's military, and we heard from a range of people. I have to say, from this guy who the other guy to the other guy. This guy said, I'll just tell you what this guy said a minute. But other people have said that, yeah, they've seen some pretty bad racist stuff in the military, but they're isolated incidences, just like in

the real world. But this is what Matthew apple White says. Uh. Start off, I'm a white guy. I can't speak on everyone's experience while in the service, but during my four years I saw more camaraderie between a mix of races than I ever see in my real life. It seems like this is the response that we got the most the most. I think you're right. They thought us. Oh, they taught us from the start in boot camp Marine Corps that you're all nothing and you will all become Marines.

And with that in common, it gives the common ground between any race or nationality. Uh. They might often refer to African American Marines as dark green implying, yes, they may have a different skin tone, but they're still green. And over the years, in and out of training, you learned that everyone endures the suck and the hard times together. Uh, and no one is above another. In the end, you learn to trust the man to my left and right with my life, no matter what his skin color. And

ladies too, there are female marines. Uh. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Now saying all this, some some prejudice from other people's upbringing do still remain, but most of the time it is shot down very fast with harsh repercussions, and it has kept to a minimum. I made many friends from all walks of life that I would have never even imagined being so close to. Without the common ground we stood on are the hard times that we endured together. And that is from an avid listener named

Matthew apple White. Thanks a lot, Matthew. Um, we appreciate you letting us know. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know. Virtually the same thing. Yeah, except for the couple of standouts. Yeah. Um. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Matthew did, you can go on to stuff you should know dot com. And I think our social links are there. Who knows, but you can always get in touch with us via email at stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.

Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M h m hm