How Alcatraz Works

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and puts them into an hour long version. Alright, yea plug fest out of the way. Oh. We have two audio books, one on the Economy, one Unhappiness. You can find them on iTunes. Yeah, super stuff guides. Yeah, okay, you're ready now, Chuck. Have you heard about this occupy Wall Street jam? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, they're shutting it down here and there are they? I thought they were generally keeping it as long as it uh stayed contained in Zuccati Park. It was relatively okay. Well, I mean in

different cities. They're like, cleared them out of Atlanta yesterday, Oakland and tear gas them, tear gasts and stunt grenades, and the apparently when they came back, they tear gast them again, stun grenade at them. And there and the the Occupy Oakland people are like, we're gonna come back every day, and the cops that are like, we're gonna stunt grenade you every day. We got lots of stunt grenades.

Did they clear out Atlanta? What happened? He cleared out Atlanta overnight last night, I think, But I don't know if people are gonna come back or nothing. It is so shady to clear it out overnight. It happens apparently so well. Occupy Wall Street in particulars doing pretty well. Um. It started September seventeenth, and as of today, October UM, it's been going on for thirty nine days, which is substantial.

I think a lot of people are surprised that it's been going on this long, But as long as thirty nine days seems it's got nothing on the occupation of Alcatraz that took place starting November nine sixty nine and lasted nineteen months. The Red Power movement, Yes, Red Power. Basically this was you've heard of AIM, the American Indian movement, the one that UM Marlon Brando helped out by having what was her name, Little Feather go except as Oscar, Yeah,

I think that was her name. UM this started that. This is largely credited with starting that. So November sixty nine a guy named Richard Mackenzie who was a UM.

I think he was a mohawk. No, I'm sorry, Uh, Richard Oakes was a mohawk and he led an occupation UM that took over another occupation basically that it started like a couple of weeks earlier, and UM basically just sat in with about a hundred people on Alcatraz and said, hey, we think this should be a cultural center for Native Americans, and we think it should be the site of an Indian university as well, and we're gonna stay here until

you meet our demands. And they did. And one of the key UM ingredients of this was that it was UM inner tribal. There was more than one tribe. It wasn't just the Mohawks who were doing this, which made it UM groundbreaking as far as um Indian, the Indian movement was concerned um and it lasted for a while, It had its ups and downs, and basically it was ultimately co opted by the dirty hippies in San Francisco, um on the across the bay, who started showing up

and like doing drugs, like openly in the in the prison. Now, granted, you don't get too many opportunities to take acid on Alcatraz, but they they ended up eroding the occupation severely the right and there was a basis for that. Even the Treaty of Fort Laramie in eighteen sixty eight said that all retired, abandoned, out of use federal land shall be returned to the Native people from whom it was acquired. And since Alcatraz the prison had shut down in nineteen

sixty three, it was declared a surplus federal property. So they said, you know what, We'll give you forty seven cents an acre, which is what you bought it for. So we'll give you nine dollars and forty cents for Alcatraz. Nice And they said no, let's bring in the coast Guard. Well,

for a while it was tolerated again nineteen months. But then in January, two oil tankers collided UH in San Francisco Bay, and although there was it was clearly established that the lighthouse, which was no longer working on Alcatraz because of the movement, had no part in this. It was enough so that public sentiment was like, get those guys out of there. So Nixon was like, get them

out of there. Yeah, they shut down the power, shut off telephone service, a fire broke out, and then it dwindled down to about fifteen people, and that was small enough to where they could just go in and say, come on, five women, four children, six unarmed men, and Richard Oakes thirteen year old stepdaughter unfortunately felled her to death during the middle of this occupation three three stories down because she probably fell from a cell block because

they were three tiers high. That's right. So this is just one major event in the history of Alcatraz, one of many UH in. Alcatraz itself dates back at least well far before this. As far as Europeans are concerned, Alcatraz origins begin in seventeen seventy five, but let's talk about the Native American um use of Alcatraz before then. I got one more interesting factory. A young Benjamin Bratt was one of the with his mother and sisters, Benjamin brad of TV's Law and Order fame. Wow, he was

one of the one of the kids. That's awesome, alright. So taking Alcatraz, let's go back in time to the Native Americans. There was some rumors that it was actually a prison for them as well, where they would exile those who broke tribal law, but historians say that might not be the case. They probably just went there looking for eggs there, Pelican egg specifically, because the word Alcatraz is an anglicization. I think that's right of the word alcatrasis,

which means Pelicans or gannetts. Though that's what I didn't get working on with Pelicans, that's what I've heard, but alcatrazs which was given to the island by the Spanish explorer Don Juan Manuel day Ayala in seventeen seventy five when he sailed into San Francisco Bay. He was pretty cool because he was like, it is on this site that I decree here and he will eventually play. Yes, that's right, Yeah, that was my Don Juan Ayala. Very nice, very nice. So that was that was the earliest history

that we know of, even though it's not written down. UH. In eighteen forty seven there was an official survey of this island, which we should mention is a the top of a mountain, because San Francisco Bay used to be a valley. Pretty much all islands are tops of mountains when you get down to it. Yeah, But I like how Grabanowski was like, no, I'm just coming out and

saying it. In this time, Lieutenant William H. Warner of the U. S. Army UH was like, Hey, this is a really prime location here in the bay to UH stage munitions and to have a defense position. So let's construct let's construct a building here to guard against the Confederate soldiers. And you don't I don't really think about you know, it's your north and south, but forget about San Francisco on there. Yeah, being a part of the Civil War. Oh yeah, especially with the gold rush going

on out there. Anybody who controlled San Francisco controlled the substantial amount of gold. So it's a big deal. But despite the fortifications that were eventually built there and the guns that were brought there, the citadel is what they called it. But It is not to be confused with the school. Um. The the guns were fired a couple of times, but never in battle. It was always like

a case of mistaken identity, like what was that? Or yeah, or everybody who was on stationed on Alcatraz got drunk and just fired him off out of boardom I suppose that could have happened. Um, eventually people started being sent Alcatraz. If you deserted and were caught, or your court martial and it didn't go so well, you might end up on Alcatraz, especially if you were stationed around there. And Um, the guy who was the head of the um fort

they're basically, was like, wow, we have a basement. I guess we can start keeping people in the basement, and we will. It's a brig Now build a couple of cells here there. And then all of a sudden it became very apparent not only is it a great spot for a garrison, it's a great spot for a prison, because, Chuck, there's a lot of aspects to Alcatraz that that make it a very attractive prison location. It's an island, it's a rock, there's a prison on it, and the water

is very chilly. Uh, and it's invested with great white sharks. And that's the word everyone uses, is infested. I don't know if that's is it infested, that's what everyone uses. Even San Franciscan's are like infested. They make it sound like you jump in and you will be attacked by great white sharks. Have you ever seen the movie Piranha. Yeah, it's like that, but with great white sharks. I saw the remake the other day. By the way, how is it?

It is kind of awesomely gruesomely awesome and funny? Is it an homage to the first one? Yeah, I mean it's way over the top, and it's one of those is so over the top it's like, well this is kind of fun. It's not good. I have a feeling it's sort of like that. But yeah, there's way way over the top and awesome for that reason too. But have you seen Piranha three D? You remembers they fly eventually? Yeah? The Spawning? Yeah you know who wrote that actually, Benjamin Bratt,

no amazing writer filmmaker John Sales. Yeah, that was one of his first writing jobs in Hollywood, was writing a Piranha three The Spawning. I think crazy, you know, Roger Ebert wrote, Um, yea, did we talk about that and they exploitation film. Yeah, that's well you should say that beyond the Valley of the Dolls. All right, back to Alcatraz,

I'm sorry, back to the citadel post Civil War. Um, there was a big earthquake in San Francisco in nineteen o six, and so they had to actually bring two hundred regular civilian prisoners out to Alcatraz, and uh, you know, the military at that point was like, you know, it's really expensive. Let's we don't really need a military prison anymore. So, um,

let's tear the citadel down. Jedger Hoover said, we need a big deterrent in a big scary place, So why don't we use Alcatraz and make that a regular federal penitentiary penitentiary. Well, that was in the thirties. In l they said the citadel, we do need a military prison, or if we're gonna do it, let's do it right, And they tore the citadel down and built the military prison.

They built actually the technical name was the United States Military Prison Pacific Branch, Alcatraz Island, and that was in nineteen twelve. But then, like you said, they were like, this is really expensive. You got to bring in everything from the San Francisco area. Everyone knows how exp some cheeses in San Francisco. And they're like, hey, Mr JAA Hoover,

look over here. And he did, right, he did. He said, I'm trying to crack down on all these bootleggers and all of these chippies, and I need a prison that's gonna just scare people. Just the name of it's gonna scare people. And I'm in love with my assistant and and we're gonna we're gonna use Alcatraz because it is again,

a perfect prison, that's right. So that that happened. Ownership was transferred in between thirty three and thirty four, and they brought the first regular civilian prisoners prisoners over to stay and in secrecy. Yeah, I wonder why. I think that's a good way to start off the worst prison in the country. Okay, well they secretly transporting prisoners there. That's like, yeah, that makes you feel like you can be stolen out of your house at any moment. All right.

So that is the history of the island and the origins of the prison a k a. Part one. Now starts part too. M M, thank you, Chuck. Yes. Part two begins with oh, let me stop you first. By the way, did you mentioned that lighthouse. That's the very first lighthouse on the West coast, and they rebuilt it

and it still operates today. Yeah. They actually had to rebuild it because they started building up San Francisco and the lighthouses, like, I can't see it's foggy, yeah, and the sharks everywhere help and uh so they tore it down and built it again in nineteen nine and now it's bigger and it's unobstructed. That's right, all right, So modern day or more modern day at least Alcatraz. We mentioned it's a mountain top of a mountain. It's very rocky,

and well they call it the rock for a reason. Yeah, there's not a lot of plant life growing there. It's not some beautiful island getaway. No. Almost all the plant life that grows there was brought in by construction crews over the years who were like, God, we need a tree or something here, you need a boxwood or something, and so they started bringing in so oil and shrubs and trees and planted a few things here there. Yeah,

a few of those things found purchase. It's just a dead piece of rock, which just adds to the gloom and the dismalness of it, right, which actually plays a part in the end of the great, great great movie Escape from Alcatraz movie. Remember you saw the little flower on the shore. Yeah, that's right. He's like, they ain't

no flowers like this here. Yeah. Uh so Alcatraz Josh was built to accommodate six hundred cons but it only held about three hundred, and at the time in l it was really innovative because first you had the island as as hey, you can't escape from the island, so why bother trying. Then they had cellblocks within the concrete wall, so it was for the first time you know it cells within cells almost right. You didn't have a window looking out to the outside from yourself, no, no, no, um.

So yeah, if you wanted to get your way out of there, you had to make it through the wall of your cell and then the outer wall. That's right. Um. They also had metal detectors, which were pretty much new, brand new at the time, and rather than the key like they had in the Green Mile, they had the levers. The lever system to open cell blocks, like they had an escape from Alcatraz, which was a big deal because you could do that remotely. You didn't have to go

to the cell where you're vulnerable. Uh. They also reinforced all the iron with hardened steels called tools distant because you couldn't cut through it, just like me, because you couldn't cut through the hacksaw. And apparently it cost as much to install those did to build it in the first place. So so the average the typical cell um was something like, uh, five ft wide by nine ft deep, and they were concrete walls. How big is this in here? Oh, this is like two cells. I think if you go

like this, it's like two cells going that way. Yiche. All three three, three of the four walls were made of um concrete, and then the fourth wall was the um steel tool resistant um bars. That's right, the fourth wall. You didn't want to break that. People thought you were corny. That a little bed. You have a little turlet. You had a couple of shelves in the back to put your stuff. You had a little they call it a desk. It was really just a sort of a little fold down.

It was very small. Obviously everything was small. And that was it. That was it. No uh, you know, no dub's no breakfast in bed and you could, uh, you can imagine this is pretty bad in and of itself. But that's a block, B block and C block, right, that's right. Um, there was also D Block, and D Block was where if you were trouble they sent you. They called that the treatment unit. Yeah, it was the inhumane treatment is what they should have called it. Yeah.

That they had um, I think fourteen or fifth cells in D Block and that was solitary confinement, and then you had cells nine through fourteen was the whole and those were the ones with the iron doors where you had no light. And then they had one cell that apparently was the worst of the worst that just had a hole in the floor to go poo poo and peepee and you were usually naked if you were in there, and not for any good reasons. That's where the Birdman

stayed the whole time. Really, Nanny's on de block. Really Yeah, apparently you couldn't be in the hole for more than nineteen days. But the Birdman, Robert Stroud, was in prison for fifty four years, and forty two years of that were in solitary confinement. Can you imagine, dude, I can't. They're not rehabbing that guy. And I'm not making a big political statement, but forty two years in solitary that was just straight up punishment. I think that. Um, I

think that that was the best Alcatraz movie ever. Birdman of Alcatraz, no way, Yeah, have you seen it? Yeah, dude, Burt Lancaster, Yeah, it was good, it was good. Um. He didn't have any birds in Alcatraz though, Did he really spent Yeah? He did. What are you talking about? You? It's like, you're crazy. He had There were no animals all out there. He had that came from Leavenworth Prison and when he got to Alcatraz there were like no

more birds for you. Oh. I thought he ended up keeping birds anyway, and that's probably why he was in D block the whole time. Let's go with that, Okay. Um, Well, then why would they call him the Birdman of Alcatraz because he was already a birdman when he went to Alcatraz. It's a movie the same reason they fictionalized murder in the first with Kevin Bacon. We'll get to that, um.

And prior to the the construction of D Block. You would just be held in the dungeon, which is in the basement of the original citadel, which is where the first prisoners ever to be kept on Alcatraz were kept. It's probably not a fun place. So Chuck, you said that there was no breakfast in bed. There was breakfast, and that came every day. After you swept yourself, then you lined up for inspection and you went down for breakfast. That's right. Then after that you went to work. Twenty

minutes twenty minute breakfast. Huh, twenty minute for each meal. I could do twenty minute breakfast. It's leisurely, that is true. Is lesually, so you'd be sent to like the laundry. Um, you would be maybe if you were the book guy, you would be sent for the library. A lot of dockwork, lots of unloading and loading of things. Yeah. Um. And

also they manufactured stuff on Alcatraz. They manufactured brushes and brooms, but a little known fact these things, by law, could not be sold on the own open market, only to federal agencies because the government didn't want to flood the broom and brush markets with cheaply made goods. So government buildings were swept with Alcatraz rooms. Interesting. Yeah, I did not know that the walkways they named the Central Walkway

was between the Cell Blox was Broadway. Because they had a flair for the dramatic, they named them after New York streets, Park Avenue, Michigan Avenue and Broadway. And then Times Square was between the mess Hall and the Cell Blox.

And overlooking all this on either end was a very important station called the Gun Gallery and it was enclosed in bars and mesh, and there's where you will find some of the only guns aside from the towers and Alcatraz, where these armed dudes that had a very clear shot in the line of sight of the whole place. But the guards didn't carry guns or keys or handcuffs because that was a risk, but they illegally carried these things called SAPs. It was like a metal baton and a

leather strap black jack. Yeah, and they weren't supposed to have those, but they had those um And then after a hard day of work of being eyed by guys in the Gun Gallery, you would have inner lights out at ninety and then ovensmores and then the thing is Alcatraz. Thanks to Jacker Hoover had a really crazy reputation for being like the hardest place ever. UM. But everything we just described you're going to go through generally in any prison in the thirties through the sixties, UM, but Alcatraz

did differ in some ways. Specifically, it was extremely especially at its beginning, it was extremely rigid in its UM discipline, Like there was literally no talking for most of the time. UM. Prisoners weren't allowed to speak out loud UM except for designated times. I think like twenty minutes a week. I don't know that sounds about right. UM. And they if you if you did speak out loud, you went to

the dungeon or d black later on. Did you have no talk in school elementary school, I don't remember if we did. They would do that in the cafeteria sometimes we had these flags and if things were getting roundy or they were whatever, they were mad at us, they would say, you know, you're on no talk and they put up the red flag. And it was the worst. It was awful, especially for me. I was just like

trying to say things to my friends. Yeah, they actually said the dining room is the most dangerous place in Alcatraz. I would imagine because you got all the cons in there, and they had um have you ever been no, I'd like to go go. They have on the wall in the dining room they have where they kept the knives, the knife rack. They had silhouetted outlines in the shape of each one, so if one of them was missing, you would see what's missing immediately, So there's no sneaking

out of butcher knives. Even though they had that stuff there. John lithcow On Dexter had that for his tools. Oh yeah, that was a great season. They did have visiting hours um or should I say visiting our You got one visit a month. Had to be an immediate family or a proo the visitor, and you could only talk about personal matters. You can talk about the prison or life there. And there was of course no contact whatsoever. Like they wouldn't like put you in a room with them. They'd

be like not touching, not touching at all. Um. Alcatraz also was a little different in that people lived on the island, which isn't all that different. I think most prisons have an area around him where the guards live. I didn't know this, um, but with Alcatraz it was like you live on the island, Your family lived on the island. Your kids take a boat to school every day and back. Um, if you want a grocery shop, if you want some smokes, whatever, you take a boat

and back. If you use up your razor and you need to shave, you throw your old razor in the bay. Same with used utensils. I'm sure after they're worn out, not from washing like every time, it's their work in the bay or anything like that. Um and the kids weren't allowed to have toy guns for really good reasons, because she didn't want to convict getting their hands on one and then pretending that they were gonna shoot a

guard with a with a cap gun. And magazines had to be carefully patrolled because they didn't want prisoners looking at sexy things or reading about current events at all, or sex or crime. Those are two things that the prisoners who were not allowed to read about, which came into play with your buddy Robert Stroud what the birdman? Yeah? What do you mean? He? Um was not allowed to read his biography because it had chapters of his criminal past. In so his biography came out and he wasn't ever

allowed to read it. It's said he had a pretty sad life. What did he do? He was a He moved to Alaska and took up with in the pimping industry, with one particular lady of the night. Ah. He though he went to go protect her at one point from this dude who didn't pay her. A scuffle broke out out and he was killed, and uh, he turned himself in with the gun, said here I did this, and um but took the money from his wallet, which I think trumped it up to a more serious charge. But

it was originally manslaughter. So he he probably would have been okay if he hadn't gone to prison and been such a jerk. When he got to prison, he was one of the most violent inmates anywhere he went. And that just kept adding time and adding time, and he kept shuffling him around until he ended up at Alcatraz.

But Burt Lancaster says that he wasn't like that. One thing the Grabster did not mention was the wreck yard, where you could go I think, for an hour a day if you're a good boy, in an hour a week if you're in solitary. And they had handball and horse shoes and chess and checkers and backgammon, and you were allowed to play hearts, cribbage, and that is it for card games, even though it says they played bridge

using dominoes. And you could see from the from the reck yard, you could see San Francisco, which they said it was the biggest psychological crippler of all is. You could see the stuff going on, and they said every New Year's at the yacht club would have a party, a big, big party, and if the winds were blowing right, you'd actually hear like music and ladies laughing and stuff like that, which was just torture. Were a lot of fun. Yeah, like listening to something at last spirit Um. You know

al Capone was there, Did you know that? That's what I hear? And so al Capone was there. You get the Birdman of Alcatraz and then has the reputation of being the worst of the worst, the worst prison where the worst of the worst are housed. That was you know, al Capone is a pretty big criminal. He has a

pretty big nab for the g men. But it was a federal prison and it was early on in the history of the federal prison system, so people who really probably didn't belong there sometimes ended up in Alcatraz as Um, you could be sent there for shoplifting in a store that had a post office branch, madd a federal crime. If like you know, how like you like to bring fireworks into Georgia a lot. Well, had that been bootleg liquor and had you been caught just just bringing in

like a fifth, you could have gone to Alcatraz. So it wasn't all murderers and gangsters, No it wasn't. It had a very um, a surprisingly normal history as far as prisons go, federal prisons go for the time. Um, but it also had a very fearsome reputation and some of it was earned compundn't a very good time there though. No, he had syphilis and he was crazy and used to

cry like a baby. Plus he had it made in the prison before apparently he was still running his ops and they got to Alcatraz like no, no, no, now it's not happening here. So, um, you want to talk about escaping from Alcatraz? Yeah, I didn't want to mention. Two, you did get cigarettes. You got a pack of smokes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, whether you smoked or not. Oh yeah, that's currency right there. Yeah, would smoke. I think if I was in prison, would you Yeah? Something

to do? Man? Yeah, And you're like, I don't know. I think at that point I trying to be I try to shorten my life anyway. I could this faster ways than smoking, that's true, more efficient ways as well. So escape, Yeah, it happened. Yeah, there have been plenty of attempts, but um at least two were possibly successful. Right. So the first attempt was two years after the prison started.

I think when you still weren't allowed to talk. This guy was like, I can't take it anymore and he ran and jumped on the fence and was shot and killed. So that was pretty easy. That was the first escape attempt. What two years after that? No, the next year two prisoners got out and they escaped and they think that they drowned, but they're not sure because they never got bodies, right, But the places infested with great white sharks, right, I'm

sure they were eating alive. Then, Henry Young, we talked about the movie Murder in the First with Kevin Bacon n nine. He tried to escape with three other ones, three other inmates. They were found on the beach so they did get out. One was shot and killed, another one was wounded, and Young and rufus McCain. Uh, we're probably near hypothermia, and we're collected back into prison. And this was there. I think Young stab McCain the next

year to death in the workshop. But um, if you see the movie Murder in the First it is highly, highly fictionalized. It's not very close to the real story. So don't don't take it's a good movie though. Now and the trial of Henry Young definitely brought attention to the treatment of prisoners in Alcatraz and public outcry, Um, you may still be out there. He broke parole, he was released and in Washington and skip parole and just disappeared. He's probably not out there because he was in prison

in ninety nine. They said he'd be in his nineties. Crazy. My grandmother lived to be a one. Well, if you're Henry Young, we want to hear from you. Please let us know. We want your your Deathbay confession. They'd be sweet. Did I ever tell you that? Um? You know I wrote about dB Cooper. I wrote an article, a brief article about him. Um. One of the guys who I cited is possibly having been dB Cooper. His widow emailed me it was like it was not him, It wasn't him.

I'm like, that is pretty cool. People have asked for that podcast? Is it? Is it meeting enough your article? Uh? Yeah? And and there's enough research and stuff that's happened since it was like a five minute podcast. Do you want to redo that one? We actually did that one. No, No, I didn't see it. I'm sorry, cheater. Do you want to yes? Okay, we will. That brings us o to the most famous escape attempt and possibly escape from the great great movie, Escape from Alcatraz, which was really pretty

accurate Clint Eastwood. No, man, that was pretty accurate job that they did. Have you ever seen the real head? It was? So we're talking about Clarence and John Anglin, two brothers, and uh played by Fred Ward and some other guy and Frank Morris played by Clint Eastwood, worked a couple of years on their plan to get out of Alcatraz, and they chipped away at the wall, which was at that point rotting somewhat from salt water and

salt air. We'll probably not water, and um, they chopped the way holes big enough to get out they made a little false facade that looked like the great in there. Anyway, it was like painted cardboard. Yeah, that they would pull too behind them when they went out in the conduit area behind the walls. So they go behind the walls, which is where they kept all their stuff. They fashioned raincoats together to make a crude, uh sort of a

life raft that they could blow up. They made paper mache heads that they put in the bed every night, and they could go work and think about how tired they work, and they couldn't sleep the next day. They must have gotten they I wonder how they figured out a schedule, like Okay, we can do this X number of hours every night or else we're gonna lose our minds. Yeah, but I imagine it's like should I be tired or should I escape from Alcatraz? Oh, and you escape from Alcatras.

You want to take your time do it right? As they proved though, because one night finally everything was finished and they went up to the roof through this little conduit area and um hopped the fence and made their way out into the night and were never heard from again. That's right. And they found apparently, uh, these myth Busters. Have you heard of them? Yeah, they apparently did in

the first season. They tried to recreate it because they lived in San Francisco, right, Yeah, they're up there somewhere, so they they tried to recreate the escape and they did it, which I guess kind of shows that it is possible, especially if you were going to go back. I can imagine they had all the incentive in the world to make that happen. Yeah, that's good point. Eight months after that escape, there was a Norwegian ship discovered

a body that they said resembled Frank Morris. But years later they found this body, dug it up, did DNA testing and found it wasn't him, and the FBI closed the case in seventy nine. And then years later, I'm sorry, this year on a station called nat Geo, they had a special called Vanish from Alcatraz and there was new evidence where they discovered a raft on Angel Island with footprints leading away and a report of a stolen car in the area that night, which could have been those guys.

And they confirmed these facts and that they were hidden from officials for a long time, and as a result, the US Marshall's office said, you know, what, We're going to keep the case open until these guys are supposedly a hundred years old, and then we'll close the case. Well that's great. If they live to be one on one, we'll just give it to them. Yeah, you know, then they can come out exactly. Yeah. So what else you

got that was it? I mean that that escape and the deterioration of the prison physically pretty much meant the end of Alcatraz. They're like, it's really expensive to operate if dudes can escape from here. Kind of the whole point of being here in the first place was that it was escape proof. So it's just a drain on our funds. So let's just shut it down. And now it's a tour. Yeah, it's starting in the seventies, right, seventy two something like that. Yeah, well worth your time.

And Alcatraz is not alone. There are other Alcatraz islands or Alcatraz like islands throughout the world, Like South Africa has Robin Island, um Tasmania has Port Arthur, and there's one that's in Quentin right in then An Island, Rikers Island, You've got Rikers Island. There's a bunch of them. The one that I found that was really interesting though. Um is in Norway and it's called Boss Toy or however you pronounced the oh with the slash through it. Yeah, yeah,

Um boss Toy is. It doesn't have any bars, no doors are locked. There's no guns on the island, so the guards aren't armed. Uh. The guys farm their own food. There's a little grocery store. When they get there, they're given five cronan I believe it's cronanner to spend at the supermarket and basically get themselves started. And that's it. Like that's the prison. It's basically like a little commune where like you're free to kind of live your own

life and hopefully underghost some sort of reformation. But there's guards there, there are, but they're not armed. The only gun on there on the whole island, it's it's in the warden's office and it's a statue of a bronze statue of pistol. And the warden says he has no idea where it came from. It predates him. I kind of like the Escape from New York plan. Yeah, that's a good one where you just throw him on the island and build up big walls and just leave them

to work it out. That's kind of what they're doing with Boss Toy, but it's a little more hippie then Escape from New York probably. Well there're Norwegian, so not too much violence there. And if it is, it's just like one guy, you know, that's it. That's Alcatraz, baby, scary place. Its chilling. There's ghosts apparently. Yeah, I didn't look into that. I didn't either that. I'm sure there's

you know, I'm sure there's just there. Um. If you want to know more about Alcatraz, a picture of Robert Stroud, who is a little bird like himself in appearance. Um. And well, this is just a good article all around. If you want to go over it, you can type in Alcatraz, not Alcatrazi's alcatraz um in the search of bartow stuff works dot com, which means now it's time for listener male friends. Yeah, this is an old one that's been sitting in the queue. It's about ethnobotany, remember

that one. Yeah, that's a good one. Guys. I'm an undergraduate chemistry student who has been a long time listener to your awesome podcast. You guys asked about synthesis versus extraction in the Ethnobotany podcast, So I thought i'd clear

it up for you. Extraction is often more difficult than synthesis because when one extracts something from a plant, one also has to worry about separating the desired component from the rest of the plant, since the plant is an organic material, separating he robe that by the way, uh, separating one organic compound from another is often very difficult, whereas if you used synthe this one could use polar and nonpolar solvents to manipulate the process for easy separation,

kind of like how oil and vinegar will separate when left alone. And lastly, syntheses are constantly being updated because of more efficient and faster reactions. The less steps and a synthesis, the better the inn yield. The better the yield, the happier your bosses. And that is from Evan, and he says, ps, I forgot to mention that an extracted product and a synthetic product will show no chemical difference. Very interesting, that's excellent. Thank you for clearing that up.

That was Evan, Yeah, very excited. Thanks a lot of evan um is he an anthropologist, A nutcom botanist. I think he's a gym teacher. Okay, um chuck. We got a pretty good response from our call out for um autumn treats. Do they be cocktails, dessert and um breads? What have you? That was I think we should do again, and I think we should compile them eventually once we get enough into like maybe a step you Should Know autumn cookbook or something like that. That's great. I I

will undertake that with forward by Paula Deene. Anyway, if you have a great autumn treat, whether that be drink or food, we want it. You can email it to us at stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you