Hey, everybody, Chuck here on your Saturday Selects, and hey, guys, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to take us on a little walk down memory lane from twenty twenty and my fix for the next geez maybe up to twenty weeks for me and then Josh picks his, so maybe forty weeks almost a year. Are going to be walking back through the year of COVID, kind of what was going on thematically that year and before and after, and we'll see if there's any fruit to bear as
far as looking back. I hope this is more interesting than your usual select. But we're going to start it off with February thirteenth, twenty twenty pre COVID by about a month ish with our episode nine to one one is not a joke, all about nine to one one and how it works.
Great episode, check it out.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and 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.
Right it 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 Costell was like, no, no, stop stop.
Oh wow, look at that reference 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 nine to 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, yeah, cat stuck in trees?
Sure what else? I should name everything you shouldn't call nine one one.
For Let's see neighbor playing his music too loud.
That's fine, exactly.
Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff you shouldn't call nine one one for, which we'll talk about. Sure, but one thing, like I'm 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. Yeah, and I was like, that doesn't make any sense because nine one one, it turns I has been around at least since nineteen sixty eight in the US.
It's been around way longer than parts in the US.
In UK, Yeah, true, but I like to think of Toledo as kind of a happening spot.
Sure, Toledo didn't get a.
Fully functional nine to one one system until nineteen eighty nine.
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 a 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 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.
Right, call these numbers first, right, and if they don't answer, called nine one one, Yeah.
Then do 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 uh, that's a long that's a long game, right, there is so chuck as new as nine one one 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 some buggy days. Yeah, since rotary phone days.
Yeah right, So.
As as as old as it is or as new as it is, it's gotten pretty.
Uh robust, very robust. Yeah.
Every year. Are some stats that our buddy Dave Ruse helped us compile two hundred and 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, are you sure? I just did that. Back of the arm made the double takes that I noted.
And another important thing here is that eighty percent 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 is that the nine to one win 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 nine one one. It still generally works, but it's having trouble or it's had trouble traditionally keeping pace with the massive sweeping changes in telecommunications. Yeah, has gone on in the last couple days.
Yeah, because telecom is always trying to move forward, and they don't think like, oh, but maybe we should slid the pace for nine to one one.
Right, exactly.
No, And plus I mean nine one one is 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 system.
That's just for nine to 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 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 it says who says me, Okay, 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, where there's smoke, there's fire.
Medical emergency and you can't you know, obviously get an ambulance or get in a get in your car and run someone of the emergency room if you can. If it's quicker and you can do those safely.
It's quicker and cheaper.
Oh well, sure, 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, right, you should probably call nine one one, Yeah, call nine one. Car accidents, of course, if they are major enough and like have injuries, yeah, 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 one one, that doesn't mean like don't alert anybody, right, But there are there's a your police have their own phone number, Your local police have their own phone numbers. They do 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.
Sure, call nine one one. Yeah.
So that's like no one's gonna argue with that, I think, so, okay, there are plenty of instances where you shouldn't call nine one one, and yet people rely. I oblique called nine 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 nine one. All you gotta do is call nine one one and then not expect to get some cat stuck in the tree calls.
You keep going back to that, Well.
We actually had did that when I was a kid.
Did you called nine one one 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 and.
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 you know they weren't saying, your father's very afraid and has screwed up, right, 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 tree.
Yeah, and looking back. I think that's totally probably what happened. Sure, he got way up there, it's freaked out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute. I have to ask him about that one day.
Okay, so your dad stuck in a tree, I would say, that's call nine one One's a choice. Cat's stuck in a tree. Now, unless you live in Pleasantville, don't call nine one one 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 nine one one.
Again, you can just call. There's even a number on the back of the ticket.
Don't be dumb. Okay, hey, bring that back just for that second. Okay, what else, chuck?
Oh, of course, anything dealing with your animals, unless well, I'm not even gonna say that. I was gonna say, if there's an animal attacking someone, yeah, you would call call nine one one for that. Come out and shoot this dog.
Basically it could be rabid. It's terrible call hect hate out.
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 you know, 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. 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 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 being's perception. So it 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 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 of this suspicious behavior. You see somebody like breaking into a car, like assaulting somebody, that's beyond suspicious.
That's like the act, that's the act, it's a crime being committed.
So you have a second when you see a suspicious person to stop and think, like would I call nine on one if this person were white? Right, if you're a black person doing this, say would I call NIME one with this person?
We're 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 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, if it's nine forty five or ten o'clock at night and someone's knocking on your door in our neighborhood.
It seems like suspicious. 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 them being killed by the cops exactly that, and that death would not have happened. Their death wouldn't have happened had the 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 wherever. 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 kising my house because a car pulled it into my driveway and sat there for two minutes.
They asked me if I want to know more about Sierra Corus.
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 ten, 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 what we'll have statistics that the thick 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.
Okay, we're back. That Josh break was invigorating.
I wasn't doing anything. I was just taking a picture of oak tree. When you get off my.
Back, Oh my gosh, 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 is like, no, that's not true.
While we're mentioning calling nine one one though you can get arrested. It is a crime to prank call nine one one.
You don't want to do that.
Or to swat. It's called swatting.
That's a bit I think that deserves its own podcast.
Maybe because there was some some guy got killed right from a swating incident.
Yeah, I think it's happened more than once.
Yeah, that's serious stuff.
If you don't know it's swatting is we'll just give you the four to one one on this abuse of nine one one.
Man, I love myself. Somethings great.
So swatting is where you are a hacker, right, 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, 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 that the people who have been swatted, you know, said something mean to 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 am mean.
Like in swat teams stick right exactly, 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 a short side, I think.
So we'll look into it a little. First.
We'll do one on swatting and one on docksing. Okay, 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 midst of Yeah, we do these so you you don't get in trouble with the nine on one, so they don't think that you're pranking them.
When you're not.
If you ever called 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, 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, Umy has a great story from when she was a kid. She got scared. Uh, I can't remember something about her grandmother who was perfectly fine, but she called nine one one and got scared with nine one one answered and hung up, and they kept calling back and she kept hanging up.
That's very cute.
They came out to the house a little welfare checking. Yeah, basically, but you don't want to do that. Don't follow the UMI model no of nine on one, 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 nine one one, but their version, which is nine nine nine, way back in nineteen thirty seven in London.
I didn't know this.
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 nine nine is the answer.
Yeah, which so nine nine nine it's easy to remember. Sure, I guess no one else was using nine nine nine at the time. But this is back in the day of rotary phones, right, Oh yeah, so that that's actually that was a It was a burden to dial nine nine nine with the roadary.
Should have been for sure. Yeah.
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 and because you know, Britain liked to do a little world conquering. You can find nine nine to nine in cities all over the world. Yeah, where London has or where England has left their imprint.
That's a way to put it, for sure. Yeah. And the US of course said, well, we're not going to let the Brits out do us.
You're going to do brexit. Hold my beer.
Yeah, we're gonna wait twenty something years and do it ourselves.
Right exactly.
So, I think in nineteen fifty seven, the Fire Chiefs Association, sorry, the National Association of Fire Chiefs, I was way off. They said, hey, we should come up with the easy to remember three digit number for people to report five and other people said, hey, that's a great idea. We'll we'll, we'll do that to report emergencies. And the Fire Teams Association said no, just fires.
Right.
Luckily no one listened to them. Well, they didn't listen to the just firepart, that's right. And then a couple of years after that or maybe yeah, a few years later, the National Academy Assizes 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 and T?
Because these were the days of phone monopolies, right or phone monopoly? It 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? Were they were all the different bells part of one big phone company.
That's right?
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, better song.
Okay, they got in touch with AT and T. And they said, can you help us out with this? Apparently AT and T is the one that chose nine to one one 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 one's a lot better than nine nine nine.
Way, it's two thirds better.
It is two thirds better and it was easy to remember. And you know, I think they had set up at this point already for one one in a lot of areas, so they just kind of extended that idea of the something one one.
Right, So the first this really surprised me, the first nine one one call that was ever placed in the United States.
New York City. You would think, so.
Washington, d C. No, Chicago, what else you got? Chicago?
You already said that one. Okay, I don't know. What about Los Angeles? Yeah, what not? What about Albuquerque? They're doing fine?
Okay, No, none of those are correct. Haleyville, Alabama was the site of the very first nine one one 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 the Ken Jennings on there. The champions sure run some of the better TV I'd seen in a while. Really good. Oh yeah, well, I mean if you're a Jeopardy fan, it was as good as it gets. Like they're 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 thousand dollars
and stuff. Ooh, like it was really tense. Wow, good drama. Yeah, so cool because I think Ken knew that other guy, the Holtzeltzer guy, was a gambler and he made his name for really just going all in and kN 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. Get in there. You know.
It's good stuff anyway, good trivia question. It's probably been on Jeopardy. Hayleyville, Alabama, did it was? It was kind of a publicity stunt. It sounds like they so.
The little the little phone company there, the Alabama Telephony.
Co basically said it's pretty funny at.
And T is about to do this. You'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 to one one system.
Yeah.
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. Right, So Hayleyville, 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 nineteen sixty eight, they had a state senator named Rank and fight he dialed nine to one to one 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.
Ingressman Tom Bevel known as the pork King, really not just the Alabama pork King, the pork King of Congress.
And the state centator 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 or two, sure festival. I wonder if they re enact 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.
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.
We've been saying this for years. No one's change.
Listen, so Noam, Alaska about a week later did the same thing and were 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 city might not have the money to put in a new telecommunications system to be used for emergency services. 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 Hayleyville and Nome, it was mostly like large metropolitan areas that were starting to roll out there the earliest nine to one one 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 nine one one systems. So ironically, Hayleyville, Alabama, had it not jumped on, it probably still wouldn't have a nine to 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, yeah, I'm.
Not being overly cynical. I'm sure that you know. Nine one one's 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.
Nope, that's that's just like a fact of death. But if you survive, you're gonna need all 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 seventeen percent 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 nineteen eighty nine.
Well, by nineteen eighty seven, only fifty percent of the country, which is that's kind of that's pretty late. I would have thought we would have had a lot more of the country covered by.
Then, for sure, you would think so.
And it wasn't until ninety nine, actually, Chuck, that that nine one one officially became the emergency number for everywhere in America.
Nineteen ninety nine.
Bill Clinton said, let's do this. He said, what about nine nine nine? 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 nine to one one as well, that's absolutely true, Check, 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.
America.
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? Okay, good, 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 a nine to one to one switchboard dedicated to that, they would patch you across phone lines that were dedicated to nine to 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, serge, dispatch some people to this address.
We got a suspicious person staring at oak trees right again, right.
And like originally, like today at nine one 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 as like a side thing. This is basically the same thing with the nine to eleven operator call taker. They knowed 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 evolved to the call center.
That evolved to what was called enhanced nine to one one, which was in the nineteen seventies, again driven by Telecom advancing with AT and 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. Yeah. Remember those cute little boxes that you could plug your phone line into and on your little table.
Show you in some little terrible readout. Yeah, 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, 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 it.
Really.
Yeah, there was one that was like a whole mixtape of.
Them of just like gag answers. Oh boy, you don't remember that, not really.
There was a very famous ad that.
Were in It was like delight your friends basically yeah, wow, yeah, it's pretty funny.
So this enhancenime on 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 a nine to one one 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. It 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 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 in the seventies and eighties. It really kind of cemented how helpful in life saving, this nine to one one system could be. And then cell phones came along and the rest of us kind of leap frogged right over nine one one because the cell phone carriers didn't.
Have ANI and ALI.
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 the FCC said, 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. Yeah, because part of the other thing about the automatic locator that they had originally with nine one one in the seventies and eighties 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, cell phones, it'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 have friends that have LA numbers that work in the film industry here just because that stupid LA three one hour three two three makes them look like a more legitimate higher just so cool.
It's so cool and so dumb.
Right, But yeah, they would be like, you're in Atlanta, says you're in Los Angeles.
Is this a prank? Are you swatting me? Yeah?
Yeah, So 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.
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. And even if it's not miles away, let's say it's a football field away. Well, if you're in a dense, 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 transfer your caller, to route your call to the closest peace app Yeah, okay, And then the other thing that they have them do now. Phase two of this enhanced wireless enhanced nine one one is it gives your GPS coordinates, right, which is so nineties It's ridiculous.
It is. And it's like map quest.
Any when he's ever waited on a ride share 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 one's 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 to 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 into smooth sexy voice.
Sure, like very 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 nine to one to one call specialist in a movie, a thriller.
It was good?
Was it great?
Yeah?
It was good.
Okay that 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 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 where? 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 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 Accident, Yeah, really good with Mercytome and Vincent Dinafrio. But it had This 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 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. It's neat disparate genres.
Well you have me at Session nine. Yeah.
The Call Is is a good, you know, popcorn movie. I highly recommend it.
Okay, I'll check it out.
Barry's a call center person and 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. Okay, 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's about, and I have never seen it now, even seen a preview. 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 that's a good one too. So where are we now? We are now at texting to nine one one.
Oh wait, hold on, I wanted to drive this home real quick. Okay, okay, drive it home.
The nineteen ninety six FCC rule that says you have to have a cell phone tower, tell nine one one it's address, the closest one to your cell phone, and then give the GPS coordinates. Yeah, for wherever that cell phone they think the cell phone is. That's the nine to one one system that's in place nationwide today.
In twenty twenty.
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, eighty percent 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 balanced out by the fact that they want to help. Well, you have that cell phone right there and immediately, so yeah, yeah, that's 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. 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're really swooped in there, I say.
We'll see as if there's some report coming out.
The thing is, though, is 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.
Yeah, and our work have figured.
Out 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 going to like 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 nine one one is the only one who doesn't know where you are at all.
Times, yes, which is a problem. It's funny.
I saw a Wired article from nineteen ninety eight 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 nine one one Now, yeah, they're like, maybe I don't know.
Well, I have to see to the future holds. Yeah, so texting the nine one one is the latest technology about ten years ago, eleven years ago in Iowa and 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 they all fifty states had text capability.
But it's not everywhere in each state.
Yeah, exactly, in par it's just text. I love Day points out you can't send emojis. I 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 nine one one nine one one, and it's where nine one one finally catches up to every other telecom company, yeah, 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 you're at, says what floor of a building you happen to be sitting on right now.
All of that information is now going to be funneled to nine one one when you call, because nine on one is finally abandoning land lines landline Telecom, that's what they're dealing with currently. They're going over to VoIP, so nine to one 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 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 you're looking for. 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, I think it's kind of 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 and 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 nine to one one call center responders is when there's a bad one and you release those calls and everyone's horrified. Yeah, 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 read about one where somebody called in of wildfire in Oregon, Oregon, sorry Oregon, and the nine one one operator said, what you're seeing is probably just the play of light on sunlight on the fog.
Right.
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. Yeah, and like a half hour twenty 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. Yeah, And I think the nine one one person was just sort of dismissive and it was really and kind of rude even. But you know that makes the news, not the six hundred 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.
There are plenty of stories of people like of them just like straight up.
Doing hero stuff. Yeah, 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 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 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 nine one 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 and the line goes dead. They 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 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 bit. It could be a big problem, and there can be pretty frequent turnover among nine to one one dispatchers.
It's halle Berry movie.
Oh yeah, I'm telling you, it's all there. 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, I took that call of this murder, yeah 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, 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 just going back and forth.
Yeah, you got to be able to compartmentalize and multitask.
Yeah.
All none of those things are my specialty.
Though.
If you're wondering you pay for nine to one one if you have a phone bill, cell phone bills included, it's a little search charge there. So that's outrageous to scream socialism everybody. 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 nine to one one is a joke flavor flame. There was a study done by the ACLU in twenty thirteen residents of a Grand Crossing this is Chicago.
Study African American neighborhood on the South Side waited eleven minutes for a cop to come after a priority call, two and a half minutes for the predominantly white neighborhood of Jefferson Park. In response times in that were four and a half times slower in the black community. And there's you know, like I mentioned earlier, with the people calling nine one 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.
There is a there are 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 to 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 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 just thinking of Diehard. Oh, I don't remember that.
There was that line where he's calling the nine one one dispatcher. Huh, 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 downs her and you know, it's not an emergency, and he said.
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 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 nine one one say hey, I'd like to order a pizza. Code, there's my address, and then yeah, and that nine one one will get what's going on and send the cops out. Apparently that's not true, but there there is.
There's another. There was an urban legend I.
Saw in the UK with nine nine nine 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 going to send you through a series of prompts if you don't respond, and if you press five to 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 to 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 to one one because you might think like, ugh, because 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 you're 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 nine one one isn't everywhere, the SEC has a law that if your telecom carrier doesn't 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 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 had served us for twenty years, you can dial nine on one you will be connected.
Yeah, that is pretty cool.
Every single phone that is that is in operation dials nine one one for free.
Yeah. I like that. I do too, man, I love nine to one one.
I think Kirvanni gets said there's no uh, no greater display of humanity than seeing a fire truck go down the street with its sirens blazing. Oh really, it sounds like something means interesting.
Uh.
Well, if you want to know more about Kirvannaget, you can just type that into the search bar. How stuff works and who knows what that will bring up?
Who knows? Uh? And since I said that, it's time for a listener. Man.
Uh. This is a response when we ask 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 Epplewhite 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 the 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 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 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 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 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 iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.