How to Control a Riot

It's no secret that people in crowds will behave differently than they would if they were alone. In a riot, individuals may exhibit a drastic change in their behavior -- but why? How? More importantly, how can riots be controlled? Tune in to find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant,
and this is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. Are

(00:25):
you waiting on me? Yes, it is Josh. Did you
see Mark Marin? What do you mean he topp old
Irony Glass for a few days. I did see that
out in nowhere. Yeah, he must have had some sort
of little, uh, publicity push or something something something happened. Yeah,
it's great for him. Yeah, he has a great show though. Yes,
he does really good interviewer Mr Maron. I emailed him

(00:47):
one time, told him that and he was like, he said,
thanks a lot many Who are you? He probably did,
but that's fine. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I'm not
a famous comedian. No, not yet, No, Chuck. Did you
ever watch Wkrappe and Cincinnati? Did so? Do you remember
the one? Like every once in a while, different Strokes

(01:09):
would do this too. They'd be like, uh, at the
end of the episode when it was really serious, there
would be no clapping. It'd just be quiet, right, but
you could tell the audience was still. There was always
somebody moving in their seat or coughing or whatever, so
like the audience was just sitting there being silent, which
threw a pall over the entire episode, even though it

(01:30):
was jarring, and even as a lad, I remember thinking like, wow,
something big just happened that I wasn't paying attention to,
you know. Um, And there's a particular w KRP episode
that stands out that was like that, the one where
they sponsored the Who concert where those people got trampled.
All right, did you see that one? Yeah? I remember,

(01:50):
I knewhere you were going with that. So so this
happened in real life. There was a a WHO concert
in Cincinnati and it was general admission seating, which apparently
UM it away with general admission for a while, open
the gates and run to wherever you want to go.
There was like a sound check, and people mistook the
sound check for an early start. Was a late sound check,
and they thought it was an early start, so people

(02:12):
started pushing in. Well they I guess the people who
owned the theater had fewer entrances open than they could have,
so this massive people just started pushing forward, and um,
some people got pressed against the doors and were asphyxiated
by this huge crowd. People trampled to death. To this day,

(02:36):
I mean, you can explain what the trigger was, but
to this day, there's a lot of study that that
has come up empty handed to that kind of crowd behavior.
That's what it's called. It's the study of crowd behavior.
People as individuals act differently when they submit to a
larger collective group, a quote unquote mob mentality. That's part

(02:57):
of it too, But things like that that stampede, um
Black Friday stampedes. Have you ever seen video of this?
They're nuts. There's one where like it ends with this
guy coming into the foreground and he's like leaning over
this railing like a target or something, and he's like,
I got this horrible look on his face and he's
like trying to catch his breath and like he's been

(03:21):
trampled and they managed to extract him, and he's sitting
there like leaning over the rail and catching his breath,
and you just know that like once he called his breath,
he was going to go right into the target and
start shopping. But um, so all of this this is
called crowd behavior. And one of the big ones, the
one that's the one that's really always been elusive, is rioting.

(03:41):
Why riots happened, Why ordinary people behave the way they
do in a riot, breaking glass, beating up people for
no good reason like stealing, looting, all this stuff. Right,
One thing they have kind of figured out is how
to control riots, right, Yes, they have, and they've gotten
better at it over the years, um as recently as

(04:04):
in l A with the famous La riots which my
brother lived out there. At the time, they still weren't
doing a great job at it, because I think that
was a big learning experience. Your injuries, seven thousand fires
Troy on the night before Halloween or something, well, we'll
talk about Detroit to more than twelve thousand arrest, a

(04:26):
billion dollars in damage after the Rodney King verdict came back.
Is not guilty obviously for the four white cops who
beat the tar out of Rodney King. And uh it
lasted from April twenty ninth until May second. That was
full on riding going on streets of l A. Yeah,
and they've gotten better at it since then. It's poor
Reginald Denny getting shot in the leg. The trucker who

(04:47):
got pulled out. Yeah, I do remember that. That was
crazy man. So that's what's called the mob mentality. And
one of the things this is the grabster ed Grabanowski
always gets the good stuff. He's quality. One thing he
pointed it out here, which is a big deal with
my mentality I never considered, is anonymity. That is the point, right, Yeah,

(05:08):
You've got a crowd of people who are like, kind
of all feeling the same way at the very least,
they're all feeling the same energy. But the cops are
standing there staring at you. You're not gonna do anything
if the cops are staying they're staring at you, especially
if you think you may be the only one to
do something right. You're not gonna throw them all the

(05:30):
top cocktail at a cop when you think everyone in
the crowd is gonna look at you like, what did
you just do that for? Right, But if you're anonymous,
not just to the cops, but within the crowd, you're
probably going to start something. Yeah, it gives it makes
you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do you were on
your own. And there's different schools of thoughts with with riots, right,

(05:51):
they The prevailing idea is that UM riots are formed
by a few people who do act as triggers once
the risk of being arrested is low enough through anonymity,
a few people who are angry enough have something to gain,
there's some there's some reason they act as the leaders
or the people who start the riots and everybody else

(06:13):
which they're considered a homogeneous group, right of soccer fans
or UM people are low on the socioeconomic ladder. In
l A. R UM, they just got caught up in
the in the mob mentality, right, And that's that's UM.
That's pretty much how most people see riots these days. Yeah,

(06:33):
and that's basically every riot you just described. There's two
things you need, the fuel and the spark. It's like
a fire, and it's very much accurate to call it that.
The fuel can build up and usually does build up
over time. Uh. In the case of l A. It
was it was racial prejudiced and what they perceived as
unfair treatment because they might have been poor. Well, not

(06:55):
just that, I think the l A p D has
been especially at that time and was viewed as like
the most crooked police department in the country. So this
builds up over time. Maybe it's a union, uh, angry
at their company, angry for years, decades even over mistreatment.
And once you get a big enough group of people
that are all ticked off about something together and you

(07:16):
can have a spark, which doesn't even need to be
something real. Sometimes it can be a rumor did something happen.
People get whipped up to a frenzy. That spark ignites
the fuel and you've gotta ride on your hands, and
that sparked. Another term for it is a shilling um incident,
shilling incident. I think, Yeah, there's this guy who studied
crowd mentalities, crowd behavior and he uh, I think his

(07:40):
name is Thomas Shilling. And um, a shilling incident is
like a signal. It can be anything from like when
you when you reach that peak moment where everybody's charged
up but nobody's gonna do anything. If somebody suddenly shatters
like a plate glass window, everybody's gonna go nuts. A
shilling incident just happened. Yeah, But another way to put
it is that that spark, right, but it takes something

(08:01):
like that signal, like it's go, time for the balance
to tip and a riot, a crowd to go from
a crowd to a riot. Josh, we talked about in
the past. Uh, they were not very good at it.
And when I say they're not very good, it was
because it was us versus them. Cops go in and

(08:22):
start beating people into submission, and that's not the way
they want to do things nowadays. No, it was viewed
as a battle. Yeah, like let's go out and fight
each other. Yeah, like Braveheart or uh the other one
that he made like that. Yeah, and we've got better
weapons cops do, so we're we're gonna win despite the
fact that you may outnumber us, although sometimes we might

(08:43):
out number you and have better weapons and um. Apparently
one of the things they figured out this happened in
l A. And when you don't number of the cops,
the cops back down. Apparently that's what they did in
l A. They were like, there's something we can do, well,
we'll get eaten alive, so we're going to just kind
of hang back and try to contain that, right. You know. Interesting, Uh,
these days, it's pretty cool how they do it. There

(09:05):
is a command team. They form a square, a big
square of officers. Yeah. And by the way, it really
helps to see this graphic. Do you have that to
This graphic is as helpful as a graphic I've ever
seen in my entire life. Yeah. So what you've got
is you've got a big square of officers. In the
center of that square, you have your command team giving
out the orders. They're obviously well protected because they're in

(09:27):
the middle. Yeah, and the outside the sides in the
front and back are called echelons, right, yes, And and
echelon is about ten to twelve cops that are you
know that you know what echelon you're in, so you
know what to do, like, oh, we'll get into that
in a second. There's also in the center there's an
arrest team, and they are the only people that are
actually placing people under arrest. Everyone has their own job,

(09:49):
and what I get from this is you gotta stick
to your job in order to be effective. If you're
in a front echelon, don't start arresting guys. It's not
your job. And I think the whole thing would fall apart.
Like you say, so, uh, it's very mobile, very tactical.
You can change direction if if all those dudes in
the square all of a sudden said, you know, the
command team sends out the message we've got people coming

(10:11):
from the south. They can all turn around and all
of a sudden, you've got the same effective team go
in the other direction, very reactive, very act. The echelon's
cover each other. They don't all go out at once
like an echelon. If they want to advance, they'll send
out one echelon while everyone else covers them. Then the
next echelon will go forward. And then what you're doing

(10:31):
is you're moving the square into another position. Right. And
remember we said that rioting groups are generally taking as
homogeneous mostly people who get caught up in this thrill
of the moment um when they're confronted with police. The
idea is that they really just kind of want to
go home. They don't want to get arrested. They don't
have any dog in the fight. So if they see

(10:53):
this tactical squad coming at them, um, the one of
the first points of the squad is to let these
people go home. That's that's what the cops want, is
they would just want you to get out of there.
So it's not just like this solid wall, although it
can be. These echelons they're also very capable of spreading
out to let people flow through them and get out

(11:15):
of there. That's what they want to do. They want
to leave you an escape route, whereas in the old
days they would actually try and strategically trap you in
a corner, which with a night stick. But you know,
when you're trapped in a corner, you're gonna be even
more enraged and scared. So that just led to more violence.

(11:36):
So if you are confronted by an echelon of this, right,
let's say you're just an average person and you're you
want to get out of there, you're probably going to
be able to make it through or around them, right.
But if you're just standing there and you're throwing rocks still,
or you're shouting at him, or you're not moving and
they're telling you to, what's gonna happen is they're gonna
close ranks and then the the two officers that you're

(11:58):
in between are gonna open up, and you're gonna find
yourself swallowed by this tactical square of riots basically, and
that's when you're going to be introduced to the arrest team.
You were in a walled area of cops and that's
probably not a fun place to know you're going to
have your you're in trouble. So Josh, you want to

(12:19):
talk about some of the devices these officers used to
quell a crowd. You're you're not going to go into
a riot, you know, wearing Madras shorts. You know it's
not you could, but you're gonna be wearing them. Wonder
what's called hardtack, which is a helmet with a visor. Right, Um,
body armor and not just like the the chest armor

(12:44):
chest and back, but like you know, the or the best,
that's what it's called. You're you're gonna have body armor
on your arms, your legs, your shins, probably flame retardant,
and then a shield and the shield in the in
the face mask are made of um what lex and yeah,
which is like bulletproof if it's thick enough. This stuff
isn't thick enough. It's not intended to be bulletproof, but

(13:05):
it's probably brickproof or at least Molotov cocktail proof. Yeah, exactly,
that's what you're looking for. Um they have, um a
baton is probably what most of these uh women in
man I keep saying, Dudes, they're probably some female riot cops.
I imagine that are holding a baton so generally made
of wood about forty two inches long, and they use

(13:27):
these instead of rifles because rifles can ignite a crowd,
and you don't want someone grabbing your rifle, so they
want to try and keep things as low key as
possible initially at least, and bringing a rifle into the
fight definitely will not do that. Well, no, not not
only that, but if if somebody gets the rifle away
from the cops, bad news. Yeah, they have non lethal rounds,

(13:49):
but it just quick to point out there is really
no such thing as a non lethal round. Anything fired
from a gun can kill you potentially. Just ask Brandon Lee. Yeah,
well I guess you couldn't ask Brandon Lee, but the
director of the crow. Uh. And they are fired from
a forty millimeter gun and it's one of those sometimes

(14:10):
it's a single shot, but it's like a grenade launcher.
Sometimes it's those really cool looking things with a six
or eight round barrels. Looks like a Tommy gun sort of.
It's very cool. But they shoot out forty millimeter shells, right,
and like you said, they're less than lethal rounds, right,
less lethal. Um. And basically you have a couple of
different kinds of rounds in or a couple of different categories.

(14:33):
Like you know, blunt force rounds, right, and blunt force
rounds are basically meant to knock you on your bottom
when you're in the middle of a riot, a big
thud in your chest, or at the very least, to
smack your legs in your stomach. Because if you're a rioter,
and you aren't, you weren't planning to be in a
riot that day, you may be wearing moderates shorts, right,

(14:54):
And so these rounds, these blunt force rounds, there's a
wood baton, the rubber baton, the phone baton, all of
these are designed. Um. They look like little canisters. They're
shot from these grenade launchers and they're filled with these things, right,
They're filled with little hockey pook like disks, right that
when the shell hits the ground, usually you shoot them
at the ground in front of protesters. When they hit

(15:17):
the ground, the shell opens up and all these little
disks just spread out and smack a bunch of people
all at once, and all of a sudden they're like, oh,
and snap out of their rioting mentality hopefully and go home. Right,
that's the idea. That's the idea of the blunt force round.
There's also a bean bag around um, which is exactly
what it sounds. It shoots little square bean bags, or

(15:41):
there's some that look like tadpoles if you are you know, aiming,
if you want to be accurate. And then there's the
sponge round, right, which is the cleanest of all the
blunt force rounds. It's basically like a sponge bullet, which
I imagine hurts pretty bad. Yeah. Actually, my nephew know
it shot me in the back over christ Us with
this little gun. Then he got a little air gun

(16:03):
that shoots a little rubber pellets. Oh yeah, the little
yellow ones. Hh yeah, very soft, I think so. Yeah,
this is a second time for some reason in my life,
I volunteered to be shot because everyone was wondering how
bad it hurts, and I was like, well, to shoot me.
So I made my back taught with my shirt and
he shot me in the back and it hurt a lot,
didn't Yeah that made raised a big red welt and

(16:24):
uh yeah, it was not fun. So I talked to
Strickland of tech stuff, John Stricklin. He went to c
ES and m one of the things that was left
out of this article was um electrocution, non lethal electrocuting
weapons of the sho people, specifically Taser, which is a
company's name by the way. But Strickland said that Taser

(16:46):
was at c S in Vegas. Yes, are you serious?
Tasing people who wanted to be tased to find out
how it felt, and they were chasing people. But he
said there was something called the Taser shock wave, which
is an electric shot cannon. Wow, right, I should Yeah,
that's that thing. So basically, it's just this array of
tasers that you sit on like a amount, and you

(17:09):
can stack them up on four legs, stack them next
to one another, so you create a barricade of tasers
and if people are running at you, just deploy and
it tastes. Let's see each each little stack can taste
six people at once, and you start stacking them up
in side by side. That's a lot of people that
you're tasting at once. Strickland didn't get tasted. There's no

(17:29):
way Strickling got taste. Uh. There's all kinds of cool
non lethal weapons. Actually, I've seen those foam guns that
like cover you in sticky goo and like sound things
flash bang grenades, gay bomb that was created or that
was thought of as a non lethal weapon at the time. Yes,
Patterson right, Patterson Air Force Space Right. Yes, they don't

(17:51):
use all these in riots though obviously, Um, they do
use pepper ball rounds and those are basically modified paint guns,
but instead of paint, it's filled with pepper spray that
hits you. It's not gonna be very fun. No, it's
gonna sting and then you're gonna get that stuff in
your face. They said they can also use a water
in case there are children or elderly in the crowd, right,

(18:15):
and that wld on a pepper spray the elderly, You don't, Um,
I just want to see the elderly rioting though. That's
what I was trying to figure out. Buddy, Wait until
they take away social Security and then you'll see some
elderly rioting. He's slow, right, Apparently the water that will
still cause a stinging sensation and uh have a similar effect. Well. Plus,
if anyone who's savvy, a savvy rioter and has been

(18:37):
hit with a pepper ball spray or pepper pepper ball around,
UM may take this water round to be pepper spray
and will start running, or it could have the same effect,
has a psychological effect, psychs him out. Yeah, you're trying
to disperse people. There's also if you're into pepper spray
or cs gas, which I'm gonna go ahead and try

(18:58):
to pronounce this now, okay, Chlora benzeldine Milan trial, Clara benzeliding,
Clara benz aladine Milana trial, and oh, sea gas is
oleah resin capsicum, which is what pepper spray is. Did
you look at the pronunciation of capsicum? Is that wrong?
I think that's right. It's either capsicum or capsicum. I'm

(19:20):
gonna go okay, But you can both of those can
be um injected into an aerosol grenade, which is tear
gas grenade. Uh, and you can throw that into a
crowd if you want to start a stampede and kill
a bunch of people. People get freaked out when you
throw a grenade that starts spewing gas, right, they don't

(19:40):
know what it is. But apparently this is very useful
for crowd control. Like, if you want the crowd to
move right, you throw one of these to the left
and the left outskirts of the crowd and everybody starts
moving the way you want them to. Or if some
people are just beating somebody up, you can throw that
into a crowd to get into layoff, or you can
create a barricade of tear gas. Yeah. The other thing, Josh,

(20:01):
they have is die rounds, so sponge drowns, ferret rounds.
We didnt talk about ferret rounds, but they penetrate windows
and wooden barricades kind of to blast through something so
that they can send in some gas. Well, they have
gas in the round. It wasn't spelled out. Yeah, I
looked at like it's in the round. Okay, Yeah, Well
all these things can be filled with die marker die

(20:22):
as well. So if you see like one of the
leaders or someone who's doing something especially bad, you can
pop them with one of these, and all of a sudden,
the arrest team knows, hey, get that guy with the
red splotch on his chest or surf or the blue
spots in the uh. And so if I would suggest, well,
I'm not going to suggest that if I was hit

(20:42):
with one of these, I'd take off my shirt or something,
which would be a whole different kind of problem. Um
animals sometimes use dogs and horses to intimidate people. Yeah,
but not only that, horses and dogs are also relatively
immune to O C and C S gas just C
S gas. Pepper spray is not good for anyone that's

(21:04):
just straight up hot um. But that's yeah, sure, I
wonder they test that. You know exactly how they test it.
They spray a horse and say, and then they'll wonder
what happens if a horse um, josh. What they're trying
to do here is the in fact, they don't even
call it a riot squad anymore. What they now call

(21:25):
it is crowd management units. Yes, we're onto the philosophy
of riot control. Chapter one. Prevention, stop it before it
starts is the goal. A lot of these things happen
at planned um protests. So when they hear about this,
someone applies for a permit to stage a rally. Let's

(21:46):
say that's one that's particularly they think in an incendiary
they'll send some a tactical unit in and they'll talk
to the people beforehand and say, hey, you can do this,
you can go here, but don't do this and don't
go there. We won't have any problem. Right, And you're
familiar with the battle for Seattle. Yeah, there was UM
Direct Action Network was running the show for that, the

(22:08):
World Trade Organization protests, and they met with the Seattle
cops and we're like, you know, this is what we'll do.
Here's a great plan. We'll agree to this. But before Warren,
there are probably going to be people there that are
not under our control. And there were. There was an
anarchist group from Eugene organ and they're the ones who
started just trash in the place. Yeah. Yeah, that didn't

(22:31):
work out so well. Well. The Seattle police were grossly
under prepared for it. They did not they were not
ready for that at all. Chuck, you're talking. Sorry to
take us off on that tangent, but we were talking
about prevention and how you you meet with the cops
will meet with you. They're gonna be like, don't do this,
don't do that. If this does happen, we're gonna go

(22:52):
from this passive, observant but present kind of mentality to you, Okay,
now we're in a riot gear mentality. Yeah, but they
say it's still important to be unbiased. Like if it's
let's say Democrats are opposing some Republican Um convention or something,

(23:13):
the cops aren't supposed to let their biases figure into
how they react. They're supposed to be unbiased and treat
them like they're members of the community. And they say,
while they want to be uh not stormtroopers, you also
can't appear to be subservient. You still have to like
give the appearance at least that you're in charge. Right,

(23:33):
So you gotta walk that fine line between stormtrooping, beat
you down mode and oh, you're just doing great things
and I got no opinion on the matters. Yeah, like
your mad with shorts, it's very nice. Oh yeah, those
so chuck. If the ground rules are broken, apparently, um,
and a riot does break out, the cops kind of

(23:55):
switch modes, right, intimidation mode. Yes, Again, the point and
all of this is theoretical law enforcement. But the point
is to get this crowd to disperse. And it's based
on the philosophy that they're just temporarily out of their
minds and caught up in this mob mentality, and if
you confront them with the strong arm of the law,

(24:16):
they'll come to their senses and want to go home. Right. Yeah,
And they do that, they'll like, um that they're very
tight with their precision with their movements, which is intimidating. Apparently,
will like beat their shields with their batons and stomp
their feet all at the same time. And all this
is the idea is to scare people into thinking, I
don't want to be swallowed up into that square. Right.

(24:37):
They also pick and choose who they arrest or even
who they mark with die somebody who is Um. If
they see somebody engaged in a crime, they're probably going
to try to arrest them, depending on the severity of
the crime, or at least they'll probably try to mark
that person for arrest later. But if they see somebody,
like if they see a group of people beating down
one person or shooting poor O Reginald Denny in the leg, Um,

(25:00):
they're going to go after those people because there's someone
whose life is in danger. Um. So they kind of
triage I think in the in the middle of this chaos,
they triaged the you know who they're gonna go after first, right,
makes sense. Um, so we've talked about um, the rioters, police,
obviously national guards sometimes trying to contain riots. Right. There

(25:23):
have been some dark spots in the history of the
world and continue to be where you get what's called
the police riot when the cops are the ones that
are kind of I don't know about instigating in all cases,
but definitely the aggressors in the situation, they've definitely been
police rights. The Haymarket riot was a very good example
of that. Which one was that That was the one

(25:44):
in Chicago in six that created the first May Day.
Oh yeah, there were some striking workers and the cops
showed up and just started beating the tar out of them. Somebody, Um, no,
I'm sorry, the cops showed up. It was very tense. Um.
Someone threw a bomb at the cops and kill late cops,
and the cops went nuts and started firing on the crowd,

(26:05):
killed four people. Um. And ultimately they went after the
these anarchists who founded this rally and without any evidence
that tied them to this bombing, and they also think
it's possibly an agent of provocateur, someone who's paid by
the cops to agitate the crowd by throwing this bomb.
Um through the bomb. But without tying these eight guys

(26:26):
to the bombing, they hung four of them, one of
them committed suicide and then three were finally pardoned. But
that's the Haymarket riot. He certain, Well, you can't mention
Chicago or riot without talking about the nineteen sixty eight
Democratic National Convention. You know that's a big, very big one. Uh.
Ten thousand anti war protesters showed up, um because they

(26:47):
wanted to protest hippies yippies. Actually, well, the people were um.
Hubert Humphrey was the candidate that was to replace who
was it, Lyndon Johnson? Yeah, we guess, and Humphrey was
pro war. Democrats didn't like that, so they went to protest.
Richard Daily was the mayor. He didn't want any part

(27:09):
of this stuff. He was pretty angry about it going
in said things like, no one's going to protest in
my city. Yeah, built up big barricades around the convention center,
got a lot of cops and National guardsmen involved. Apparently
twenty three thousand cops and National guardsmen were on hand,
and they had a stance on things, and they started

(27:29):
beating the tar out of people. Yeah, there was a
have you seen Chicago ten? Now you see it, you'd
like it? Is it part of the Chicago seven? Eight?
Then seven? But it's um. You tend to begin with, well,
the filmmakers include to the two defense lawyers who were
cited for contempt, and Bobby Seals and then the Chicago seven,

(27:50):
so which makes ten. But they they it's all animated,
like Waking Life. It's mostly animated. There's also like archival
footage and all that's a document entry. But it's really
really cool. It's based on court transcripts, but that's animated
to check that out. It's very it's very cool. But um,
they were saying that people were staying in this park
in Chicago, Jackson Park, Lincoln Park one of the parks,

(28:13):
and the cops are like, yeah, stay as long as
you want until when the park closes at eleven o'clock
and then after that we're gonna go through and sweep
the park and beat the tar out of anybody we find.
And then I think ultimately set off the riots. When
it got real bad was the cops wouldn't stop doing that. Well,
it got pretty out of hand to say the least,

(28:33):
and everyone from Mike Wallace and Dan Rather, two Red
Cross medics were roughed up. Hunter Thompson, I was he there, Yeah,
I'm sure he was roughed up. They went into a
hotel where people were staying and dragged people out of
their rooms. It was bad. Well, I know that they
said they throw so much tear gas on the scene
that um, Hubert Humphrey was actually bothered in the shower

(28:56):
in this hotel by the tear cats. So yeah, that
was a dark spot on our nation's history for sure. Yeah.
I think Hunter Thompson road in our client like it's
probably fair and loathing at the Democratic National Convention. Absolutely,
And uh, I said Detroit earlier, we would be remiss
if we didn't mention that. In nineteen forty three, this
was the case of rumors of things that never happened,

(29:18):
sparking your riot. There was already a race fight going
on at an amusement park, uh. And then there was
two rumors one that um, some white men had thrown
a black woman who was holding a baby into a
lake right there, Like the throwing a white woman into
the lake wasn't bad enough right there? And then then
they're like and she was holding a baby, right They're

(29:39):
like what? And then white people heard news that a
mob of black folks had assaulted a white woman. Neither
of these things even happened. But that was my point earlier.
It doesn't matter if it happened or not. There were
racial tensions in Detroit at the time in nineteen forty three,
and this set it off, and cops apparently we're shooting,
uh fleeing black people in the back. That was the rumor. Well,

(30:03):
I don't know about rumor. Five black folks and nine
white folks were killed, two million in property damage, and
yet another black spot on our nation's history when it
comes to writing. But you know, they say they've got
it figured out now. Uh. Yeah, it's not just our
nation either. Right now in Moscow they have race riots

(30:24):
going on. Yeah, Tunisia too, there's writing going on as
we speak. Yeah, that's anti government rioting. Yeah. This guy
set himself on fire. The twenty six year old student
who had no had a college degree and dismal prospects
for work. I think he was like a merchant or
something in the market and he was being taxed or
something unfairly. He felt, well, he was trying to sell

(30:46):
fruit and vegetables and they basically told him he couldn't
do it at all because he didn't have the proper
permit and that was the only way he could make money.
So he set himself on fire. And now through like Facebook.
The word has spread to right it in Tunisia and
it's still going on. And apparently Anonymous sent a message
to the Tunisian government telling him to open up the internet.

(31:08):
They have it locked down like China does. Yeah, so
it's happening all over the place. Yes, it is. It's crazy.
Time to be alive, my friend. It is. Well. If
you want to learn more about how to control a riot,
if your kids are ever going crazy or something like that,
you can type in riot control in the handy search
bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I

(31:29):
said handy search bar, it's time for Facebook questions. Right,
what's the jingle? Chuck questions? I don't think it's the same,
but I'll change it every time. Alright. This is from
Christian Winger. If money was no object, what job would
you love to do besides the one that you have? Um?

(31:50):
I would say two things. One selfishly, I would love
to be a filmmaker, and then unselfishly selfish well because
I'm not helping out my fellow man except offering them
great movies. But if money were no object, I used
to want to start a camp for behavioral disorder children.
I take them camping. You mean the camp from Stir Crazy? Yeah, basically,

(32:16):
or no, was it Stir Crazy? Was it Richard Pryor
and Gene Walder? Yeah, Gene Walder wasn't in. It was
the one where he was the bus driver. It was
just Richard Pryor Silver Streak. Now that was the train
And I know which one you're talking about, right, What
would you do first, Chuck? I want to commend you
on that. That is very sweet. It's not sweet. My
dad did that. He had outdoor programs for he's a principal,

(32:38):
you know. So you could do both. You could take
some of the money you make from being a successful
filmmaker open up a camp exactly. So there you go,
both dreams realized. I would write books. Yeah, whatever books.
I just write a book writing. Yeah, don't forget that
is what I would be doing that anyway. Maybe, um
cer lock card. What's the room like that you record

(32:59):
the show in? It is smallish, It's got some phone
padding on the walls, gotta there's heavy curtain chains and
shackles that are bolted to the walls, jains and shackles. Bleak,
it's bleak. It's depressing. There's a picture of Nikola Tesla
and a picture of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on
there is that's the only adornment on the walls. Right,
that's what I can here, Kerr. You've got some josh, right,

(33:22):
I do, But I'd like the way that you ask questions. Um,
you see you've already already done that one, Chuck. Where
you ever in a frat? That one's from Drew Sorenson
was not in a frat, nor was I, but I
did hang out with the pie Kappa Alpha's. Yeah, I
had a bad frat friends, true, a few uh cigappes
and figs. I didn't hang out with any of them.

(33:45):
My dad was a teak. Was he at the University
of Tilda, Ali Smith? What career did you think you
would pursue when he graduated? At one point, I wanted
to be a sportscaster, But I didn't pursue a whole
lot right after college except bling and stuff like that.
I traveled after college as well. I lived in a van.
I think I've probably said before, right. Uh, this one's

(34:09):
from Matthew Paul Morris. Possibly one of the better questions
we've gotten, and justice for all or Master of Puppets,
Master of Puppets. Yeah, me too. Yeah, but that's that's
a very very close close contest. Yeah, and justice for
all it's no no slouch. Uh. How about Luke Kelly?

(34:30):
If you could, if you had to live in a
world without cheese or movies, which would you choose? I
would say no cheese because I love movies. But that's tough, man.
I love cheese. I love cheese too, but I would
definitely choose cheese over move. That means no pizza. That
means Mexican food isn't as fun. Chinese foods are good, yeah, really,

(34:52):
Sushi you're good. Yeah. Movies, I would want movies still. Yeah.
What's your Dead Island beer? I think i'd say Sierra Nevada?
Everyone knows I love that. Maybe Budweiser. I'm really big
on um Bells too. Heart at Ale right now, that's good.
It is really good. And yeah, they have it on
tap at a place near me. It's very nice. Um

(35:14):
Let's see, how did we meet? Obviously it was at work,
But did you hit it off right away or did
the friendship grow over time? This is from Tamara Beth Stevens.
We hit it off and it continues to grow over time.
Like any good friendship, I would say that too. Yes,
it evolves and changes and makes us happy. It's nice.

(35:35):
From Kim Rigden Briskow. Do you do your wife girlfriend
slash girlfriend? Mind if you mentioned her on the podcast? Um,
Emily loves it because I'm always plugging her company. You
mean's fine with it too, Okay. Favorite childhood toy mine
definitely was my um Evil Kine Evil crank up motorcycle

(35:58):
because I that was I would jump him through like
flaming coat hangar loops that we would set on fire,
which by the way, you should never ever do, and
we would jump him over the creek and all kinds
of stuff. We would put him in peril. It was
always fun. Uh wow, that is fun. What about you? Gee? Um,
I would have to say I had. I had this

(36:21):
um plastic Navone Castle Nava remember forced ten from Navone? Okay,
So I had that and it had little green army
guys or whatever. And now I looked back, I realized
it was just like some generic knockoff toys. But I
love that thing. And I also I think I did
have a thing for castles, because I also loved my
Castle Gray School he Man play set he certainly did.

(36:43):
And then my sitting spam was pretty awesome too. Yeah,
I had I wanted a green machine, but I was
stuck with a big wheel. I don't remember the green machine.
It was a more complex big wheel. That was. It
was pretty tough and rich kids got that that I was.
I was gonna worked up, all right. I've got one
more Josh from Tim Lind's a I've always wondered how

(37:04):
much coffee do you both drink in a typical work day.
I drink in the wintertime, maybe a couple of cups
a week. I'm not a huge coffee guy. I like
it in the winter to warm me up. Sometimes it
jacks me up, which is nice. But I'm not coffee guy.
But I've got to hear your answer. Honestly, in a
day and day wintertime, it definitely steps up a little

(37:27):
from me. I don't know if I can quantify it.
It's more like I drink coffee until I can't breathe.
I'm seriously probably eight to ten cups in a day,
hate the tin cups, maybe more all right, of regular
because we don't have decap in the office. I was
drinking the calf here there and now there's no decaf,

(37:48):
so it's all regular. I don't I think that for
a big coffee person. That's about right. Eight to tin cups.
It's a lot of coffee, but it's way too much coffee. Yeah,
who might judge? Yeah, keep drinking it, thanks man. A
lot worse things you could be doing. Yes, I think
I could be shooting junk or something eight to ten
times a day. Don't want to do that. All right.

(38:09):
That's it for Facebook questions. Thank you for those are
always fun. Yeah again, we have fun over at Facebook.
That's Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know we
tweeked s y s K podcast. Um and then we
have an email address too. Can you believe it? Uh?
It's stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For

(38:31):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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