December 28, 2021 • 46 mins
Attorneys and judges get all the press. What about bailiffs, court reporters and sketch artists? Yeah, let's give them their due.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody. It's your old pals Josh and Chuck, and
you will have the chance to see us live in
person for the first time in two years, Friday, January
twenty one in San Francisco. Right, Chuck, that's right, We're
returning to the stage at Sketch Fest. We're very excited
about it. We can't wait to see everyone. It is
a VACS only show. Bring your backscard. It is a
(00:21):
mask only show. Bring that mask. Can't wait to see
a third of your faces. That's right. You can get
tickets at s F sketch Fest dot com and again Friday,
January one, thirty pm Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, California.
We will see you there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:49):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck,
Bryan and Jerry's over there, and this is stuff you
should know. Let's get to it, friends. Yeah, that's right.
But hey, we have a bit of an announcement that
I'm excited about me too. We have added a new
writer to the stable. Uh Olivia Greshawn and this is
(01:12):
Libya's first effort and how we're doing it, you know,
because we've we've never really on boarded people because uh
David Edward colleagues of ours from the Housetuff worksdays. So
we thought, maybe, you know, we'd give someone an article,
not I mean sort of as a tryout, but just
to make sure that it was a good fit. And
Olivia killed it right out of the block. And she's
(01:33):
super talented as a writer and obviously very smart and
great at research, and like I know, both speaking for
both of us, we're just very excited to have Livia
on board. And uh yeah, so thanks Olivia, and welcome
to the to the family. Welcome aboard, Olivia. If you
went to high school with Livia, now would be a
good time to email her and say, hey, I didn't
(01:55):
know you were writing for stuff you should know. She'd
be like, oh that yeah. But this is a kind
of fun one I think as a first assignment to
for her because it's a little different, and that it
wasn't just one um one really deep dive on one
single thing. What she's gonna bomb that when we give
her that next one, but this is actually three things
(02:18):
in one. I had the idea of court stenography. But
then I was like, you know what, maybe, uh, that's
not quite enough. But I didn't want to do it
as a shorty, so I thought, let's just expand it
and talk about bailiff's uh court stenography and court sketch artists,
the triumvirate. Yeah, what we're calling the unsung heroes of
(02:42):
the courtroom because they're there. Uh, but you know, you're
not really ideally if they're doing their job right and
they're not a celebrity bailiff, you're not even gonna know
they're there. Yeah, that's pretty much true. They're kind of
meant to kind of blend into the background. Is the
judge who wants all the attention usually sometimes the lawyers, Okay,
bailiffs sometimes the lawyers, please, um, even the bailiff that's
(03:04):
super busy doing things. They're they're not showboating, you know
what I'm saying. No, they're not like twirling their gun
or anything or being like hurry up, this is boring.
That would be bad. But bailiffs are the least exciting though,
so I think we should start with them. Okay, so bailiff's,
it turns out, um find their heritage. It goes back
(03:24):
many many centuries actually, and they apparently originally started out
in the UK as kind of legal overseers of a
manor house for a feudal lord. Basically, yeah, kind of
property managers. They could collect rent today, would sometimes do
some accounting, they could collect fines. I think a little
(03:47):
later on is when they were brought into the court system,
but it was still sort of doing like sheriffy things, right.
So that I saw, Chuck was the bailey in ants
where they were much more um involved in courts and
they actually have more power. They were more of a
government official than just like somebody who served a feudal lord. Okay,
(04:11):
And that's where this it's it's weird. It's almost like
between medieval England and medieval France, between these two interpretations
of what a bailiff was, it got all mixed together,
shaken up, some stuff fell off and some stuff stick around.
And then you said, okay, now we have the bailiff
as we understand it today, right, which is you know,
kind of what we're gonna concentrate on is the the
(04:33):
good old fashioned American bailiff sitting in the quarter eat
eating apple pie and ready to jump in there and
crack someone's skull open, or hand the judge a key
piece of evidence or arrest somebody. Yeah, because a bailiff
today is as far as people in America and if
you're in the UK, you're like, oh, I know the
(04:53):
bailiff is. It's somebody who, uh there's a water bailiff
for there's an eviction bailiff who deals with travelers who
won't leave. Um, that's not really our understanding of bailiff
in the United States. In the United States, we think
of them almost exclusively as an officer of the court,
who is, in most people's opinion, the the security for
(05:14):
the court. Like they were a gun, they were a badge.
They're very frequently like a sheriff's deputy or a federal
marshal or something like that. But apparently there's way more
to their job than just that I had no idea about.
Like I really thought they were just there just stand
up and look menacing that was their their purpose. Uh. Yeah,
there's about eighteen thousand and change in the United States. Interestingly,
(05:38):
it's not a it's not an official title. Um, it's
just sort of, as Olivia says, like a colloquial term
for someone who does this job. Um, but you don't
get titled bailiff. They just they just call you bailiff.
Like you can be a a part time bailiff in
a small town but also be a marshal or a
sheriff's deputy as your main job. Yeah, I think even
(06:00):
in in um in big cities that can be the
case as well. But um, but yeah, I think you're
you're you're You're definitely in a smaller area, more rural
area where there's say, less court activity, they're gonna be like,
this is not big enough of a job for you.
You need to do more. You need to pull your
weight more than this. That's right, So go back to
be a veterinary assistant, all right, deliver the paper, Yeah,
(06:22):
do a little bailiffing, and don't forge the mayor's That's right.
So some of the other jobs that a bailiff has
that I wasn't aware of. You said something about them
handling evidence. If you are dealing with evidence in the court,
you do not just hand it to the judge. You
hand it to the bailiff, and the bailiff hands it
to the judge. That was a big one. I didn't realize, Yeah,
(06:44):
you present the murder weapon and you run it. The
judge with it, right, and then bailiff says, go ahead,
yeah exactly. Another one that I did know but didn't
realize I knew is that the bailiff is usually the
person who swears in a witness, making them swear an
oath on the Bible or the Constitution or something like that,
depending on whether you're in a red state or a
blue state, you know what I mean. Yeah, they're gonna
(07:04):
usher the jury in and out. They're gonna usher the
prisoners in and out. Uh. You know, a lot of
times with these big trials, they'll have you know, a
few bailiffs working the room. Uh. They tell people to
not smoke, They tell people, they screen people when they
come into the courtroom. They have to you know, you
can't yell out loud. You can't do that, not in
this court. Like the judge is gonna admonish them. But
(07:25):
then the judge is gonna look over at the bailiff,
and the bailiff is gonna say, I know what that
look means, right, Yeah, And I was gonna say good.
Bailiff doesn't even need to wag their finger, like the
kemb motumbo. They can just shoot a look and you
know exactly what you're not supposed to be doing anymore.
So Olivia did some research on on a website that
kind of broke down the you know, like what makes
(07:46):
for a good bailiff if you're looking to do this
as a job, And they classified it as highly social
with constant contact with others, including unpleasant and angry people
and physically aggressive people. So you're not just the muscle,
but you're definitely the muscle exactly. Um, which means you're
also providing security to not just to the courtroom, but
(08:08):
for like functions of the court. So like, if the
jury is sequestered, your job as bailiff is to be
one of the people guarding them. You're also kind of
in charge of guarding the jury against themselves, so like
if the jury is not supposed to be discussing the
case or at some point, you're supposed to be there
making sure that they don't discuss the case. Yeah that look, um,
(08:29):
you're just basically making sure everybody's following the rules as
much as possible. That's right, And I thought this is
pretty interesting, kind of going back to the feudal lord
time bailiff still in the United States can be responsible
for evicting people, not just in England. I saw that
was Michigan, in Ohio and I think Washington State all
(08:51):
use bailiffs still, whereas other places use sheriff's deputies. But
then confusingly, in some places of bailiff is a sheriff's deputy.
What do you paid for doing this? Grand? Easy? Not
quite h it depends state governments pay much more. There's
a median of almost sixty nine grand a year, which
is not bad if you're on a local level, maybe
(09:13):
forty two grand for being a bailiff. What I didn't understand,
and I didn't get a chance to look up, is
if that's on top of your salary as a marshal
or a a sheriff's deputy or something like that. Uh,
it wouldn't surprise me if you part time to bailiff.
If it might be more of an hourly thing. But
(09:35):
I don't know. I'm just guessing there, um but not.
You know, it's not bad scratch for a high school
graduate or to get your g e d. That's a
you know, it's a very good living. Uh. You can
have a degree in criminal Justice. I saw where and
we'll talk about celebrity bailiffs here in a second. But
Judge Judy's bailiff Petrie. Is it Petrie Hawkins Bird or
(09:56):
Petrie I have never watched the second of Judge Judy
Points of Pride in my life, so I don't know,
but I'm going with Hawkins Bird. He had a he
had AH, he has a criminal justice degree, so he's legit, right. Um,
So well, I mean, let's talk about celebrity bailiff's because
(10:17):
there's basically two that come to mind, and one of
them is Petrio Petrie Hawkins Bird, who was Judge Judy's
bailiff for twenty five seasons of Judge Judy. And I
read a like a really sad little article. So apparently
Judge Judy um ran her course on CBS, got canceled
(10:38):
and said I'm going over to I m B TV
where I am dB TV, which I didn't know was
the thing. No, I don't think anybody did. So everybody's
like a good, good move, Judge Judy. But she didn't
ask her bailiff of twenty five years to come to
her show and apparently didn't talk about it at all.
And she had announced that she was doing this show
(11:00):
before the end of her twenty fifth season, so they
filmed the entire twenty fifth season together, and she just
never mentioned it that she was starting this other show
and he wasn't invited. So, um, his feelings were definitely hurt.
And I think he was a little bewildered and sad,
and I think felt a little betrayed by that. Yeah.
I saw that too. I saw that the reason she
(11:20):
gave was that they can't afford your salary. And he said, well,
no one even talked to me about it. I probably
would have taken less, but it wasn't offered. Uh. And
he also said that in twenty five years, she never
like invited me to one celebrity shin dig or one
like social lunch. Right. Yeah, but he said, but I
wish her well, and you know, he didn't want to
drag her through the money. You know, he was a
(11:41):
class that He basically was just saying, like we were
professional colleagues, we weren't friends, and she was just like,
I'm I'm just moving on with a new cast, and
it is what it is. Like I said, I never
watched it. What I did watch a lot as a
ten to twelve year old was the People's Court. Yeah.
I don't know why I love that show as it
(12:01):
was on right after school and I watched me a
lot of Judge Wapner and a lot of Rusty Barrell
is bailiff and Rusty Barrell has the first celebrity bailiff
and by far the most prolific celebrity bailiff of all time.
He actually was a real bailiff in court for Los
Angeles County. So was a bird. Oh yeah, Bert, Yes,
(12:23):
you're right, you're right. He was from Manhattan. That's how
he knew judge duty was. They worked in an actual
court together before she had a TV show. Um Rusty
Barrell worked in in l A County courts. He actually
guarded the courtroom during the Manson trial. He was legit
um but he became the celebrity bailiff on divorce Court
first from nineteen fifty seven and nineteen sixty nine. And
(12:46):
it just so happened that he worked with um Uh,
a lawyer by the last name of Wapner during that
time on that show, and that lawyer Wapner would go
on to have a son named Judge Joseph A. Wapner
who would become the People's Court judge. Right, that's right. Uh.
And they worked together on People's Court and then uh
(13:07):
judge Wattner's Animal Court. And he said, most prolific. I
was doing the math real quick because Bird was in
there twenty five years, but it looks like twenty six
years for Rusty. Oh wow, it was twelve on divorce Court,
twelve on People's Court. And the boy that Animal Court
that pushed him over the edge was that the shark
(13:27):
that got jump. I don't know. I mean it was
two years. I bet it wasn't very good, but they
count as two more years, so one more year than Bird. Uh.
And apparently Wattner at one point an interview said when
they were originally doing the People's Court casting that the
executive producer said that he wanted to sexy, give me
a sexy girl as the bailiff, but Wattner was like, no,
let's let's use this real bailiff my dad worked with.
(13:50):
And he did, and the rest is history. Should we
take a break, we should. We're gonna take a break, everybody,
and not keep you in suspense. We're gonna come back
and talk about court reporters. Alright, Chuck, So core reporters
(14:30):
are um, you said that bailiffs were the least interesting,
So core reporters are the most interesting to you. I
think court reporters and sketch artists are definitely interesting to me.
But boy, I love this court reporting section. I thought
it was super interesting. Uh, the machinery and the history,
(14:51):
and that this the fact that they are play a
real civic duty, uh in recording history. And that's one
of the first points Olivia makes is in uh Neo
Babylonian Mesopotamia, they kept legal records on clay tablets, and
these weren't just like, uh so we'll know what happened
in this court case. It was, but it was recording history,
(15:13):
like it was recording precedent and all that stuff was
really important from the beginning. Yeah, for for the Mesopotamians,
the Babylonians, they weren't saying, like, we gotta preserve this
this amazing verdict about this land dispute for posterity, Like
this was how like on this clay tablet was how
somebody could prove that no, my family owns this land.
(15:33):
It was decided back in five b c UM and
my family owns this land. Look at the cunea formed
tablet um, we get a hand truck and I'll be
right back right exactly. But the the it just turned
out that that they kept such meticulous records and they survived,
and we figured out how to read Kennea formed that um.
(15:54):
That that we learned a lot about the Babylonians and
how they dealt with law and agricult sure um and
land disputes and traditions and customs and all that thanks
to writing that down through legal documents. And we actually
understand a lot about a lot of things based on
court documents. Like do you remember when we were talking
about the Salem witch trials in that episode and we
(16:16):
were saying, like, we we understand it very much because
it was extensively documented, but it was documented through court cases,
and there's just certain ways that you preserve facts and
information when you're documenting it through a court record, that's
just not the same. It doesn't give you the full picture,
um compared to you know, rounding out with journals and
(16:36):
diaries and stuff like that. But it's still way way
better than nothing. But what struck me is weird, Chuck,
is that the idea of recording stuff like that, which
seems like, of course you're going to do that. It
got lost for a while. Yeah. Here in the United
States during the colonial period, they were like you mentioned
diaries and stuff. That's kind of what they relied on was,
(16:58):
you know, whenever a lawyer or a judge might happen
to keep personal notebooks about stuff, they would use that.
But they didn't officially decree like, this is something we
need to do. I think it was the early eighteen
hundreds that they said, no, this is a problem when
we can't just rely on whoever happens to want to
take notes and save them. Uh, judges, you need to
(17:20):
start writing your verdicts down on paper at least and
not just say them out loud. And the judges are like, uh,
Probably because judges didn't really feel like doing that is
gave rise to actual court reporting. Yeah, think about this, chuck.
You know how like emphatic like older men are when
they're just they just know they're right. Like, think about
the cluster that would arise when some judge just knew
(17:43):
he remembered a verdict correctly and those totally wrong. Like
that was the state of the early American court system
before they finally said, like the beginning of the nineteenth century,
when they finally said, no, we we need to write
this down, like if you put yourself in that situation,
I can't imagine how many terrible outcomes there were from that.
Oh yeah, I think it was an eighteen o four one,
(18:05):
Massachusetts finally enacted a law that said the governor has
the authority to appoint someone quote learned in the law
to obtain true and authentic reports of the of the decisions.
In eighteen seventeen was when Congress finally passed a law
saying the Supreme Court at the very least has to
have an official court reporter. Said yeah, yeah, Supreme Court,
(18:27):
you get on that too. It's something I didn't realize.
I thought it was pretty interesting, is that, Um, before
that people did document court reports, is particularly of the
Supreme Court, but they were just like freelance mos who
showed up and sat there and documented it themselves to
turn around and sell to whoever wanted that that kind
of information. So it was like, um, it was it
(18:47):
was willy nilly, I think is the term for that.
And you might ask who would want to buy that? Uh,
you know, law schools, attorneys, bobbies, right, constant bailiffs, bailiff's
Bailey's So finally, finally, at the end of the nineteenth century,
(19:08):
everybody's like, all right, we're on board with this idea
about actually recording the decisions of the court. And let's
go a little further. Let's let's record every single minute detail,
down to gestures, down to somebody sitting quietly when asked
a question. And um, that's where court reporting was actually born,
was in the end of the nineteenth century. Yeah, when
(19:31):
the National Shorthand Reporters Association was formed. And I think
this is one of the reasons that spoke to me
a little bit because I took a course in high
school called speed writing. Oh well, there we go, speedwriting, type, typing,
and um, I can't remember the third thing. It's one
of those classes that that you know that you spent
time doing three different things. Oh a checkbook that was
(19:58):
in there. I don't that was that class anyway. Speed
writing was, um no, but I did take kommack. Um
I wasn't. It wasn't official shorthand as we're about to
talk about. It was. It was a kind of shorthand though,
um and the funniest thing I remember from that class.
(20:19):
I don't know. I don't think I should say her
name is my old friend. She would probably think it's funny,
it wouldn't care, but I won't say her name. But
she sat next to me in class, and we used
always cut up and she did not learn UM. She
learned the shorthand, but not such that she could take
the test, which was basically a teacher would just dictate things.
You would write it in shorthand and then transcribe it
(20:42):
back in long form UM. But she was really really
fast at writing, so she would write it all in
regular longhand and then take the time to transcribe it
to shorthand and then turn them in reverse order. And
now you got busted though, And that was technically cheating UM.
(21:02):
And always felt bad for my unnamed friend. Was really fast,
didn't account for something. Yeah, I mean it was she
should have gotten an A for effort at least. But yeah,
if she went back and transcribed it using a book,
that's that's cheating chuck a book. Oh well, then yes
she should have gotten an A. She just needed more time.
(21:23):
It's like if you were in a German class and
you had to just write down in English what they
were saying in German, writing the German first and then
taking your time to transcribe it. Yah know, I got
what you're saying for sure, And I dispute the teacher
having a book involved. But shorthand is fascinating to me.
And as a very long history going back to Cicero's
(21:45):
enslaved servant, Marcus Julius Tiro in six b c E
developed a Latin shorthand became known as tyroni in notes,
and these were symbols. They were like four thousand symbols,
and they you know, it was basically the earliest version
of shorthand. Yeah, and apparently medieval monks got ahold of
(22:05):
it and turned it into thirteen thousand symbols. Of course
they did so, um, yeah, because they had a lot
of time on their hand time. Um. And there's like
a real value in developing shorthand. So there was all
sorts of shorthand systems that were developed over the time.
But as far as court reporting goes, it wasn't until
a guy named John Robert Greg got into the mix
(22:28):
in the late nineteenth century, UM, and he developed a
Greg method of shorthand writing that was so useful and
so popular he actually opened schools around the country. I
saw him described as a tycoon where basically, if you
were a secretary, if you were involved in anything that
(22:50):
that that involved transcribing or taking dictation or any job
like that, you basically could not get the job until
you had a GREG certificate. And so you had to
go pay to take those classes and be trained like
it was just the way it was. And then along
came Miles Bartholome You, who basically ruined everything for John
Robert Creig and his heirs. No, not so you would
(23:14):
think the court reporter Miles barthol of You, by inventing
the first stenotype machine, would have made uh speedwriting in
shorthand go the way of the Dodo, But that did
not happen. Uh. And Livia points out very stuteley that
today there are still some court reporters who do pen
and paper shorthand and ostensibly because as as we'll see,
(23:36):
it's really hard to learn how to master that machine.
And if you're really good at shorthand, and you can
write two hundred words a minute using shorthand, then just
have plenty of pins and paper and go at. Yeah,
if you can write two hundred words a minute, you're
probably generally keeping up. But from the the stenography machines
or the steno um is what they're called machine shorthand
(23:59):
like you can, if you know what you're doing, you
can do three d words a minute. And that's when
you're doing like some high quality court reporting work. Yeah.
I get a feeling that the pen and paper might
be some of these small town courts that you know
what I mean. Yeah, they they're bailiff is doing all
sorts of other jobs. Their core reporter just has pen
(24:19):
and paper. That's a giant mess basically in these small
I mean, but it makes sense, you know. Uh. And
before we move onto the stinto we do need to
shout out the that weird, uh gas mask looking thing
that you see sometimes the stino mass and that's the
thing that you speak into but they can't hear you speaking,
and it records, you know, it records you saying the
(24:40):
real words. Yeah. I think my issue with that is
not even the shape or the look of the mask.
It's the color of the material they use. It's always
this weird clinical medical tan color. It's like have you
heard of yellow or blue. This is a job that
I thought when might be fun as a retirement job
(25:02):
for me. Yeah. Uh, but I would not be able
to do it without my own commentary, So it would
just be a little very low voice like and and
you know this attorney objects, Oh god, this guy again.
He thinks he's all that. Yeah, I don't think we can.
I don't think you can do that. I think you
just need to say what people are saying. Well, that's
a talent in and of itself. It depends. So I
(25:24):
was looking into those Steno masks and I was like,
so how does this work? So you're actually when you're
wearing that mask, it's part part muffler, part silence or
like the people around you can't hear you. That's why
that mask is so big. But all you're doing is
restating what the people are You're you're doing vocal commentary
on what's going on. Okay, that makes sense. But then
(25:44):
you're like, well wait a minute, are there like transcriptions? Yes,
that means that you have to go back listen to
what you recorded, type it up as you're listening, and
turn it into a clean transcript. So you're basically doubling
the work with the Steno steno mask. Oh, I thought
it had. I thought it was a machine that just
did it for you. Now it does. But when Force
(26:05):
Wells invented that thing in World War Two, it did
not have that machine. So it was a really clugey
process that took a lot of time. But the reason
they did it is because it was so highly accurate
and it could produce so many like comments and details
and observations that you might just miss that if you
were typing or writing shorthand right. So it was a
(26:27):
lot of effort, but it seemed to be worth the effort. Uh.
Livia found a court reporter from Cleveland named Todd L.
Peterson who wrote some stuff. I think his name, sorry,
it's person. Oh do say Peterson? This person with two
s s. Yeah, But he said basically, you know, if
you're just talking about a regular person, they speaking about
a hundred and eighty words a minute. But then you
(26:49):
have multiple people speaking, you have people talking over each other,
people interrupting each other. Uh, it can get up to
three hundred actual words a minute. And if you're one
of the best typist around, you max out. You know,
in the in the low one hundreds basically, and uh,
you also have to say who was speaking to the
name of the person you're in there for, you know,
(27:11):
eight to ten hours at a time, and it's a
brutal job. This machine is, uh, it's a crazy piece
of machinery because it doesn't it's not like a little
tiny typewriter. It is twenty two blank keys and a
blank number bar and you are playing it like a piano. Basically,
(27:33):
you're not saying, you're not spelling out words one letter
at a time. You're doing it all at the same time.
And it's it's it's just a miracle how anyone ever
learns how to use this thing. Yeah that that um,
that hundred and ten word a minute typist is using
a quarty keyboard like you and I use on our computers.
And apparently, um, because the rate of speech is a
(27:55):
hundred and eighty words per minute. That means that if
you're typing on a normal keyboard, you start to fall
by mind at the first after the first ten seconds,
and you just get further and further behind. Right with
the machine you're talking about, the stenography machine with just
twenty two keys in that blank number bar. The way
that set up is you've got the beginning consonant sounds
that are being worked on the left hand the left side,
(28:17):
on your right hand, on the right side are the
ending consonant sounds, and in the middle are the syllables
or the vault the vowels that um that you use
your thumb to type, that go in the middle of
the words. So that means, because of the placement of
the keys, you can press all these these keys at
once and compose a word all at once, rather than
(28:39):
one letter at a time. No matter how fast you're
typing on a quarty keyboard, you're still ultimately typing one
letter at a time. With a stenography machine, you're typing
an entire word all at once. Basically, yes. And that's
why in a courtroom they can ask for the stenographer
to read back, the court reporter to read back something
(29:00):
that's just been said, which has been used in countless
TV comedies and movie comedies throughout history. It's always a
great gag when something dumb happens in court and the
court reporter, in the very monotone reads back what has
just happened, like airplane airplane two. I can't remember what
the joke was but I know there was one in that.
(29:21):
I'm sure they did. That's a trope. It's been in
a million movies. It's one of the great jokes. So
one of the things that they've done is said, they said, Okay,
the stenography machine is amazing, and the people who who
use these things and can type three hundred plus words
a minute are are magical human beings there. But um,
we not have technology that can make these things even
more outstanding, and that is that while you're typing. Uh.
(29:45):
And apparently, by the way, people who are typing who
are masters of a stenography machine, um, they can they
type with like accuracy at three hundred words a minute.
So it's just fantastic. So they have these things plugged
in now to a computer that's basically adding time stamps, um,
putting the person's name after like next to who's speaking
(30:07):
at any given point, um, And then they take that
and transfer it. They send it out to a real
time live feed to like the judges computer, the lawyer's computers, um,
so that everybody who needs one in the courtroom sees
the transcript as it's happening, basically almost entirely in real time.
Pretty cool. It is pretty cool. And then the one
(30:28):
last technology I saw a chuck is that, um, they
have a speech to text now, so that now, finally
those stunno masks are actually a valuable tool, and I
believe they're starting to come back. Those on your phone,
Yeah basically, but you just need a muffler silencer mask
to attach to your phone and you'd be you'd be
(30:49):
right there for a court reporter. Yeah, that those are
remarkably accurate on the phone. I found. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty interesting. But there are some things where they kind
of lack, um, like if you are if you weren't
using just the court reports. Some apparently some courts have
said let's just set up some microphones in the court
and have an AI transcribe this and and just not
(31:12):
you know, take the court reporter out of the whole
thing in the stentle mask. Get rid of that ugly
stentle mask. And they found that the AI can't do
things like understand accents, um, especially if it's a thick
accent when people talk over each other. It just throws
its hands up. Um. If if you want, if you
ask an AI to to read it back, that can
(31:33):
be a problem, or the AI can't ask you to
repeat yourself. That's another one too. So if you are
a court reporter, you're getting me making should be three
thousand dollars a year. Should be asked me to learn
that machine because it takes uh, it's this, you know.
I guess it depends on how fast of a learning
(31:55):
you are. But Mr person says six months to learn
those key strokes and a a couple of years to
really get good at it. That's that's a lot of
time put in. UM. I think the median pay is
about sixty one grand as of May. You can also
get a little side hustle going doing uh depots maybe,
(32:18):
although I think most of those are usually video recorded
because my friend does that for a living. Um, but
sixty one grand should be more. That's all I'm saying.
I'll bet they do both. I'll bet the video record them.
But I'm sure they have transcripts. Is because it's so
much easier to scan a transcript definement you're looking for
almost to his or just video. There's no court reporter
on there. That's interesting. It probably depends on the again,
(32:40):
the size of the case and the how much money
you can throw at it, because it costs dough. Yeah,
I can imagine. Uh, there was one person we should
mention that. I kind of feel bad. But there's one
part of this I did find funny. There was New
York State Supreme Court Court reporter, let's say this, we
don't even aim him, who had a drinking problem and
(33:03):
it screwed up pretty big at a few trials. And
it's not funny because he had a drinking problem. The
only funny part is I can imagine them reading the
transcript backed at some point when he just repeatedly typed
I hate my job. I hate my job, over and
over and over. Yeah. And apparently like he did this
on some really important um trials and like he just
(33:25):
didn't take notes for a couple of days and some
of them and so now some guilty verdicts have been
up for grabs, and they had chuck. They had reconstruction
hearings where the judge brought the lawyers and the defendants
at everybody back in and said, Okay, who remembers what
about this? Because we're missing some really important parts of
the record and we need to try to recreate it. Wow.
(33:48):
And the thing that stuck me to was in this
in a New York Post article on it. They interviewed
his ex wife and she said it was that job
that caused him to start drinking the first place. And
I'm like, amen, because I gotta tell you, I can't
think of too many more stressful jobs that don't involve
an actual human life in your hands, like say like
(34:09):
a heart surgeon or something than a court reporter. You think, yeah, man,
the pressure to get everything right, not miss anything, not
fall behind, and stay like that for eight hours at
a stretch, you know, every day that you're working that
that sounds like a very high pressure job. I don't know.
I think from that thing that that account you sent
(34:30):
of what they it was another insider account was it
seemed a little more zen to me than that because
what they he talked about was hearing but not listening.
So you kind of have to go into this fugue
state almost where you're hearing words but you're not listening,
as if you're in a conversation with someone, because then
(34:51):
you're investing even if you're not trying to, you're probably
investing emotionally, and that'll get you out of your rhythm.
You just have to you just to hear and let
the words flow through your fingers. Yeah, yeah, pretty interesting,
I think. Yeah, it is, like it is any thing,
but it takes a certain kind of person for sure. Yeah,
and I'm sure, I'm sure not all of them can
do it, but yeah, that would probably be the ideal
(35:12):
way to do it, for sure. All Right, let's take
our last break, and we're gonna come back and talk
about those scrappy little sketch artists right after this. Alright, Uh,
(35:48):
sketch artists are maybe the most unsung because there aren't
many of them. Um. I was starting to think about
court sketch artists, and you don't have them for every trial.
It's not like a bailiff or a stenographer. You only
get a sketch artist in there when it's something the
media is interested in. And there's only so many of
(36:10):
those trials. There's only so many big cities where those
trials might be taking place, So there aren't that many
court sketch artists anymore that are working. No, And yeah,
the sketches that are produced, they're not ordered by the court,
they're not part of the court record. They exist to
two for the media to have some sort of visual
information to accompany reports of like court cases, which makes sense,
(36:33):
but I never really thought about that before. Yeah, and
that's it. And it started because there weren't cameras. Uh.
In eighteen fifty nine, it was John Brown's trial in
Virginia and there was a national magazine that sent illustrators
to cover this, and that was kind of where the
whole thing started. When cameras did come around, they put
him in the courtroom and the trial of the century,
(36:56):
the first trial of the century, uh, the Limberg baby
kidnapping with Bruno Holtman was chaos with those huge cameras
and flashbulbs and court reporter and photographers just like apparently
climbing on tables to get good shots. It was just
it was a zoo in there. So he said he
couldn't even get a fair trial because of these camera people.
(37:17):
And even though that argument didn't work, Uh, the A
b A said, you know what, no more cameras in
the courtrooms. Um. Generally this is the American Bar Association,
so they don't they can't lay down the law. But usually,
I mean some are televised and sometimes there's cameras. I know,
we'll watch the O J trial, but most times you're
(37:37):
gonna see a sketch come out on the five o'clock news. Yeah,
I mean because the A B. A said there shouldn't
be cameras in the courtroom a lot of states and
the federal government said, yeah, you're you're absolutely right. And
so that actually was one of those rare instances where
like the predecessor came back in style. And yeah, I
guess in the sixties, TV news was not a huge
(37:59):
thing until the civil rights era. Um, until the assassination
of JFK and the ensuing assassination of Jack Ruby. Um,
like the sixties is kind of supercharged the reason for
there to be TV news, and um, the people who
are doing the news needed, like if they couldn't get
(38:20):
cameras in the courtroom, they still needed some visual and
so that gave like a real boost to two courtroom
sketch artists as well. Yeah, I think the Jack Ruby
trial is a man named Howard Brody very famously sketched
that one, and he went on to do RFK and
mlk's assassinations. Then there was a man named Bill Roebols
(38:41):
who has done some pretty famous ones. I like his stuff.
He did the Manson trial, and if you look at
those sketches online. He kind of has a Ralph Steadman
quality to him. Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty cool stuff.
The is that the guy who did the Manson leaping
at the judge? Yes, yeah, so, um so yeah. So
they're like, I think there are courtroom sketch artists that
(39:03):
have kind of made names for themselves, especially among the media.
But what they will do is sit there and and
you know, draw, um the scenes in the court. Believe
it or not, that's what these sketch artists are doing
all day. They sit around and draw. But then but
it's it's harder than it sounds because very frequently there
are um, there's not a lot of visual action going
(39:26):
on in like the courtroom. It's very it's not rare necessarily,
but it's not happening every moment. So they can't count
on Charles Manson to always be jumping over a table exactly.
So the court the court sketch artist has to basically
have a real eye for nuance and facial expression and
and to figure out how to capture visually a subtle
(39:48):
exchange that can maybe change the momentum of a court
case or something like that, and then present it. Then
they have to do it in a way that looks good,
and they have to do it quickly, and then when
they're done, they have to run out. Well, up until
probably the last few decades, they had to run outside
and the TV news crewise would film the um the
sketches that they made for that day for the evening news. Yeah,
(40:10):
and you know, they don't have a special chair like
the stenographer does, or a special place to stand. I mean,
I think in some courts they accommodate them as best
they can. I think there was this one article for
Mental Floss where one of the court reporters, Vicky ellen Behringer,
said that, uh, they would give her a place to
(40:30):
sit sometimes in the jury box if there was room.
But sometimes you're just out there with everyone else and
you're you know, you might have somebody with a big
giant head in front of you. You gotta you gotta
really work on the fly, and like you said, work fast.
I mentioned, it's not a whole lot of people doing it.
I think Robols was interviewed like three or four years ago.
He said he's working a lot, but he's just one
(40:52):
of two in Los Angeles. So and I thought that
just sounded astounding, but again, if you think about the
media covered trials, so just aren't that many of them.
So you don't need hundreds and thousands of sketch artists
around the country just to pick up work. Sketch artists
are becoming bailiffs. Yeah, the bailiffs like got the gun
(41:13):
in one hand and sketching on the other. It's tough, man,
it's tough out there. So, um, one of the places
you can get work, if you're a reliable sketch artist
is by drawing the Supreme Court because you just aren't
going to get a camera in there. Like anybody who
listens to MPR News is familiar with Nina Totenberg's like
play by play of um Supreme Court arguments and discussions,
(41:38):
and she's kind of like a verbal sketch artist. But um,
the point is here there's not any media allowed in
the Supreme Court. Champ just today with the abortion proceedings.
I was looking at pictures. I saw some last night
of the sketch artists and it was probably done by
Arthur Lean. Arthur maybe the only person to him for
(42:00):
the Supreme Court, but I know that he does the
Scotus blog and h for NBC, so maybe they probably
let more than one end for something this big, but
apparently it's uh court reporters have round or I'm sorry. Um.
Sketch artists have roundly said it's a lot easier to
draw someone like Charles Manson than it is to draw
(42:21):
some just sort of normal looking normal I don't know,
like Tom Brady or something like that. Yeah, that was
very famous. Jane Rosenberg sketch Tom tom Brady almost that
Tom Barringer um during the deflate Gate proceedings and and
it was, you know, Tom Brady is a traditionally a
(42:42):
handsome person, and he looked a little bit like Lurch
and it became a meme and it was pretty funny.
The best one I saw, the best of me my
saw was um, that sketch of Tom Brady photoshopped onto
the Hunchback from Hunchback and Notre Dame the Disney movie.
Really it was perfect. If she got a lot of
press out of that, she did the others. Best one
(43:03):
I saw was that sketch of Tom Brady's head on
the potato Jesus meme right right. The fit pretty well. Team. Uh.
The final little thing here that Livia found, which I
thought was pretty great in a testament to how good
of work that she's doing for us so far. But
she she found that they sometimes attorneys, and this doesn't
surprise me. They will buy some of these sketches. I
(43:26):
guess sometimes either if it's a famous case or early
in their career and you know, have it framed, so
you know, just I think it's just sort of a
symbolic thing because there they all, even though they have
different styles, you can always tell a courtroom sketch. Oh
you don't think to have a framed courtroom sketch of
yourself and you finally make it as an attorney is
probably a pretty big deal. Yeah, especially if you're standing
(43:46):
and pointing at the accused. Yeah, they're really dramatic like that. Sure,
I've always wanted the Wall Street Journal to do a
piece on us, so we could get a drawing of
us like that. That's a really like um um, easily
recognizable type of drawing too. Yeah, totally come on Wall
Street or you know, Mad Magazine. Maybe it's defunct, Chuck,
(44:08):
I know, but this guy's still draw They can bring
him out her retirement. I want more Drucker. I think
he passed away. But oh God, to be drawn by
more drunk that would be pretty amazing. Or I'd take
Jack Davis too. He did the ug A football um
guy in the seventies. Now that's right. I got that
coke bottle in my bar still any care? Maybe someday
(44:29):
Chuck commemorative coke bottle. Uh. Well, since Chuck said commemorative
coke bottle, I think that's it, which means it's time
for a listener mail everybody. I'm gonna call this another
dentistry email. This is from Kayla. Hey, guys, really enjoyed
your episode about dentistry and currently a fourth year dental
(44:49):
student in the US graduating in May. I don't want
to add a couple of things here. Green Black was
one of the fathers of dynastry that you mentioned, but
you didn't say much about him. Green, commonly known as G. D.
Black in the dental realm, invented the pedal driven dental
drill and also outlined the best way to prepare tooth
for cavity filling, which is still the method used today.
(45:12):
And secondly, since you focused on the history of dynastry,
I wanted to mention st uh Apollonia, the patron saint
of Dynastry and the year two forty nine, Apollonia, a
deaconess was beaten for refusing to renounce her faith, and
the beating caused all of her teeth to shatter and
fall out. She then elected to be burned alive instead
of renounced her faith, and even jumped into the fire herself.
(45:34):
After her death, she was made the patron state of
Dentnastry and Toothaches and there's even a painting of her
in the louver. And this is uh from Kayla, who
was just introduced to the show last year by her
brother and now was a big fan. Nice, thanks Kayla,
Good luck Dynasty. Yeah, for sure, that's a that's one
of those examples. I knew both of those, they just
(45:54):
didn't make it in the show, and it's just so
excruciating to be called out about those later on. It's
okay to miss things. Well, thanks a lot, Kayla, and
good luck with dental school. Uh, and thank you for
writing in and welcome to the show, right, Chuck. That's right. Well,
if you want to be like Kayla, you can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast. Did I Heart radio
(46:16):
dot com? Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, everybody. It's your old pals Josh and Chuck, and
you will have the chance to see us live in
person for the first time in two years, Friday, January
twenty one in San Francisco. Right, Chuck, that's right, We're
returning to the stage at Sketch Fest. We're very excited
about it. We can't wait to see everyone. It is
a VACS only show. Bring your backscard. It is a
(00:21):
mask only show. Bring that mask. Can't wait to see
a third of your faces. That's right. You can get
tickets at s F sketch Fest dot com and again Friday,
January one, thirty pm Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, California.
We will see you there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:49):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck,
Bryan and Jerry's over there, and this is stuff you
should know. Let's get to it, friends. Yeah, that's right.
But hey, we have a bit of an announcement that
I'm excited about me too. We have added a new
writer to the stable. Uh Olivia Greshawn and this is
(01:12):
Libya's first effort and how we're doing it, you know,
because we've we've never really on boarded people because uh
David Edward colleagues of ours from the Housetuff worksdays. So
we thought, maybe, you know, we'd give someone an article,
not I mean sort of as a tryout, but just
to make sure that it was a good fit. And
Olivia killed it right out of the block. And she's
(01:33):
super talented as a writer and obviously very smart and
great at research, and like I know, both speaking for
both of us, we're just very excited to have Livia
on board. And uh yeah, so thanks Olivia, and welcome
to the to the family. Welcome aboard, Olivia. If you
went to high school with Livia, now would be a
good time to email her and say, hey, I didn't
(01:55):
know you were writing for stuff you should know. She'd
be like, oh that yeah. But this is a kind
of fun one I think as a first assignment to
for her because it's a little different, and that it
wasn't just one um one really deep dive on one
single thing. What she's gonna bomb that when we give
her that next one, but this is actually three things
(02:18):
in one. I had the idea of court stenography. But
then I was like, you know what, maybe, uh, that's
not quite enough. But I didn't want to do it
as a shorty, so I thought, let's just expand it
and talk about bailiff's uh court stenography and court sketch artists,
the triumvirate. Yeah, what we're calling the unsung heroes of
(02:42):
the courtroom because they're there. Uh, but you know, you're
not really ideally if they're doing their job right and
they're not a celebrity bailiff, you're not even gonna know
they're there. Yeah, that's pretty much true. They're kind of
meant to kind of blend into the background. Is the
judge who wants all the attention usually sometimes the lawyers, Okay,
bailiffs sometimes the lawyers, please, um, even the bailiff that's
(03:04):
super busy doing things. They're they're not showboating, you know
what I'm saying. No, they're not like twirling their gun
or anything or being like hurry up, this is boring.
That would be bad. But bailiffs are the least exciting though,
so I think we should start with them. Okay, so bailiff's,
it turns out, um find their heritage. It goes back
(03:24):
many many centuries actually, and they apparently originally started out
in the UK as kind of legal overseers of a
manor house for a feudal lord. Basically, yeah, kind of
property managers. They could collect rent today, would sometimes do
some accounting, they could collect fines. I think a little
(03:47):
later on is when they were brought into the court system,
but it was still sort of doing like sheriffy things, right.
So that I saw, Chuck was the bailey in ants
where they were much more um involved in courts and
they actually have more power. They were more of a
government official than just like somebody who served a feudal lord. Okay,
(04:11):
And that's where this it's it's weird. It's almost like
between medieval England and medieval France, between these two interpretations
of what a bailiff was, it got all mixed together,
shaken up, some stuff fell off and some stuff stick around.
And then you said, okay, now we have the bailiff
as we understand it today, right, which is you know,
kind of what we're gonna concentrate on is the the
(04:33):
good old fashioned American bailiff sitting in the quarter eat
eating apple pie and ready to jump in there and
crack someone's skull open, or hand the judge a key
piece of evidence or arrest somebody. Yeah, because a bailiff
today is as far as people in America and if
you're in the UK, you're like, oh, I know the
(04:53):
bailiff is. It's somebody who, uh there's a water bailiff
for there's an eviction bailiff who deals with travelers who
won't leave. Um, that's not really our understanding of bailiff
in the United States. In the United States, we think
of them almost exclusively as an officer of the court,
who is, in most people's opinion, the the security for
(05:14):
the court. Like they were a gun, they were a badge.
They're very frequently like a sheriff's deputy or a federal
marshal or something like that. But apparently there's way more
to their job than just that I had no idea about.
Like I really thought they were just there just stand
up and look menacing that was their their purpose. Uh. Yeah,
there's about eighteen thousand and change in the United States. Interestingly,
(05:38):
it's not a it's not an official title. Um, it's
just sort of, as Olivia says, like a colloquial term
for someone who does this job. Um, but you don't
get titled bailiff. They just they just call you bailiff.
Like you can be a a part time bailiff in
a small town but also be a marshal or a
sheriff's deputy as your main job. Yeah, I think even
(06:00):
in in um in big cities that can be the
case as well. But um, but yeah, I think you're
you're you're You're definitely in a smaller area, more rural
area where there's say, less court activity, they're gonna be like,
this is not big enough of a job for you.
You need to do more. You need to pull your
weight more than this. That's right, So go back to
be a veterinary assistant, all right, deliver the paper, Yeah,
(06:22):
do a little bailiffing, and don't forge the mayor's That's right.
So some of the other jobs that a bailiff has
that I wasn't aware of. You said something about them
handling evidence. If you are dealing with evidence in the court,
you do not just hand it to the judge. You
hand it to the bailiff, and the bailiff hands it
to the judge. That was a big one. I didn't realize, Yeah,
(06:44):
you present the murder weapon and you run it. The
judge with it, right, and then bailiff says, go ahead,
yeah exactly. Another one that I did know but didn't
realize I knew is that the bailiff is usually the
person who swears in a witness, making them swear an
oath on the Bible or the Constitution or something like that,
depending on whether you're in a red state or a
blue state, you know what I mean. Yeah, they're gonna
(07:04):
usher the jury in and out. They're gonna usher the
prisoners in and out. Uh. You know, a lot of
times with these big trials, they'll have you know, a
few bailiffs working the room. Uh. They tell people to
not smoke, They tell people, they screen people when they
come into the courtroom. They have to you know, you
can't yell out loud. You can't do that, not in
this court. Like the judge is gonna admonish them. But
(07:25):
then the judge is gonna look over at the bailiff,
and the bailiff is gonna say, I know what that
look means, right, Yeah, And I was gonna say good.
Bailiff doesn't even need to wag their finger, like the
kemb motumbo. They can just shoot a look and you
know exactly what you're not supposed to be doing anymore.
So Olivia did some research on on a website that
kind of broke down the you know, like what makes
(07:46):
for a good bailiff if you're looking to do this
as a job, And they classified it as highly social
with constant contact with others, including unpleasant and angry people
and physically aggressive people. So you're not just the muscle,
but you're definitely the muscle exactly. Um, which means you're
also providing security to not just to the courtroom, but
(08:08):
for like functions of the court. So like, if the
jury is sequestered, your job as bailiff is to be
one of the people guarding them. You're also kind of
in charge of guarding the jury against themselves, so like
if the jury is not supposed to be discussing the
case or at some point, you're supposed to be there
making sure that they don't discuss the case. Yeah that look, um,
(08:29):
you're just basically making sure everybody's following the rules as
much as possible. That's right, And I thought this is
pretty interesting, kind of going back to the feudal lord
time bailiff still in the United States can be responsible
for evicting people, not just in England. I saw that
was Michigan, in Ohio and I think Washington State all
(08:51):
use bailiffs still, whereas other places use sheriff's deputies. But
then confusingly, in some places of bailiff is a sheriff's deputy.
What do you paid for doing this? Grand? Easy? Not
quite h it depends state governments pay much more. There's
a median of almost sixty nine grand a year, which
is not bad if you're on a local level, maybe
(09:13):
forty two grand for being a bailiff. What I didn't understand,
and I didn't get a chance to look up, is
if that's on top of your salary as a marshal
or a a sheriff's deputy or something like that. Uh,
it wouldn't surprise me if you part time to bailiff.
If it might be more of an hourly thing. But
(09:35):
I don't know. I'm just guessing there, um but not.
You know, it's not bad scratch for a high school
graduate or to get your g e d. That's a
you know, it's a very good living. Uh. You can
have a degree in criminal Justice. I saw where and
we'll talk about celebrity bailiffs here in a second. But
Judge Judy's bailiff Petrie. Is it Petrie Hawkins Bird or
(09:56):
Petrie I have never watched the second of Judge Judy
Points of Pride in my life, so I don't know,
but I'm going with Hawkins Bird. He had a he
had AH, he has a criminal justice degree, so he's legit, right. Um,
So well, I mean, let's talk about celebrity bailiff's because
(10:17):
there's basically two that come to mind, and one of
them is Petrio Petrie Hawkins Bird, who was Judge Judy's
bailiff for twenty five seasons of Judge Judy. And I
read a like a really sad little article. So apparently
Judge Judy um ran her course on CBS, got canceled
(10:38):
and said I'm going over to I m B TV
where I am dB TV, which I didn't know was
the thing. No, I don't think anybody did. So everybody's
like a good, good move, Judge Judy. But she didn't
ask her bailiff of twenty five years to come to
her show and apparently didn't talk about it at all.
And she had announced that she was doing this show
(11:00):
before the end of her twenty fifth season, so they
filmed the entire twenty fifth season together, and she just
never mentioned it that she was starting this other show
and he wasn't invited. So, um, his feelings were definitely hurt.
And I think he was a little bewildered and sad,
and I think felt a little betrayed by that. Yeah.
I saw that too. I saw that the reason she
(11:20):
gave was that they can't afford your salary. And he said, well,
no one even talked to me about it. I probably
would have taken less, but it wasn't offered. Uh. And
he also said that in twenty five years, she never
like invited me to one celebrity shin dig or one
like social lunch. Right. Yeah, but he said, but I
wish her well, and you know, he didn't want to
drag her through the money. You know, he was a
(11:41):
class that He basically was just saying, like we were
professional colleagues, we weren't friends, and she was just like,
I'm I'm just moving on with a new cast, and
it is what it is. Like I said, I never
watched it. What I did watch a lot as a
ten to twelve year old was the People's Court. Yeah.
I don't know why I love that show as it
(12:01):
was on right after school and I watched me a
lot of Judge Wapner and a lot of Rusty Barrell
is bailiff and Rusty Barrell has the first celebrity bailiff
and by far the most prolific celebrity bailiff of all time.
He actually was a real bailiff in court for Los
Angeles County. So was a bird. Oh yeah, Bert, Yes,
(12:23):
you're right, you're right. He was from Manhattan. That's how
he knew judge duty was. They worked in an actual
court together before she had a TV show. Um Rusty
Barrell worked in in l A County courts. He actually
guarded the courtroom during the Manson trial. He was legit
um but he became the celebrity bailiff on divorce Court
first from nineteen fifty seven and nineteen sixty nine. And
(12:46):
it just so happened that he worked with um Uh,
a lawyer by the last name of Wapner during that
time on that show, and that lawyer Wapner would go
on to have a son named Judge Joseph A. Wapner
who would become the People's Court judge. Right, that's right. Uh.
And they worked together on People's Court and then uh
(13:07):
judge Wattner's Animal Court. And he said, most prolific. I
was doing the math real quick because Bird was in
there twenty five years, but it looks like twenty six
years for Rusty. Oh wow, it was twelve on divorce Court,
twelve on People's Court. And the boy that Animal Court
that pushed him over the edge was that the shark
(13:27):
that got jump. I don't know. I mean it was
two years. I bet it wasn't very good, but they
count as two more years, so one more year than Bird. Uh.
And apparently Wattner at one point an interview said when
they were originally doing the People's Court casting that the
executive producer said that he wanted to sexy, give me
a sexy girl as the bailiff, but Wattner was like, no,
let's let's use this real bailiff my dad worked with.
(13:50):
And he did, and the rest is history. Should we
take a break, we should. We're gonna take a break, everybody,
and not keep you in suspense. We're gonna come back
and talk about court reporters. Alright, Chuck, So core reporters
(14:30):
are um, you said that bailiffs were the least interesting,
So core reporters are the most interesting to you. I
think court reporters and sketch artists are definitely interesting to me.
But boy, I love this court reporting section. I thought
it was super interesting. Uh, the machinery and the history,
(14:51):
and that this the fact that they are play a
real civic duty, uh in recording history. And that's one
of the first points Olivia makes is in uh Neo
Babylonian Mesopotamia, they kept legal records on clay tablets, and
these weren't just like, uh so we'll know what happened
in this court case. It was, but it was recording history,
(15:13):
like it was recording precedent and all that stuff was
really important from the beginning. Yeah, for for the Mesopotamians,
the Babylonians, they weren't saying, like, we gotta preserve this
this amazing verdict about this land dispute for posterity, Like
this was how like on this clay tablet was how
somebody could prove that no, my family owns this land.
(15:33):
It was decided back in five b c UM and
my family owns this land. Look at the cunea formed
tablet um, we get a hand truck and I'll be
right back right exactly. But the the it just turned
out that that they kept such meticulous records and they survived,
and we figured out how to read Kennea formed that um.
(15:54):
That that we learned a lot about the Babylonians and
how they dealt with law and agricult sure um and
land disputes and traditions and customs and all that thanks
to writing that down through legal documents. And we actually
understand a lot about a lot of things based on
court documents. Like do you remember when we were talking
about the Salem witch trials in that episode and we
(16:16):
were saying, like, we we understand it very much because
it was extensively documented, but it was documented through court cases,
and there's just certain ways that you preserve facts and
information when you're documenting it through a court record, that's
just not the same. It doesn't give you the full picture,
um compared to you know, rounding out with journals and
(16:36):
diaries and stuff like that. But it's still way way
better than nothing. But what struck me is weird, Chuck,
is that the idea of recording stuff like that, which
seems like, of course you're going to do that. It
got lost for a while. Yeah. Here in the United
States during the colonial period, they were like you mentioned
diaries and stuff. That's kind of what they relied on was,
(16:58):
you know, whenever a lawyer or a judge might happen
to keep personal notebooks about stuff, they would use that.
But they didn't officially decree like, this is something we
need to do. I think it was the early eighteen
hundreds that they said, no, this is a problem when
we can't just rely on whoever happens to want to
take notes and save them. Uh, judges, you need to
(17:20):
start writing your verdicts down on paper at least and
not just say them out loud. And the judges are like, uh,
Probably because judges didn't really feel like doing that is
gave rise to actual court reporting. Yeah, think about this, chuck.
You know how like emphatic like older men are when
they're just they just know they're right. Like, think about
the cluster that would arise when some judge just knew
(17:43):
he remembered a verdict correctly and those totally wrong. Like
that was the state of the early American court system
before they finally said, like the beginning of the nineteenth century,
when they finally said, no, we we need to write
this down, like if you put yourself in that situation,
I can't imagine how many terrible outcomes there were from that.
Oh yeah, I think it was an eighteen o four one,
(18:05):
Massachusetts finally enacted a law that said the governor has
the authority to appoint someone quote learned in the law
to obtain true and authentic reports of the of the decisions.
In eighteen seventeen was when Congress finally passed a law
saying the Supreme Court at the very least has to
have an official court reporter. Said yeah, yeah, Supreme Court,
(18:27):
you get on that too. It's something I didn't realize.
I thought it was pretty interesting, is that, Um, before
that people did document court reports, is particularly of the
Supreme Court, but they were just like freelance mos who
showed up and sat there and documented it themselves to
turn around and sell to whoever wanted that that kind
of information. So it was like, um, it was it
(18:47):
was willy nilly, I think is the term for that.
And you might ask who would want to buy that? Uh,
you know, law schools, attorneys, bobbies, right, constant bailiffs, bailiff's
Bailey's So finally, finally, at the end of the nineteenth century,
(19:08):
everybody's like, all right, we're on board with this idea
about actually recording the decisions of the court. And let's
go a little further. Let's let's record every single minute detail,
down to gestures, down to somebody sitting quietly when asked
a question. And um, that's where court reporting was actually born,
was in the end of the nineteenth century. Yeah, when
(19:31):
the National Shorthand Reporters Association was formed. And I think
this is one of the reasons that spoke to me
a little bit because I took a course in high
school called speed writing. Oh well, there we go, speedwriting, type, typing,
and um, I can't remember the third thing. It's one
of those classes that that you know that you spent
time doing three different things. Oh a checkbook that was
(19:58):
in there. I don't that was that class anyway. Speed
writing was, um no, but I did take kommack. Um
I wasn't. It wasn't official shorthand as we're about to
talk about. It was. It was a kind of shorthand though,
um and the funniest thing I remember from that class.
(20:19):
I don't know. I don't think I should say her
name is my old friend. She would probably think it's funny,
it wouldn't care, but I won't say her name. But
she sat next to me in class, and we used
always cut up and she did not learn UM. She
learned the shorthand, but not such that she could take
the test, which was basically a teacher would just dictate things.
You would write it in shorthand and then transcribe it
(20:42):
back in long form UM. But she was really really
fast at writing, so she would write it all in
regular longhand and then take the time to transcribe it
to shorthand and then turn them in reverse order. And
now you got busted though, And that was technically cheating UM.
(21:02):
And always felt bad for my unnamed friend. Was really fast,
didn't account for something. Yeah, I mean it was she
should have gotten an A for effort at least. But yeah,
if she went back and transcribed it using a book,
that's that's cheating chuck a book. Oh well, then yes
she should have gotten an A. She just needed more time.
(21:23):
It's like if you were in a German class and
you had to just write down in English what they
were saying in German, writing the German first and then
taking your time to transcribe it. Yah know, I got
what you're saying for sure, And I dispute the teacher
having a book involved. But shorthand is fascinating to me.
And as a very long history going back to Cicero's
(21:45):
enslaved servant, Marcus Julius Tiro in six b c E
developed a Latin shorthand became known as tyroni in notes,
and these were symbols. They were like four thousand symbols,
and they you know, it was basically the earliest version
of shorthand. Yeah, and apparently medieval monks got ahold of
(22:05):
it and turned it into thirteen thousand symbols. Of course
they did so, um, yeah, because they had a lot
of time on their hand time. Um. And there's like
a real value in developing shorthand. So there was all
sorts of shorthand systems that were developed over the time.
But as far as court reporting goes, it wasn't until
a guy named John Robert Greg got into the mix
(22:28):
in the late nineteenth century, UM, and he developed a
Greg method of shorthand writing that was so useful and
so popular he actually opened schools around the country. I
saw him described as a tycoon where basically, if you
were a secretary, if you were involved in anything that
(22:50):
that that involved transcribing or taking dictation or any job
like that, you basically could not get the job until
you had a GREG certificate. And so you had to
go pay to take those classes and be trained like
it was just the way it was. And then along
came Miles Bartholome You, who basically ruined everything for John
Robert Creig and his heirs. No, not so you would
(23:14):
think the court reporter Miles barthol of You, by inventing
the first stenotype machine, would have made uh speedwriting in
shorthand go the way of the Dodo, But that did
not happen. Uh. And Livia points out very stuteley that
today there are still some court reporters who do pen
and paper shorthand and ostensibly because as as we'll see,
(23:36):
it's really hard to learn how to master that machine.
And if you're really good at shorthand, and you can
write two hundred words a minute using shorthand, then just
have plenty of pins and paper and go at. Yeah,
if you can write two hundred words a minute, you're
probably generally keeping up. But from the the stenography machines
or the steno um is what they're called machine shorthand
(23:59):
like you can, if you know what you're doing, you
can do three d words a minute. And that's when
you're doing like some high quality court reporting work. Yeah.
I get a feeling that the pen and paper might
be some of these small town courts that you know
what I mean. Yeah, they they're bailiff is doing all
sorts of other jobs. Their core reporter just has pen
(24:19):
and paper. That's a giant mess basically in these small
I mean, but it makes sense, you know. Uh. And
before we move onto the stinto we do need to
shout out the that weird, uh gas mask looking thing
that you see sometimes the stino mass and that's the
thing that you speak into but they can't hear you speaking,
and it records, you know, it records you saying the
(24:40):
real words. Yeah. I think my issue with that is
not even the shape or the look of the mask.
It's the color of the material they use. It's always
this weird clinical medical tan color. It's like have you
heard of yellow or blue. This is a job that
I thought when might be fun as a retirement job
(25:02):
for me. Yeah. Uh, but I would not be able
to do it without my own commentary, So it would
just be a little very low voice like and and
you know this attorney objects, Oh god, this guy again.
He thinks he's all that. Yeah, I don't think we can.
I don't think you can do that. I think you
just need to say what people are saying. Well, that's
a talent in and of itself. It depends. So I
(25:24):
was looking into those Steno masks and I was like,
so how does this work? So you're actually when you're
wearing that mask, it's part part muffler, part silence or
like the people around you can't hear you. That's why
that mask is so big. But all you're doing is
restating what the people are You're you're doing vocal commentary
on what's going on. Okay, that makes sense. But then
(25:44):
you're like, well wait a minute, are there like transcriptions? Yes,
that means that you have to go back listen to
what you recorded, type it up as you're listening, and
turn it into a clean transcript. So you're basically doubling
the work with the Steno steno mask. Oh, I thought
it had. I thought it was a machine that just
did it for you. Now it does. But when Force
(26:05):
Wells invented that thing in World War Two, it did
not have that machine. So it was a really clugey
process that took a lot of time. But the reason
they did it is because it was so highly accurate
and it could produce so many like comments and details
and observations that you might just miss that if you
were typing or writing shorthand right. So it was a
(26:27):
lot of effort, but it seemed to be worth the effort. Uh.
Livia found a court reporter from Cleveland named Todd L.
Peterson who wrote some stuff. I think his name, sorry,
it's person. Oh do say Peterson? This person with two
s s. Yeah, But he said basically, you know, if
you're just talking about a regular person, they speaking about
a hundred and eighty words a minute. But then you
(26:49):
have multiple people speaking, you have people talking over each other,
people interrupting each other. Uh, it can get up to
three hundred actual words a minute. And if you're one
of the best typist around, you max out. You know,
in the in the low one hundreds basically, and uh,
you also have to say who was speaking to the
name of the person you're in there for, you know,
(27:11):
eight to ten hours at a time, and it's a
brutal job. This machine is, uh, it's a crazy piece
of machinery because it doesn't it's not like a little
tiny typewriter. It is twenty two blank keys and a
blank number bar and you are playing it like a piano. Basically,
(27:33):
you're not saying, you're not spelling out words one letter
at a time. You're doing it all at the same time.
And it's it's it's just a miracle how anyone ever
learns how to use this thing. Yeah that that um,
that hundred and ten word a minute typist is using
a quarty keyboard like you and I use on our computers.
And apparently, um, because the rate of speech is a
(27:55):
hundred and eighty words per minute. That means that if
you're typing on a normal keyboard, you start to fall
by mind at the first after the first ten seconds,
and you just get further and further behind. Right with
the machine you're talking about, the stenography machine with just
twenty two keys in that blank number bar. The way
that set up is you've got the beginning consonant sounds
that are being worked on the left hand the left side,
(28:17):
on your right hand, on the right side are the
ending consonant sounds, and in the middle are the syllables
or the vault the vowels that um that you use
your thumb to type, that go in the middle of
the words. So that means, because of the placement of
the keys, you can press all these these keys at
once and compose a word all at once, rather than
(28:39):
one letter at a time. No matter how fast you're
typing on a quarty keyboard, you're still ultimately typing one
letter at a time. With a stenography machine, you're typing
an entire word all at once. Basically, yes. And that's
why in a courtroom they can ask for the stenographer
to read back, the court reporter to read back something
(29:00):
that's just been said, which has been used in countless
TV comedies and movie comedies throughout history. It's always a
great gag when something dumb happens in court and the
court reporter, in the very monotone reads back what has
just happened, like airplane airplane two. I can't remember what
the joke was but I know there was one in that.
(29:21):
I'm sure they did. That's a trope. It's been in
a million movies. It's one of the great jokes. So
one of the things that they've done is said, they said, Okay,
the stenography machine is amazing, and the people who who
use these things and can type three hundred plus words
a minute are are magical human beings there. But um,
we not have technology that can make these things even
more outstanding, and that is that while you're typing. Uh.
(29:45):
And apparently, by the way, people who are typing who
are masters of a stenography machine, um, they can they
type with like accuracy at three hundred words a minute.
So it's just fantastic. So they have these things plugged
in now to a computer that's basically adding time stamps, um,
putting the person's name after like next to who's speaking
(30:07):
at any given point, um, And then they take that
and transfer it. They send it out to a real
time live feed to like the judges computer, the lawyer's computers, um,
so that everybody who needs one in the courtroom sees
the transcript as it's happening, basically almost entirely in real time.
Pretty cool. It is pretty cool. And then the one
(30:28):
last technology I saw a chuck is that, um, they
have a speech to text now, so that now, finally
those stunno masks are actually a valuable tool, and I
believe they're starting to come back. Those on your phone,
Yeah basically, but you just need a muffler silencer mask
to attach to your phone and you'd be you'd be
(30:49):
right there for a court reporter. Yeah, that those are
remarkably accurate on the phone. I found. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty interesting. But there are some things where they kind
of lack, um, like if you are if you weren't
using just the court reports. Some apparently some courts have
said let's just set up some microphones in the court
and have an AI transcribe this and and just not
(31:12):
you know, take the court reporter out of the whole
thing in the stentle mask. Get rid of that ugly
stentle mask. And they found that the AI can't do
things like understand accents, um, especially if it's a thick
accent when people talk over each other. It just throws
its hands up. Um. If if you want, if you
ask an AI to to read it back, that can
(31:33):
be a problem, or the AI can't ask you to
repeat yourself. That's another one too. So if you are
a court reporter, you're getting me making should be three
thousand dollars a year. Should be asked me to learn
that machine because it takes uh, it's this, you know.
I guess it depends on how fast of a learning
(31:55):
you are. But Mr person says six months to learn
those key strokes and a a couple of years to
really get good at it. That's that's a lot of
time put in. UM. I think the median pay is
about sixty one grand as of May. You can also
get a little side hustle going doing uh depots maybe,
(32:18):
although I think most of those are usually video recorded
because my friend does that for a living. Um, but
sixty one grand should be more. That's all I'm saying.
I'll bet they do both. I'll bet the video record them.
But I'm sure they have transcripts. Is because it's so
much easier to scan a transcript definement you're looking for
almost to his or just video. There's no court reporter
on there. That's interesting. It probably depends on the again,
(32:40):
the size of the case and the how much money
you can throw at it, because it costs dough. Yeah,
I can imagine. Uh, there was one person we should
mention that. I kind of feel bad. But there's one
part of this I did find funny. There was New
York State Supreme Court Court reporter, let's say this, we
don't even aim him, who had a drinking problem and
(33:03):
it screwed up pretty big at a few trials. And
it's not funny because he had a drinking problem. The
only funny part is I can imagine them reading the
transcript backed at some point when he just repeatedly typed
I hate my job. I hate my job, over and
over and over. Yeah. And apparently like he did this
on some really important um trials and like he just
(33:25):
didn't take notes for a couple of days and some
of them and so now some guilty verdicts have been
up for grabs, and they had chuck. They had reconstruction
hearings where the judge brought the lawyers and the defendants
at everybody back in and said, Okay, who remembers what
about this? Because we're missing some really important parts of
the record and we need to try to recreate it. Wow.
(33:48):
And the thing that stuck me to was in this
in a New York Post article on it. They interviewed
his ex wife and she said it was that job
that caused him to start drinking the first place. And
I'm like, amen, because I gotta tell you, I can't
think of too many more stressful jobs that don't involve
an actual human life in your hands, like say like
(34:09):
a heart surgeon or something than a court reporter. You think, yeah, man,
the pressure to get everything right, not miss anything, not
fall behind, and stay like that for eight hours at
a stretch, you know, every day that you're working that
that sounds like a very high pressure job. I don't know.
I think from that thing that that account you sent
(34:30):
of what they it was another insider account was it
seemed a little more zen to me than that because
what they he talked about was hearing but not listening.
So you kind of have to go into this fugue
state almost where you're hearing words but you're not listening,
as if you're in a conversation with someone, because then
(34:51):
you're investing even if you're not trying to, you're probably
investing emotionally, and that'll get you out of your rhythm.
You just have to you just to hear and let
the words flow through your fingers. Yeah, yeah, pretty interesting,
I think. Yeah, it is, like it is any thing,
but it takes a certain kind of person for sure. Yeah,
and I'm sure, I'm sure not all of them can
do it, but yeah, that would probably be the ideal
(35:12):
way to do it, for sure. All Right, let's take
our last break, and we're gonna come back and talk
about those scrappy little sketch artists right after this. Alright, Uh,
(35:48):
sketch artists are maybe the most unsung because there aren't
many of them. Um. I was starting to think about
court sketch artists, and you don't have them for every trial.
It's not like a bailiff or a stenographer. You only
get a sketch artist in there when it's something the
media is interested in. And there's only so many of
(36:10):
those trials. There's only so many big cities where those
trials might be taking place, So there aren't that many
court sketch artists anymore that are working. No, And yeah,
the sketches that are produced, they're not ordered by the court,
they're not part of the court record. They exist to
two for the media to have some sort of visual
information to accompany reports of like court cases, which makes sense,
(36:33):
but I never really thought about that before. Yeah, and
that's it. And it started because there weren't cameras. Uh.
In eighteen fifty nine, it was John Brown's trial in
Virginia and there was a national magazine that sent illustrators
to cover this, and that was kind of where the
whole thing started. When cameras did come around, they put
him in the courtroom and the trial of the century,
(36:56):
the first trial of the century, uh, the Limberg baby
kidnapping with Bruno Holtman was chaos with those huge cameras
and flashbulbs and court reporter and photographers just like apparently
climbing on tables to get good shots. It was just
it was a zoo in there. So he said he
couldn't even get a fair trial because of these camera people.
(37:17):
And even though that argument didn't work, Uh, the A
b A said, you know what, no more cameras in
the courtrooms. Um. Generally this is the American Bar Association,
so they don't they can't lay down the law. But usually,
I mean some are televised and sometimes there's cameras. I know,
we'll watch the O J trial, but most times you're
(37:37):
gonna see a sketch come out on the five o'clock news. Yeah,
I mean because the A B. A said there shouldn't
be cameras in the courtroom a lot of states and
the federal government said, yeah, you're you're absolutely right. And
so that actually was one of those rare instances where
like the predecessor came back in style. And yeah, I
guess in the sixties, TV news was not a huge
(37:59):
thing until the civil rights era. Um, until the assassination
of JFK and the ensuing assassination of Jack Ruby. Um,
like the sixties is kind of supercharged the reason for
there to be TV news, and um, the people who
are doing the news needed, like if they couldn't get
(38:20):
cameras in the courtroom, they still needed some visual and
so that gave like a real boost to two courtroom
sketch artists as well. Yeah, I think the Jack Ruby
trial is a man named Howard Brody very famously sketched
that one, and he went on to do RFK and
mlk's assassinations. Then there was a man named Bill Roebols
(38:41):
who has done some pretty famous ones. I like his stuff.
He did the Manson trial, and if you look at
those sketches online. He kind of has a Ralph Steadman
quality to him. Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty cool stuff.
The is that the guy who did the Manson leaping
at the judge? Yes, yeah, so, um so yeah. So
they're like, I think there are courtroom sketch artists that
(39:03):
have kind of made names for themselves, especially among the media.
But what they will do is sit there and and
you know, draw, um the scenes in the court. Believe
it or not, that's what these sketch artists are doing
all day. They sit around and draw. But then but
it's it's harder than it sounds because very frequently there
are um, there's not a lot of visual action going
(39:26):
on in like the courtroom. It's very it's not rare necessarily,
but it's not happening every moment. So they can't count
on Charles Manson to always be jumping over a table exactly.
So the court the court sketch artist has to basically
have a real eye for nuance and facial expression and
and to figure out how to capture visually a subtle
(39:48):
exchange that can maybe change the momentum of a court
case or something like that, and then present it. Then
they have to do it in a way that looks good,
and they have to do it quickly, and then when
they're done, they have to run out. Well, up until
probably the last few decades, they had to run outside
and the TV news crewise would film the um the
sketches that they made for that day for the evening news. Yeah,
(40:10):
and you know, they don't have a special chair like
the stenographer does, or a special place to stand. I mean,
I think in some courts they accommodate them as best
they can. I think there was this one article for
Mental Floss where one of the court reporters, Vicky ellen Behringer,
said that, uh, they would give her a place to
(40:30):
sit sometimes in the jury box if there was room.
But sometimes you're just out there with everyone else and
you're you know, you might have somebody with a big
giant head in front of you. You gotta you gotta
really work on the fly, and like you said, work fast.
I mentioned, it's not a whole lot of people doing it.
I think Robols was interviewed like three or four years ago.
He said he's working a lot, but he's just one
(40:52):
of two in Los Angeles. So and I thought that
just sounded astounding, but again, if you think about the
media covered trials, so just aren't that many of them.
So you don't need hundreds and thousands of sketch artists
around the country just to pick up work. Sketch artists
are becoming bailiffs. Yeah, the bailiffs like got the gun
(41:13):
in one hand and sketching on the other. It's tough, man,
it's tough out there. So, um, one of the places
you can get work, if you're a reliable sketch artist
is by drawing the Supreme Court because you just aren't
going to get a camera in there. Like anybody who
listens to MPR News is familiar with Nina Totenberg's like
play by play of um Supreme Court arguments and discussions,
(41:38):
and she's kind of like a verbal sketch artist. But um,
the point is here there's not any media allowed in
the Supreme Court. Champ just today with the abortion proceedings.
I was looking at pictures. I saw some last night
of the sketch artists and it was probably done by
Arthur Lean. Arthur maybe the only person to him for
(42:00):
the Supreme Court, but I know that he does the
Scotus blog and h for NBC, so maybe they probably
let more than one end for something this big, but
apparently it's uh court reporters have round or I'm sorry. Um.
Sketch artists have roundly said it's a lot easier to
draw someone like Charles Manson than it is to draw
(42:21):
some just sort of normal looking normal I don't know,
like Tom Brady or something like that. Yeah, that was
very famous. Jane Rosenberg sketch Tom tom Brady almost that
Tom Barringer um during the deflate Gate proceedings and and
it was, you know, Tom Brady is a traditionally a
(42:42):
handsome person, and he looked a little bit like Lurch
and it became a meme and it was pretty funny.
The best one I saw, the best of me my
saw was um, that sketch of Tom Brady photoshopped onto
the Hunchback from Hunchback and Notre Dame the Disney movie.
Really it was perfect. If she got a lot of
press out of that, she did the others. Best one
(43:03):
I saw was that sketch of Tom Brady's head on
the potato Jesus meme right right. The fit pretty well. Team. Uh.
The final little thing here that Livia found, which I
thought was pretty great in a testament to how good
of work that she's doing for us so far. But
she she found that they sometimes attorneys, and this doesn't
surprise me. They will buy some of these sketches. I
(43:26):
guess sometimes either if it's a famous case or early
in their career and you know, have it framed, so
you know, just I think it's just sort of a
symbolic thing because there they all, even though they have
different styles, you can always tell a courtroom sketch. Oh
you don't think to have a framed courtroom sketch of
yourself and you finally make it as an attorney is
probably a pretty big deal. Yeah, especially if you're standing
(43:46):
and pointing at the accused. Yeah, they're really dramatic like that. Sure,
I've always wanted the Wall Street Journal to do a
piece on us, so we could get a drawing of
us like that. That's a really like um um, easily
recognizable type of drawing too. Yeah, totally come on Wall
Street or you know, Mad Magazine. Maybe it's defunct, Chuck,
(44:08):
I know, but this guy's still draw They can bring
him out her retirement. I want more Drucker. I think
he passed away. But oh God, to be drawn by
more drunk that would be pretty amazing. Or I'd take
Jack Davis too. He did the ug A football um
guy in the seventies. Now that's right. I got that
coke bottle in my bar still any care? Maybe someday
(44:29):
Chuck commemorative coke bottle. Uh. Well, since Chuck said commemorative
coke bottle, I think that's it, which means it's time
for a listener mail everybody. I'm gonna call this another
dentistry email. This is from Kayla. Hey, guys, really enjoyed
your episode about dentistry and currently a fourth year dental
(44:49):
student in the US graduating in May. I don't want
to add a couple of things here. Green Black was
one of the fathers of dynastry that you mentioned, but
you didn't say much about him. Green, commonly known as G. D.
Black in the dental realm, invented the pedal driven dental
drill and also outlined the best way to prepare tooth
for cavity filling, which is still the method used today.
(45:12):
And secondly, since you focused on the history of dynastry,
I wanted to mention st uh Apollonia, the patron saint
of Dynastry and the year two forty nine, Apollonia, a
deaconess was beaten for refusing to renounce her faith, and
the beating caused all of her teeth to shatter and
fall out. She then elected to be burned alive instead
of renounced her faith, and even jumped into the fire herself.
(45:34):
After her death, she was made the patron state of
Dentnastry and Toothaches and there's even a painting of her
in the louver. And this is uh from Kayla, who
was just introduced to the show last year by her
brother and now was a big fan. Nice, thanks Kayla,
Good luck Dynasty. Yeah, for sure, that's a that's one
of those examples. I knew both of those, they just
(45:54):
didn't make it in the show, and it's just so
excruciating to be called out about those later on. It's
okay to miss things. Well, thanks a lot, Kayla, and
good luck with dental school. Uh, and thank you for
writing in and welcome to the show, right, Chuck. That's right. Well,
if you want to be like Kayla, you can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast. Did I Heart radio
(46:16):
dot com? Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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