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SYSK Selects: How Crime Scene Cleanup Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here with my select pick of the week,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: How crime scene Cleanup Works from September seven, two thousand ten.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: There's an oldie body goody and part of our probably
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: not ever going to be finished sweet on crime and punishment,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And this one was pretty good crime scene clean up.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: You never think about that. What happens, who goes in there,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: how's it done? What are the rules around crime scene
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: clean up? And we detail all of that good stuff
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in this week's Selects episode. Welcome to Stuff you Should
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and h that makes the stuff you should know. Freshly shaven,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: m hm, I got rid of the beard. Yeah, I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: cleaned up this crime scene of the face. Your hair
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: sticking on a really weird way? Is it out from
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: my hat? Thank you? That's even crazier. Please don't like
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: lick your thumb and come over like mommys the I
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: should say for those of you who might be experiencing
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: some sort of alarm or teror right now. Chuck kept
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the goatee. He just shaved the beard. Part of the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: parts that made it a beard. I guess the burnside
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: mutton chops yea, and the neck fuzz Yeah, looking good,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Chuck. Have you ever seen a movie called
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Curdled No, it's a little sleeper produced by one Quentin Tarantino.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It's about this very quiet, kind of demure woman who
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: um gets a job as a crime scene clean up person.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: It's the girl from Pulp Fiction, the cab driver, right.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I believe she. I believe she was the taxi driver
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: who drove Bruce Willis around after the boxing match from
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Pulp Fiction. Really of that movie, I haven't seen it,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: but I think that's her. It's worth seeing, is it.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: But now that i've I've read this crime scene cleanup
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: article on our fair site how stuff works dot com. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I realized just how far off the mark some of
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the details were on that was it pretty far? Yeah?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: A little bit. Have you seen Sunshine Cleaning? No, But
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: from the previous that one looks pretty far off the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: mark to like, I remember seeing them carrying out like
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a mattress and just like you know, um, Mrs Brady
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: spring cleaning type outfits. Yeah, you remember that she had
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: like the little de rag and she had like the
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: little clam diggers rolled up and like some converse on
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: just like cute as a button. That was one of
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the jokes of the scenes. Actually, they were carrying out
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: this Amy Adams and the other girl carrying out this
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: nasty like bloody mattress and one of them dropped her
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  Speaker 1: end and the other one fell on the bloody stain
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and it was just like and it mate. It's really
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: good movie though, actually was it? Yeah? It was great?
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  Speaker 1: Is it by the people who made um a little
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Miss Sunshine? Or am I just confusing that because sunt
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the name. It's a little indie though Alan Arkin was
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: in it, so maybe so I wonder it's good? All right, Well, um,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: both of these movies are utter frauds when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to the details, right chuck uh yeah for the most part. Okay,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: let's talk about crime scene clean up, the real stuff,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: because there's nothing cute or about it. It's actually horrific
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: work and it takes a very specific kind of person
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and the those people last in average of about eight
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: months before they get burned out in this business, right yeah,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: all right, So it's actually called it's it's part of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the cleaning industry and the it's a niche part of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the cleaning industry, not very heavily marketed in traditional channels. Exactly,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: it's not how it works. Um. But it's called CTSD
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  Speaker 1: con Crime and Trauma Scene decontamination, right, and Um, basically
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: what it is is it is a cleaning service on steroids.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: There's no Mrs Brady outfits. You're wearing full bio hazard
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  Speaker 1: has matt suits, no French Maids going on here, nothing
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  Speaker 1: like that, because you're dealing with some really dangerous stuff.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: You're dealing with um blow which often feature appropriately enough
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: blood borne pathogens. Um, you're cleaning up meth labs. Yeah,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: that's a big one. Um, And a lot of times
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: you're you're um And we should probably warn people this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: This is gonna get a little graphic here. Sure, you
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: can't do what I'm scene without being a little graphic, right,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: But I mean you're cleaning up like there may not
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: be a body there anymore, but you're picking up pieces
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of bone that the the crime scene investigators missed. Um,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you're scraping brain off of walls. It's not normal work, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean I think that's where the decontamination part of
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  Speaker 1: the CTS deacon comes in. It's not just cleaning, You're
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  Speaker 1: you're actually your goal is to return the spot to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: its original condition. So like you don't it made a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: point in this article, like you don't just clean the
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  Speaker 1: carpet because if the carpet has a two inch blood
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  Speaker 1: stain on the carpet, there's probably a two foot blood
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  Speaker 1: stain under the carpet on the floorboard. Right, Yeah, So
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: cleaning the carpet doesn't work. You've gotta cut the carpet out,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: maybe cut the base base boards out, right, So it
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: is decontaminations. Um who wrote this, Julia Layton, She's she's
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: got the goods. She definitely has the goods, but the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: way she put it has to be actually clean, not
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: just apparently clean, right yeah, which I do apparently cleaning
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: in my house. But I mean we're not cutting up
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: carpet and replacing floorboards or anything. Um So it takes
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: a very certain type of person um because of the
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  Speaker 1: gore that you're going to have to deal with in
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  Speaker 1: a large number of your cases. Um So, a lot
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: of the people in UM the ct S DACON industry
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: or former or maybe even current e m t S
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  Speaker 1: emergency room nurses people who are already trained to deal
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: with this kind of thing. Yeah, that that one articles
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  Speaker 1: And you know, I think that that company said they
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: hire a lot of former firemen and I would think
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  Speaker 1: probably military people, people that have dealt with high stress
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and dead bodies. Yeah, basically, but it's not just that.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I mean you have to um also is a crime
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  Speaker 1: scene clean up person. You have to have a sympathetic nature,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: is one of the points in this article. Right, sympathetic
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  Speaker 1: but not empathetic, right, because there's a lot of times
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: when all the the the ambulance is gone, the cops
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  Speaker 1: are gone, but the family is still there and they
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  Speaker 1: may be sitting there sobbing while they're watching you clean
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the house. Um, and you you have to be able to, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: sympathize with them without getting caught up in and what
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: they're experiencing. Right then you have to be able to
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: remain detached, but you have to be um uh, you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: have to be understanding to what they're going through to Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The one guy in that article that they interviewed said
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that he's cried along with families and stuff like that.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And um, I think they also said that some companies
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: offer grief counselors along with their service. Yeah, the upon
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: request apparently, if you want a grief counselor usually that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: can be factored into the price or else the company
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: will will give it to you for free. Yeah. In
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Sunshine Cleaning, there was never anyone at the scene, but um,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: it was realistic in some ways because one of the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: subplots involved UM. One of the girls found a wallet
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  Speaker 1: and an identification from the deceased and ended up looking
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: up her daughter and befriending her daughter, but not telling
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  Speaker 1: the daughter that she had cleaned up her mother's suicide
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: or homicide scene. So they kind of dealt with that,
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  Speaker 1: you know, delicately. That's great. Yeah, that's probably the one
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  Speaker 1: thing you should deal with delicately, right, Um, because some
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that you're cleaning up is pretty rough stuff.
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the three main scenes that you're
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  Speaker 1: going to encounter as a UM clean up technician, Josh.
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  Speaker 1: Number one, you've got violent death, which is homicide, suicide
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  Speaker 1: or bad luck accident type of thing. You've got a decomposition,
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  Speaker 1: decomposing body happening, and meth labs is a lot of
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  Speaker 1: their business comes from meth labs that have exploded because
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  Speaker 1: meth labs are known for exploding. I don't even know
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  Speaker 1: that they necessarily have to have exploded. I think just
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  Speaker 1: the fact that there was a meth lab there, that's true.
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  Speaker 1: It means that you have to decontaminate the scene. Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently meth labs um are so toxic that they're um
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  Speaker 1: capable of making people who live in a former meth
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  Speaker 1: lab sick, like a decade on um. Some of the
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  Speaker 1: toxins that you're running into our things like acetone, methanol, benzene, iodine,
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  Speaker 1: hydrochloric acid. This is like the ingredients of myth. Right,
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  Speaker 1: this is what people are snoring. Kids. Unless you want
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  Speaker 1: to turn into a disgusting, haggard wreck mess of a human,
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  Speaker 1: stay away from meth. Meth equals death. Just look at
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: those pictures. You've seen those pictures on the internet that
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: showed the before and after. Yeah, oh god, that that
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  Speaker 1: should be like on billboards in Oklahoma. We should talk
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  Speaker 1: a podcast on meth sometime. We have a good article.
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  Speaker 1: It's like Tom she wrote it. Yeah, we absolutely should. Um. So.
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  Speaker 1: One of the one of the reasons why meth labs
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  Speaker 1: are so dangerous is because you are going to absorb
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  Speaker 1: the stuff through your skin. It leaves a toxic breads
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  Speaker 1: to do, not just on walls, but on the air
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  Speaker 1: as well. So another um I guess prior job experience
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  Speaker 1: that is good to bring to the table if you're
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: a crime scene clean up person is construction background or
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  Speaker 1: at the very least demolition, because a lot of cases,
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  Speaker 1: like with UM meth labs, like if it was a
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  Speaker 1: house or an apartment or something, you have to knock
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  Speaker 1: everything out. Anything that UM can't be put in some
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  Speaker 1: sort of decontaminating chemical. UM has to be taken out,
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  Speaker 1: thrown away. That includes drywall, floorboards, carpet, all this stuff
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: until it's just down to the bones of the building. Yeah,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: or they will tear it down or more likely, uh,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: haul the trailer away. Well, let's talk about this. We
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: said that you're not wearing UM just normal everyday spring
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  Speaker 1: cleaning clothes. You're wearing like full on biohezard suit. Right.
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  Speaker 1: What are some of the other um I guess tools
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: of the trade, Chuckers, Well, there's there's a laundry list. Josh.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: You you definitely want your protective gear. UM. You have
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  Speaker 1: to have biowaste containers like big fifty five gallon drums
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  Speaker 1: to hold this stuff. You can't just throw it in
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: a bag into the back of your van. There's regulations
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you gotta follow. Um, you're gonna have your regular cleaning
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: supplies that you would need to clean up any kind
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of mess, you know, mops and disinfectants and that kind
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: of thing. You've got your more hardcore supplies like industrial strength,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: like hospital strength, the disinfectants which only allow the merca
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: bug to survive. Really now there's like hospital acquired mercer infections.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about that. Yeah, or they like
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: get used to the industrial cleaners and they're like these
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: super bugs are like bring it. When you spray it
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: on them, it's bad news. That's some ticks. You can
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: have an ozone machine which removes odors. You can have
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: a fogger which they will use to shoot um stuff
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: into like air ducts to get rid of odors. Right, Well,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: it'll um. It takes a chemical and kind of gets
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: it around corners and stuff. You get everywhere with it.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: When you have when you run it through a fogger,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: apparently you've got some enzyme solvents you want to kill bacteria,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and it can also liquefied dried blood, which can be
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: pretty nasty to get out once it's coagulated and dried, right,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: which is why you want shovels. Apparently chuck after what
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: three hours two hours coagulates into kind of a jelly
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: like goo that you can shovel into bags. So gross
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: but very very thick bags biohazard bags. They also include
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in this article putty knives to scrape brain matter from
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the wall, because apparently brain when it dries becomes like cement,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and we'll stick to something like cement, which is really
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: gross and sad. You can also use um a steam
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: basically a steamer to steam it back into gooiness. Yeah.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And then my favorite thing, which is be the first
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: thing in my van, would be the no touch cleaning system.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And these are like big long scrubbing brushes, uh, heavy
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: duty sprayers, things like that, like pressure washers and no
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: touch cleaning system seems like the smartest cleaning system, yes
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah. Then, like you said, you want some
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: carponry tools, probably ladders, stuff like that, and then a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: camera because you need to take before and after pictures
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: for insurance, and you wouldn't think about that, right, And
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: actually Apparently most insurance covers this, right, Yeah, insurance covers
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: it a lot of times. Or if it's a homicide,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's paid for by the state, by the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: federal government really Crime Victory Victim Reparations Agency. Okay, and
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I know the state agencies that do that too, So well,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: we're getting aheir of ourselves. I don't mean to jump
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the gun, but let's talk more about some of the scenes. Specifically,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: we talked about meth labs, Chuck, one of the other
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: big ones that you'll be called out to. That makes
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: quite a message when a decomposing body is found, right, absolutely,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: he had to call him de comps in the in
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the trade. Uh, that's not gonna be like usually, it's
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: not gonna be some big nasty um blood sprays and
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: like brains and things. It's not gonna be all over
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the place, but it can be pretty nasty because a
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: decomposing body, Josh, is really gross. Your body swells up,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: um insects move into your body and take up residence.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Your organs are going to digest themselves, and your skin liquefies. Yeah,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: remember we talked about um rigor mortis or no, I
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: think it was On the Body Farms episode, we talked
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a lot about how decomposition works. So if you want
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: to know more about d COMP go listen to our
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Body Farms, Um eppie right, Yeah, And of course there's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the smell. You can't talk about decomposition without the smell. No,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And as Julia Layton puts it, it would bring an
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: average person to his knees. Yeah, that's bad. Yes, apparently
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it's ammonia. It's an ammonia based smell created by d
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: COMP like the litter box. Yeah, you ever cleaned out
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of litter box? Sure, I have toxic plasmos is all
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: over the place, that's right. Um. The other thing too
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: with a d COMP is and this you know, you
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: don't think about these things when you hear about it
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: on the news. But someone actually has to go behind
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: after the body has been removed. There's probably liquefied parts
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: of the body there, and there's also maggots that have
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: already feasted and have the blood inside of them, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: you gotta get it. You gotta get rid of them too,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: because they're carrying you know, disease maybe right, And so
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you have to basically scour the place looking for maggots,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: collect the maggots, and then you dispose of them through burning. Right,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: tastes like burning. That's dcompey, that's D. Now let's get
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: down to the one that everybody's fascinated with that all
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the movies are about. And those are murder scenes, suicide scenes,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: accidental shootings, basically where somebody was shot it's specifically in
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the head, I guess is the worst. I mean, you've
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: seen Full Metal Jacket, right, remember pile. Yeah, someone had
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: to clean that up. Somebody did. Yeah, I'll bet it
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: was a joker. Well, somebody in the art department for
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the movie. But uh, yeah, a violent death is not
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: good because there's gonna be lots of blood. Especially suicides
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: they say are probably the worst for the blood. Yeah,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: which is why I guess. I can't see shooting yourself
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: in the head at home. That's just so so much
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: of a problem. It's just a huge problem. At least
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: go to a hotel or a motel. And that Hunter
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Thompson did, he shot himself in his basement while he's
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: on the phone with his wife. But I mean, I
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: think it's fine for him that he was on the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: phone with her because apparently he'd let her know that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: this was happening. This wasn't like she had no idea
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: that something like this was going to happen, but at home.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: He did it at home, which I can understand wanting
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: to be at home. But yeah, I guess shooting yourself
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in the head if you're going to why, I don't
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: see why you would do it at home. Yeah, I agree. Uh,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And like we said earlier, it has to be really
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: really clean. So any bodily fluid is a potential pathogen.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but after you leave, if you
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: don't get it all up, it can lead to mold
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and bacteria and cause people to get sick like months afterward. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you have to, like you said, restore this place to
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the state it was in before the trigger was pulled, right, Yeah,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And it can take up to, I mean a few
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: hours to up to like forty eight hours to do this. Yeah.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And apparently a good crime scene clean up company is
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: gonna charge you about six hundred bucks an hour. Yeah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it ain't cheap um for one room with lots of
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: blood for a homicide or suicide, it's gonna cost you
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: between three and sixth grand I guess right. Yeah. One
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of the reasons why it's so expensive is because these
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: people don't just take the stuff home and throw it
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: in their trash out front. Right. There are really specific
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: permits and rules that govern disposal of this which, by
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the way, we should say the actual industry itself is
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: not regulated. Yeah, it's not nationally regulated. No, but they
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: generally follow Ocean's bloodborne pathogen standards, which requires training and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: certification itself. Um. But to be a crime scene cleanup
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: technician that you don't there's no national certification or even
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: state or local certification. It's just company training. Yeah yeah, right,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: and but I'm you know, we'll talk about the training
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: in a minute. But they obviously want to do a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: good job because the last thing you want is I mean,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the turnover is already high enough, you know. Um. But
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: like we said, there is plenty of permits and um
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: standards and procedures to follow in disposing of this waste. Right. Yeah,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you can't just like you said, you can't throw in
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the dumpster like they do in Sunshine cleaning. You have
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: to incenterate it. And there are medical waste incinerator companies
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and uh, the one thing I thought they charged by
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the pound, which I thought was kind of gross. But
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: how else are you going to do it? Because it's
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: a pound of nastiness. Yeah, And the other thing I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: thought was kind of gross was they a lot of
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: them have minimum charges. So if you don't have the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: minimum you have to keep this uh bio human bio
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: waste in your van, well, not in your van, but
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: if it's hot and in like a refrigerated space until
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: you have collect enough of it to go to the incinerator.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I'll bet it's funny. I'll bet the same um,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the same companies that that operate medical waste incinerators also
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: just so happen to have some cold storage units that
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you can put your waist in until you have enough
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to burn. To be smart, but I'll bet it's I'll
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: bet if you're in the industry for a while, you're
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: friends with some guy who operates it, and you kick
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: them like fifty bucks to throw your stuff in with
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: somebody else's or whatever. But you better be incinerating it
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: following proper procedure else you're a horrible jerk, right, Yes,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And it's not just the goal where that has to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: be disposed of. Um, If you have just deconstructed a
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: house that was a meth lab. You've got to do
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: something with this waste again. Can't just take it to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the dumpster you came and take it to a normal dump.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: You have to take it to special dumps that are
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: um out of public reach, right right right? Um, and
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: just transporting it you have to have a special permit
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for that, right, you have to have a has Met permit. Yeah,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: my friend, uh, my friend Timmy has he works in
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: has Matt Disposal And now yeah you met Timmy. Now
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: he does a lot of um like trained derailments and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. But he used to live in Oklahoma,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and in Oklahoma nothing but nothing but meth labs and
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: he had to do uh he didn't do crime scene cleanup,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: but he he worked on teams that investigated sites, I think.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And he said that he saw bodies that had dirt
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the body that they've shoveled dirt in their mouths and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: would choke on it sometimes because apparently once whatever badness
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: happens and it becomes airborne, it's such a like awful
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: re action like that you're breathing in this in they
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: start just putting something in their mouth to try and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: quell this nasty taste, so they would like stuff dirt
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: in their mouths until they died, not nasty. Said, that's horrible.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: It's another reason not to cook or do meth. What
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a mini um. So let's say you all this is
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, and you're looking to earn no,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know, between thirty five and fifty grand without
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a high school diploma. We should say, um, what what
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: do you need to do to become a crime scene
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: clean up technician? Well, we already talked about some of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the uh traits they look for in somebody, like to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: be empathetic and maybe to have prior training with the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: dead bodies and stuff like that. But they will actually
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: give you test um to make sure that you won't like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: throw up on the scene in front of a family. Yeah,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: it's like monster's ball. Yeah, that would be awful to go.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine losing a family member in your home
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and then someone coming in to clean it and then
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: they start throwing up all over the place. Plus, if
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you're the owner of the company, that's just extra work,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: that's more clean up that you can't charge for, right,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: So they will actually put you through a test to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: pass a gross factor that um it ranges from like
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: looking at pictures of dead bodies to actually cleaning up
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: dead animals carcasses to make sure that you won't vomit.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: And I wonder if they tell you that it's actual
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: like human stuff, but it's actually like a fox like
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Halloween when you when you reach into the shape grapes
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: and their eyeballs. Yeah. Um, you also really really really
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: need to get a hepatitis B vaccine every five years.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, as many letters as there
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: are types of hepatitis I would get a vaccine for
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: each of them, probably every month. Yeah, what do we
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: get heap A for Guatemala so we can still wouldn't
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: qualify huh. Um. Also, Chuck, even if you are a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: very strong person, we like we said, the turnovers about
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: eight months on average, and you are um really at
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: risk for a couple of stress disorders UM, critical incident
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: stress syndrome and secondary traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, and basically
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the first one is you were on site of like
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: horrific events routinely it's tough to shake off. And then
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the other one is if you become too attached to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the families grief. You're you, you basically can leach off
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of their post traumatic stress disorder and have secondary stress disorder,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: secondary traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, they also obviously look for
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: people going in that don't have any sort of like
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: depressive disorders or things like that. That That probably wouldn't be
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a good job to put someone who was manic depressive
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: to crimes and cleanup situation. It wouldn't chuck, not at all. Uh,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the business a little bit. I think
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you said six dollars an hour, but a room can,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: like a bloody room can cost up to like three
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars to get clean. I thought it was three
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: to six. Yeah, it's one to three. I misspoke. I'm sorry. Well,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: it could be six depends on how many people were
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: killed in there. I mean, if it was a really
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: nasty scene, it could be six, I'm sure. And you
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: said also that the Crime Victim Reparation Act pays for
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: agency agency pays for um, the cleaning bill. If it's
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a homicide, um, if it's I don't know if it's
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: a suicide, because I know that insurance generally doesn't cover
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: suicides for anything. But maybe if it's an accidental death
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Your homeowners insurance will cover it.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: In most cases, you're not going to have to pay
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the bill. Um. And we said also that marketing and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: advertising can be tricky and touchy. Hotels and motels are
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: the two largest businesses that have to deal with this, yeah,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: with suicide. So if you own a ctsdcon company, you
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: probably go to every hotel and motel convention there is,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: which appropriately are held in hotels. Uh. And you hand
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: out cards, right, You hand out cards to homicide detectives,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: You make friends with ambulance drivers. You just make sure
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that everybody's going to contact these families first if they're asked.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: You don't want to pimp in your card. But if
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: if the families like what are we gonna do about this,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: that they can say, well, I know this guy is good. Yeah.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: That's actually how it worked in Sunshine Cleaning. Really. Yes,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Amy Adams was a regular house cleaner making beans, and
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: her boyfriend was steve'son and he was a homicide detective.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Steven is great and he's awesome and he um. He
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: he told her like, you know, you can make a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: lot more money by doing this, and he got her
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: her first job and first for roll In. It just
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: kind of grew from there. Um, it's a burgeoning business,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: right Yeah. And apparently if you like to name your
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: business after yourself first and last name, this is the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: this is the industry for you. This in waste disposal. Yeah,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: what was the company from San Francisco in there? There
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is um Neil Smithers crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Right, And
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and they have people they send out all over the country. Now,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: but I think it said that they do about four
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: hundred cleanups in San Francisco alone each year. This is
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: two thousand six. That's more than one a day. That's
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: saying well, and here we reach to the debate, right,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the crime scene cleanup companies literally make money off of tragedy, right,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: horrific tragedy. And a lot of people argue like that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: there's this kind of commercialization of death of tragedy, and
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: and that why are we so okay with this? Um?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And I can kind of see that maybe this is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: something that should be a free service of a police department,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: worked into the budget or something that a city does, right. Um,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can really make a
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: case like if you need someone like this, it's a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: really good thing that they're around, whether it's a commercialization
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of death or not, because before this it was up
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to the family to do it right, or maybe some
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: friends of the family or something like that. But isn't
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: that just way way worse. I don't even cleaning up
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: your loved one's brains in your home. Yeah, that's obviously
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: way way worse. But like a private tot truck company
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: comes and gets a car after car accident, so that's
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: not taken care of by the police, so sort of
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: sort of the same thing. I definitely fall in the
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: line like, yeah, this is fine, this is perfectly acceptable capitalism. Yeah. Well,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and until it is covered by the police department, then
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: somebody's should be making money, and it should be top
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: dollar because it's no one to clean up brains and
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: bone out of drywall, you know, I know, And I
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: mean if you leave it to the city, can you
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: imagine the job a city worker would do. And well,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that's the other point, man. These people are paid good
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: money because they restore it to its original condition. And
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: you're right, I would not want to see employee doing it.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: If you're a city employee who is good at your job.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: We apologize in advance. It's the rest of the people
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: in your field that make it hard on you. UM.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: And if you are a crime scene cleanup technician, we
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: want to hear from you. Uh. Send us an email
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: uh to the email address that I will give at
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the end of the show because I got ahead of myself.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about crime scene clean up,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: go type that into our search bar. Crime scene is
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: crime hyphen scene clean up is clean hyphen up uh,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and we'll take you to this really really good article. UM.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And that means now, friends, that it's time for listener mail.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Jerry had a big problem with the hyphen thing, like
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you were. You were out of the room getting some
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: coffee and I had to explain to the hyphens and
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: that you have capitalized the first one and you don't
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: capitalize the second. I can see that. And she said,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: this is the most difficult title we've ever had, Is
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: it really? She said, she said, yes, Okay, she's tittering. Uh, Josh,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: this is prison email Part two. We had part one?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Was it right before this one? Are we going to
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: split those up? Uh? We have to have the one
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that we recorded go first, or else Who've got two
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and then one Okay, so yeah, this came out on
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: this is Thursday. Right. That's more confusing than college football
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: rankings in quantum physics. Uh so this is the end
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of the prisoners email the guy who was busted for
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: math and then went on the lamb and then went
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to prison and is now an fine, upstanding citizen. We
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: will continue with this. Food items available from the commissary
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: like ramen noodles, can corn or chicken, and soda pop
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: were valuable for trade as well. Pack of ramen noodles
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: were often uses currency for bet on things like football games.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: She was betting rama noodles on a football game. I
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: guess when you're in the whoscal, you're doing what you
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: can to, you know, make it just like the outside.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Or prizes and handball tournaments organized by enterprising inmates who
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: would often keep five as an entry fee for putting
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the tournament together. Huh that crazy. I think it's crazy
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: that this guy wasn't in a minimum security federal prison
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and he was still playing handball. Uh. There were two
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: escapes during the year that I was at the camp.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: One person took a blanket and threw it over the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: top of the barbed war fence. That was just regular Barbara,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: he said, not razor wire, and he climbed over in
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night and that was pretty much
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: how he got out. Did they catch the guy? Uh? Yes,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: both were caught. The second guy left his job at
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the State and motor pool during the day, so I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: guess he just got one of the cars and left,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: which is pretty smart way to escape. It's a pretty
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: typical way to escape. Again. Well, that's actually what he says.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: He stole a state vehicle and he said both were
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: caught in under forty eight hours. Shank, and here's just
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: some little points he makes. Shank is indeed both a
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: bourbon and noun, although shiv was much less common in usage.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Somebody said it was east coast, west coast, but another credibility, Well,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: this is Nevada, so shank is what they said there. Uh.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: In addition to the whole, the special housing unit was
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: known as the Shoe as an s h U, and
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it was more frequently referred to as the shoe than
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the whole. So we were sort of wrong in that one.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And one of the more colorful terms that you can
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: here in prison was to keyster something. Yeah, and can
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you imagine what that might be. Of course, I mean
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to hide something in a very uncomfortable place. You're wrecked.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, not like this stop watch? Did you not
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: know that you did? You get dysenterry from that when
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: you put a watch in your keystar or a wrist watch.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Sorry it wasn't a stop I got distant, teary little man.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Another term was man walking, which meant that action officer
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: was out in the yard walking around. So someone would
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: yell out man walking, and that was a cue to
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: hide any contraband or desist any activities like tattooing, which
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: was you didn't want the corrections guys to see tattooing
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: each other. They're heavy critics, exactly. I've already written much
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: more than I intended. Guys. I could go on for
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: much longer about many of the topics, including racism, which
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: was extreme, the power structure, and what it was like
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: not having freedom even though I worked outside the camp
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and mostly an unsupervised fashion. UH favored trading and so
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: on and so on. It's weird that I have so
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: much to write about, even though I was only in
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: total for about eighteen months, so it wasn't three years.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: It was eighteen months. Totally ten months, man, can you imagine?
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. So that's the end of part two
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: of the prison prisoner email. It's part two of two.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Huh yep. And he's on the up and up now
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and we wish him all the best. It sounds like
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: he's doing really good. Thank you, anonymous jail bird. We
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: appreciate you. Who doesn't work here? Right? It is not
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: John Constructing. Okay, um, let's see if you have a
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: we already did this this well email thing right, crime
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: scene clean up? Just say the email address. Yeah, just
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: send your emails to Stuff podcast at how stuff works
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: com home page.