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Stranger Danger! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:14
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're
0:17
Speaker 1: flying solo today. But that's cool because God is our
0:21
Speaker 1: co pilot. This good one. I thought it too, because
0:28
Speaker 1: God has nothing to do with you and me, that
0:31
Speaker 1: kind of unless he was one of us. What a song,
0:38
Speaker 1: What a great song. I can't wait till that comes
0:39
Speaker 1: back in five years. Who was that? Oh? I think
0:44
Speaker 1: had been a one hit wonder but it was one
0:46
Speaker 1: heck of a one hit like I want to say
0:48
Speaker 1: tor Amos, but it wasn't. No, it definitely wasn't. It
0:51
Speaker 1: was like Diane West or something like story was too
0:55
Speaker 1: good for that dribble. She was good. I thought that
0:58
Speaker 1: was a pretty good, good little song. I like the message. Sure,
1:02
Speaker 1: just a stranger on the bus. Just a slob like
1:06
Speaker 1: one of us. That wasn't the player, Yeah, just a
1:10
Speaker 1: slab kid, you not my friend boy? Yeah, just a
1:14
Speaker 1: slab like all of us. I didn't know that was
1:16
Speaker 1: being insulted. When I was grown out to that song
1:19
Speaker 1: on the dance floor, you couldn't feel her. Supernumerary finger
1:23
Speaker 1: poking you in your chest. I could not so. Um, Chuck,
1:28
Speaker 1: I feel like we should stop this chit chat and
1:31
Speaker 1: get down to it, because we're talking today about something
1:34
Speaker 1: that made up our childhood, and I was very dismayed
1:37
Speaker 1: to learn still makes up some kids childhoods. A lot
1:41
Speaker 1: of kids childhood's still being taught today. Um, and that
1:45
Speaker 1: you could conceivably make the case that it eroded at
1:51
Speaker 1: the very fabric of society. A very misguided campaign that
1:55
Speaker 1: came about in the very early eighties that had the
1:59
Speaker 1: very ge term known as stranger danger. Yeah, it's funny
2:05
Speaker 1: when you look at this and you couple it with
2:06
Speaker 1: everything else. The eighties had a lot of misguided campaigns.
2:11
Speaker 1: Didn't they just say no, break No, They're all over
2:15
Speaker 1: the place, satanic panic. It's really weird. I think it was.
2:20
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look back, it was clearly like uh,
2:24
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of factors, like the
2:26
Speaker 1: the I think the Reagan era sort of moral majority
2:30
Speaker 1: years conspired to kind of just they wanted to scare everybody,
2:36
Speaker 1: wait into everything, Yeah, scared you straight straight into their
2:39
Speaker 1: political ideology. That's definitely, I mean, that's definitely part of
2:43
Speaker 1: it for sure, because there is a there's a definite UM.
2:45
Speaker 1: And this isn't just me riffing here, like I saw
2:47
Speaker 1: this in multiple places, uh with legit sources even UM
2:52
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about legit sources are
2:55
Speaker 1: not And I think there's some good examples in here
2:57
Speaker 1: of being careful who you listen to. UM. But there,
3:00
Speaker 1: but there does seem to be like a kind of
3:02
Speaker 1: a general consensus that part of those moral panics in
3:06
Speaker 1: the eighties came from UM Christian conservatives who very much
3:12
Speaker 1: into their credit are are UM dedicated to the idea
3:17
Speaker 1: of protecting children from predation at the hands of adults,
3:22
Speaker 1: and that that's where a lot of that stuff came from.
3:24
Speaker 1: But that it was really done poorly and probably overblown,
3:29
Speaker 1: and in very short order. It was not the Christian
3:33
Speaker 1: right that was leading in charging more was everybody. Everybody
3:35
Speaker 1: was involved in this kind of stuff. Yeah, because I
3:39
Speaker 1: think you know, if you were a kid in the eighties,
3:42
Speaker 1: you knew a few things. You knew that if you
3:44
Speaker 1: listen to rock and roll music that you might be
3:47
Speaker 1: possessed by the devil. Uh. If you went outside to
3:50
Speaker 1: go play by yourself, there was a really good chance
3:53
Speaker 1: you might not come home, and that if you travel
3:56
Speaker 1: to like in New York City, like the Big City
3:58
Speaker 1: or someplace, you stand a really good chance to being murdered. Yeah,
4:01
Speaker 1: it was just gonna happen. Statistically speaking, you if you
4:04
Speaker 1: went to New York City, you're going to be murdered. Yeah,
4:06
Speaker 1: and none of those things portry or or if you
4:09
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette then you're going to end up, you know,
4:11
Speaker 1: like a cocaine fiend, right. Or if you take LSD,
4:15
Speaker 1: your children's genes are going to be all sorts of
4:17
Speaker 1: messed up and you'll be addicted to LSD for the
4:20
Speaker 1: rest of your life and have taken multiple times a
4:22
Speaker 1: day flashbacks for the rest of you if only Yeah,
4:27
Speaker 1: for real free trip. But we'll go ahead and start
4:32
Speaker 1: because this ed the Grabanowski. The Grabster helps to help
4:35
Speaker 1: us with this, and he very logically started out with
4:38
Speaker 1: some statistics. The National Crime Information Center from the FBI
4:43
Speaker 1: have been they kind of good at collecting missing persons stats.
4:47
Speaker 1: They've been doing that since the Crime Control Act in
4:49
Speaker 1: nine And it's like with anything else when you collect
4:54
Speaker 1: statistics on like missing children, Let's say you also have
4:58
Speaker 1: to clean up that list every year, right, because a
5:01
Speaker 1: lot of kids run away from home, a lot of
5:03
Speaker 1: kids come come back home. A lot of kids were
5:06
Speaker 1: never lost to begin with that are reported missing, that
5:08
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And in twenty nineteen, I believe once
5:14
Speaker 1: they added and then subtracted, they added about six hundred,
5:17
Speaker 1: nine thousand, two hundred seventy five missing persons. That is
5:20
Speaker 1: eye popping. And that's all missing persons. It's not just
5:23
Speaker 1: kids for that year though, that's not over the course
5:26
Speaker 1: of a century. That's in two thousand nineteen alone, right,
5:29
Speaker 1: But they also purge six hundred and seven thousand, one
5:32
Speaker 1: d and four, leaving about two thousand actual missing persons
5:41
Speaker 1: remaining in their system, and about a hundred of those
5:43
Speaker 1: were juvenile. And then some of those our kids who
5:47
Speaker 1: ran away from home more than once, so they're on
5:49
Speaker 1: the list more than once. So if you just look
5:51
Speaker 1: at naked statistics and actual kidnapping in modern times of
5:57
Speaker 1: a child is really really air and even rarer still
6:02
Speaker 1: to be kidnapped by a stranger. Exactly. So, Chuck, I
6:05
Speaker 1: got my trusty old calculator out, and I got a
6:09
Speaker 1: lot of stuff wrong, But I'm going to read what
6:11
Speaker 1: I came up with. Okay, does um and just got
6:18
Speaker 1: me with that. Uh So out of the let's say
6:22
Speaker 1: two thousand people who are two thousand kids who are
6:25
Speaker 1: abducted every year, That's what I saw in one place,
6:28
Speaker 1: I think from the FBI, two thousand kids were abducted. Um,
6:32
Speaker 1: that means that out of the seventy four million kids
6:36
Speaker 1: in America in two thousand eleven, each one technically had
6:41
Speaker 1: a point zero zero, zero, zero to seven percent chance
6:46
Speaker 1: of being abducted. Okay, and that's just abducted. Okay, So
6:51
Speaker 1: hating with me for one more second. You have twenty
6:55
Speaker 1: you have a quarter of a million of a percent
6:57
Speaker 1: of being abducted. Statistically speaking, if or a child in
7:00
Speaker 1: the US in two thousand eleven, of that quarter of
7:05
Speaker 1: a millionth of a percent chance, you had an additional
7:09
Speaker 1: two hundreds of a percent chance of being abducted and
7:13
Speaker 1: murdered by a stranger, which is, as anyone will tell you,
7:16
Speaker 1: the money fear of being a parent, and that is
7:20
Speaker 1: what drove it that there was this irrational fear of
7:25
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario. And even though it was the
7:28
Speaker 1: chances were vanishingly remote, every single parent in America starting
7:33
Speaker 1: in the very early eighties was was staying up awake
7:36
Speaker 1: at night for decades, worried that this was going to
7:39
Speaker 1: happen to their child. Yeah, and you know, that's we
7:43
Speaker 1: were talking nineteen, which is the lowest number since they've
7:47
Speaker 1: been keeping track. I think that number peaked in the nineties.
7:51
Speaker 1: But even in the eighties it wasn't a common occurrence.
7:55
Speaker 1: It's you know, these days with camera doorbells and self
8:00
Speaker 1: owns and CCTV and how security cameras like, obviously that
8:04
Speaker 1: kind of stuff isn't going to happen as much because
8:06
Speaker 1: it's just harder to get away with it. And you
8:08
Speaker 1: can make a case that in the eighties it was
8:10
Speaker 1: easier and maybe happened a little more for that reason,
8:13
Speaker 1: but it still was founded upon parents worse fears and
8:18
Speaker 1: and it was never a statistical probability, no, not even remotely.
8:23
Speaker 1: And there definitely were more kidnappings in general. I think
8:27
Speaker 1: they used to get around a million entries rather than
8:30
Speaker 1: the seven hundred thousand or six hundred thousand and change um.
8:34
Speaker 1: And so that's definitely gone down, and we'll talk about why.
8:37
Speaker 1: And then the recovery rate has actually gone up from
8:39
Speaker 1: the sixties of the of from the sixty percentile to
8:44
Speaker 1: the ninety percentile, So it definitely has improved. But like
8:47
Speaker 1: you're saying, even at its worst, it was driven by fear,
8:50
Speaker 1: which makes it the definition of a moral panic. Yeah,
8:54
Speaker 1: and driven by the media that has the statistic of
8:58
Speaker 1: newspaper articles about how to protect kids focus on threats
9:02
Speaker 1: from strangers, and only about four percent talk about um
9:07
Speaker 1: abuse within the family, which is far and away the
9:10
Speaker 1: most common threat to a child or people within the family. Yeah, yeah,
9:15
Speaker 1: I think um something like fifty eight thousand kids were
9:18
Speaker 1: abducted by familiar, non family members, like people they already knew,
9:24
Speaker 1: and most of the time they were targeted for sex.
9:27
Speaker 1: So it's not to say like there isn't a there
9:30
Speaker 1: isn't a big problem with child sexual abuse, Like I
9:33
Speaker 1: think it's even at the time, it was a hidden
9:36
Speaker 1: problem even when everyone was focusing on it, because everyone
9:40
Speaker 1: was focusing on the wrong group strangers. Whereas it's like, no,
9:44
Speaker 1: you're far more likely if you're going to be sexually abused,
9:47
Speaker 1: to have been sexually abused by someone you know or
9:49
Speaker 1: even a family member. You know, the stranger picking you up,
9:53
Speaker 1: abusing you sexually and then murdering you. Was it just
9:56
Speaker 1: almost never happened in the United States. Did you happen
9:59
Speaker 1: to to sit through the frustrating experience of Abducted in
10:03
Speaker 1: Plain Sight? Was it a documentary? No? I didn't see
10:07
Speaker 1: that one. Don't bother I. Well, I kind of like
10:10
Speaker 1: those vintage like P s A films. I mean, it's
10:13
Speaker 1: a remarkable story, but it's on Netflix. It'll it is
10:17
Speaker 1: one of the more frustrating things that you will ever
10:19
Speaker 1: ever sit through in your life. Do they keep like
10:22
Speaker 1: going further and further back in time to give more
10:24
Speaker 1: and more backstory and context. No, it's just the story
10:27
Speaker 1: of this one family. But I don't want to give
10:30
Speaker 1: anything away. If all right, it's just you're gonna want
10:34
Speaker 1: to throw your television into the street so frustrated. Abducted
10:38
Speaker 1: in Plain Sight? Yeah, I mean it's I don't know
10:40
Speaker 1: if I can recommend it. You know, it's one of
10:42
Speaker 1: those things it's just like, I mean, I'm kind of
10:44
Speaker 1: glad I watched it, but it was just so frustrating,
10:47
Speaker 1: like listening to the Shags album or something. Hey, did
10:50
Speaker 1: you ever see that one after school special where Helen
10:53
Speaker 1: Hunt smokes PCP and jumps out of the second floor
10:57
Speaker 1: window or school? That was a great one. Yeah, all
11:00
Speaker 1: time So what were you about to start with? Let's
11:04
Speaker 1: take a break. Oh, I think that's very appropriate, man. Yeah,
11:08
Speaker 1: we'll take your break and we'll come back and talk
11:09
Speaker 1: a little bit about the beginnings of the stranger danger
11:12
Speaker 1: era in the late seventies right after this. Stop you
11:37
Speaker 1: you know, stop stop fearing. You shouldn't you know? No
11:43
Speaker 1: you stop you you know, stop stop fearing. Shouldn't you know? Stop?
11:49
Speaker 1: You should know? Okay, Chuck. So it's this is one
11:52
Speaker 1: of those rare things where you can kind of point
11:54
Speaker 1: to a moment in history where society change, there is
11:58
Speaker 1: a sea change, And it really happened in May of nine,
12:03
Speaker 1: um when a little, cute, cute, little six year old
12:05
Speaker 1: boy named Eating pats Um vanished. He he was walking
12:10
Speaker 1: for the very first time in his life, uh, by
12:14
Speaker 1: himself to the bus stop two blocks away from his
12:17
Speaker 1: family's house in in Soho. And by house, I'm sure,
12:20
Speaker 1: I mean like a two square foot studio apartment. Um. Yeah.
12:25
Speaker 1: And it was the last day of school before summer.
12:27
Speaker 1: This was his last chance as a six year old
12:30
Speaker 1: to walk by himself like a grown up to the
12:32
Speaker 1: bus stop. His mom let him do it because it
12:34
Speaker 1: was a hectic Marian and she knew he was really
12:36
Speaker 1: wanting to get more independence. He had a dollar in
12:39
Speaker 1: his pocket for a soda, his favorite Eastern airlines had
12:42
Speaker 1: on and he was never seen again. To this day,
12:45
Speaker 1: they have no idea what happened to him. Really. Yeah,
12:48
Speaker 1: and this was a huge, huge news story, um, partially
12:53
Speaker 1: as we'll see, because it was a little white boy
12:56
Speaker 1: who was very cute and um, media heavily slants their
13:01
Speaker 1: news stories towards white people in general, white kids. Uh.
13:06
Speaker 1: And like I said, we'll get into that morning minute. Um.
13:08
Speaker 1: His dad was a professional photographer, so that definitely helped.
13:12
Speaker 1: There were tons of great photos of eating that the
13:15
Speaker 1: news could dig into and put all over the place,
13:18
Speaker 1: and they did. Um. And you know, like you said,
13:20
Speaker 1: this is one of those deals that, uh, it's the
13:23
Speaker 1: parents worst nightmare. So when a news story gets run
13:27
Speaker 1: like this, every parent in the country is going to
13:30
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. These days it would be you know, online,
13:33
Speaker 1: but they would pick up the phone and call their
13:34
Speaker 1: friends and say, did you seek here? What happened? Did
13:36
Speaker 1: you see what happened? Like this is the kind of
13:38
Speaker 1: thing that that we're also scared about, and it's actually happening.
13:42
Speaker 1: It does happen. Yeah, and there were some other extenuating
13:45
Speaker 1: circumstances to that just made it even worse. Like this
13:48
Speaker 1: school didn't bother to call to ask about where he
13:50
Speaker 1: was when he didn't show up, because I guess they
13:53
Speaker 1: didn't know he was walking by himself the first time ever. Um.
13:57
Speaker 1: And so his parents went the whole day without being
14:00
Speaker 1: wear it all until he didn't come home from school
14:02
Speaker 1: that he had never showed up. Um, there was just
14:05
Speaker 1: a there was just a lot going on for something
14:07
Speaker 1: about it. It just struck everybody in just the right way.
14:10
Speaker 1: It's just heartbreaking and it scared parents to death. And
14:15
Speaker 1: that was in May of nineteen seventy nine, and you
14:18
Speaker 1: can fast forward to just over two years later, uh,
14:21
Speaker 1: this time in Hollywood, Florida, another six year old, another
14:26
Speaker 1: cute little white kid named Adam Walsh, was abducted from
14:30
Speaker 1: a Sears store while his mom shopped like two miles over.
14:34
Speaker 1: He was playing like video games in the store and
14:38
Speaker 1: his mom was doing some shopping, something that parents did
14:40
Speaker 1: all the time back then. Like it was astounding that
14:44
Speaker 1: he was even in the same store at the mall
14:46
Speaker 1: as her. He could have been anywhere in the mall,
14:48
Speaker 1: like at that time, and he was abducted while she
14:51
Speaker 1: was just a few miles over. And then even worse
14:53
Speaker 1: than I think eaten and this this really kind of cemented,
14:56
Speaker 1: like the Eating Pat's disappearance was in a one off,
14:59
Speaker 1: like we're we're dealing with a huge social problem now.
15:02
Speaker 1: Is that Adam Walsh's um poor little head was found
15:06
Speaker 1: floating in a canal about ten days after he went missing.
15:10
Speaker 1: And that that was it. I mean, that was it.
15:12
Speaker 1: That didn't just scared parents, that scared everybody. Anyone who
15:16
Speaker 1: heard about it was now scared to death of stranger
15:19
Speaker 1: danger and abductions and being murdered by some mirando who
15:23
Speaker 1: picks you up. Yeah, And uh, if you noticed Josh
15:27
Speaker 1: earlier saying we don't know what for sure what happened
15:28
Speaker 1: in the Eaton Pats case, his body was never found.
15:32
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, there was a man named Pedro Hernandez
15:35
Speaker 1: who was a store clerk that worked in the same
15:37
Speaker 1: neighborhood in New York who confessed to killing him, and
15:41
Speaker 1: he was convicted in seventeen. But uh, it was a
15:44
Speaker 1: pretty flimsy case and a flimsy confession, and I think
15:48
Speaker 1: generally everyone kind of says, you know, it's not case closed.
15:53
Speaker 1: We still don't really know for sure what happened, even
15:56
Speaker 1: though there was a confession, because there was nobody that
15:59
Speaker 1: was ever found. And I don't think the parents ever
16:01
Speaker 1: felt closure like they deserved no, no for sure, and
16:04
Speaker 1: they I mean they had already previously zeroed in on
16:06
Speaker 1: another suspect named Jose Ramos, who was somebody who had
16:09
Speaker 1: a relationship with one of Eaton's babysitters and who was
16:14
Speaker 1: a peder asked um and I don't know if he
16:17
Speaker 1: ever admitted to it or not, but he was never charged,
16:20
Speaker 1: but the um pat's has won a civil suit against
16:24
Speaker 1: him that saying he was responsible. So to two people
16:28
Speaker 1: have been once been convicted and one's been ruled against,
16:31
Speaker 1: two different people in the in the murder of him,
16:33
Speaker 1: even though they have nothing to do with one another. Right.
16:37
Speaker 1: So that brings us to the famous Milk Carton Kids campaign.
16:42
Speaker 1: Um not the Amazing Folks Singing Duo? Is that the
16:48
Speaker 1: name of a band? Yes, these two guys, they're they're great.
16:51
Speaker 1: They they sort of a Simon and Garfunkly Everly Brothers
16:55
Speaker 1: type of thing, but there's there. They like, play it straight.
16:58
Speaker 1: They're not like they might be giants or something. No,
17:01
Speaker 1: I mean they the music is played straight, but they
17:03
Speaker 1: there is a lot of humor in their banter. But
17:06
Speaker 1: they're not They're not like a joke band. Okay, gotcha, Hey, yeah,
17:09
Speaker 1: it's it's good stuff. I don't know if they might
17:11
Speaker 1: be giants, could be considered a joke band. Well no, no, no,
17:14
Speaker 1: I don't mean they're a joke band. Right here we
17:18
Speaker 1: get with the emails. If you ever heard his reels
17:21
Speaker 1: polka stuff, it's great, sure it is. Everybody loves weird out. Hey, man,
17:24
Speaker 1: back off. His non parody music is wonderful. Did you
17:28
Speaker 1: see the documentary? It was not a good documentary at all,
17:32
Speaker 1: but it was still really interesting about the amazing Jonathan.
17:37
Speaker 1: I never saw that there. It's it's it's very interesting
17:41
Speaker 1: in that it really kind of explores the amazing Jonathan.
17:44
Speaker 1: But the documentary itself is not not great, and the
17:46
Speaker 1: documentary and even knows it like part of the documentaries
17:49
Speaker 1: him struggling with figuring out how to how to do
17:52
Speaker 1: this right? You know, so kind of something worse than
17:55
Speaker 1: a great documentary subject being made by a C grade commentary.
18:01
Speaker 1: I see, I see, there's a chance that this guy
18:03
Speaker 1: is listening right now, because he looked to me like
18:05
Speaker 1: a stuff you should know listeners. So I'm just gonna say, no,
18:08
Speaker 1: give it a shot. Well, I'm not saying this was
18:10
Speaker 1: a C great filmmaker, but I've seen plenty of C
18:12
Speaker 1: grade documentaries about really great topics, That's all I'm saying.
18:16
Speaker 1: So the milk carton kids, not the folks thinging duo. Uh.
18:19
Speaker 1: This began in Iowa and the miss the disappearance of
18:24
Speaker 1: Johnny Gosh in nineteen eighty two and Eugene Wade martin four,
18:29
Speaker 1: both twelve year olds, both newspaper boys in Des Moines,
18:32
Speaker 1: kind of spurred this campaign. Um, I do love that.
18:35
Speaker 1: Ed dear sweet Ed when he he gave credit to
18:41
Speaker 1: the Anderson Anderson Ericson Dairy in Iowa for starting this
18:46
Speaker 1: in nine eight four, and he said the only source
18:49
Speaker 1: I could find was something called quote Uncle John's Bathroom
18:52
Speaker 1: Weader Reader in quote, it was like, have you ever
18:56
Speaker 1: listened to the podcast before? I just since you going
18:59
Speaker 1: like what something called red is going on here? This
19:05
Speaker 1: is like I'm in bizarro world or something. Well that's
19:08
Speaker 1: good enough for us. Uh, And I think I believe it.
19:11
Speaker 1: I think They were probably the first company to put
19:14
Speaker 1: kids on the side of a milk carton to raise
19:17
Speaker 1: awareness and say, hey, here's a picture of this kid.
19:20
Speaker 1: Here's what they look like, how tall they are, when
19:22
Speaker 1: their birthday is um, you know some things. They might
19:27
Speaker 1: just like little clues how to identify this kid if
19:29
Speaker 1: you see them out clue there's like they're like, put
19:33
Speaker 1: on your pirate hat because X marks the spot and
19:36
Speaker 1: we're gonna go find Johnny Gosh, here are your clues. Well,
19:39
Speaker 1: I mean this was this is the best they could
19:40
Speaker 1: do pre internet. It's like, what's always sitting on the
19:43
Speaker 1: table while you're having your breakfast cereal that you're staring
19:46
Speaker 1: at is that milk carton? And I mean great idea.
19:49
Speaker 1: All of us have read the milk carton out of
19:50
Speaker 1: boredom when you know there's no good cartoons on or
19:53
Speaker 1: something like that. You just kind of read this stuff.
19:55
Speaker 1: So yeah, it made total sense. And from what I understand, yes,
19:58
Speaker 1: Anderson Ericson was the first day to do that. Uh.
20:01
Speaker 1: And it also makes sense that they would be the
20:03
Speaker 1: first one because they were in des Moines and Johnny
20:06
Speaker 1: Gosh and Eugene martin Um were both abducted from Des
20:10
Speaker 1: Moines two years apart, probably by the same person from
20:13
Speaker 1: what I read um and they so like this local
20:17
Speaker 1: dairy doing this is like part of a get out
20:19
Speaker 1: the info campaign makes a lot of sense. I did
20:22
Speaker 1: see that a local grocery store chain was actually the
20:25
Speaker 1: first to print their images and missing like info on
20:29
Speaker 1: their bags, and that Anderson Ericson probably got the idea
20:33
Speaker 1: or somebody got the idea and went to Anderson Ericson
20:36
Speaker 1: and they said sure. The offshot of this, they were
20:38
Speaker 1: the first producers of milk cartons. And a lot of
20:40
Speaker 1: people say, well, it was eating Pats who was the
20:43
Speaker 1: first kid who was on a milk carton, probably on
20:45
Speaker 1: a national level, but on a milk carton. Ever, it
20:49
Speaker 1: was two kids. It was Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin,
20:53
Speaker 1: and both of them were paper boys, abducted from their
20:55
Speaker 1: routes in the early morning. It was just their stories
20:58
Speaker 1: are so sad, man, Yeah, super sad. The milk carton
21:02
Speaker 1: thing picked up again in Chicago and then California, and then,
21:07
Speaker 1: like you said, eventually became a national thing. In the
21:11
Speaker 1: National Child Safety Council, which is a nonprofit, they launched
21:15
Speaker 1: this nationwide campaign and that's where beaten Pats probably comes
21:18
Speaker 1: into play. And then it was on you know a
21:20
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. It was on grocery bags and pizza boxes,
21:24
Speaker 1: and it wasn't around long though, Like I kind of
21:27
Speaker 1: thought it might still be a thing even but I
21:30
Speaker 1: think it only lasted you know, a handful of years.
21:32
Speaker 1: And let in nineties mid nineties, the whole milk carton
21:35
Speaker 1: thing had kind of gone away, gone away, with people saying,
21:39
Speaker 1: you know, it was successful while it lasted, but it
21:41
Speaker 1: just had its run. And then other people, of course,
21:44
Speaker 1: now I look back and say, but was it really
21:46
Speaker 1: successful in that? Did it lead into you finding some
21:50
Speaker 1: of these kids? And I don't necessarily think that is
21:53
Speaker 1: the only measure of success, uh if it's an awareness campaign,
21:57
Speaker 1: but they definitely can't go back and say, well, yeah,
22:00
Speaker 1: look at this list of kids that were found because
22:02
Speaker 1: of the milk carton campaign. And actually there is I
22:05
Speaker 1: saw the number three that there are three named kids
22:08
Speaker 1: who were rescued and found and returned based on milk cartons.
22:13
Speaker 1: But there's only one actual name I can find, and
22:16
Speaker 1: you can find it all over the place. Her name
22:17
Speaker 1: is little Bonnie Lowman. I had in the little her
22:19
Speaker 1: first name is actually Bonnie, not little, and she has
22:24
Speaker 1: one of the most name for a kid, little Bonnie Lowman. Yeah. Um,
22:27
Speaker 1: until you reach in a middle age and you're like,
22:29
Speaker 1: oh my god. Um. So she has one of the
22:33
Speaker 1: most amazing stories you could possibly encounter when it comes
22:36
Speaker 1: to kids on milk cartons, don't you think? Yeah? I
22:40
Speaker 1: mean she was kidnapped by her mom and stepdad and
22:44
Speaker 1: as the story goes, recognized her own image on a
22:47
Speaker 1: milk carton and like kept it, you know, cut it
22:50
Speaker 1: out and kept it on our wall. And I guess
22:53
Speaker 1: a kid's or a friend's parents saw it and called
22:57
Speaker 1: the cops. But is that that's not true though, my friend,
23:01
Speaker 1: I would put a significant amount of money on the
23:04
Speaker 1: fact that Bonnie Lohman is not a real person, that
23:07
Speaker 1: it is the internet legend. Yes, dude, I looked on
23:11
Speaker 1: the New York Times website is search for Bonnie Loman
23:14
Speaker 1: missing milk carton. I even put quotes around Bonnie Loman.
23:18
Speaker 1: Did it on the Washington Post website. I did it
23:20
Speaker 1: on the Denver Post website, and Denver is supposedly where
23:23
Speaker 1: she was found living, abducted by her mom and stepfather. Nothing,
23:27
Speaker 1: Nothing comes up, not even a vague reference. She's an
23:31
Speaker 1: internet legend and we figured it out, we think, until
23:36
Speaker 1: someone writes us and says, no, no no, no, I knew
23:38
Speaker 1: little Bonny Loman, right, And we'd say the Bonnie Loman
23:41
Speaker 1: and say, well, I don't know. Actually it was my
23:43
Speaker 1: cousin's friends co worker who knew Bonny. But no. Another giveaway, Chuck,
23:48
Speaker 1: is that this story is repeated almost verbatim around the Internet.
23:52
Speaker 1: They don't say where she was abducted from and returned
23:55
Speaker 1: to the only the only thing I've seen consistently is
23:58
Speaker 1: that the story itself and then that it happened in Colorado,
24:02
Speaker 1: And then a lot of the sites that carry this
24:04
Speaker 1: story are like Jesus Daley or board game tips dot com,
24:09
Speaker 1: not necessarily the most credible sources for like a um
24:12
Speaker 1: an actual like child abduction case. So I'm I think
24:15
Speaker 1: we may have rooted that one out, all right, So
24:18
Speaker 1: what's going on here is panic? Uh, these milk cartons
24:22
Speaker 1: come out. It's a good campaign, but all that does
24:24
Speaker 1: is sort of reinforced to parents that you know, a
24:28
Speaker 1: stranger is lurking outside your home kind of at all times,
24:30
Speaker 1: just waiting for your kid to be playing on the
24:33
Speaker 1: playground by themselves for just a minute and then they're
24:35
Speaker 1: gonna get snatched. And while this panic is going on,
24:39
Speaker 1: there are people that were sort of ringing the bell
24:41
Speaker 1: for good sense way back in the eighties, even the
24:45
Speaker 1: famous pediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock. Uh, he was quoted in
24:49
Speaker 1: the Washington Post and five is saying children are bombarded
24:53
Speaker 1: by more than photographs. They stand in line at mass
24:55
Speaker 1: fingerprinting sessions and shopping malls and watch cartoon characters on TV,
24:59
Speaker 1: reminding them to be wary of strange adults. Uh. There's
25:03
Speaker 1: a little bit more to the quote, but he was
25:04
Speaker 1: kind of saying, like we're going overboard a little bit here,
25:07
Speaker 1: and we're actually maybe doing harm by raising children in
25:12
Speaker 1: this culture of fear. We did you were you fingerprinted
25:15
Speaker 1: as a child? I was never fingerprinted, but I certainly
25:20
Speaker 1: remember everything else. I mean, I forgot about the Saturday
25:23
Speaker 1: Morning cartoons. It was stuff all over those two. Yeah
25:25
Speaker 1: McGuff remember the crime Dog to teach you how to
25:28
Speaker 1: run away from strangers, And like that's what they would
25:30
Speaker 1: teach you, is like you should scream and yell and
25:33
Speaker 1: kick and run for your life if a stranger ever
25:36
Speaker 1: approached you, Like if they just hit the basic minimum thing.
25:40
Speaker 1: We're like, Okay, strangers approaching you, run as fast as
25:43
Speaker 1: you can for your little life. Um, And it was like,
25:47
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely easy to to to buy into the
25:51
Speaker 1: idea that that culture of fear had real repercussions on
25:55
Speaker 1: us growing up, because I remember I was scared of
25:57
Speaker 1: all this and my dad took me to get fingerprinted.
26:00
Speaker 1: You were yeah. I was like, why are we doing
26:02
Speaker 1: this again? It's like, just in case they find you
26:03
Speaker 1: at their head cut off one day, we can identify
26:05
Speaker 1: I might have been fingerprinted. Something about that really seems
26:08
Speaker 1: familiar to me. Yeah, And I didn't commit a crime
26:11
Speaker 1: now now, not a little chuck. Still to this day,
26:14
Speaker 1: I'll bet uh no, I've never been arrested. That's good.
26:19
Speaker 1: And you know, I realized later that my dad preemptively
26:21
Speaker 1: ratted me out to the cops really well, yeah, by
26:25
Speaker 1: having me fingerprinted. But that was the level of like,
26:29
Speaker 1: my dad took me to a fingerprinting fair for a
26:32
Speaker 1: little kid, so that they had your fingerprints in the
26:35
Speaker 1: system in case something bad happened to you and you
26:37
Speaker 1: turned up, they could identify your body or you even
26:40
Speaker 1: if you've just been abducted, but you knew what was
26:43
Speaker 1: going on, you knew why you were going there, and
26:45
Speaker 1: that that definitely did affect me. And I think a
26:49
Speaker 1: lot of kids our age, Yeah, Ed has a and
26:52
Speaker 1: this is one of those kind of stats that I
26:54
Speaker 1: think is a little dumb. But from the early nineties,
26:57
Speaker 1: there was a study that found that seventy two percent
26:59
Speaker 1: appearance cited abduction is something they worry about. That's just
27:04
Speaker 1: a little weird. I mean, I think every parent that
27:07
Speaker 1: is deep down worried that it could happen. But it's
27:11
Speaker 1: not like I don't know, there's just so many qualifiers there,
27:15
Speaker 1: like how how much did they worry about it? They
27:18
Speaker 1: sounded like it was one of their chief fears, along
27:20
Speaker 1: with like failing their kid, not they're not providing for
27:24
Speaker 1: their kids, like like deep down fears, like a big fear.
27:28
Speaker 1: That's what it sounded like in the abstract I read.
27:30
Speaker 1: I didn't read the whole study, but you know, that's
27:32
Speaker 1: how they don't get A prominent fear would be the
27:35
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for, rather than big fear, because it
27:38
Speaker 1: is the biggest fear. But whether or not you think
27:41
Speaker 1: it's a reality that you really should worry about a
27:44
Speaker 1: lot is a different thing. I don't know. I would
27:46
Speaker 1: bet dollars nuts that they there was a prominent fear
27:50
Speaker 1: in your definition for sure. All right, Uh, it did
27:53
Speaker 1: do some harm, like in actual instances that we can site. Uh,
27:58
Speaker 1: in the boy Scouts they still teach danger of danger.
28:01
Speaker 1: And in two thousand five, a cub Scout um was
28:04
Speaker 1: lost in the woods and actually if they did rescue
28:07
Speaker 1: for a few days because people like there were people
28:11
Speaker 1: there trying to help him, like, hey, are you lost
28:12
Speaker 1: a little boy, and you know, stranger danger would run away.
28:17
Speaker 1: And so in that case, like this kid was trying,
28:20
Speaker 1: you know, people trying to help him out, and he
28:22
Speaker 1: he ran away from him. So that's that's one definite instance. Yeah.
28:26
Speaker 1: And that WAPO article that you mentioned earlier, it was
28:30
Speaker 1: just rattling off. This is eight five. This is like
28:32
Speaker 1: right in the middle of all this when it was
28:35
Speaker 1: kind of rare to question this this mentality, and they
28:38
Speaker 1: were rattling off all these instances of kids just like
28:40
Speaker 1: losing their minds out of fear. Like they mentioned a
28:44
Speaker 1: girl who was got hysterical when it was her time
28:47
Speaker 1: to get off the bus because she lived on a
28:49
Speaker 1: rural road and she was sure that if she walked
28:51
Speaker 1: alone down this rural road, she will be kidnapped. It's
28:53
Speaker 1: just a certainty in her mind. And you know, kids
28:56
Speaker 1: were like anytime they were parents that said high to
28:59
Speaker 1: the little kids, they freaked out, you know, like you
29:02
Speaker 1: just couldn't. You couldn't, you couldn't give any attention to
29:06
Speaker 1: little kids or else they would be really scared. And
29:09
Speaker 1: there's this aspect of the moral panic as far as
29:12
Speaker 1: stranger danger goes, where the dangerous group is not Satanists,
29:17
Speaker 1: you know, it's not um. It's it's not um witches
29:21
Speaker 1: or something like that. It's strangers. And all of us
29:24
Speaker 1: are strangers to somebody else. So that means that everybody
29:28
Speaker 1: is under suspicion of everyone else at some point in time,
29:32
Speaker 1: where a suspicious character to somebody who doesn't know us,
29:35
Speaker 1: and possibly a kid, and then that alters how you
29:39
Speaker 1: act around kids, and that that has had, over the
29:42
Speaker 1: years an impact of how adults deal with kids, and
29:46
Speaker 1: it's removed us from that. It takes a village to
29:49
Speaker 1: raise a child kind of community where it's like that's
29:52
Speaker 1: your kid, I'm not going anywhere near them. I don't
29:54
Speaker 1: even want to look at them because I don't want
29:56
Speaker 1: somebody to think I'm trying to kidnap them or something.
29:58
Speaker 1: And that has had a real impact on how adults
30:01
Speaker 1: deal with kids, and that is surely having an impact
30:04
Speaker 1: on how children develop in a community in society. Yeah,
30:09
Speaker 1: didn't you find a thing where it said that men
30:12
Speaker 1: and these are these days men are more reticent to
30:16
Speaker 1: like help out a child because of that fear. Yeah,
30:18
Speaker 1: something like sixty seven or seventy said they would not
30:21
Speaker 1: help a kid who was who needed help. They would
30:24
Speaker 1: like so much smaller percent, but basically most of them said,
30:27
Speaker 1: I just keep walking because I'd be so worried that
30:29
Speaker 1: that people were wondering why I was approaching a little kid.
30:33
Speaker 1: And then a smaller proportion said that they would go
30:36
Speaker 1: find a woman to help, or maybe the cops or
30:40
Speaker 1: something like that, but they would not step in and
30:42
Speaker 1: fulfill their normal social roles an adults helping a kid
30:46
Speaker 1: in need, and that that's just that was a UK survey,
30:50
Speaker 1: I think, But that's um, you know, that definitely applies
30:52
Speaker 1: over here as well too. I didn't know it's the
30:54
Speaker 1: UK should told me that this. Did the studies say,
30:58
Speaker 1: you know, are men on the way to the pub
31:00
Speaker 1: survey and said little humor there trying to light the move.
31:06
Speaker 1: I liked it. It worked. It also made me want
31:08
Speaker 1: a nice draft beer. Oh boy. I went to this
31:11
Speaker 1: great pub in Manchester when we did that show. That
31:14
Speaker 1: was just that was one of my great days in England.
31:16
Speaker 1: It was so awesome. That place was on a probably
31:19
Speaker 1: a one ft slant that floor. It was so old.
31:23
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I actually found a Topas place in Manchester
31:26
Speaker 1: because remember we were there for like a couple of
31:28
Speaker 1: days and I ate there probably like three or four
31:31
Speaker 1: or five times. It was so good. But I was
31:34
Speaker 1: aware that I was eating at a Topas place in Manchester.
31:37
Speaker 1: I finally hit a pub in No I did I.
31:40
Speaker 1: I hit one in Manchester to kind of buy the venue. Yeah.
31:43
Speaker 1: They're pretty neat, little little places, aren't they. It's a
31:45
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, you gotta get back there. Uh. So.
31:48
Speaker 1: There's something called the children's independent or called children's independent mobility,
31:53
Speaker 1: and it's a measurement of how free your kid is
31:58
Speaker 1: to move about your neighborhood and to explore or things
32:00
Speaker 1: without supervision, Like sure, walked down to the playground or
32:04
Speaker 1: walked down to your friend's house. That kind of thing.
32:06
Speaker 1: And a higher see I am is a really good
32:10
Speaker 1: thing that correlates with psychological development, with analytical skills, with
32:15
Speaker 1: motor skills. It gives the kid um just sort of
32:19
Speaker 1: more um confidence and knowledge about their community. And get this,
32:24
Speaker 1: it gives it makes kids more aware of true dangers
32:29
Speaker 1: than if you're constantly watching them instead of stranger danger.
32:33
Speaker 1: It makes kids more aware of like a real danger
32:36
Speaker 1: that might be out there, like they have they have
32:38
Speaker 1: done studies and figured this out right. So we talked
32:42
Speaker 1: a lot about that in our Free Range Children episode.
32:45
Speaker 1: I don't know if you talked specifically about that that measure,
32:48
Speaker 1: but um, I mean, we definitely found that that. Yes,
32:52
Speaker 1: your your kid is just more well rounded and developed
32:54
Speaker 1: if they're allowed to explore the world on their own terms.
32:57
Speaker 1: You know, within reason. Nobody's saying like let your kid
33:00
Speaker 1: play with flaming knives or anything like that, but we
33:04
Speaker 1: really exactly also known as the swing set um, but
33:09
Speaker 1: the the you know, there's a there's a pendulum that
33:12
Speaker 1: swings between things like that, and it has swung way
33:15
Speaker 1: too far in the other way. If if you guys
33:17
Speaker 1: will just allow me to get up on my soapbox
33:19
Speaker 1: for a second, please do it. Okay, I just got
33:24
Speaker 1: one toe up and then came back. All right, well
33:26
Speaker 1: you're off your soapbox. Let's take our final break. We'll
33:29
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the criticism of stranger
33:31
Speaker 1: danger and sort of some of the best practices these
33:34
Speaker 1: days right after this, you know, stump, No, you know, stump. Alright,
34:13
Speaker 1: So we mentioned earlier news stories, uh, as far as
34:17
Speaker 1: child abductions covering cute, little white kids, and that's kind
34:21
Speaker 1: of always been the case. And that's one of the
34:22
Speaker 1: biggest criticisms of media coverage, uh, is it's very much
34:27
Speaker 1: disproportionately covers white children in those cases and ignores cases
34:33
Speaker 1: of people of color. Um. There's an organization called Black
34:37
Speaker 1: and Missing because of this, and they report that thirty
34:40
Speaker 1: seven percent of missing kids just a few years ago
34:44
Speaker 1: were people of color, which is a much higher percentage
34:47
Speaker 1: proportionately than the overall population. But you're not hearing about
34:52
Speaker 1: this stuff in the news like you would if it
34:54
Speaker 1: was you know, the pageant queen, right exactly. It's just
34:58
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just that kind of gets it across
35:01
Speaker 1: pretty pretty clearly. Yeah, So what we're not saying is
35:05
Speaker 1: that there is no risk to your kid being abducted
35:08
Speaker 1: by a stranger. It it obviously happens, because we do
35:12
Speaker 1: see it on the news, um and and it is
35:16
Speaker 1: every parent's worse nightmare. And I think that's probably why
35:19
Speaker 1: it's always been such a thing. It's because it's the
35:22
Speaker 1: it's the worst thing you can imagine happening, because not
35:25
Speaker 1: only has that happened, and that that is horrific in
35:29
Speaker 1: its own right, but that also means that you have
35:31
Speaker 1: failed to do your number one job is to protect
35:34
Speaker 1: your kid at all costs. Yeah, man, I can't. I
35:37
Speaker 1: just it's astounding that people can go on from that,
35:41
Speaker 1: they can manage to keep living. You know, I don't
35:44
Speaker 1: get it at all, but it's one of the things
35:47
Speaker 1: that they do though, and I think one of the
35:48
Speaker 1: things that gives them purpose in life from that point
35:51
Speaker 1: on is a lot of parents, especially some of the
35:53
Speaker 1: early more prominent national cases like Eating pats as parents,
35:58
Speaker 1: the Walshes, Adam Walsh his parents, and Johnny Gash's parents,
36:02
Speaker 1: they all threw themselves into like lobbying for social reform,
36:06
Speaker 1: and their their lobbying efforts did lead to things like
36:10
Speaker 1: the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to be developed
36:14
Speaker 1: and um National Missing Kids Day to start to be
36:17
Speaker 1: recognized on May which is the anniversary of John of
36:20
Speaker 1: Eaton Path's disappearance, and UM, the Walsh's I think set
36:23
Speaker 1: up the Adam Walsh Foundation four days after Adam Walsh's funeral,
36:28
Speaker 1: like and then John Walsh all is very famous for
36:30
Speaker 1: doing that, UM America's most wanted thing, and like has
36:34
Speaker 1: has like legitimately dedicated himself to like stopping this, and
36:38
Speaker 1: so has UM a lot of other parents. So I
36:40
Speaker 1: think that's one way that they've they've put their their
36:43
Speaker 1: time and effort and energy into this, imported into doing
36:46
Speaker 1: what they can to to make it so that other
36:49
Speaker 1: parents don't go through this. Yeah, they're there been quite
36:53
Speaker 1: a few of those. Jacob Wetterling Act that created the
36:58
Speaker 1: the Sex Offender Registry, and interestingly, his mother eventually on
37:04
Speaker 1: a podcast said she she expressed regret about these registries
37:09
Speaker 1: that were expanded. UM she felt like overly expanded and
37:15
Speaker 1: endlessly punitive basically and saying like you're on this list
37:18
Speaker 1: forever and you're never allowed to reintegrate into society. And
37:23
Speaker 1: is that fair? Especially when they've expanded those registries to
37:27
Speaker 1: include things like if you got caught urinating in public,
37:31
Speaker 1: you are registered sex offender, which is really interesting. I've
37:37
Speaker 1: I've never been caught, but boy, I've been in public
37:39
Speaker 1: plenty of times. I've got a little bladder and sometimes
37:42
Speaker 1: I just gotta go. But that happens, and and um,
37:45
Speaker 1: apparently again, especially the one where you're having like, um,
37:48
Speaker 1: consensual sex as a teenager and like, depending on your state,
37:51
Speaker 1: so you're seventeen and the girls sixteen, you can you
37:54
Speaker 1: may if you're caught, if the parents prosecute you, um,
37:58
Speaker 1: you may be on the sex offender registry for the
38:00
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And apparently that happens just proportionately
38:04
Speaker 1: two kids of color. So the whole thing is like, like,
38:07
Speaker 1: the sex offender registry is not in and of itself
38:10
Speaker 1: a bad thing, Like it's meant to be a tool
38:12
Speaker 1: to warn communities, like, hey, there's somebody who has perpetrated
38:17
Speaker 1: and more in many cases a crime against a child,
38:19
Speaker 1: and you should know that that they live at this apartment.
38:23
Speaker 1: But it's not just a cut and dried issue. People
38:26
Speaker 1: can be categorized unfairly, get caught up in that dragnet.
38:29
Speaker 1: The categories can be far too expanded. And then yeah, like, um,
38:33
Speaker 1: Jacob's mom was saying there's no redemption there. In fact,
38:38
Speaker 1: like there's only like in most towns because you can't
38:41
Speaker 1: live within X number of feet from a bus stop
38:44
Speaker 1: or a school or a plate or a park. There's
38:47
Speaker 1: like very small pockets where a sex offender can legally live.
38:51
Speaker 1: And that means that you've got like these little sex offenders. Yeah,
38:56
Speaker 1: of sex offenders who are on the sex registry list,
38:59
Speaker 1: and they become shunned and outcasts, and a lot of
39:01
Speaker 1: them get run out of town or run to go
39:04
Speaker 1: live homeless under overpasses and that kind of thing. So, um,
39:07
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tinkering that could be done to
39:09
Speaker 1: make it more just if. That's kind of where where
39:12
Speaker 1: our minds are. But I think when it comes to
39:14
Speaker 1: sexual abuse of children, that's justice isn't necessary. Justice for
39:19
Speaker 1: the perpetrator isn't isn't where America's mind is typically, you know,
39:23
Speaker 1: I mean Jerry Seinfeld is a registered sex offender. On
39:26
Speaker 1: his TV show for What what did he do? Pet
39:29
Speaker 1: in the barking deck and got caught? I don't remember,
39:33
Speaker 1: is there right? Yeah? When they couldn't find their car
39:35
Speaker 1: and they're all split up and looking for their car
39:39
Speaker 1: and got caught someone else might have to George might
39:42
Speaker 1: have pee, but yeah, technically ter sex offender. So like,
39:49
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good example of how it could
39:51
Speaker 1: be made better. But the the point of the upshot
39:54
Speaker 1: of the whole thing is that there is there is
39:56
Speaker 1: a need and a desire to protect kids, and that's
39:59
Speaker 1: great and we should be be putting our efforts towards that.
40:02
Speaker 1: But we can figure out how to direct it more, yes,
40:05
Speaker 1: more smartly, I guess, and in doing so help kids
40:09
Speaker 1: more effectively. You know. Yeah. In the UK is a
40:13
Speaker 1: good example, they have a campaign um instead of like
40:16
Speaker 1: a stranger danger, it's called clever Never Goes, which it
40:20
Speaker 1: doesn't jump off the page is self explanatory at first
40:24
Speaker 1: as an American, but the point of it is is like,
40:28
Speaker 1: not every adult is waiting to kidnap. You go to
40:31
Speaker 1: someone with a uniform or a badge, even if that's
40:34
Speaker 1: like a store clerk or you know, a nurse. It
40:38
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a cop walk in the beat.
40:40
Speaker 1: If you feel like you're in trouble or something like that,
40:43
Speaker 1: you can approach responsible adults. And the idea clever never
40:48
Speaker 1: goes is in you know, never go anywhere with a
40:50
Speaker 1: stranger because that's how they operate, which is, hey, get
40:54
Speaker 1: in my car because I have a cool cartoon playing
40:57
Speaker 1: at my house, that kind of thing like never ever
41:00
Speaker 1: go somewhere with a stranger, clever, never goes. And speaking
41:03
Speaker 1: of the UK, I saw something Chuck that I thought
41:05
Speaker 1: was a little um surprising. So they had they used
41:07
Speaker 1: to have this cartoon p s A for kids called
41:10
Speaker 1: Charlie says, and this this cat would keep his little
41:14
Speaker 1: human friend out of danger by like going ballistic when
41:17
Speaker 1: the kid did something dangerous. And um, there was a
41:21
Speaker 1: n p s A about stranger danger, about not going
41:25
Speaker 1: with strangers. So this is yeah, almost a full decade
41:28
Speaker 1: before the US was even tuned into this stuff, that
41:30
Speaker 1: UK were already scaring their kids. Good for them. Yeah,
41:35
Speaker 1: I think we got to talk about the Amber alert
41:37
Speaker 1: because this is sort of the smarter version of the
41:39
Speaker 1: milk cart and kid and it actually works. This is
41:42
Speaker 1: name for the very said case of Amber Haggerman, who
41:46
Speaker 1: was kidnapped and killed. The N and Amber Alerts started
41:51
Speaker 1: going out to initially to nearby radio stations and now
41:55
Speaker 1: thanks to the A and S the Alert notification system,
41:58
Speaker 1: you're gonna get that on your phone you might get
42:00
Speaker 1: that on your weather radio. You might get that if
42:02
Speaker 1: you're driving down the highway. That's a big one. These
42:05
Speaker 1: you know, sort of electronic highway signs, those are huge
42:10
Speaker 1: because they can actually say, you know, there is a
42:13
Speaker 1: a brown forward tourist with this license plate somewhere on
42:17
Speaker 1: this road within the last hour. And I believe they
42:21
Speaker 1: have caught close to a thousand or or recovered close
42:24
Speaker 1: to a thousand kids thanks to the Amber Alert system.
42:28
Speaker 1: So it's pretty effective. And those electronic billboards that they
42:30
Speaker 1: have on highways can now flash like their picture too,
42:34
Speaker 1: is along with the other stuff. And supposedly from people
42:37
Speaker 1: who are in that industry of recovering children who are
42:39
Speaker 1: missing or abducted, say that the number one, far and
42:44
Speaker 1: away best way to recover kids safely is to get
42:47
Speaker 1: their picture out far and wide immediately after they go missing.
42:52
Speaker 1: U And that was a big that's now kind of
42:54
Speaker 1: a big retroactive criticism of the milk cartons is that,
42:57
Speaker 1: you know, um, they're circulating these kids pictures often years
43:02
Speaker 1: after the abduction, and they probably don't look anything like
43:05
Speaker 1: those pictures anymore, and like the trail has gone cold,
43:07
Speaker 1: and um, the idea that that doesn't mean that pictures
43:11
Speaker 1: don't work. It's just the timing of the pictures. Is
43:13
Speaker 1: is um a paramount? Yeah? I mean, man, nothing is
43:18
Speaker 1: more sad than when you read a story of the
43:21
Speaker 1: kids that never there's never closure and the parents just
43:25
Speaker 1: never know what happened. Never a body, never confession. It's
43:28
Speaker 1: just my my kid disappeared thirty seven years ago and
43:32
Speaker 1: we don't know anything. It's just man, it's hard to
43:36
Speaker 1: even read those stories. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of
43:39
Speaker 1: anything much sadder than that. Man. Um. I do have
43:42
Speaker 1: one other thing too. I saw also in addition to
43:44
Speaker 1: that clever never goes that people are teaching their kids now, Um,
43:48
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of focusing more on how like what abuses, like,
43:53
Speaker 1: like what sexual abuse is like, so inappropriate touching their
43:56
Speaker 1: teaching kids that like they're in charge of their own
43:58
Speaker 1: bodies and they don't have to let some Yeah, makes
44:03
Speaker 1: total sense because it's more laser focused, um in the
44:06
Speaker 1: actual the actual danger that kids can face, which is
44:10
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, because apparently we do have an enormous sexual
44:13
Speaker 1: abuse problem. The problem is is we've been looking at
44:16
Speaker 1: strangers and ignoring the fact that it's almost always a
44:19
Speaker 1: family member or somebody that the kid knows. So if
44:22
Speaker 1: you can teach the kid what sexual abuses like and
44:24
Speaker 1: how to look out for and what to do if
44:26
Speaker 1: somebody makes advances on them, then they can trust strangers
44:29
Speaker 1: because they can they can trust people in general. They
44:34
Speaker 1: can just know that that can come from anywhere and
44:35
Speaker 1: if it happens, this is what you do. So I
44:38
Speaker 1: can imagine kids learning that today will turn out a
44:41
Speaker 1: lot better than a lot, a lot less messed up
44:43
Speaker 1: than you and I in our generation. Den we're so broken. Yeah,
44:47
Speaker 1: and the and the body autonomy is not just for uh,
44:52
Speaker 1: you know, it's obviously great for that, but it's kind
44:54
Speaker 1: of for everything. It's about with other kids, like you know,
44:57
Speaker 1: they don't want to be pushed that way or played
44:59
Speaker 1: with that way. It's like it's their body. You gotta
45:01
Speaker 1: you gotta ask them for permission to to do whatever
45:04
Speaker 1: you want to their body. And kids, you know, my daughter,
45:07
Speaker 1: from the time she was in preschool, they were teaching
45:10
Speaker 1: them that. And she'll tell me when she doesn't want
45:13
Speaker 1: me doing something, she'll say, no, Daddy, my body, and
45:15
Speaker 1: I'll say, you got it. That's great. Yeah, that was
45:17
Speaker 1: something I saw was like, you really have to back
45:19
Speaker 1: them up. So like as comes over and wants to
45:20
Speaker 1: plan a big wet kiss on their right and they
45:23
Speaker 1: don't want it. Yeah, you have to listen to them. Yeah,
45:27
Speaker 1: or else what is it worth? You know what you
45:29
Speaker 1: taught him? So so way to go parents of today.
45:33
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys are figuring it out. Um and uh,
45:37
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we could lead by example, right Chuck
45:39
Speaker 1: our generation. That's right. If you want to know more
45:44
Speaker 1: about stranger danger, there's a lot of it on the internet.
45:47
Speaker 1: Just be careful to verify what you're reading and where
45:50
Speaker 1: it's coming from. Uh. And since I said that, of
45:52
Speaker 1: course the s Y s K one of our mottoes.
45:55
Speaker 1: That means it's time for listener mail anything. All this
46:00
Speaker 1: love from an Army vet. Hey, guys, want to thank
46:03
Speaker 1: you both for being such a valuable new addition to
46:05
Speaker 1: my routine. I'm currently going through particularly nasty divorce and
46:09
Speaker 1: have lost my career in the process. Have been a
46:11
Speaker 1: paratrooper and a medic in the Army for about six years,
46:14
Speaker 1: but now I must find a new path while bearing
46:16
Speaker 1: this incredible loss. Because of this, I've had to travel
46:19
Speaker 1: back home to live while I get back on my
46:22
Speaker 1: own two feet. I used to listen to your podcast
46:24
Speaker 1: in the Army during field ops, and began listening during
46:27
Speaker 1: the cross country drive from Colorado back to the Midwest.
46:31
Speaker 1: Now that I'm home, I still find myself listening to
46:33
Speaker 1: at least one show a day. Sometimes I find myself
46:35
Speaker 1: adopting a pessimistic view of humanity, and it's been very
46:38
Speaker 1: therapeutic to know that such kind hearted people still exist
46:40
Speaker 1: in the world. Your podcast has not only grounded me
46:44
Speaker 1: and ignited my fire for curiosity again, but it's also
46:47
Speaker 1: refreshing to hear from two people understand the unending beauty
46:50
Speaker 1: of the world. Hummingbirds, anyone. I just want to say
46:54
Speaker 1: thank you for your for the enormous presence you have
46:56
Speaker 1: been keeping in my life, making it fun and beautiful.
46:59
Speaker 1: Never underestimate to buy what you do. Uh ps. Is
47:03
Speaker 1: there ever been a consensus on how to measure standing
47:05
Speaker 1: water in your lawn? Nope? Okay, and chuck b s
47:10
Speaker 1: p p S. I also love tiny things. We used
47:13
Speaker 1: to get tiny, little one inch Tabasco bottles in our
47:16
Speaker 1: m ris in the Army, and everybody complays, but there's
47:19
Speaker 1: something about and they still pack a punch, just a
47:21
Speaker 1: little bit of it. Sure, I'm gonna keep this anonymous
47:25
Speaker 1: because I didn't hear back from the persons. Okay, good,
47:27
Speaker 1: thank you, Mr Anonymous, Army back. That was an all
47:30
Speaker 1: time great email. Thank you Anonymous. That was really really moving.
47:33
Speaker 1: I'm glad we can be doing something to help you
47:35
Speaker 1: keep going during this time and keep your chin up.
47:38
Speaker 1: Everything gets better, right, Chuck, that's right. Just stay away
47:41
Speaker 1: from the strangers, all right, Claire never goes. If you
47:46
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with me and Chuck uh
47:49
Speaker 1: and Jerry, your Frank the chair anybody guest producer Dave Real,
47:53
Speaker 1: producer Dave God who knows you can get in touch
47:57
Speaker 1: with us by saying it's an email at stuff podcast
48:00
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
48:05
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
48:08
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
48:11
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H