Stuff You Should Know - How Human Trafficking Works

Episode Date: January 24, 2012

Despite worldwide prohibitions, slavery still exists. Slaves are forced or coerced into prostitution or made to work in deplorable factory conditions. Yet there's still debate over how widespread the problem is. Learn about modern slavery in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. The cross for me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know.

Not Bush League. No, we've been doing this way too long. Not Bush League. We're pioneers, man. Are we? Probably. We're like riding the coattails of Adam Curry. That's right. Long, supple, velvety coattails of Adam Curry. Yeah. I'm happy to be on them. Sure. He's great, man. I'm not making fun of him at all. Oh, I know. Of course. Well, don't make it sound like I am.

You're not one of those guys who just says something like, I'm cool to be ironic and have it be cool. No, and I'm glad you brought that up because I posted a Kenny G song on our Facebook page, and I wasn't trying to be ironic. I wasn't trying to be cool. It's a good song. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Like when you go see Dolly Parton, it's not to be ironic. It's because you like Dolly Parton. Exactly. All right. Thank you.

I just want to clear that up. Same goes for Ronnie Millsap, by the way. Oh, he's class act. Yeah. One of mine and Yumi's friends, Adam, was like, who's that cat that you listen to who's always wearing the sunglasses? His country? And Yumi was like, Ronnie Millsap? He's like, yeah. I was like, he's blind, man. That's why he's always wearing the sunglasses.

Adam Adam? Adam Adam, yeah. Who is engaged? Yeah. Congratulations to him. Yes. Congratulations to Adam and Serena. So, Chuck, what have you been trafficking? We might as well have gotten the light stuff out of the way, because this will be another Joke Free podcast.

This is a, I don't know about Joke Free. We don't pull off Joke Free very well, but we, this is heavy. It's one of our heavier ones. It's up there with like homelessness. Sure. And, um... And opt requested. Yeah, this one's been asked for a lot. We're finally doing it.

Yes. And human trafficking is not to be confused with the movie about raves from the 90s called Human Traffic. It has absolutely nothing to do with one another. Human trafficking is basically another term for modern slavery. Yeah. And apparently, I want to bust out an unquantified stat. That's my forte.

Yes. There are supposedly more slaves in the world right now than there ever have been. That is true. I looked that up just to be sure. And I did not get a number, but they said there are more. Well, I think they said more than 12 million is what the UN says. The State Department said, uh, in 2010. Yeah. And their report on human trafficking, they cited something like 17, 12.3.

12.3, yeah. So the U.S. and the U.N., I guess, are using the same number. Looks like it. That's a lot of slaves. And sad, very sad. So, okay, we, I think everybody has a pretty good understanding of how West Africa became the slave capital of the world and from about what, the 16th to the 19th century. Okay.

I think into the 20th century, they commonly cited because I think some of Southern Europe was still using slaves after the U.S. issued the Emancipation Proclamation. All right. And, but, you know, here in the U.S., it's like, well, that must have ended slavery everywhere because it was. Right. Issued by the U.S. Sure.

Not so. But we understand West African slavery. You know, it's been studied. We, we, we've discussed it before. Modern slavery takes a, it's just as insidious, but it takes different kinds of forms. Right. Yes. It's not just, you know, being captured and then transported to work on a, a farm or a

plantation, although that still happens. Right. And it doesn't necessarily mean even being transported across any sort of a border. A lot of U.S. human slaves or human trafficked peoples are Americans. Yeah. You want to paint a story, a story in the intro? I thought this was pretty good illustration. Yeah.

This was written by Molly, our old friend from Sminty, who has gone on to, I hope, Greener Pastures. Yes. She's at MREU. So, Molly wrote this and it's a good one. And she just, she gives a little story here at the beginning on how this might work. Eastern European country, a woman might see a billboard that says, hey, come to Paris or New York City to work as a waitress.

She doesn't make much money. She doesn't have a lot going on. Plus it's New York and Paris. Yeah. Exactly. Let me go, promises of something richer in another land. So she calls this number. She's told, hey, for just like three grand, which we may even front you,

you can pay it back when you get here. Right. We'll bring you over and you can get this great job and start a new fantastic life. Once she gets here, however, she's not taken to a restaurant, but she may be taken to like a brothel, let's say. Right. A lot of times women and young girls are, it's sex trafficking as opposed to labor trafficking. Yes.

We should point out. Actually, the FBI says, I think the majority of girls and women are from Central America and Asia, and most boys and men are forced into labor. But an increasing number of boys and men are working in the commercial sex industry. Oh, yeah. Molly kind of made it sound like I think she's the pronoun. She almost exclusively when she talked about sex trafficking, but there are plenty of men and boys in that too.

Yeah. So anyway, she comes over, she's forced to work in a brothel as a prostitute or in porn or some other kind of sex industry. And basically is either blackmailed or coerced or beaten or drugged or all of the above. Never is paid back. Or I'm sorry, she's never working off the money. Right. Basically, she's just there forever.

And also, even if she is working off the money, she may also be charged room and board in the brothel, which is probably about the biggest insult you could ever lay on somebody. Hey, we kidnapped you and forced you into prostitution and we're charging you for this room that we're making you perform sex acts. And the prices just go up and up on the room and board. So you're really not paying down your loan to get over here. And we have your passport. So good luck getting back anywhere.

Right. She may also be funneled, I guess, into labor trafficking. There's two kinds of human trafficking. There's sex trafficking and labor trafficking. And obviously sex trafficking gets the most headlines because, you know, the idea of sex slaves is just mind boggling. Sure. Labor trafficking is far more prevalent, though.

Yeah. Somebody who, you know, entered the same situation may end up in a restaurant in Paris or New York. But as like a line cook who's not really getting paid, apparently the restaurant industry is rife with human trafficking as well. Atlanta is. Did you know that? No, I didn't.

Atlanta is one of the most major hubs in the United States for human trafficking. Did you get an idea of why? I don't know why, but I know that Grady Hospital here in town has recently stepped up efforts to recognize victims when they come in as patients. Because one of the biggest issues Molly points out is recognizing them, even though they're in plain view. Yeah. Like we have probably come into contact with somebody at some point in Atlanta.

Whether it was, you know, the bus boy or the, you know, the quote unquote migrant worker you see working on a farm. Are you trying to tell me that you're being trafficked right now? No. Blink once. Jerry has a gun to my head. Right. We'll get into the problems of why this isn't just an obvious problem.

But let's talk a little more about the two different types of trafficking. You talked about sex trafficking, which can be very lucrative for the trafficker. Sure. The trafficky or the trafficked is not making any money whatsoever, is being fed whatever is a slave. The trafficker, Molly used Bulgaria as an example. Yeah. In Bulgaria, the average annual salary is about $2,600 U.S.

in a year, that same year, a sex slave can make about $23,500 for a trafficker. Wow. Yeah. Also, if you're diverted over to labor trafficking, you may end up, like we said, in a restaurant, a mine. Agriculture is a big one. Yeah. Matter of fact, there's this group called sweatfree.org.

And a lot of the anti-sweat shop groups, pro-union groups, and anti-human trafficking groups, all form this Venn diagram in the middle that has to do with sweat labor, forced labor. Right. And there's this group called sweatfree.org. And if you ever want to shop with somebody, a company that you know doesn't use sweat labor, so you can't possibly be using by buying a product that is made up of forced labor, you can look up their shopping guide. But they also release a Hall of Shame every year.

And their 2010 Hall of Shame shamed LL Bean, Jimberry, and Haynes for using Uzbek cotton. And apparently, the Uzbekistan government mandates that children as young as seven have to be forced to harvest the cotton in the fall rather than go to school. And a lot of these kids are shuffled off to remote areas away from their homes. That's human trafficking that's government mandated. You know what really shocked me is that sometimes these people are sold to wealthy individuals. Yeah, this one was awful. Who actually just use them as housemaids and housekeepers and cooks.

And I would quote unquote respectable people. That's probably where sex trafficking and labor trafficking like collide. You think? Yeah, I'm sure. Depending on the house you end up in. But yes, I'm sure. Did you see Taken, the leading movie? I did.

Obviously, I'm sure that happens. But in that movie, it was very high end operation going on. It was. But where the girl ended up was like a mine camp or something like that. Remember like the place like there was just ropes with like sheets hanging over that made this one room into smaller rooms or whatever. But Liam Neeson had a very particular set of skills, luckily. He's able to rescue his daughter.

Yeah. When did he become an action hero? Uh, what was the first one? Was it the clone war one? Maybe. Attack of the clones. But I agree. Like all of a sudden, Liam Neeson.

Well, Dark Man many years ago, he was a. Oh, yeah. But that didn't like launch him into action movie guy. But now, yeah, he's a, he's a A1 butt kicker at this point. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. I like that movie actually Taken.

Yeah, it was pretty good. Pretty enjoyable. It was just I couldn't get past the fact that we were watching Liam Neeson do this stuff. Give me Daniel Craig. I can, I can believe him. All right. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts on the podcast. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, let's get back to it, shall we? Uh, we, we, and obviously if you're a sex slave, aside from just the trauma of being forced to perform sex acts like a dozen times a day on strangers,

uh, they're obviously at risk for STDs, uh, violence from their johns or pimps, uh, pregnancy, forced abortions, sterilization, forced sterilization, all like a host of awful things. Yeah. Which all add up to immense emotional trauma. And if you are in a labor slave, you are basically facing probably the worst, um, labor conditions. Yeah. That the person can come up with. You're, you're not protected at all because you're not going to stand up and say anything.

And why, Chuck? Why would somebody endure this kind of life quietly? Because it's a big, there's a big discussion about how many slaves, how many trafficked people there are in the world. Um, because we, we really don't know. And a lot of people think that they're hiding in plain sight. Why? Well, because, uh, they could be drugged.

Like a lot of times in the sex industry, I read cases in like Oregon and Seattle, where they were, they would get them addicted to crack cocaine. Yeah. Um, remember in the homelessness podcast, we talked about that Florida labor camp that had a little company store. Oh yeah. Crack. Yeah.

Yeah. And like these, these homeless people were in living lives of basically indentured servitude. Right. Uh, black male might be another one like, Hey, look, we've got these pictures of you now. We're going to send them to your family. Yeah. And that particularly insidious.

Forcing a woman into prostitution, taking pictures and then using those pictures to blackmail her. Yeah. That's crazy. And Molly points out a lot of times they may be from a country where, I mean, it's never like that's a great thing for your family, but they may be from a country where it's, you know, all of a sudden the family is, you know, outcast from their village. Right.

And like great shame is brought upon their family name and they don't want that. Or like we said, they may not have, if they had travel documents to begin with, they snatched those, they may not speak the language. So what are you going to do? Plus also you've got the threat of violence almost always or actual violence. So yeah, there's three, three terms that basically legal definitions almost always used to describe human trafficking and how it's carried out. That's force, fraud and coercion and forces the, like you said, drugs, the use of drugs.

Well, maybe they're kidnapped outright. Right. Sleep deprivation, food deprivation, physical abuse, rape. And then even having guards guard you. Right. I guess that that intimidates, but it also implies the threat of violence as well. So that's force. There's coercion.

Yeah, we kind of already covered fraud, which was getting someone here under false pretense. Right. But I think probably a lot, one of the ways you talked about the billboard, right? And the girl calls herself. There's also a lot of human traffickers that will go to poor families and be like, Hey, you love your kid, right? This is the worst. We can get your kid over to America where they're going to get an education.

And there's like this, there's people over there that like sponsor kids and like your kid can go live with them. Family's really nice. Your kid will be educated. Come back and take care of you in your older years. Don't you want your kid to do that? We'll take them for free. Right.

The family doesn't realize that that once they find out that this is all fraudulent, they already agreed to letting their, their, the person take their kid. They don't realize that under any law, it's, that's invalid immediately because it was, yeah, that agreement was reached under fraud or deception. Well, and they're probably not anywhere where they can legitimately get in touch with them. Anyway, I doubt if they do that, then give them like the real address while they'd be staying. Or cell phone. Just call me.

Exactly. So that basically the kid is not technically kidnapped, but virtually kidnapped. Yeah. And yeah, coercion was also blackmail. Yeah. I get the idea too that a lot of this, these threats are empty threats, but the traffic E doesn't understand that. Like I doubt, a lot of times I doubt if they would take the time to send their family a photo

in their village back home, it's just an empty threat that, that, you know, they don't know that they're not going to follow through on it. Right. Or they might follow through on it. Yeah. Um, because of all of these things though, coercion, physical abuse, drugs, shame, guilt, like all this stuff comes together, like you said, to form some like serious emotional and psychological problems for the person who's been kidnapped and forced into this life and is held

in this life. They got like no power. Right. And they were probably not very empowered to begin with or they wouldn't have been coerced into that kind of situation. Right. Well, that's, that's a big debate that's going on. It's like, how can you ever eradicate human trafficking if you don't first eradicate poverty?

Poverty. Yeah. That's so, I mean, that's a big question too. Which will probably never happen. But so you have these people, you have just people who are, um, not in a great state. And when we encounter them, normals, people who are not being, uh, enslaved encounter them, we might just look right past a lot of really obvious signs because number one, they're keeping their mouth shut, which is probably the biggest problem of all.

Yeah. Um, but number two, we may also see them a victim as a criminal because they're involved in criminal acts, wouldn't really dawn on us to think, well, wait a minute, maybe they're being forced into these criminal acts. Well, Amalia's examples were great. Like you see the teenage girl on the street that's obviously, you know, a prostitute and you may turn your nose up and say, I mean, I, you know, look at that girl, she's trouble or look at that migrant worker in the field.

You know, I bet he's an illegal, shouldn't even be in this country working. You might be looking at victims instead of criminals. Right. Um, and not just society at large, but apparently law enforcement is not very well trained to recognize, um, the human traffic. That is true. I went to the FBI site and they said that's one of the biggest things that they're working on is educating local law enforcement officers.

Like when they bust a prostitution ring, don't just throw them all in jail, like investigate it on a case by case basis. Right. So you've got, um, victims who are too scared to talk. You have, um, society that, uh, it's society in law enforcement that immediately deems them criminals. So you have this idea that there's a really big problem out there, but no real idea of exactly how big it is.

Yeah. Right. So here's where the numbers kind of come in. Like we said, the U S and the UN say that there's about 12.3 million adults and children worldwide, right? In around the world. Yeah. But the problem is, is that in 2009, there were only, um, like 4,300, 4,166 successful

trafficking prosecutions, prosecutions. Yeah. I went to the FBI site and they have, they started the human smuggling trafficking center in 2004. Yeah. And they were touting. I'm not saying they're not doing a good job, but they were touting in 2004. They had 86 investigations going on and they doubled that by 2009 to 167.

That's 167 investigations. If you've got what they say, about like 15,000 in the U S alone. Well, that's another number that's hotly contested. So in 1999, apparently Congress heard that there was 50,000 slaves that were brought into the U S every year. And apparently that came from CIA estimates. Right. Um, that really kind of got the charge going against human trafficking.

Like that number is just incredible, right? Yeah. Especially just coming into the U S alone. Yeah. So that got everybody on board, including George W. Bush. Sure. Um, got some, some laws enacted. There's the, um, oh, which one is it?

Chuck, the, the one we passed in 2000, um, uh, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Yes. And then that same year, the UN passed the Palermo Protocols. So that was like a big moment for human trafficking. Yeah. Right. Or I should say combating human trafficking. Right. Um, and then the, the numbers were downgraded in 2004 to something like, um, 14,500 to 17,500.

And then even people think even those numbers are high. Right. Then a New York Times magazine writer named, uh, Peter Landerman, Landisman, he wrote an article called, um, I think the sex slaves next door or the girls next door. I can't remember which one, what it was called. But, um, in his article, it just created this huge firestorm. It was like one of those 12 page long articles and like he, he was doing a lot of really good investigative journalism. There was this interview with this one girl who'd been sold from, from

Mexico at like age four, um, and had been living as a sex slave ever since. And like, um, people started digging into the article and we're like, wait a minute, this sounds a lot like, you know, urban legend. Some of like the, the details about, you know, how people are coming from Mexico into the U.S. or kind of spotty. Like if they're going by boat, there's really no good place to land in the U.S. Right. Um, there is a lot of problems with it and he even said 10,000. So he had the lowest number so far and even that has been torn apart.

And part of the problem that was raised by Peter Landisman's, um, article and its reception is that if you conflate, inflate the, the numbers, the figures too much, and then it's shown that you're off big time, then it comes across as hysterical and alarmist. Right. But if the numbers are too low, then you risk not being able to generate enough interest to really do something about the people who are enslaved. Right. And it's hard to pinpoint at period because if they knew, then they would be doing something about it. Right. Only 27 states and that's the latest number I have.

It may be more, but I saw 27 states have anti-trafficking legislation. Is that it? Yeah. That's crazy. I know. So I mean the rest, it's technically legal or surely there's laws that you're breaking. Yeah. I don't think it's legal, but it's not just trafficking specific legislation. Gotcha. Yeah.

So we're kind of, it seems like we're at a period where we realize that there's a real problem, but we don't know how big it is and we don't know what to do about it yet. One guy, Nicholas Christoff, you read New York Times? Sure. So Christoff. He's a smart guy. He did something in 2004 that was pretty amazing. Yeah. He decided to purchase the freedom of two Cambodian prostitutes. Yeah. He went to Cambodia and did it too.

Which is very controversial because as Molly points out, it still perpetuates the idea that you can buy and sell a human life. Yeah. Even though he was doing it for the good, still sort of playing ball in a way. Yeah. And a lot of people say it doesn't do a lot of good anyway because these people aren't prepared for the quote unquote real world. So one of them did kind of escape that life and the other went right back to it.

Yeah. The one that he paid more for, $203, she went back to it and she was very reluctant to come out in the first place. She kind of dragged her feet and even her owner, I guess, the madam that ran the brothel and literally owned this woman was like, you should really take this man's offering leave right now because this is never going to happen again. She went back because she was institutionalized as the way to put it. She didn't know if her village would accept her. She didn't know if her family would take her back. She was very shamed and this is the life that she was used to.

It's like red and Shawshank. Yeah, or Brooks. Yeah, Brooks was institutionalized. Yeah, he's the one who hung himself. Right. And red thought he was until he found all that money. Yeah, and he's like, hey, I'm not so institutionalized. I'm going to go buy some milkshakes. So yeah, he paid $203 and $150 for those two women.

But yeah, and I mean, it makes sense. Like if you pay money to free somebody, then yeah, you're putting a value on that and you're saying yes, what you're doing is legitimate to some degree. Well, maybe if nothing else, this move got a lot of attention because he did this. But the question is this, like that Peter Landisman article was all about how there's all these sex slaves in the US, but almost all of the action that he describes takes place in Mexico, Nicholas Kristoff to free sex slaves, he didn't go into New Jersey or Portland. He went to Cambodia.

Right. So the question is, how big is this in the US and elsewhere? Is it a big problem in the US? We have no idea. But we're starting to kind of shape how to take this on thanks to groups like Anti-Slavery International and Free the Slaves, right? Yes, and the Polaris Project too is another big one. Yeah.

The State Department says they have what's called a 3P approach, prevention, prosecution and protection. Prosecution is a big one because until they start really hanging these dudes up by their toes, as an example, then they're not going to be dissuaded so much from trying to traffic these girls and boys. It's a big one. And men and women. Yeah.

So you've got to prosecute these people, let it be known, plaster it all over the newspapers to kind of dissuade folks. Right. Protecting the victims is a problem, especially when a cop just looks at them and sees a hooker rather than a victim. Yeah, exactly. So like you said, I guess the FBI is figuring out how to train local law enforcement to recognize signs and there are some pretty easy signs if you can, I guess, gain the trust of somebody you

suspect is being trafficked. There's just a few questions that you can ask and if you can get honest answers out of them, you're like, oh, you are a modern slave. Well, that's the tough part is getting the answers. But asking them where they work, maybe what they're getting paid, who they live with. Are they free to come and go as they please? Yeah. How would you say how much they get paid?

Yeah. Where they sleep, what kind of sleeping conditions are, what they ate last or the day before? Right. Is another good one? Yeah, those are great questions. And then if you come up with some suspicions, there's actually groups that you can call. There's the National Human Trafficking Resource Center that has a hotline that's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It's 1-888-373-7888 and they start to get the ball rolling. And apparently the State Department, especially under Hillary Clinton, has really taken the ball and run with it to combat human trafficking. And the U.S. issues travel visas, TV visas to people who are found to be trafficked. So they're saying, hey, we won't even deport you. Yeah, you're not going to stay arrested. Or if you are arrested and we find out you've been trafficked here, we're going to, you'll be okay after that.

Well, the DOJ has a hotline too, 888-428-7581 and PolarisProject.org is a great place to visit. You mentioned them in the How the Underground Railroad Worked podcast. Oh, really? Yeah, remember they're named after the North Star that freed or escaped slaves used to follow? Benjamin Skinner, an author, wrote a book called A Crime So Monstrous in 2008. And he said, educate yourself. So hopefully we're helping a little bit right there. Secondly, write your congressman, your local elected official.

Be the guy that stands up at the town hall and says, yeah, I get what you're saying about the electromagnetic pulse. But what do you want to do about human trafficking? Right, exactly. Or, you know, find out if you're one of the 27 states or one of the, what's 27 minus 50? 23. 23 states that does not have legislation on the books and get in touch with your congressman who probably won't be in office by the time the next election rolls around. Yeah, wait till after November.

Get in touch with your new congressman and say, hey, why don't we have legislation on the books? This is ridiculous. Yeah, and so educating yourself, figuring out what, I guess harassing your local politicians and then supporting advocacy groups like sweatfree.org, free the slaves, anti-slavery international. That's right. Yeah, that's what you can do. Yeah. Or just keep your eye out.

Don't be so judgmental when you see that person who you might think is a nefarious criminal. You never know. Yeah, and I'm sure there's people out there who are going to be like, well, I mean, if we make a big deal of this, then everybody's going to say I'm a slave when they're really a criminal. I think that's unlikely. I think so, too. And if you start doing something about human trafficking or you already are, we want to know about it. So I'll call out again if you'll remind me, Chuck, because sometimes I forget.

But for listener mail, call out. How about we say, let us know what you're doing to fight human trafficking? OK? Yeah, or if you were one of the people that requested this over the years, then you probably had a good reason to let's hear it. OK. Aside from the fact that it's a good cause. Yeah, the war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you want to learn more about human trafficking and read a very good article by Molly Edmonds, you can type in human trafficking, t-r-a-f-f-i-c-k-i-n-g in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and that will bring this article up.

And I said how stuff works. No, I said search bar and that brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this Josh's Choice. You picked this one out because I didn't have a computer all day. I did my research on my iPhone. So thank you, Apple, for allowing me to do my job. You shill. Hey, did you see me over there?

You better get at least like an iPhone cover case or something for that. I don't need it. All right, this is about earthworms from Susan in northern Minnesota. I just listened to your podcast on earthworms. I must say I was disappointed that you minimized the damage that earthworms are doing to our northern forest. We did point out damage, but I guess she didn't think we did a good enough job. Yeah, I actually didn't mean to pick this one out. It was between this and the dental implant, but we'll go with this one.

I'm volunteering for the University of Minnesota, Go Gophers, on monitoring the superior national forest and have come across large sections of the forest that are heavily damaged due to the worms. The forest duff that you mentioned has several other uses other than to host seedlings. It also acts as mulch, which keeps earth cooler, holds in moisture and decomposes and creates soil. Yeah, when she mentioned that, it reminded me that drying the soil out is a big problem because of the eating duff, eating the leaf litter. Not drinking duff, because that's great.

I've seen the roots of the large trees exposed, which is called girdling. This stresses the trees and puts them in jeopardy. But it's also really pretty. A person can view large sections of the forest that are completely bare as there is no vegetation at all. The worms can move about three miles per year, which leaves a large path of destruction. To date, there is no successful method to rectify or reclaim those areas of our forest. I am from northern Minnesota, which is a large tourist area. Three miles per year is way, way longer farther than I've run across in any other.

Oh, really? Resource. Yeah. Think about it. That glacier, that ice sheet that killed all those worms, and basically drove them south. They've had 10,000 to 20,000 years to make their way up. If they can move three miles a year, they'd be all over the place. That we wouldn't be seeing this invasive species problem right now.

That way they can. Well, maybe the Minnesota worms are a little lightning fast. Yeah, they have a little jump in there, giddy up. Yeah, she finalizes this email, Josh, by saying the slow destruction of our forests is putting our whole economy at risk. That is Susan C. from Minnesota. So sorry if we minimized it. We certainly didn't mean to.

I didn't think we did. But apparently we didn't really, really dissect a live earthworm during the podcast to show it, show its friends what happened here. Right. Well, thank you, Susan C., for that one. And thank you to the other guy whose email I was going to choose, but printed the wrong one. Yeah, I think he had a fellow toothless guy like me. Yeah, yeah.

He's wanting to give you props for coming out. Coming out, taking the tooth out on TV or on the internet. If you don't know what we're talking about, you have to see this. We have a video podcast now, too, that you can subscribe to. Indeed. And we do, like we have one of the things that we do is a little game show where we teach one another something in 60 seconds. And Chuck taught me about dental implants and showed me his toothless grin.

Showed the world. Which is, yeah, it's pretty awesome. So if you want to see that, you should type in stuff you should know, dental implant into your favorite search engine, or in the search bar, howstuffworks.com, and it should bring up that video. And if you want to tweet to us, you can at SYSKpodcast. If you want to join us on Facebook, go to facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Remember, we want your emails on human trafficking.

You can send those to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready.

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