Stuff You Should Know - How to Control a Riot

Episode Date: January 27, 2011

It's no secret that people in crowds will behave differently than they would if they were alone. In a riot, individuals may exhibit a drastic change in their behavior -- but why? How? More importantly, how can riots be controlled? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.

Are you waiting on me? Yes, it is, Josh. Did you see Mark Marin? What do you mean? He toppled Ira Glass for a few days. I did see that. Out of nowhere. Yeah, he must have had some sort of little publicity push or something. Something. Something happened.

Yeah, it's great for him. Yeah, he has a great show, though. Yes, he does. Really good interviewer. Mr. Marin, I emailed him one time, told him that. And he was like... No, he said, thanks a lot, man. Did he?

Who are you? Yeah. He probably did, but that's fine. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I'm not a famous comedian. No. Not yet. No.

Chuck, did you ever watch WKRP in Cincinnati? Oh, you know I did. Yeah? Uh-huh. So do you remember the one... Like, every once in a while, different strokes would do this, too. There'd be like, at the end of the episode, when it was really serious. I know where you're going.

There'd be no clapping. It'd just be quiet. Right? But you could tell the audience was still there. There was always somebody moving in their seat or coughing or whatever. So like, the audience was just sitting there being silent, which threw a pall over the entire episode. Even though we're used to hearing the laughing.

It was jarring. Yeah. And even as a lad, I remember thinking like, wow, something big just happened that I wasn't paying attention to, you know? Uh-huh. And there's a particular WKRP episode that stands out that was like that. The one where they sponsored the Who concert where those people got trampled. Yep.

All right? Yeah. Did you see that one? Oh yeah, I remember. I knew where you were going with that. So this happened in real life. There was a Who concert in Cincinnati, and it was general admission seating, which apparently did away with general admission for a while.

Yeah, open the gates and run to wherever you want to go. There was like a sound check, and people mistook the sound check for an early start. It was a late sound check, and they thought it was an early start. Right. So people started pushing in. Well, I guess the people who owned the theater had fewer entrances open than they could have. So this mass of people just started pushing forward. And some people got pressed against the doors and were suffixiated

by this huge crowd. Yeah, people were trampled to death. Yes, awful. To this day, I mean, you can explain what the trigger was, but to this day, there's a lot of study that has come up empty-handed to that kind of crowd behavior. That's what it's called. It's the study of crowd behavior. People as individuals act differently when they submit to a larger collective group.

A quote unquote mob mentality. That's part of it too. But things like that stampede, Black Friday stampede, have you ever seen video of those? They're nuts. There's one where it ends with this guy coming into the foreground, and he's just leaning over this railing like a target or something. And he's got this horrible look on his face, and he's trying to catch his breath. And he's been trampled, and they managed to extract him.

And he's sitting there leaning over the railing, catching his breath. And you just know that once he caught his breath, he was going to go right into the target and start shopping. Right. But all of this is called crowd behavior. And one of the big ones, the one that's really always been elusive, is rioting. Yes. Why riots happen?

Why ordinary people behave the way they do in a riot, breaking glass, beating up people for no good reason, like stealing, looting, all this stuff? Right. One thing they have kind of figured out is how to control riots, right? Yes, they have. And they've gotten better at it over the years. As recently as 1992 in LA with the famous LA riots, which my brother lived out there at the time, they still weren't doing a great job at it. No, I think that was a big learning experience itself.

2,300 injuries, 7,000 fires per set. It's like Detroit on the night before Halloween or something. Well, we'll talk about Detroit too. More than 12,000 arrests, a billion dollars in damage after the Rodney King verdict came back is not guilty, obviously, for the four white cops who beat the tarot of Rodney King. And it lasted from April 29th until May 2nd. There was full-on rioting going on, Streets of LA. Yeah.

And they've gotten better at it since then. And we're poor Reginald Denny getting shot in the leg, the trucker who got pulled out. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that. That was crazy, man. So that's what's called the mob mentality. And one of the things, this is the Grabster.

Ed Grabinowski always gets the good stuff. He's quality. One thing he pointed out here, which is a big deal with mob mentality, I never considered, is anonymity. That is the point. You've got a crowd of people who are kind of all feeling the same way. At the very least, they're all feeling the same energy. But the cops are standing there staring at you.

Mm-hmm. You're not going to do anything if the cops are standing there staring at you, especially if you think you may be the only one to do something. Right. You're not going to throw a Molotov cocktail at a cop when you think everyone in the crowd is going to look at you like, what did you just do that for? Right. Right?

But if you're anonymous, not just to the cops, but within the crowd, you're probably going to start something. Yeah. It makes you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. Right. If you were on your own. And there's different schools of thoughts with riots, right? The prevailing idea is that riots are formed by a few people who do act as triggers

once the risk of being arrested is low enough through anonymity. Uh-huh. A few people who are angry enough have something to gain. There's some reason. They act as the leaders or the people who start the riots. And everybody else, which they're considered a homogenous group of soccer fans or people low on the socioeconomic ladder in LA, they just get caught up in the mob mentality. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And that's pretty much how most people see riots these days. Yeah. And that's basically every riot you just described. There's two things you need, the fuel and the spark. It's like a fire. Right.

And it's very much accurate to call it that. The fuel can build up and usually does build up over time. In the case of LA, it was racial prejudice and what they perceived as unfair treatment because they might have been poor. Well, not just that. I think the LAPD has been, especially at that time, was viewed as like the most crooked police apartment in the country. Sure.

So this builds up over time. Maybe it's a union, angry at their company, angry for years, decades even over mistreatment. And once you get a big enough group of people that are all ticked off about something together and you have a spark, which doesn't even need to be something real. Sometimes it can be a rumor that something happened. People get whipped up to a frenzy. That spark ignites the fuel and you've got a riot on your hands. And that sparked another term for it is a shelling incident.

Shelling incident, I think. Oh, really? Yeah, there's this guy who studied crowd mentalities, crowd behavior. And he, I think his name is Thomas Schilling. And a shelling incident is like a signal. It can be anything from when you reach that peak moment where everybody's charged up. But nobody's going to do anything. If somebody suddenly shatters like a plate glass window, everybody's going to go nuts.

A shelling incident has just happened. Yeah. But another way to put it is that spark. But it takes something like that signal like it's go time. Yeah. For the balance, the tip and a riot, a crowd to go from a crowd to a riot. Right. Josh, we talked about in the past, they were not very good at it.

And when I say they're not very good, it was because it was us versus them, cops go in and start beating people into submission. And that's not the way they want to do things nowadays. No, it was viewed as a battle. Yeah, like let's go out and fight each other. Yeah, like Braveheart or the other one that he made like that. Yeah. But we've got better weapons, cops do.

So we're going to win despite the fact that you may outnumber us. Although sometimes we might outnumber you and have better weapons. And apparently one of the things they figured out, this happened in LA in 92. When you outnumber the cops, the cops back down apparently. That's what they did in LA. They were like, there's nothing we can do. We'll get eaten alive. So we're going to just kind of hang back and try to contain this.

Right. Interesting. These days, it's pretty cool how they do it. There is a command team. They form a square, a big square of officers. Yeah. And by the way, it really helps to see this graphic. Do you have that?

No. Dude, this graphic is as helpful as a graphic I've ever seen in my entire life on the site. Yeah. So what you've got is you've got a big square of officers in the center of that square. You have your command team giving out the orders. They're obviously well protected because they're in the middle. Yeah, and the outside, the sides in the front and back are called echelons, right? Yes.

And an echelon is about 10 to 12 cops that are, you know, they, you know what echelon you're in. So you know what to do. Like, oh, we'll get into that in a second. There's also in the center, there's an arrest team. And they are the only people that are actually placing people under arrest. Everyone has their own job. And what I get from this is you got to stick to your job in order to be effective.

Yes. If you're in a front echelon, don't start arresting guys. No. It's not your job. No. And I think the whole thing would fall apart, like you say. So it's very mobile, very tactical. You can change direction.

If all those dudes in the square, all of a sudden said, you know, the command team sends out the message, we got people coming from the south. They can all turn around. And all of a sudden you've got the same effective team going the other direction. Right. They're very reactive. Very reactive. The echelons cover each other.

They don't all go out at once. Like an echelon, if they want to advance, they'll send out one echelon while everyone else covers them. Then the next echelon will go forward. And then what you're doing is you're moving the square into another position. Right. And remember, we said that rioting groups are generally taken as homogenous, mostly people who get caught up in this thrill of the moment.

When they're confronted with police, the idea is that they really just kind of want to go home. They don't want to get arrested. They don't have any dog in the fight. So if they see this tactical squad coming at them, one of the first points of the squad is to let these people go home to disperse. That's what the cops want, is they just want you to get out of there. So it's not just like this solid wall, although it can be these echelons. They're also very capable of spreading out to let people flow through them and get out of there.

That's what they want to do. They want to leave you and escape route. Whereas in the old days, they would actually try and strategically trap you in a corner. Right. Which has everyone. Beating the target of you with a night stick. But when you're trapped in a corner, you're going to be even more enraged and scared. So that just led to more violence.

So if you are confronted by an echelon of this, let's say you're just an average person and you want to get out of there, you're probably going to be able to make it through or around them. Right? But if you're just standing there and you're throwing rocks still or you're shouting at them or you're not moving and they're telling you to, what's going to happen is they're going to close ranks and then the two officers that you're in between are going to open up and you're going to find yourself swallowed by this tactical square of riot cops. They travel you up basically. And that's when you're going to be introduced to the arrest team.

You're in a walled area of cops. Yeah. And that's probably not a fun place to be. No. You're in trouble. So Josh, you want to talk about some of the devices these officers use to quell a crowd? You're not going to go into a riot wearing madras shorts. You could, but you're going to be wearing them under what's called hard tack. Yeah, I love that. Which is a helmet with a visor.

Right? Body armor. And not just like the chest armor, chest and back, but like, you know, or the vest, that's what it's called. You're going to have body armor on your arms, your legs, your shins. It's probably flame retardant. Yeah. And then a shield. And the shield in the face mask are made of what, lexand? Yeah. Which is like bulletproof.

If it's thick enough, this stuff isn't thick enough. It's not intended to be bulletproof. No. But it's probably brickproof. Yeah. Or at least Molotov cocktail proof. Yeah, exactly. That's what you're looking for. They have a baton is probably what most of these women and men, I keep saying dudes,

they're probably some female riot cops, I imagine, that are holding a baton. Generally made of wood about 24 to 42 inches long. And they use these instead of rifles because rifles can ignite a crowd. And you don't want someone grabbing your rifle. So they want to try and keep things as low key as possible, initially at least. Right. And bringing a rifle into the fight definitely will not do that. Well, no, not only that, but if somebody gets the rifle away from the cops.

Bad news. Yeah. They have non-lethal rounds, but at this quick to point out, there's really no such thing as a non-lethal round. Right. Anything fired from a gun can kill you potentially. Just ask Brandon Lee. Yeah.

Well, I guess you couldn't ask Brandon Lee, but look what happened. The director of the crow. And they are fired from a 40 millimeter gun. And it's one of those, sometimes it's a single shot, but it's like a grenade launcher. Sometimes it's those really cool looking things with a six or eight round barrels. Looks like a Tommy gun sort of. It's very cool. But they chewed out 40 millimeter shells.

Right. And like you said, they're less than lethal rounds, right? Yes. Less lethal. And basically you have a couple of different kinds of rounds in, or a couple of different categories, like you have blunt force rounds, right? Yes. And blunt force rounds are basically meant to knock you on your bottom when you're in the

middle of a riot. A big thud in your chest. Or at the very least to smack your legs in your stomach, because if you're a rioter and you aren't, you weren't planning to be in a riot that day, you may be wearing moderate shorts. That's right. Right. And so these rounds, these blunt force rounds, there's a wood baton, the rubber baton, the

foam baton, all of these are designed, they look like little canisters that are shot from these grenade launchers. And they're filled with these things, right? They're filled with little hockey puck-like discs, right? That when the shell hits the ground, usually you shoot them at the ground in front of protesters. Right. When they hit the ground, the shell opens up and all these little discs just spread out and smack a bunch of people all at once.

Right. And all of a sudden they're like, ow, and snap out of their rioting mentality, hopefully, and go home. Right? That's the idea. That's the idea of the blunt force round. There's also a bean bag round, which is exactly what it sounds. It shoots little square bean bags.

Or there's some that look like tab poles if you are aiming, if you want to be accurate. Yeah, yeah. And then there's the sponge round, right, which is the cleanest of all the blunt force rounds. Yeah, it's basically like a sponge bullet, which I imagine hurts pretty bad. Yeah. Actually, my nephew, you know, shot me in the back over Christmas with this little gun that he got, a little air gun that shoots a little rubber pellets.

Oh yeah, the little yellow ones? Oh yeah, very soft. I think so. Yeah, this is the second time for some reason in my life I've volunteered to be shot because everyone was wondering how bad it hurts. And I was like, well, just shoot me. So I made my back taut with my shirt and you shot me in the back. And it hurt a lot, didn't it?

Yeah, it raised a big red welt. And yeah, it was not fun. 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 answer for it. 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 night. 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 I talked to Strickland of tech stuff, John Strickland. He went to CES and one of the things that was left out of this article was electrocution, non-lethal electrocuting weapons, specifically Taser, which is a company's name by the way. But Strickland said that Taser was at CES in Vegas. Tasing people? Yes. Are you serious?

Tasing people who wanted to be tased to find out how it felt and they were tasing people. But he said there was something called a Taser Shockwave, which is an electroshock cannon. Right? I showed you this. Oh yeah, that's that thing. So basically it's just this array of tasers that you sit on like a mount and you can stack them up. Yeah, it's on four legs. You can stack them next to one another.

So you create a barricade of tasers and if people are running at you, you just deploy. Wow. And it tases, let's see, each little stack can tase six people at once. And you start stacking them up inside by side. That's a lot of people that you're tasing at once. Strickland didn't get tased today. There's no way Strickland got tased, no. There's all kinds of cool non-lethal weapons actually.

I've seen those foam guns that like cover you in sticky goo and like sound things, flashbang grenades. Gay bomb that was created or that was thought of as a non-lethal weapon. At the time, yeah, sure. Patterson, right? Patterson Air Force Base, right? Yes. They don't use all these in riots though, obviously.

They do use pepper ball rounds and those are basically modified paint guns, but instead of paint, it's filled with pepper spray. That hits you. It's not going to be very fun. No. It's going to sting and then you're going to get that stuff in your face. They said they can also use water in case there are children or elderly in the crowd. You don't want to pepper spray the elderly.

No, you don't. I just want to see the elderly rioting now. That's what I was trying to figure out. Buddy, wait until they take away social security and then you'll see some elderly rioting. Be a slow riot. Apparently, the water though will still cause a stinging sensation and have a similar effect. Well, plus, if anyone who's savvy, a savvy rioter and has been hit with a pepper ball spray or pepper ball round may take this water round to be pepper spray and will start running or

it could have the same effect. It has a psychological effect. Sikes them out. Yeah, you're trying to disperse people. There's also, if you're into pepper spray or CS gas, which I'm going to go ahead and try to pronounce this now, okay? Chlorobenzolidine melanotrile. Chlorobenzolidine, chlorobenzolidine melanotrile.

Yep, and Oc gas is oleoresin capsicum, which is what pepper spray is. Did you look up the pronunciation of capsicum? No, was that wrong? I think that's right. Oh, it's either capsicum or capsicum. Oh, I'm not going with capsicum. Okay, but both of those can be injected into an aerosol grenade. Yeah.

Which is tear gas grenade, right? And you can throw that into a crowd if you want to start a stampede and kill a bunch of people. People get freaked out when you throw a grenade that starts spewing gas, right? They don't know what it is. Sure. But apparently this is very useful for crowd control. Like if you want the crowd to move right, you throw one of these to the left and the left is outskirts of the crowd and everybody starts moving the way you want them to.

Or if some people are just beating somebody up, you can throw that into a crowd to get in the layoff. Right. Or you can create a barricade of tear gas. Yeah. The other thing, Josh, they have is dye rounds. So sponge rounds, ferret rounds, we didn't talk about ferret rounds, but they penetrate windows and wooden barricades kind of to blast through something so that

they can send in some gas. Well, they have gas in the round. Oh, they're actually in the round. It wasn't spelled out. Yeah, I looked it up like it's in the round. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, all these things can be filled with dye, marker dye as well.

So if you see like one of the leaders or someone who's doing something especially bad, you can pop them with one of these and all of a sudden the arrest team knows, hey, get that guy with the red splotch on his chest. Or get that Smurf. The blue splotch in that case. And so if I would suggest, well, I'm not going to suggest that. If I was it with one of these, I'd take off my shirt or something. Sure.

Which would be a whole different kind of problem. Animals sometimes use dogs and horses to intimidate people. Yeah, but not only that, horses and dogs are also relatively immune to O.C. and C.S. gas. Oh, just C.S. gas. Oh, is it just C.S.? Yeah, pepper spray is not good for anyone. Okay. That's just straight up hot.

But that's, yeah, sure. I wonder how they test that. You know exactly how they test it. They spray a horse and say. And then they're like, I wonder what happens if you taste a horse. Josh. What they're trying to do here is, in fact, they don't even call it a riot squad anymore. What they now call it is crowd management units.

Yes, we're on to the philosophy of riot control. Chapter one, prevention. Stop it before it starts is the goal. A lot of these things happen at planned protests. So when they hear about this, someone applies for a permit to stage a rally, let's say. If it's one that's particularly they think an incendiary, they'll send some tactical unit in and they'll talk to the people beforehand and say, hey, you can do this. You can go here, but don't do this and don't go there.

We won't have any problems. Right. And you're familiar with the battle for Seattle. Yeah. There was a direct action network was running the show for that, the World Trade Organization protest. And they met with the Seattle cops and were like, you know, this is what we'll do. Here's a great plan.

We'll agree to this. But before warned, there are probably going to be people there that are not under our control. And there were. There was an anarchist group from Eugene, Oregon. And they were the ones who started just trash in the place. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that didn't work out so well.

Well, the Seattle police were grossly underprepared for it. They did not. They were not ready for that. Yeah. At all. Chuck, you're talking, sorry to take us off on that tangent, but we're talking about prevention and how you you meet with the cops will meet with you. You're going to be like, don't do this.

Don't do that. If this does happen, we're going to go from this passive observant, but present kind of sure mentality to. Okay. Now we're in a riot gear mentality. Yeah. But they say it's still important to be unbiased. Like if it's let's say Democrats are opposing some Republican convention or something.

And the cops aren't supposed to let their biases figure into how they react. They're supposed to be unbiased and treat them like they're members of the community. And they say, while they want to be not stormtroopers, you also can't appear to be subservient. You still have to like give the appearance at least that you're in charge. Right. So you got to walk that fine line between stormtrooping, beat the down mode. And, oh, you're just doing great things and I got no opinion on the matter. I like your tie.

Sure. Yeah. I like your mattress shorts. It's very nice. Oh, yeah, those. So Chuck, if the ground rules are broken, apparently, and a riot does break out, the cops kind of switch modes, right? Intimidation mode.

Yes. Again, the point in all of this is theoretical law enforcement, but the point is to get this crowd to disperse and it's based on the philosophy that they're just temporarily out of their minds and caught up in this mob mentality. And if you confront them with the strong arm of the law, they'll come to their senses and want to go home, right? Yeah. And they do that though, like they're very tight with their precision, with their movements,

which is intimidating. Right. Apparently, we'll like beat their shields with their batons and stomp their feet all at the same time. Right. And all this is the idea is to scare people into thinking, I don't want to be swallowed up into that square. Right.

They also pick and choose who they arrest or even who they mark with dye. Somebody who is, if they see somebody engaged in a crime, they're probably going to try to arrest them depending on the severity of the crime, or at least they'll probably try to mark that person for arrest later. Right. But if they see somebody, like if they see a group of people beating down one person or shooting poor Reginald Denny in the leg, they're going to go after those people because they're someone whose life is in danger.

So they kind of triage, I think, in the middle of this chaos. They triage who they're going to go after first. Right, right. Makes sense. So we've talked about the rioters, police obviously, National Guard sometimes, trying to contain riots. There have been some dark spots in the history of the world and continue to be where you get what's called a police riot.

When the cops are the ones that are kind of, I don't know about instigating in all cases, but definitely the aggressors in the situation. Yeah, there have definitely been police riots. The Haymarket riot was a very good example of that. Which one was that? That was the one in Chicago in 1886 that created the first May Day. Oh, really? Yeah, there were some striking workers and the cops showed up and just started beating

the tar out of them. Somebody, no, I'm sorry, the cops showed up. It was very tense. Someone threw a bomb at the cops and killed eight cops and the cops went nuts and started firing on the crowd, killed four people and ultimately they went after these anarchists who founded this rally and without any evidence that tied them to this bombing and they also think it's possibly an agent of provocateur, someone who's paid by the cops to agitate the crowd by throwing this bomb through the bomb.

But without tying these eight guys to the bombing, they hung four of them. One of them committed suicide and then three were finally pardoned. Wow. But that's the Haymarket riot in Chicago. Well, you can't mention Chicago or riot without talking about the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Yeah, that's a big one. Very big one.

10,000 anti-war protesters showed up because they wanted to protest. Yippies. Yippies, actually. Well, the Yippies were there, sure. Yeah, Hubert Humphrey was the candidate that was to replace, who was it, Lyndon Johnson? Yeah, we guess so, yeah. And Humphrey was pro-war. Democrats didn't like that, so they went to protest.

Richard Daley was the mayor. He didn't want any part of this stuff. He was pretty angry about it going in, said things like, no one's going to protest in my city. Yeah. Built up big barricades around the convention center, got a lot of cops and national guards involved, apparently 23,000 cops and national guardsmen were on hand. And they had a stance on things, and they started beating the tar out of people. Yeah, there was a, have you seen Chicago 10?

No. You used to see it, you'd like it. Is it part of the Chicago 7? Eight, then seven? Uh-huh, it is. But it's, whether it's 10 to begin with? Well, the filmmakers include the two defense lawyers who were cited for contempt, and Bobby Seals, and then the Chicago 7,

so which makes 10. But they, it's all animated, like waking life. Oh, really? Or it's mostly animated. There's also like archival footage and all that. It's a documentary, but it's really, really cool. It's based on court transcripts, but that's animated. I'll have to check that out.

It's very, it's very cool. But they were saying that people were staying in this park in Chicago, Jackson Park, Lincoln Park, one of the parks, and the cops are like, yeah, stay as long as you want until when the park closes at 11 o'clock, and then after that, we're going to go through and sweep the park and beat the tar out of anybody we find. And then I think ultimately set off the riots. Oh, really? When it got real bad was the cops wouldn't stop doing that.

Well, it got pretty out of hand to say the least, and everyone from Mike Wallace and Dan Rather to Red Cross medics were roughed up. Hunter Thompson? Oh, was he there? Yeah. I'm sure he was roughed up. They went into a hotel where people were staying and dragged people out of their rooms. Really?

It was bad. Well, I know that they said they threw so much tear gas on the scene that Hubert Humphrey was actually bothered in the shower in his hotel by the tear gas. Wow. So, yeah, that was a dark spot on our nation's history, for sure. Yeah, I think Hunter Thompson wrote in our client, like, it's probably fear and loathing at the Democratic National Convention. Absolutely.

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 a 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. And I said to Troy earlier, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that. In 1943, this was the case of rumors of things that never happened,

sparking a riot. There was already a race fight going on at an amusement park, and then there was two rumors. One that some white men had thrown a black woman who was holding a baby into a lake. Right, they're like throwing a white woman into the lake. Wasn't bad enough. Right, and then they're like, and she was holding a baby. Right.

They're like, what? And then white people heard news that a mob of black folks had assaulted a white woman. Neither of these things even happened, but that was my point earlier. It doesn't matter if it happened or not. There were racial tensions in Detroit at the time in 1943, and this set it off. And cops apparently were shooting fleeing black people in the back. Yeah. That was the rumor.

Well, I don't know about rumors. How many died? 25 black folks and nine white folks were killed, 2 million in property damage, and yet another black spot on our nation's history when it comes to rioting. But, you know, they say they've got it figured out now. Yeah, it's not just our nation either. Right now, in Moscow, they have race riots going on.

Yeah, Tunisia too. There's rioting going on as we speak. Yeah, that's anti-government rioting. Yeah, this guy set himself on fire. A 26-year-old student who had no, had a college degree and dismal prospects for work. He was being taxed. I think he was like a merchant or something in a market, and he was being taxed or something unfairly he felt.

Well, he was trying to sell fruit and vegetables, and they basically, told him he couldn't do it at all because he didn't have the proper permit, and that was the only way he could make money. So, he set himself on fire, and now, through Facebook, the word has spread to riot in Tunisia, and it's still going on. Apparently, Anonymous sent a message to the Tunisian government telling him to open up the internet, if they have it locked down like China does. Wow.

Yeah. So, it's happening all over the place. Yes, it is. It's crazy time to be alive, my friend. It is. Well, if you want to learn more about how to control a riot, if your kids are ever going crazy or something like that, you can type in riot control in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, and since I said handy search bar, it's time for Facebook Questions.

That's right. What's the jingle, Chuck? Facebook Question Time. Nice. I don't think it's the same, but I'll change it every time. All right, this is from Kristen Winger. If money was no object, what job would you love to do besides the one that you have? I would say two things.

One, selfishly, I would love to be a filmmaker, and then unselfishly. Why is it selfish? Well, because I'm not helping out my fellow man, except offering them great movies. But if money were no object, I used to want to start a camp for behavioral disorder children. I take them camping. You mean the camp from Stir Crazy? Yeah, basically. Or no.

Was it Stir Crazy? Was it Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder? Yeah, Gene Wilder wasn't in it. It was the one where he was the bus driver. It was just Richard Pryor. Silver Streak? No, that was the train. I know which one you're talking about.

Yeah. All right, what would you do? Well, first, Chuck, I want to commend you on that. That is very sweet. Oh, it's not sweet. My dad did that. He had outdoor programs for, he was a principal, you know, so. You could do both.

You could take some of the money you make for being a successful filmmaker. Open up a camp. Exactly. All right. So there you go. Both teams realized I would write books, whatever books I'd just write. Book writing. Yeah, that is what I would be doing.

You could do that anyway. Maybe. Um, Kerr, Lockhart, what's the room like that you record the show in? It is smallish. It's got some foam padding on the walls. It's got a heavy curtain. Chains and shackles that are bolted to the walls. Chains and shackles.

It's bleak. It's bleak. It's depressing. There's a picture of Nikola Tesla and a picture of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on. Yeah, there is. That's the only adornment on the walls, right? That's what I can hear, Kerr. You've got some, Josh, right?

I do, but I'd like the way that you ask questions. Okay. Let me see. We've already sort of done that one. Chuck, were you ever in a frat? That one's from Drew Sorensen. Was not in a frat. Nor was I.

But I did hang out with the Pi Kappa Alphas. Yeah, I had frat friends, sure. Yeah. A few sigups and Fijis. Didn't hang out with any of them. My dad was a teak. Was he? At the University of Toledo.

Allie Smith, what career did you think you would pursue when you graduated? At one point I wanted to be a sportscaster, but I didn't pursue a whole lot right after college except traveling and stuff like that. I traveled after college as well. I lived in a van, I think I've probably said before, right? Yes. This one's from Matthew Paul Morris. Possibly one of the better questions we've gotten.

And justice for all or master of puppets? Master of puppets. Yeah, me too. Yeah. But that's a very, very close contest. Yeah, and justice for all. It's no slouch. How about Luke Kelly?

If you could, if you had to live in a world without cheese or movies, which would you choose? I would say no cheese because I love movies, but that's tough, man. I love cheese. I love cheese too, but I would definitely choose cheese over movies. That means no pizza? That means Mexican food isn't as fun? Chinese food, you're good.

Yeah, really? Sushi, you're good. Yeah, movies. I would want movies still, yeah. What's your desert island beer? I think I'd say Sierra Nevada. Everyone knows I love that, or maybe Budweiser. I'm really big on Bell's Too Hard at Ale right now.

Oh, that's good. It is really good. Yeah, they have it on tap at a place near me. It's very nice. Nice. Let's see, how did we meet? Obviously, it was at work, but did you hit it off right away or did the friendship grow over time?

This is from Tamara Beth Stevens. Yeah, we hit it off and it continues to grow over time. Like any good friendship. I would say the two, yes. It evolves and changes and makes us happy. It's nice. From Kim Rigdon Briskow, do your wife girlfriend slash girlfriend mind if you mention her on the podcast?

Emily loves it because I'm always plugging her company. Yeah, Yumi's fine with it too. Okay. Favorite childhood toy? Mine definitely was my evil-can-evil crank-up motorcycle guy. Oh, that's nice. Because I would jump him through like flaming coat hanger loops that we would set on fire and soak in gasoline,

which by the way, you should never, ever do. And we would jump him over the creek and all kinds of stuff. We would put him in peril. It was always fun. Wow, that is fun. What about you? Gee, I would have to say I had this plastic Navarone, Castle Navarone, remember Force 10 from Navarone?

Oh, yeah. Okay. So I had that and it had little green army guys or whatever. Now that I look back, I realize it was just like some generic knockoff toy. But I love that thing. And I also, I think I did have a thing for Castles because I also love my Castle Grace Goal He-Man play set. You certainly did.

And then my Sit and Spam was pretty awesome too. Yeah. I had, I wanted a green machine, but I was stuck with the big wheel. I had a big wheel too. I don't remember the green machine. It was a more complex big wheel that was, it was pretty tough. Okay. And rich kids got that.

Okay. So I was, I was kind of like that. All right. I've got one more, Josh, from Tim Lindsay. I've always wondered how much coffee do you both drink in a typical work day? I drink in the wintertime, maybe a couple of cups a week. I'm not a huge coffee guy. I like it in the winter to warm me up.

Sometimes it jacks me up, which is nice, but I'm not coffee guy. But I've got to hear your answer, honestly, in a day. In a day, wintertime, it definitely steps up a little for me. I don't know if I can quantify it. It's more like I drink coffee until I can't breathe. I'm seriously probably eight to 10 cups in a day. Eight to 10 cups. Maybe more.

All right. Of regular because we don't have decaf in the office. I was drinking decaf here or there and now there's no decaf. So it's all regular. I don't, I think that for a big coffee person, that's about right. Eight to 10 cups. It's a lot of coffee, but it's way too much coffee. Yeah.

Yeah. Who am I to judge? Yeah. Keep drinking it. Thanks, man. A lot worse things you could be doing. Yes. Like I could be shooting junk or something eight to 10 times a day.

Don't want to do that. No. All right. That's it for Facebook questions. Thank you for those are always fun. Yeah. Again, we have fun over at Facebook. That's facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

We tweet S Y S K podcast. And then we have an email address too. Can you believe it? It's 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 homepage. The HowstuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Every week on Crash Course, I'm going to bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.