Stuff You Should Know - Interpol: World Police

Episode Date: May 15, 2012

Interpol is an international police agency that helps other law-enforcement agencies track criminals who operate across national borders -- but how does it work, exactly? Join the guys as they delve into the world of global law enforcement. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. 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 since you put the two of us together with microphones as we are now, and press record you get stuff you should know. That's right. A little podcast.

Just a little podcast. A squishy little podcast made of silicone. How are you, sir? I'm pretty good. Your papers, please? No. What is that? I know. Interpol. Is that you sounded like the little Asian man who gives the box to Pinhead, the man who eventually becomes Pinhead. What is your pleasure, sir? That's kind of who you want to be. Well, then that's what I was doing. Good one. My first good impression yet. The guy has Interpol written all over him. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's got an orange notice out on him, I'll bet you.

Green. We'll get on that later. Chuck. Yes. I'm pretty much 100% sure you had nothing to do with this, so you may not have heard about it. Okay. Back in 2011, about this time, March 2011, Interpol, the international police organization, cracked a child pedophile ring. Nice. The biggest one ever. Really? Centered on a website, I guess appropriately enough, called boylover.net. Wow. Run out of Amsterdam. Boylover.net is just a straight up legitimate gay porn site, but there is a forum there with like 70,000 members with that, like said, well, hey, you're into this kind of thing too, huh? I got a video that you're going to love,

and I also have a little boy that I'm going to mail to you. So this wasn't affiliated with the website? No, they're just using one of the forums as a meeting place for pedophiles. But Interpol busted these guys up, rescued 230 kids, arrested 184 suspects just in the first sweep. They sent William Neeson in? Pretty much, yeah. In 30 countries. Wow. Yeah. Good for them. It is good for them. It's just one of the many victories and triumphs over pedorasty that Interpol can boast. That's right. And not just pedorasty, like all sorts of huge international crimes. Anytime there's a crime syndicate or a ring, you need to watch out because Interpol is watching you.

Interpol is right behind you. What is your pleasure, Sarah. And this was actually fan generated. This came off Facebook like three days ago. Oh, really? I wish I would have got the guy's name. Some kid was like, hey, can you do Interpol? And I went, yeah, sure. Are you sure he wasn't talking about the band? He might have been. Are they still around? Yeah, they're still around. Yeah, they are. Yeah, I don't know what they're doing these days. I'm not a fan, so I don't know. How do you not like Interpol? I listened to their music and it didn't sit right in my ears.

Huh. I'm surprised. I thought everybody liked Interpol. Yeah, they're just good. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think? All right, Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, or ICPO, or if you're in France, where they're headquartered, you might call it the Organis- Organis-Cécien International de Police Criminel. Very nice. Which is pretty much the same thing. And different word order. I didn't know this, but criminal is feminine. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I didn't realize that. They like the ladies? I guess.

All right, so as you said, Josh, they are an international, fully autonomous, not affiliated with any single country. Right. Organization. I think they're 186 countries. 190 now. Oh, really? Uh-huh. And they all contribute to the budget, to the kitty. Based on their size and their GDP and some other factors. Like crime. It's very fair. But it's very important, like you said, that they're not beholden to any one country and that they remain neutral.

And they don't engage in any investigations into political stuff, things contributing or being centered on race or religion. That's right. My brain is not working today. That's all right. My brain is. Uh, so what they do, Josh, you just said what they don't do, what they do do, terrorism, sexual abuse, terrorism, like nobody else. Sexual abuse, especially with children, which is what you just talked about. Yep. Organized crime, international fugitives, computer crime, stolen art, money laundering,

human trafficking, illegal drugs, smuggling, environmental crime, anything that crosses international borders almost. You're going to find Interpol helping out with. But, and you said the magic phrase, helping out. Like Interpol doesn't have, they don't run around like arresting guys. They freeze bad guys. It is Interpol. And they don't have Interpol jail, as Grebinowski points out. But what they do is they serve as this international meeting point for

for, um, already established national agencies, right? Yeah. So let's, let's do a little scenario. All right. I'm FBI agent Todd Ridgway of the Des Moines, Iowa field office. Okay. And you're agent Vinnie Tester Verity of the, um, Polizia Dostado in Italy. And I believe a terrorist is, um, hiding out near your field office in Genoa.

So I'm calling you up. I'm like, hi. Ring ring. This is Todd Ridgway. I'm with the FBI in Des Moines. Hey, Todd, this is Vinnie Tester Verde. Right. So, and see what Chuck just demonstrated was how it doesn't work because Vinnie Tester Verde doesn't speak a lick of English and Todd Ridgway doesn't speak any Italian.

Yeah. Right. And not only that, he shouldn't have been calling Vinnie Tester Verde. He should have been calling Giuseppe De Bichono, um, who's with the local police. Yeah. Because that's what the Italian, um, police bureaucracy protocol calls for. But Todd Ridgway didn't know this. He has no idea.

No. So what does he do? He calls Interpol. That's right. And they step up and they're like, you know, he need to get in touch with. You need to get in touch with Vinnie Tester Verde's cousin who works for the state police over there, the Polizia. Right.

But Italy, because they are who's handling this case. Here's their number. In fact, let me go ahead and patch it through. But not only that, I'm going to patch it through. And I'm going to translate for you. Sure. Yeah. So the Interpol, Interpol has what are called national central bureaus, national country

bureaus, no, national central bureaus, NCBs. And that's like an FBI field office, but they have them in different countries around the world. And they serve as liaisons for the local or state or national police with the same, their counterparts in other countries. That's the big one. Yeah. It gets, you know, when you, it's, it's complicated enough within these United States with jurisdictions and protocol.

But when you open it up to the world, boy, it gets all kinds of crazy. So luckily Interpol is there. They couldn't any peeing contests. Well, they probably tried to, but then should they exist? Sure. Yeah. Their big deal is their databases, because the FBI and the CIA, why they might all have like, in whatever your country's databases are, crime databases, they probably just extend

to that country unless it's like some sort of database on terrorism. Right. Interpol's databases are way extensive. They circle the globe and they can track criminals pretty much anywhere and everywhere, fingerprints, mugshots, wanted people, DNA, you name it. They have a, they have a database just of lost track, lost and stolen travel documents. Yeah. That's got more than like 12 million files to it.

Yeah. I think I saw somewhere today too that they said most people don't try and recover those, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. Well, I imagine like if you lose your passport, you're probably traveling abroad and there's, you're not getting that back. Well, you never know. Unless you go.

Call Interpol. Yeah. Yeah. They could have your stuff because who knows? They could, that could have been stolen to be used in some trafficking syndicate. It's true. And your name could be all, drug all through the mud on boylover.net. That's right.

The, the database that they, or the databases that they maintain are their own, but they're open and they're accessed through this communications network called I247. That's kind of cool something. Because Interpol is, they're open 24 seven, 365, even on Christmas. They're fully operational. Really? They don't close down like all the police do here on Christmas? No, because think about it, man.

Yes, I get your joke, but I mean, think about the skeleton crews that go down. I think Interpol is open all the time because they cross all, all time zones. Sure. At all times. Yeah. So they kind of have to be ready to go all the time because, you know, while one guy sleeping, the criminals in one country are sleeping, they're wide awake and carrying out bad activities in another.

That's true. What else can they do, Josh? Oh, they serve that I247 is also a place where you can access another country's databases. Right. So this, those, those nationally bound databases become international through this I247 portal. And Interpol oversees all of that. Yeah. So they know what's going on.

They also, let's say there's an international disaster of some sort, like a terrorist attack, assassination. They can send an incident response team. Yeah. Generally coordinated through the UN. If there's some sort of actually a natural disaster, like the tsunami efforts, they can send people down there to help identify people and look for missing persons. Protect kids.

Because I can guarantee you there are a lot of pedophiles who traveled to Indonesia after that tsunami. That's right. That's crazy, man. I know. That is just, that's awful. Imagine like losing your parents, being seven, suddenly an orphan. And then now there's some guy who's like, hey, you're coming to Holland with me.

Right. You're like, no, I'm not. He's like, yeah, you really are. Oh, you didn't understand what he's saying. He just offered you the loli. Right. And a, and a car ride. Yeah.

Yeah. Very sad. But thanks to Interpol, things like that are being thwarted. Right. And I saw there's two types of incident response teams. Um, they have the criminal type and the disaster type. Yeah. And, but they both serve in an advisory capacity and they show up at their database.

They're like, I can get you into I-247. You need me. They can act as a central command though. If local authorities say, hey, we need your help to act as central command. Help us out with logistics. Um, I think the Grabster said in 2005, they did that 12 times. Yeah. Once a month.

Not bad. Yeah. Dust off the old work and shoes. Yeah. They're like, get out of the field. Yeah. Time to get out of bed. Uh, how's the structure, Josh?

Well, I'll tell you, Interpol is made up of a general assembly in which each of the member nations has one delegate and one vote. Thanks a lot of sense. They meet once a year and they vote on all the big stuff, which kind of makes it a slow lumbering bureaucracy unless they invest a lot of authority into the executive committee, which is a 13-member committee that basically carries out all the administrative functions of Interpol. And they are elected.

Right. As is the secretary general. Although it says in here, point it. That's all elected. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, he's elected because, um, I saw this guy, Ronald K. Noble. Uh-huh.

He, he got an overwhelming majority of the vote for his second reelection. So he's in his third term. Yeah. First time ever. Yeah. Which is, uh, I think he's running from, uh, 2010 to 2015 under this current term. Yeah. And he is the first American secretary general, if I'm not mistaken, right?

Yeah. And he's the first three-time secretary general, too. Then a lot of Frenchies. Uh, I think I saw one, uh, Englishman. Yeah. And, uh, there's definitely one German because there was some controversy with that. I believe the president is Korean now. Oh, really?

Mm-hmm. Okay. Not to be confused with the secretary general. Right. The president is beneath him. Right. The secretary general is who actually runs the day-to-day show. Right.

And he's headquartered, um, in the general secretariat, which is the main headquarters. Yeah. In Lyon, France. That's right. And then there's other, there's, um, regional offices. There's six of them. The sixth of which is in New York. And that's the special liaison to the UN.

Because Interpol very wisely got in with the UN because, like, this body has some staying power. That's right. We're going to become friendly with them. Uh, you can also find these, uh, place offices in Argentina, El Salvador, Thailand, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and... Cote d'Ivoire. Very nice. Thank you. Did you practice that?

No, I just, it's such a lovely name that I've said it many times. It just rolls off the tongue. It just rolls off the tongue. It means the, um, Cote d'Ivoire in French. Oh, okay. 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, uh, 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 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,

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because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race Herstory, and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race Herstory. So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode. Deep brief on all the looks and more, listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned that we all, all member countries, chip in for the budget.

The budget's not a lot, though, compared to, like, any budget in the United States. I think in 2007, the Grabster pointed it at roughly $61 million U.S. or 44 million euros, which... I wonder what that's equal to now. $2,007 to $2,011, but it's a big change. I should have looked up the current budget, actually. Yes, you should. I failed to. It's okay, Chuck.

Let's talk about the notices. So this is their other big thing. They don't just sit around and wait to be asked for help. They also disseminate information, and they do it through color-coded notices. They've got, let's see, what is that, nine, eight? I think seven. Okay, so they have eight now, because they added another one after this. After this, even?

Yes. Oh, wow. And the different color codes mean different things. So you're going to get via teletype, possibly fax, or maybe even email. Yeah. You'll get some sort of maybe a PDF document of, say, orange, basically says, like, hey, we've got, we have a pretty good idea that there's an imminent threat, and it's this guy, and he's wearing this coat, and he's probably carrying a bomb.

He's got a dirty bomb, yeah. So that if you get an orange one, your head better perk up, and you need to look closely. That's right. Black is unidentified bodies? That's the sad one. That's the saddest of all notices. That's the saddest of all notices. Yellow, missing persons?

Yep. That's probably the second saddest. Green, general information and warnings about major criminals. So this one is kind of, it, it, that's pretty vague. Well, it highlights another function that they have, that it wasn't explicitly stated in this article, but I gleaned using my powers of deduction, that they have analysts who crunch all this data, who pour through databases, look at crime trends, look at criminal trends, and then come up with basically just general notices when they're sitting around with some

time on their hands. They issue green notices that say like, hey, here's another angle to a case that you might not have thought of. Interesting. Have you met this guy? Here's all the bad stuff he's done. He may be in your neighborhood. Right.

That kind of thing. And the local authorities say, yeah, yeah, Interpol, we got, we know you got some time on your hands. Right, exactly. Very nice. Thank you. The blue notice, Josh, is individuals of interest related to a crime, including possible witnesses or suspects or persons of interest is a good umbrella term for those kinds of people for

crime that's already been committed. People who ran with the wrong crowd were at the wrong place in the wrong time and didn't stick around on an international level. That's right. Red recently, Mr. Julian Assange was issued the red notice, which means you are wanted and it's sort of like a worldwide APB. You've got to keep that. You print it out and put it on your wall.

What? A red Interpol notice on you. Oh, yeah, gotcha. Although Assange probably wasn't too fond of his. I'll bet he kept his. I'll bet he's one of the few who did. With Photoshop though, I mean, you can never tell if it's real or not. That's true.

You or I could make our own. I mean, we should do that. Why not? I have a feeling one's coming our way. Interpol notice, which is not a color. That was scary to me because it was the only one that's not a color. Unless the new one you talked about is not a color. It's a color.

Okay. The Interpol notice means it's a UN Security Council special notice, meaning groups of individuals involved with Al Qaeda or the Taliban are at work. Yeah. People who have UN sanctions on them. Yeah. Then there's now the Purple notice, which basically it's kind of like a green notice. It's like, hey, be aware of this kind of stuff that's going on.

But it's about what people are doing like international criminal trends. Like, do you remember? I think they were like pin guns. There was like just a few years back, there was like a pin that could shoot and it was very low powered. But I think Interpol sent out a notice on this like, hey, you guys need to be aware that this thing's out there. I just saw that in a movie.

Okay. Well, Interpol probably inspired the writer. Interesting. It was a comedy too. I guarantee Interpol inspired the writer. It was pretty funny. It was Fred Ward. Fred Ward or Fred Willard?

Fred Ward. Okay. The time writer. Remo Williams? Yeah. Okay. He had a pin gun and shot at a dude in the neck. It was kind of funny.

What movie was it? 30 Minutes or Less with Danny McBride. And it was good. The guy who played Facebook. The guy who played Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, Jesse Eisenberg. They were both in that.

It was sort of funny, but not highly recommended. But that scene was funny because Fred Willard's like, you think it's a pin and all of a sudden he just shoots this dude in the neck with it. That's funny. Yeah. That's high comedy. Yeah. It was very much.

I watched Inside Man again last night. That's such a good movie. Which one's that? Spike Lee. Heist movie with Clive Owen. I never saw that. Dude. Really?

Yeah, Yumi hadn't seen it either. I made her watch it last night. She's like, this is a good movie. That's one of the few Spike Lee movies I have not seen. It's... See that. All right. Have you seen 25th Hour?

Yeah. That's a good one too. Yeah. I think Inside Man hasn't beat. All right. So, yeah. Purple is just basically like information on new types of criminal activity that people need to be made aware of.

Like, pen guns. Gotcha. And Fred Ward. But the pen gun was a real warning or a real purple warning? Notice? I don't know. I'm just assuming I'm using an example. Gotcha.

So, let's talk about the history of Interpol. Chuck has a strange tumultuous history that closely follows the tumulti of the 20th century, if you ask me. Yeah, and Ed kind of breezed right over the whole Nazi part of it. There's been a lot of controversy over that, actually. Oh, yeah? Why are they accused of colluding? Well, let's back up.

Of 1923, they were formed in Vienna, Austria. During World War II, Ed says they were interrupted when the Nazis took control, deposed to Secretary General, moved to Berlin for a short time. But then after the war, everything was rebuilt and moved to Paris. And that's kind of all he said. Right. I looked a little further into it, and it's pretty controversial those years when it was under Nazi rule, obviously.

They shared headquarters with the Gestapo, officially operated as a division within the Nazi security police, and two Nazi war criminals were the agency's presidents during the war time. Plus, they overspent on Christmas parties. And then this, a Reddit Times article and some of the comments back to the editorial said, you guys even kind of whitewashed it because after the war, they refused to take part in the 60s and 70s in any of the Nazi war crime hunting, war criminal hunts. Crazy.

Wow, I had no idea, Chuck. I'm really glad you did this. Really? Yeah. And then in 1968, their president to 72 was Paul Dickup, and he was an SS officer. No. He was and remained president despite them finding out about this and knowing about this. And that was pretty controversial, too.

Geez, I'll bet. You don't usually want Nazis leading your organization. Former Nazis, either. No. You know what I'm saying? Once a Nazi, always a Nazi, in my opinion. Well, Dickup was the, he was the president for whatever, for years. Yeah, wow.

And a lot of people, a lot of people say Interpol is like run without oversight, and they have all this access, but no one has access to their real, like how they do things. It's the opposite of how Grabbinowski tells it. Yeah, it's a little more controversial than I thought, once you start poking around. Well, I guess it was probably the VHS tapes that started to bring them out of the dark, and into, I guess, a brighter role. Remember the Interpol warning on old video cassettes? No.

Was that Interpol? Oh, yeah. Now it's like an FBI warning, but before, and every once in a while, you'll still see it like Interpol warning. And so again, it's like copyright theft and piracy. Wow. But yeah, apparently they now are, they've shed themselves of Nazis and have a third term secretary general who's busting pedophiles in Amsterdam.

And did you pretty, I think that's good, I'm saying. Oh, no, of course. Yeah, yeah, they've apparently tried to clean up their image a lot since those days. That is crazy, man. And did you hear about the executive order Obama signed in 09? It was pretty controversial among conservatives because little background, the International Organization and Immunities Act in 1945 was signed in the law and basically that meant the president could say certain organizations, international

organizations that worked in the U.S. are exempted from certain things like taxes, search and seizure laws. And pretty much every president has said, you can be a part of this like the Red Cross. Reagan in 1983 included Interpol as part of that group, songs like four different sections and dealing with property taxes, social security, federal taxes, customs duties, and having property and assets searched and confiscated. Then in 09, Obama said those four things now you're immune from as well. So you have full immunity.

Interpol does in the United States for these things. And conservatives got up in arms about, you know, the fact that Obama had signed this. They tend to get up in arms about anything he signs. Like his dinner check. But then people rallied back and said, well, you know, I thought you wanted someone tough on crime and he's basically saying Interpol has more rights to do their thing in the United States. So which way do you want it? Or do you just want to complain about everything that he does?

And the Obama administration said that, you know what, this really didn't give them any more free reign than Reagan had already given them in 83. It just sort of finished up what he started. So who knows, regardless of which side you sit on on the political aisle. Obama is the new Reagan, the end. 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. 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 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 podcast.

Ready, set, slay. Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast is taking you behind the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 on MTV with me, Alec Moppa, and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, the best and worst looks, and we'll even be joined by some of your favorite queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of queens this season, because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race, Herstory, and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race,

Herstory, so make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode, debrief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. You got any more? Some successes, you talked about the tsunami in 2004.

Sure, that was one. And your pedophile scenario? It's pretty big. Not yours. 30 countries, that's pretty huge. They helped identify and capture a Serbian war criminal, Milan Lukic Lukic Lukic. I'll bet it's Lukic in Argentina, coordinating between Argentina and Chile and Bosnia, Herzegovina. Nice.

And let's see, they also had one. You remember the Madrid train bombings? Oh yeah. Man, I had forgotten about those. 2004. Killed 190 people and they managed to catch at least one guy. They found 21 guilty but Interpol caught at least one guy through coordination between Belgrade, Baghdad and Madrid offices.

And did you know the 21 people who were found guilty of that got to combine 40,000 years in prison? Really? Yeah. They'll probably never get out. No. No, I don't think they're going to get out. And then Grabster pointed this one out, a response team obtained and disseminated fingerprints and photographs of Abu Musab al-Zarkawi.

Yeah, which sounds kind of whatever. But then you're like, oh yeah, how would you get that guy's fingerprints? Yeah, I thought the same thing. And then I thought twice. I was like, nah, I guess that is a pretty big deal. Yeah. It's worth mentioning. Yeah, sure.

I didn't find a lot of stuff though. I searched for more. Yeah, same here. And I think they're sort of behind the scenes. They're like, we're not going to have any big arrests because we don't do that. But we're involved in a lot of those on the back end. On their website, which is a pretty cool user friendly website. Agreed.

It's like, here's a lot of information that's very vague. Yeah. Like we have two kinds of response teams, criminal and disaster. And that's all we're going to say about that, that kind of thing. And you know, I'm interested to hear if anyone knows anymore about their controversies. I'm curious. Yeah. Does your dad work at Interpol?

We want to know. Interpol. You got anything else? No. So if you want to learn more about Interpol and read a very glowing review of their life and work, very glossy whitewashed review, you can type in Interpol, I-N-T-E-R-P-O-L. And did we say where they got the name? I don't think we did.

I don't think so. So with the advent of telegraph communications, they were like, man, we need to shorten this or else people aren't going to waste the money with Western Union talking about us. So they shortened their name to Interpol. Instead of the longer I-C-O-P, they should just call it I-C-O-P. Yeah. I-COP. Yeah.

Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, don't type. Well, I guess you could type I-COP into the search bar. It's probably some Mac Apple app now that allows you to like make citizens arrest or something. Exactly. That's a good one.

Thanks. We should go make that. Well, yeah. Type I-COP in the searchbarhousestuffworks.com. And I said search bar, it just didn't, you know it, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this my brewer for Anheuser-Busch. Wow, it's a big, big time. One of the big daddies.

Hey guys, just finished listening to the beer podcast and felt compelled to write. I used to live in Atlanta and miss the beer senior, a dream of the brick store pub every third night. I'm a beer geek, home brewer, and also happened to now brew beer for Anheuser-Busch. I'm also now known as A.B. Inbev, as was mentioned in the podcast. It's a pretty sweet gig that all started for me by home brewing in my Atlanta apartment closet. Crazy. I enjoyed the podcast a lot and you were pretty spot on with the info on brewing 101,

except for the mention of forced carbonation. I have worked, because I think we said that the big breweries like forced carbonate everything. Yeah. Not so. I've worked in a couple of craft breweries aside from my current job at Anheuser-Busch and I had never seen this before. I can't speak for the other big guys, but our beer at Anheuser-Busch is made pretty much the same way as other small craft beers.

We just have much larger equipment and more automation. At Anheuser-Busch. After primary fermentation, our beers are loggered in a tank for as long as 21 days. In the case of the famous Budweiser. I've heard of that. 21 days. During the aging process, the beer is still fermenting slightly and builds up CO2 in the tank. This is how our beer is carbonated, all natural, similar to the priming home brew and bottles.

And that's it. He says have a 420 on me and I'll pick up the tab next time in Atlanta. No, you send us the money first and then we'll go have a 420 on you. That's what I say, David. Thanks, David. We appreciate in advance the money you'll send us for our 420s. Yes, and also I wanted to point out when we were talking about our favorite beers, I was sort of snobby with all my IPAs and all that stuff.

I do love all that, but the triumvirate for me has been my staple since college, which is Budweiser, Miller Highlight and Pat's. I like, yeah, I like all those. I'm fine with those. Yeah, and I don't drink those as much anymore because I love the taste of like a delicious IPA, but I certainly don't turn my nose up at a Budweiser. Okay, well then you're definitely not a beer snob. No, not at all.

You like the drinking poo. You remember those kids in college, did you know anybody in college who could like recite what it said on the next label of the Budweiser bottle, like what it says? No. The writing? I didn't know anyone. It's like, this is Budweiser, the finest beer ever produced, blah, blah, blah. I used to go to school with kids who could recite that like by heart.

No, I just thought it was kind of sad. Yeah, I didn't even know. I've never even read the bottle. Yeah, it's easier if you have like a beach towel because the lettering's way bigger. Oh, and I also got called out by a fan for being a hipster for drinking hops. Then I was like, dude, I've been drinking PBR since I know like 1993. And it amused me when it became a hipster beer. I was like, really?

It blows my mind how much we share ourselves and how much we have in the 400 plus episodes. And there's so many people out there who do not know us at all. Yeah. So I guess if you want to offer us money for beer, that's cool. Or you can just send us beer. We're not done with that call out yet. I'm not ashamed over money. Sure.

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