Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Is Stockholm Syndrome real?

Episode Date: August 27, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, since a hostage standoff in Sweden took place in 1972 a peculiar and mysterious psychological phenomenon has had a name. But is Stockholm Syndrome real? And what conditions have to be present? Join Chuck and Josh as they look into this unusual condition. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna 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. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And this Saturday for SYSK Selects, I chose Is Stockholm Syndrome Real? It originally ran in November of 2012, and it's got it all, mostly kidnapping,

but it's some other stuff as well. It's just one of my all time favorite episodes. So, check it out, hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I'm still sick, I'm sorry about that. Like, this is actually me with my nose blown recently.

I think at this point we could recommend to listeners who typically listen with earbuds or headphones, maybe give this one a try just in your car speakers. It's probably a good idea. Yeah, Jerry was like, dude, have you heard this through headphones? Did you listen to it? No, not yet, but we don't wear headphones here, which is odd for audio recording.

Yeah, a lot of people like hearing headphones right in there. I don't like that. I don't either, we're told we're the only ones here who don't do that. Hey, we're trailblazers. Maybe that's the secret. Yeah. Chuckers. Yes.

Have you ever been kidnapped? Not in the strictest of senses. I have been kidnapped in the fun church youth group way. Oh, for like diabetes or something like that? Yeah, like when someone comes by and kidnaps you for a cause. Right, you know, yeah, which is an odd thing to do. I always felt kind of left out because no one ever kidnapped me for any cause.

Oh yeah? Yeah, I will. Maybe I'll do that one day. Just get the crap out of you, break into your house with a ski mask on, duct tape. I'd probably recognize you by your clothes. You can wear a ski mask and be like, what are you doing? I know that kidnapper. I know that beef stew smell anyway.

It's a good thing that you were kidnapped just for a cause because there's a very low likelihood that you would have suffered from what's known as Stockholm syndrome from being held basically ransom until you raised X number of dollars for juvenile diabetes foundation. Right. There are a lot of cases, a surprising amount of cases. Even in the statistics that are used to poo poo, the concept of Stockholm syndrome or its prevalence, it's still a surprising amount of cases of people who are abducted, people who are held as slaves or hostages.

Yeah, it's not like a ransom deal. It's just I'm going to take you now and put you in my cellar for 15 years. That's depending. It depends on how you look at it, but yeah, and it depends on the factors involved. But there is a weird phenomenon that we do not yet have fully pinned down yet even that toy dinosaur can tell you what it is, and it's called Stockholm syndrome. That's right. It's a crazy thing because it's a psychological disorder that almost no one ever will endure.

The press loves it, so they talk about it all the time, and it has an awesome back story. So basically it has everything there for everyone to just overestimate the prevalence of it. Yeah, I think the press loves it because it has the name and like you said, the cool back story, but I don't agree. But to the press, I think they think it's just like, how could anyone ever feel for their captor? It's so remarkable that this happens. But when I read this article, I'm kind of like, I get it a little bit in some cases.

And especially in this day and age, after so many incidents of it being reported and covered in like us and people and time and whatever, it almost comes off as disingenuous where the press, the tabloid press particularly is like, how could this person identify their captor? It's definitely sensational and not like empathetic it seems like. But that's the point though. I mean, I guess we should probably define what Stockholm syndrome is for that one person who doesn't know.

Yeah, it's well when you're held captive for some period of time and you end up, and it's actually not always being held captive because they said in battered spouse cases or slave master relationship, you end up feeling empathy and identifying somewhat with your captor. Yeah. It's destructive culture. Another one. Yeah.

And I would advise everybody to go listen to the brainwashing episode and if you've already heard it, a lot of this stuff is going to sound kind of familiar because the two share a lot of common traits. Very true. There are some specific traits to Stockholm syndrome, some factors that psychology generally agrees have to be present for somebody to develop Stockholm syndrome. But let's talk about where this came from. You want to?

Sure. The first, the 73. I wonder what they called it before this. I saw two other names for it, but I don't know if they predated Stockholm syndrome. Terror bonding and trauma bonding. Terror bonding seems like a new kind of phrase. It seems like a traumatic bonding was the other one. It's the no-frills like we're not sensationalizing here.

This is the real deal. Well, it came from a bank robbery in 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden. And this article actually has it wrong. It says two men entered the bank. Yeah. It was actually just one dude. Olsen entered the bank, cops showed up for this bank robbery, shootout happens, injure some cops.

He takes some hostages and then he demands that his buddy, Olsen, who I think just got out of jail. No, he was in jail, I thought. Oh, he was in jail? Yeah. And they freed him and sent him to this bank. And I guess it was like, thanks, buddy. Yeah.

Here's the gun. Yeah. You're now in a hostage standoff with him. And he was kind of a career criminal, so I doubt if he was like, well, great. Now I'm out of, I was two months from being let out, now here I am holding people hostage. He sort of looked, the second guy I thought looked a little bit like Koresh. Oh, really? Yeah, a little bit.

Which one? Olsen or Ericsson? Because Olsen. Olofsson. Okay. Or yeah, yeah, yeah. Olsen or Olofsson. Yeah.

Olsen looks kind of like Charlie Manson a little bit. Oh, yeah. But then again, 1973, everybody looked like Charlie Manson, you know? So what happens in this case is it's a standoff. There's a hostage situation and reportedly the hostages ended up showing love for the captors and were sort of against the cops. And one reason I saw a sighted was because they felt like the cops were, put them in more danger, like with their violent tactics that they thought were coming down upon them.

Yeah. So that's what happened. They said Stockholm syndrome. I read this right up by the guy, a psychologist named Nils Bergerot. He was actually the, one of the hostage negotiators, a liaison for the police to these hostage takers at Credit Bonkin. Is that how you say it? What, the bank?

Yeah, Credit Bonkin. Yeah, Credit Bonkin. So he was there and they actually, he's usually credited with coining the term Stockholm syndrome. Oh yeah. But he was saying like after talking with these guys that they weren't insane. They weren't on drugs. They were like, like you said, career criminals. And every move they made was to like benefit themselves or their situation.

It was beneath them to hurt these people, to hurt their hostages, but they loved shooting at cops because they hated cops. And they were not above threatening these hostages lives to the point where the hostages were taking it seriously. But yes, it seemed like the police were putting them in danger with these raids. Yeah. What surprised me was how quickly, like the only reason Stockholm syndrome makes sense to me is that when it takes place over like years, like this was a little weird to me.

Okay. Here's the thing. There's a great debate over whether, and by great debate, people disagree over whether Stockholm syndrome develops over a short, intense period or a long protracted period. So like in the case of say Natasha Kempush. Yeah. Let's tell her story, I guess, real quick. Okay.

She was an Austrian girl who disappeared in 1998 in the way to school. And she was kept in a 54 square foot cellar with soundproof with no windows by Wolfgang Pricklopel and told her the doors and windows were booby-trapped, you can't escape. And they like, how many years was this? She was held for eight years, eight years, sorry. And they were, they ended up, she went on a ski vacation with them, eventually was like let out of the basement during the day, had to go back at night always and like would go to restaurants occasionally.

And she eventually escaped when she was vacuuming and he took a phone call when in the other room she left the vacuum running and bolted, which is pretty smart. And when he found out, she eventually made it to a neighbor's house and went inside and this old lady called the cops and she's like, I'm this girl that's been missing on these years. And eventually he jumped in front of a train when he found out she got out, killed himself and apparently she cried and like lit candles at the morgue where he was kept. And also denied that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome.

Okay. So can I give you another one? Yeah. This is Lee Duggard. Yeah. I remember that one well. Much more recent, much more familiar. I'm sure to those of us in the US, especially those of us who pay attention to us weekly.

But she was held for 18 years. She, her captor, she assisted her captor with his home business. Captors. Captors with their home business, emailed customers, took phone calls from customers, greeted customers at the door by herself. Really it was a lot like Natasha's story where like she was like living out in plain sight with these people and like had all these opportunities to like make a, make a run for it and like never did.

Yeah. And he was a kidnapper. He was already served time for kidnapping. Yeah. I believe so. When she was finally freed, she, her, I guess her stepfather was explaining it to the press that she really had strong feelings for this guy and that like she thought of this as like a marriage basically.

Yeah. I mean she was held captive for 18 years, right? So on the one side, those are two really good examples of Stockholm syndrome to like coming to see your captor as your husband or to cry and like, you know, light candles at Morgue for your captor after he kills himself. Yeah. And then on the other side, there's like the, remember the TWA hijackers in 1985? Yeah.

Somebody who was freed after that relatively short standoff said that these were, they weren't bad people, quote, the terrorists weren't bad people. They let me eat. They let me sleep. They gave me my life. Wow. And that was a really short, brief, intense encounter. And those are like kind of the different sides of the whole thing.

So like which one, if you become a member of your captor's family, is that Stockholm syndrome or is it a slightly different animal? If you come to see your captors, your savior simply because they're letting you live over like the course of like 24 hours while they're holding you, is that Stockholm syndrome? Which one's which? Because we have slightly different things going on and they're both really abnormal psychologically speaking. Agreed.

So I think it was the girl in Austria said that like on the plus side, I didn't drink or do drugs or smoke and I didn't hang out with like bad kids because I was in a cellar. So I mean, obviously we're not laughing at her, but it was definitely a unique take on being held captive. And one of the things too, like I guess we'll eventually get to Patty Hearst, but in the case of these girls, they were like, you know, the one was 10 years old when she was originally kidnapped. Right.

So I mean, when you're 10, I think you would be much more susceptible to something like this over the course of like your entire adolescence. Growing up as your teenage years like this, you know, it makes sense to me a little bit that you accept it and see these people as your protectors. Right. So that's the common thread, whether it's a short, brief, intense period or 18 years of captivity. Right.

The common thread is that Stockholm Syndrome developing it is seen as a survival strategy. Yeah. So I think that's the common thread. Hey, we're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, let's talk about the factors involved, shall we? We shall. What traits must be present? The three traits are a severely uneven power relationship, which makes sense. The captor is completely in charge

of every facet of your life. When you eat, when you sleep, how you sleep, where you sleep, what you eat, what you drink. If you can shower or not, like everything. If you can talk? Yeah, true. Whether or not you're like chained to a bed. Threat or threat of death or physical injury.

And a lot of times that includes like, you know, rape and assault and severe beatings. There's another one, like, I'll talk about that in a second, but there's a disagreement about whether that can be present or not. Oh, really? Yeah.

And then finally, self-preservation instinct, which is what we were talking about. They believe like, the only way my butt's gonna get out of here is if I... Obey. Yeah, obey. And it's called a healthy ego, as a self-preservation instinct.

Like, your ego starts to take over and says, okay, we need to figure out how to stay alive here. Yeah, it puts a lotion on the skin. Right, exactly. Or else what? Or else it gets the hose again. And so the ego takes over because all other normal tactics available

to any free human being to stay alive. Yeah. Grabbing a gun, calling the police, shouting, whatever are stripped from that person. Well, sure, and in the case of the Austrian girl, she was told things were booby-trapped, like windows and doors, and that he said he had a gun on him at all times.

And when you're 10 and you grow up like this, like, how are you gonna figure this out? You know, you're not watching TV, you're obviously not on the internet. Like, for all she knew, things were booby-trapped. Yeah. And she's trying to live. There's two other factors that usually have to be present,

too, is the prisoner has to believe that escape is impossible, like you were saying. Whether it's booby-trapped or whatever. That there's just no escape. There's no other thing to focus the mind on. Like, how can I dig my way out of here? It's totally focused on the captor being the means of escape or survival.

And then the prisoner also has to be isolated. So this one kind of like undermines the idea of somebody who's held captive in plain sight for 18 years, developing classic Stockholm syndrome. Because if you were totally isolated from the outside world, other opinions of the captor are sequestered from you. Yeah, same cults.

Yeah, so that Lieutenant Denzel Washington out there, an inside man, and what he thinks of Clive Owens, is not coming through. All you have is your increasingly deranged mind to tell you what you think about Clive Owens. Right. You know?

I'm gonna add my own here, too. Okay. I think that part of it has to do with just human's desire to connect with another human. Oh, yeah. And if all you've got is this one person, and it's over the course of eight to 18 years, that's gonna take over at some point,

and you're gonna wanna connect with this person. You know, I think you may have just hit upon the distinction between the short intense period and the long duration. Yeah, because think about it, like you do. If you are just kept apart from everybody else, you do still have that need to connect with people. That's brilliant, Chuck.

That may be the most brilliant thing you've said yet. My dinosaur's clapping. Yeah. It's better than the caveman Melton, and Neanderthals Melton. That's a good theory. Okay, so we know all of the stuff that has to be present, right?

Basically, you're a hostage that is totally subject to the whims of your captor. You think you're going to die. You don't think there's any escape. You're sequestered away from other people, and your captor likes to remind you that he or she is in charge. Yes.

Okay, let's talk about the stages. Well, that is the first stage. Yeah. And I just went over it. Okay. Also threatening the family, like, hey, you love your little brother and your mom and your dad.

Well, I can kill them very easily. Yeah, like you try to escape. And if you're talking to a little 10-year-old girl that's going to, you know, do some serious damage. It has more effect than, say, on like a 40-year-old single guy. Yeah, I think so. You know?

Yeah. Or a married guy. Well, no, I don't know. You can still threaten a married guy's family, a family man's family. It's just... Yeah, but I think they would react like, you know, like Harrison Fordwood on Air Force One.

Yeah. Not cowering. They would be like, oh, yeah. What was the famous line? You shouldn't test me. No, it was get off my plane. Oh, yeah, that's what it was. You shouldn't test me.

That's pretty good, though. Thanks. I think that was in the initial script. Well, of course, my line got revised. Very funny. So, time goes on. And then what happens is the captor gets stressed out because I'm sure it's pretty stressful

to keep someone captive like that. So, the kidnap E sees these wild mood swings, maybe, and maybe feels threatened by this. And in order to survive again, they feel like they have to learn the emotional patterns of this person. And so what happens is they end up connecting by learning about this person.

Like, studying their behaviors. They get to know them in like that sense, right? Yeah. And that's like when they figure out that just obeying everything the person says is not enough because the fuzz outside, shooting tear gas into the bank vault is really starting to take the hostage-taker off.

Yeah. And you can obey all day long, but the police are screwing things up. And that's also about the time when that third step where you come to see the outside world, the people who are trying to rescue you, as harmful as a threat, yeah. So, you get to know your captor.

You're obeying. And then it comes as part where, if you listen to the brainwash episode, this will make a lot of sense. Your captor displays some minor bit of kindness toward you. Yeah, this is the key, I think. And this is why they think possibly abuse can't be present. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Because it breaks down this very essential ingredient of kindness. Or it can. Well, or if the abuse stops, they said sometimes just the lack of violence from a certain point. The scene is like, will you do me a kindness? Okay.

Quit beating and raping me. So I would agree with you on that one. But for the most part, say it could be offering food. It could be something as simple as stopping, abusing somebody. Or just saying, I'm not gonna kill you yet. Or I'm just not killing the person yet. And the captor, no, the hostage,

comes to see the captor as some sort of savior. Because the captor not only can kill you because he's got your life in his hands, he's not killing you. Which means he's protecting you. And now your brain just broke a little bit. Well, and if they're the one bringing you your food and water and books and magazines,

like they're essentially the one caring for you. Because they're keeping you alive. And in the case of J.C. Lee Duggard, I think like on the very first day, after she was like handcuffed and raped, the guy was started to tell her like amusing stories and things. I mean, this dude was seriously twisted.

Wow. And like would get her fast food and things like that. So like kind of right out of the gate, he would like do these little random acts of kindness. Which I'm sure just confused the hell out of her. Oh yeah, I'll bet. Cause she was pretty young when she was, I think she was 10, 11.

There's nothing like you could do to these people that would be as bad as what they did to those girls. No, no, it's absolutely true. There's another woman whose name I don't recall who was kept in a box. Wow. Under a bed. Helena?

No, no. No, it was like for real, for years. Like she wasn't like allowed out or anything like that. Like she was kept in a box. Jeez. Yeah. And it's like you raise a pretty good point. What can you possibly do to somebody

who did that to someone else? I mean, do you think just desserts like eye for an eye? Yeah, well you put them in prison and they eventually get out or don't. I guess that's similar. But prison is, although it has some of those hallmarks because the guards are in charge and can beat you up and do a lot of stuff,

you're still connected in some ways to the outside world. And there's still a lot of independence that a prisoner would have that somebody, like being held hostage, like this stuff. Like it would probably be solitary confinement for the duration of their sentence. The old Quaker sentence, right? That one there.

Yeah, remember they're the ones who came up with solitary? Oh yeah, that's right. You can think about what you did. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, um, the, the captor now has emerged as your savior. Yeah.

And as a friend, kind of. And I think it's in the sense of, you know, when you go through something like really hardcore and intense and threatening with somebody. Oh, yeah. But it's not because of them. Mm-hmm. Like, you can feel it.

You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. It's not because of them. Like, you can feel either tight with that person,

or you can feel like Homer and Mr. Burns getting trapped in that house during the avalanche. I can never want to talk about it again. Yeah. You'd never want to see that weirdo again. Yeah. Right? That's true.

Um, but this would be type A, but the, it's, you're identifying with your captor. Like, you guys are going through this crazy intense thing together. Yeah. And you're throwing out the window. The fact that the captor has started all this and has dragged you into it, put your life in jeopardy, and now you're friends with this person,

and you think that if you guys work together, you can get out of this mess, and maybe like go, you know, live in Jamaica and hang out. Well, and I'm sure that the captors at some point over the course of these years say things to reinforce that, like, you know, what are we doing here? Like, what's going on?

I've kept you in this thing, and look at this mess we are in. You think? Oh. That's, I'm just surmising. But yeah, I think. But I think, well, like saying a bank robber or something. Yeah. It's like you're, if you have classic Stockholm syndrome,

you're saying like, you know, let me talk to the cops. I'll get us out of here. Like, I'll tell them that, like, they got it all wrong, or something like that. Yeah. That level of identifying with your captors. Now, you just raised yourself to the same level

as the bank robber as well, which I guess probably gives you a little bit of humanity. Yeah. True. So, the prevalence of this stuff is definitely debatable. There's an actual database, Chuck, called the Hostage Barricade Database System. It's an FBI database,

and it's 4,700 cases of people basically taking hostages. Wow. And surveying this, they found about 73% of hostages showed no signs whatsoever of Stockholm syndrome. Are these kidnappings or hostages or both? I would say hostage taking, I believe. So, that means 27% of people do show some affinity. It's pretty high.

You would think so, but at the same time, you can also say, well, like, some high percentage of hostage takings are domestic disputes. Right. Where like, you know the person, so they already have an affinity for them. Yeah, that's true. And if they shoot themselves,

then you immediately feel bad for that person too. So, we almost need a set of data just about like strangers taking strangers hostage. Exactly. That would give us probably a better view of Stockholm syndrome. That's true. And I think I had a larger point, but I don't remember what it was.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've got it. Are you ready? Yeah. So, despite the, a lot of law enforcement people poo-pooing the idea of Stockholm syndrome or its prevalence, they do think that there's something to it,

and they actually, hostage negotiators, encourage the formation of Stockholm syndrome. Because it keeps the guys alive? Yes, because when you hit a certain point where you've got a classical Stockholm syndrome case going on with the hostages identifying with their captor as a friend, they may turn on the police, and it may make prosecution even down the road harder,

because the people may refuse to testify. But, in the short term, it can help keep the hostages alive because the captor, in turn, will start to see the hostages as human beings. Because these are people who are coming at them like friends. So, what's going on? And, like, what's your first name? Are you kids?

And now, the idea of executing these people is much more removed. Interesting. So, yeah, hostage negotiators will try to, like, get the whole Stockholm thing going. So, now, this can live in a suite with brainwashing, cults, hostage negotiation. And that's probably it.

Amazing. It is now a four-podcast suite, where it was previously three. It is, but we're not done yet. No, we're not. So, I guess we should wrap up with Patty Hearst, very famous case of Stockholm syndrome. Granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnet, was famously kidnapped by the Symbianese Liberation Army

in the 70s, and was reportedly abused and brainwashed to a certain degree, and ended up sort of joining them in a famous robbery. Yeah. She turned into a bank robber. Like, with the bray and the machine gun and the whole deal. Yeah. Everyone's seen the photo.

Yeah. But then after she was freed, she publicly came out against the Symbianese Liberation Army and opposed it, which is unusual for somebody with Stockholm syndrome. Yeah. And a lot of people thought maybe she was faking it, maybe she was making it up, but I think the consensus now is that she was,

it was just a survival tactic. Yeah, but for, I remember many years, though, when I was a little kid, hearing about this, like, oh, some people thought she, like you said, she was, now she's tricking all us. She really did get into it. Right. And she's trying to save her bacon.

Right. Because look at that photo with the machine gun and the bray, it's pretty convincing. Yeah. But definitely interesting. And then... That's a war haul, isn't it? Didn't he paint that?

Oh, really? I think so. He painted that photo. And then he went on to, or she went on to starring John Waters movies. Yeah. Oddly enough. Nice. Have you seen the thing on the video of Verne Herzog,

like, figuring out that John Waters is gay? No. He's pretty great. Really? He's talking to people, and, you know, the accent is just what makes it so priceless, about how, you know, people are just people to me. I don't even think about gay or straight or something. And he's like, I was...

I've known John Waters for, like, 20-something years, and I love him. And I said to my wife recently, I said, I think he might be gay. And everyone in the room just cracks up. But he was just illustrating a point, like, I just don't even see people like that. He never dawned on me that John Waters was gay. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. That's all I got. That's good. If you all learn more about Stockholm Syndrome, you can type that word into, or those two words, into the search bar, howstoveworks.com, and it'll bring up this fine article.

And I said search bar, so that means it's time for Listener Mail. Josh, I'm going to call this, I'm a musketeer. Yeah? Did you read this one? No, I missed that one. This is a good one. This guy, all right, I'll just read it. Lauren McNett.

My father and I are avid outdoorsmen and carry a flintlock muzzleloader whenever we can. Cool. We're also configured, we've configured our flintlocks to be 20-gauge shotguns as well. Geez. I know. I won't be so nervous pulling the trigger.

They know what they're doing, though. We go through the same process as the men and men. We load the powder charge, load the patch, load the ball, charge the pan, cock the hammer. I gotta charge the pan. Pull the set trigger, and finally pull the main trigger, at which point the flint and the hammer strikes the frisen, showering the pan with sparks that ignites the black powder

in the pan, which is adjacent to the touch hole. This guy's just showing off. That in turn ignites the powder charge, sending the 180-grain lead ball out of the barrel at about 1,850 feet per second, which is faster than the speed of sound. Wow. There is a difference in that true muskets do not have

rifled barrels where ours do, because it increases accuracy. We've been hunting for many years, and we aren't anywhere near the speed of the men and men, which was three shots per minute. We also don't have targets that fire back, obviously. But they hunt like this. Yeah. They hunt deer, turkey, bear, and ducks with flintlocks,

and it's really challenging, and it takes careful consideration, special tools, and lots and lots of patience. 100-yard shots are possible, but we generally try to get within 40 yards with the rifles and 20 yards with the shotguns. And he can confirm that inclement weather does take a toll on the ability to fire even on human days. It can dampen the powder, so it will not ignite. And then he just goes on to point out that they are responsible hunters.

They typically only get one shot, so they do their best to ensure that it is the swiftest, cleanest, harvest possible. And then they process the animals themselves. Oh, cool. And waste as little as possible as a way of honoring the animal and being respectful of nature. So that's Lauren McNett. P.S., keep the powder dry.

And let's have t-shirts to say that. Thanks, Lauren. Yeah, pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Except for the killing animals part, but I get it. You're a hunter. Do you remember the, is knife hunting the fairest way to hunt episode? Oh, man, that's an old one.

It is. But it was a good one. Remember, we ended up talking about how if a boar comes at you and you have a knife and that's it, you're on pretty much equal footing. Yeah, that's pretty fair. But then toward the end, we started to go off on internet hunting. Ah, yeah. That was a great episode.

Dig that up, everybody. Is knife hunting the fairest way to hunt? That's the only article I ever refused to write was the internet hunting. Yeah. I was assigned that. I was like, I'm not going to write about this. Yeah, good for you. And it went away because of that.

It did. Like the next day. Internet hunting. Yeah. No. No, but it has gone away about that time that you contributed to it. Let's see. If you want to tell us about something, it can be anything.

Anything at all. Oh, if you've ever had Stockholm syndrome, how about that? Yeah, then I would feel very bad for you, but I would like to hear a story. For sure. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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