Stuff You Should Know - Unsung Heroes of the Court

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Attorneys and judges get all the press. What about bailiffs, court reporters and sketch artists? Yeah, let's give them their due.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, 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. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. It's your old pals, Josh and Chuck, and you will have the chance to see us live in person for the first time in two years, Friday, January 21st in San Francisco, right, Chuck? That's right. We're returning to the stage at Sketch Fest. We're very excited about it. We

can't wait to see everyone. It is a Vax-only show. Bring your Vax card. It is a mask-only show. Bring that mask. Can't wait to see a third of your faces. That's right. You can get tickets at sfsketchfest.com. And again, Friday, January 21st, 7.30 p.m. Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, California. We will see you there. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brighton, Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Let's get to it, friend. Yeah. That's right, but hey, we have a bit of an announcement that I'm excited about. Me too. We have added a new writer to the stable, Livia Gershan, and this is Livia's first effort and how we're doing it, you know, because we've never really onboarded people,

because Dave and Edward are colleagues of ours from the House of Workstays. So we thought maybe, you know, we'd give someone an article, not, I mean, sort of as a tryout, but just to make sure that it was a good fit. And Livia killed it right out of the block, and she's super talented as a writer and obviously very smart and great at research. And like, I know both, speaking for both of us, we're just very excited to have Livia on board. And yeah. So thanks, Livia, and welcome to the family. Welcome aboard, Livia. If you went to high school with Livia, now would be a good time to email her. Say, hey, I didn't know you were writing for stuff you should know. She'd be like, oh, that, yeah. But this is a kind of fun one, I think, is a first assignment

too for her, because it's a little different in that it wasn't just one, one really deep dive on one single thing. Right. Well, she's going to bomb that when we give her that next one. But this is actually three things in one. I had the idea of court stenography, but then I was like, you know what, maybe that's not quite enough, but I didn't want to do it as a shorty. So I thought, let's just expand it and talk about bailiffs, court stenography, and court sketch artists. The triumvirate. Yeah, what we're calling the unsung heroes of the courtroom, because they're there. But, you know, you're not really ideally, if they're doing their job right, and they're not a celebrity bailiff, you're not even going to know they're there.

Yeah, that's pretty much true. They're kind of meant to kind of blend into the background, as the judge who wants all the attention usually, sometimes the lawyers. Occasionally. Even a bailiff who's sometimes the lawyers, please. Even a bailiff that's super busy doing things, they're not showboating, you know what I'm saying? No, they're not like twirling their gun or anything or being like, hurry up. This is boring. That would be bad. But bailiffs are the least exciting though, so I think we should start with them. Okay, so bailiffs, it turns out, find their heritage, it goes back many, many centuries, actually. And they apparently originally started out in the UK as kind of legal overseers of a

manor house for a feudal lord, basically. Yeah, kind of property managers. Yeah. They could collect rent, they would sometimes do some accounting, they could collect fines. I think a little later on is when they were brought into the court system, but it was still sort of doing like, sheriffy things. Right, so that I saw Chuck was the Baillie in France, where they were much more involved in courts and they actually had more power. They were more of a government official than just like somebody who served a feudal lord. Okay. And that's where this, it's weird. It's almost like between medieval England and medieval France, between these two interpretations of what a bailiff was, it got all mixed together, shaken up, some stuff fell off and some stuff stick around.

And then you said, okay, now we have the bailiff as we understand it today. Right, which is kind of what we're going to concentrate on is the good old-fashioned American bailiff sitting in the corner eating apple pie and ready to jump in there and crack someone's skull open or hand the judge a key piece of evidence or arrest somebody. Yeah, because a bailiff today is as far as people in America, and if you're in the UK, you're like, oh, I know what a bailiff is, it's somebody who, there's a water bailiff or there's an eviction bailiff who deals with travelers who won't leave. That's not really our understanding of bailiff in the United States. In the United States, we think of them almost exclusively as an officer of the court who is, in most people's

opinion, the security for the court. Like they wear a gun, they wear a badge, they're very frequently like a sheriff's deputy or a federal marshal or something like that. But apparently, there's way more to their job than just that. I had no idea about, like I really thought they were just, they're just stand up and look menacing. That was their purpose. Yeah, there's about 18,000 in change in the United States. Interestingly, it's not an official title. It's just sort of, as Libya says, like a colloquial term for someone who does this job, but you don't get titled bailiff. They just call you bailiff. Like you can be a part-time bailiff in a small town, but also be a marshal or a sheriff's deputy as your main job.

Yeah, I think even in big cities, that can be the case as well. But yeah, I think you're definitely in a smaller area, more rural area where there's say less court activity. They're going to be like, this is not big enough of a job for you. You need to do more. You need to pull your weight more than this. That's right. So go back and be a veterinary assistant and deliver the paper, do a little bailiffing. And don't forget to be mayor. That's right. So some of the other jobs that a bailiff has that I wasn't aware of, you said something about them handling evidence. If you are dealing with evidence in the court, you do not just hand it to the judge. You hand it to the bailiff, and the bailiff hands it to the judge. That was a big one I didn't realize.

Yeah, you present the murder weapon and you run at the judge with it. Isn't that how you do it? Right. And the bailiff says, go ahead. Yeah, exactly. Another one that I did know but didn't realize I knew is that the bailiff is usually the person who swears in a witness, making them swear an oath on the Bible or the Constitution or something like that, depending on whether you're in a red state or a blue state. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're going to usher the jury in and out. They're going to usher the prisoners in and out. A lot of times, for these big trials, they'll have a few bailiffs working in the room.

They tell people to not smoke. They screen people when they come into the courtroom. You can't yell out loud. You can't do that, not in this court. The judge is going to admonish them, but then the judge is going to look over at the bailiff and the bailiff is going to say, I know what that look means. Right. Yeah, I was going to say a good bailiff doesn't even need to wag their finger like the Cambay Mutombo. They can just shoot a look and you know exactly what you're not supposed to be doing anymore. So, Livia did some research on a website that broke down what makes for a good bailiff

if you're looking to do this as a job. They classified it as highly social with constant contact with others, including unpleasant and angry people and physically aggressive people. So, you're not just the muscle, but you're definitely the muscle. Exactly. Which means you're also providing security too, not just to the courtroom, but for functions of the court. So, if the jury is sequestered, your job as bailiff is to be one of the people guarding them. You're also kind of in charge of guarding the jury against themselves. So, if the jury is not supposed to be discussing the case at some point, you're supposed to be there making sure that they don't discuss the case.

Get that look. Yeah, that look. You're just basically making sure everybody's following the rules as much as possible. That's right. And I thought this is pretty interesting kind of going back to the feudal lord time, bailiffs still in the United States can be responsible for evicting people, not just in England. I saw that was Michigan and Ohio and I think Washington state all use bailiffs still, whereas other places use sheriff's deputies. But then, confusingly, in some places,

a bailiff is a sheriff's deputy. What do you get paid for doing this? A hundred grand? Easy. Not quite. It depends. State governments pay much more. There's a median of almost 69 grand a year, which is not bad. If you're on a local level, maybe 42 grand for being a bailiff. What I didn't understand and I didn't get a chance to look up is if that's on top of your salary as a marshal or a sheriff's deputy or something like that.

It wouldn't surprise me if you part time to bailiff if it might be more of an hourly thing. I see. But I don't know. I'm just guessing there. But that's not a bad scratch for a high school graduate or to get your GED. That's a very good living. You can have a degree in criminal justice. I saw where, and we'll talk about celebrity bailiffs here in a sec, but Judge Judy's bailiff, Petrie, is it Petrie Hawkins Bird or Petrie? I have never watched the second of Judge Judy's actually one of the points of pride in my life, so I don't know. But I'm going with Hawkins Bird.

He has a criminal justice degree, so he's legit. Right. Well, let's talk about celebrity bailiffs because there's basically two that come to mind, and one of them is Petrie or Petrie Hawkins Bird who has never seen it either. Judge Judy's bailiff for 25 seasons of Judge Judy. I read a really sad little article, so apparently Judge Judy ran her course on CBS, got canceled, and said, I'm going over to IMDbTV. Yeah, which I didn't know was a thing. No, I don't think anybody did. Everybody's like, good move, Judge Judy. But she didn't ask her bailiff of 25 years to come to her show, and apparently didn't talk about it at all.

She had announced that she was doing the show before the end of her 25th season, so they filmed the entire 25th season together, and she just never mentioned it, that she was starting this other show and he wasn't invited. His feelings were definitely hurting. I think he was a little bewildered and sad, and I think fell a little betrayed by that. Yeah, I saw that too. I saw that the reason she gave was that they can't afford your salary, and he said, well, no one even talked to me about it. I probably would have taken less, but it wasn't offered. And he also said that in 25 years, she never invited me to one celebrity shindig or one social lunch. Oh, is that right? Yeah, but he said, but I wish her well, and he

didn't want to drag her through the mud. Oh yeah, no, he was a class actor. But he basically was just saying, we were professional colleagues, we weren't friends, and she was just like, I'm just moving on with a new cast, and it is what it is. Like I said, I never watched it. What I did watch a lot as a 10 to 12-year-old was The People's Court. I don't know why, I love that show. I guess it was on right after school, and I watched me a lot of Judge Wapner and a lot of Rusty Burrell, his bailiff. And Rusty Burrell is the first celebrity bailiff, and by far the most prolific celebrity bailiff of all time. Oh yeah. He actually was a real bailiff in court for Los Angeles County. So was Bird. Oh yeah, Bird, yes, you're right,

you're right. He was from Manhattan. That's how he knew Judge Judy, was they worked in an actual court together before she had a TV show. Yeah. Rusty Burrell worked in LA County courts. He actually guarded the courtroom during the Manson trial. He was legit, but he became the celebrity bailiff on divorce court first from 1957 to 1969, and it just so happened that he worked with a lawyer by the last name of Wapner during that time on that show, and that lawyer Wapner would go on to have a son named Judge Joseph A. Wapner, who would become the People's Court judge, right? That's right. And they worked together on People's Court, and then Judge Wapner's Animal Court, and he said, most prolific, I was doing the math real quick,

because Bird was in there 25 years, but it looks like 26 years for Rusty. Oh, wow, that was close. 12 on divorce court, 12 on People's Court, and boy, that animal court, that pushed him over the edge. Was that the shark that got jumped? I don't know. I mean, it was two years. I bet it wasn't very good, but they count as two more years, so one more year than Bird, and apparently Wapner, at one point in an interview, said when they were originally doing the People's Court casting, that the executive producer said that he wanted to give me a sexy girl as the bailiff, but Wapner was like, no, let's use this real bailiff who my dad worked with. Yeah, and he did, and the rest is history. Should we take a break? We should. We're going to take a

break, everybody, and not keep you in suspense. We're going to come back and talk about court reporters. Okay, I see what you're doing. 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, 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. I'm Mangesh Atikler, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. So court reporters are... You said that bailiffs were the least interesting. So court reporters are the most interesting to you? I think court reporters and sketch artists are definitely interesting to me, but boy, I love this court reporting section. I thought it was super interesting, the machinery and the history, and the fact that they play a real civic duty in recording history. And that's one of the first points Olivia makes is, in Neo-Babylonian Mesopotamia, they kept legal records on clay tablets. And these weren't just

like, so we'll know what happened in this court case it was, but it was recording history. Like it was recording precedent and all that stuff was really important from the beginning. Yeah. For the Mesopotamians, the Babylonians, they weren't saying like, we got to preserve this amazing verdict about this land dispute for posterity. Like on this clay tablet was how somebody could prove that, no, my family owns this land. It was decided back in 555 BCE and my family owns this land. Look at the Cuneiform tablet. Let me get a hand truck and I'll be right back. Right, exactly. But it just turned out that they kept such meticulous records and they

survived and we figured out how to read Cuneiform that we learned a lot about the Babylonians and and how they dealt with law and agriculture and land disputes and traditions and customs and all that. Thanks to writing that down through legal documents. And we actually understand a lot about a lot of things based on court documents. Like do you remember when we were talking about the Salem witch trials in that episode? And we were saying like, we understand it very much because it was extensively documented, but it was documented through court cases and there's just certain ways that you preserve facts and information when you're documenting it through a court record. That's just not the same. It doesn't give you the full picture compared to, you know,

rounding out with journals and diaries and stuff like that. But it's still way, way better than nothing. But what struck me as weird, Chuck, is that the idea of recording stuff like that, which seems like, of course, you're going to do that. It got lost for a while. Yeah. Here in the United States during the colonial period, they were like you mentioned diaries and stuff. That's kind of what they relied on was, you know, whenever a lawyer or a judge might happen to keep personal notebooks about stuff, they would use that, but they didn't officially decree like this is something we need to do. I think it was the early 1800s that they said, no, this is a problem and we can't just rely on whoever happens

to want to take notes and save them. Judges, you need to start writing your verdicts down on paper at least and not just say them out loud. And the judges were like probably because judges didn't really feel like doing that is gave rise to actual court reporting. Yeah. Think about this, Chuck. You know how like emphatic like older men are when they're just, they just know they're right. Like think about the cluster that would arise when some judge just knew he remembered a verdict correctly and those totally wrong. Like that was the state of the early American court system before they finally said like the beginning of the 19th century when they finally said, no, we need to write this down. Like if you put yourself in that situation,

I can't imagine how many terrible outcomes there were from that. Oh yeah. I think it was in 1804 when Massachusetts finally enacted a law that said, the governor has the authority to appoint someone, quote, learned in the law to obtain true and authentic reports of the decisions. And 1817 was when Congress finally passed a law saying the Supreme Court at the very least has to have an official court reporter. Right. I said, yeah, yeah, Supreme Court, you get on that too. Something I didn't realize that I thought was pretty interesting is that before that people did document court reports, it's particularly of the Supreme Court, but they were just like freelance schmoes who showed up

and sat there and documented it themselves to turn around and sell to whoever wanted that kind of information. So it was like, it was, it was willy nilly, I think is the term for that. And you might ask who would want to buy that, you know, law schools, attorneys, yeah, Bobbies, right, constables, bailiffs, bailiffs, bailees. So finally, finally, at the end of the 19th century, everybody's like, all right, we're on board with this idea about actually recording the decisions of the court. And let's go a little further. Let's, let's record every single minute detail down to gestures down to somebody sitting quietly when asked a question. And that's where court reporting was actually born, was in the end

of the 19th century. Yeah, 1899 was when the National Shorthand Reporters Association was formed. And I think this is one of the reasons this spoke to me a little bit because I took a course in high school called speed writing. Oh, well, there we go. Speed writing, typing, and I can't remember the third thing. It's one of those classes that, you know, that you spent time doing three different things. How reckless would that have been? Balancing a checkbook? That was in there. I don't know if that was that class, but anyway, speed writing was, no, but I did take homec. I did too. I wasn't, it wasn't official shorthand as we're about to talk about. It was, it was a kind of shorthand though. And the funniest thing I remember from that class,

I don't know, I don't think I should say her name is my old friend. She would probably think it's funny and wouldn't care, but I won't say her name. But she sat next to me in class and we just always cut up and she did not learn. She learned the shorthand but not such that she could take the test, which was basically a teacher would just dictate things. You would write it in shorthand and then transcribe it back in long form. But she was really, really fast at writing. So she would write it all in regular longhand and then take the time to transcribe it to shorthand and then turn them in in reverse order and got caught. Now, she got busted though and that was technically cheating. That always felt bad for my unnamed friend. It was like she can really

fast. Doesn't that count for something? Yeah, I mean, she should have gotten an A for effort at least. But yeah, if she went back and transcribed it using a book, that's, that's cheating Chuck. Well, no, she needs a book. Oh, well then she should have gotten an A. She just needed more time. It's like a, if you were in a German class and you had to just write down in English what they were saying in German, writing the German first and then taking your time to transcribe it. Yeah, no, I got what you were saying for sure. And I dispute the teacher having an A. There's no book involved. But shorthand is fascinating to me and has a very long history going back to Cicero's enslaved servant Marcus Tuleus Tiro in 63 BCE developed a Latin

shorthand, became known as Tyronian notes. And these were symbols. They were like 4,000 symbols. And they, you know, it was basically the earliest version of shorthand. Yeah. And apparently medieval monks got ahold of it and turned it into 13,000 symbols. Of course they did. So yeah, because they had a lot of time on their hands. Plenty of time. And there's like a real value in developing shorthand. So there is all sorts of shorthand systems that were developed over the time. But as far as court reporting goes, it wasn't until a guy named John Robert Gregg got into the mix in the late 19th century. And he developed a Gregg method of shorthand writing that was so useful and so popular. He actually opened schools around the country.

I saw him described as a tycoon where basically if you were a secretary, if you were involved in anything that involved transcribing or taking dictation or any job like that, you basically could not get the job until you had a Gregg certificate. And so you had to go pay to take those classes and be trained. Like it was just the way it was. And then along came Miles Bartholomew, who basically ruined everything for John Robert Gregg and his heirs. No, not so. You would think that court reporter Miles Bartholomew, by inventing the first stenotype machine would have made speed writing and shorthand go the way of the dodo, but that did not happen. And Livia points out very astutely that today, there are still some

court reporters who do pen and paper shorthand. And ostensibly, because as we'll see, it's really hard to learn how to master that machine. And if you're really good at shorthand, and you can write 200 words a minute using shorthand, then just have plenty of pens and paper and go at it. Yeah, if you can write 200 words a minute, you're probably generally keeping up. But from the stenography machines, or the steno, is what they're called machine shorthand, like you can, if you know what you're doing, you can do 300 words a minute. And that's when you're doing like some high quality court reporting work. Yeah, I get a feeling that the pen and paper might be some of these small town courts that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, their bailiff is doing all sorts of other jobs. Their court reporter just has pen and paper. That's a giant mess, basically, in these small towns. I mean, but it makes sense, you know. And before we move on to the steno, we do need to shout out the, that weird gas mask looking thing that you see sometimes, the steno mask. Yeah. And that's the thing that you speak into, but they can't hear you speaking. And it records, you know, it records you saying the real words. Yeah. I think my issue with that is not even the shape or the look of the mask,

it's the color of the material they use. It's always this weird clinical medical tan color. It's like, have you heard of yellow or blue? This is a job that I thought would might be fun as a retirement job for me. Yeah. But I would not be able to do it without my own commentary. So it would just be a very low voice and, you know, this attorney objects, God, this guy again, he thinks he's all that. Oh man, the judge is mad. Yeah. I don't think we can, I don't think you can do that. I think you just need to

say what people are saying, but that's a talent in and of itself. It depends. So I was looking into those steno masks and I was like, so how does this work? So you're actually, when you're wearing that mask, it's part muffler, part silence, or like the people around you can't hear you. That's why that mask is so big. But all you're doing is restating what the people are. You're doing vocal commentary on what's going on. Okay. That makes sense. But then you're like, well, wait a minute, aren't there like transcriptions? Yes. That means that you have to go back, listen to what you recorded, type it up as you're listening, and turn it into a clean transcript.

So you're basically doubling the work with the steno mask. Oh, I thought it had, I thought it was a machine that just did it for you. Now it does. But when Horace Wells invented that thing in the World War II, it did not have that machine. So it was a really kluge process that took a lot of time. But the reason they did it is because it was so highly accurate and it could produce so many like comments and details and observations that you might just miss that if you were typing or writing shorthand. Right. So it was a lot of effort, but it seemed to be worth the effort. Right. Livia found a court reporter from Cleveland named Todd L. Peterson who wrote some stuff.

I think his name, sorry, it's person. Oh, did I say Peterson? Mm-hmm. I guess. He's a person with two S's. Yeah. But he said basically, you know, if you're just talking about a regular person, they speak at about 180 words a minute, but then you have multiple people speaking. You have people talking over each other, people interrupting each other. Mm-hmm. It can get up to 300 actual words a minute. And if you're one of the best typists around, you max out at, you know, in the low 100s basically. And you also have to say who is speaking, do the name of the person. You're in there for, you know, eight to 10 hours at a time.

Man. And it's a brutal job. This machine is a crazy piece of machinery because it doesn't, it's not like a little tiny typewriter. It is 22 blank keys and a blank number bar. And you are playing it like a piano basically. You're not saying, you're not spelling out words one letter at a time. You're doing it all at the same time. And it's just a miracle how anyone ever learns how to use this thing. Yeah. That 110 word a minute typist is using a QWERTY keyboard like you and I use on our computers. And apparently because the rate of speech is 180 words per minute, that means that if you're typing on a normal keyboard, you start to fall behind at the first, after the first 10

seconds and you just get further and further behind, right? We can't do it. With that machine, you're talking about the stenography machine with just 22 keys in that blank number bar. The way that it's set up is you've got the beginning consonant sounds that are being worked on the left hand, the left side. On your right hand, on the right side are the ending consonant sounds. And in the middle are the syllables or the vowels that you use your thumb to type that go in the middle of the words. So that means because of the placement of the keys, you can press all these keys at once and compose a word all at once rather than one letter at a time. No matter how fast you're typing on a QWERTY keyboard, you're still ultimately typing

one letter at a time. With a stenography machine, you're typing an entire word all at once basically. Yes. And that's why in a courtroom, they can ask for the stenographer to read back, the court reporter to read back something that's just been said, which has been used in countless TV comedies and movie comedies throughout history. It's always a great gag when something dumb happens in court and the court reporter in a very monotone reads back what has just happened. Yeah. Like airplane two, I can't remember what the joke was, but I know there was one. Did they do it in that? I'm sure they did. That's a trope. It's been in a million movies. It's one of the great jokes. So one of the things that they've done is they said, okay, the stenography

machine is amazing. And the people who use these things and can type 300 plus words a minute are magical human beings. They are. But we now have technology that can make these things even more outstanding. And that is that while you're typing, and apparently, by the way, people who are typing, who are masters of a stenography machine, they can, they type with like 99% accuracy at 300 words a minute. So it's just fantastic. So they have these things plugged in now to a computer that's basically adding timestamps, putting the person's name after like Nexa, who's speaking at any given point. And then they take that and transfer it, they send it out to a real-time live feed to like the judge's computer, the lawyer's computers, so that everybody who

needs one in the courtroom sees the transcript as it's happening basically almost entirely in real time. Pretty cool. It is pretty cool. And then the one last technology I saw, Chuck, is that that they have a speech to text now, so that now finally those Steno masks are actually a valuable tool. And I believe they're starting to come back. You have those on your phone. Yeah, basically. But you just need a muffler silencer mask to attach to your phone and you'd be right there for a court reporter. Yeah, those are remarkably accurate on the phone I found. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. But there are some things where they kind of lack. Like if you weren't using just the court reporter, some apparently some courts have said, let's just set up some microphones in the court

and have an AI transcribe this and just not take the court reporter out of the whole thing and the Steno mask. Get rid of that ugly Steno mask. And they found that the AI can't do things like understand accents, especially if it's a thick accent. When people talk over each other, it just throws its hands up. If you ask an AI to read it back, that can be a problem. Or the AI can't ask you to repeat yourself. That's another one too. So if you are a court reporter, you're going to be making should be $300,000 a year. Should be. If you ask me to learn that machine, because it takes this, you know, I guess it depends on how fast of a learner you are. But Mr. Persson says six months to learn those keystrokes and another couple of years to really get good

at it. I buy that. That's a lot of time put in. I think the median pay is about $61,000 as of May 2020. You can also get a little side hustle going, doing depots maybe. Although I think most of those are usually video recorded because my friend does that for a living. But $61,000 should be more. That's all I'm saying. I'll bet they do both. I'll bet they video record them. But I'm sure they have transcripts just because it's so much easier to scan a transcript to find what you're looking for. Almost a hazardous video. There's no court reporter in there. That's interesting. It probably depends on the, again, the size of the case and how much money you can throw at it. Right. Because it costs dough. Yeah, I can imagine.

There is one person we should mention that I kind of feel bad, but there is one part of this I did find funny. There was a New York State Supreme Court court reporter. Let's say this, we won't even name him. Okay. Who had a drinking problem and it screwed up pretty big at a few trials. And it's not funny because he had a drinking problem. The only funny part is I can imagine them reading the transcript back at some point when he just repeatedly typed, I hate my job. I hate my job. Yeah. Over and over and over. Yeah. And apparently he did this on some really important trials. He just didn't take notes for a couple of days and some of them. And so now some guilty verdicts have been up for grabs. And they had, Chuck, they had reconstruction hearings where

the judge brought the lawyers and the defendants and everybody back in and said, okay, who remembers what about this? Because we're missing some really important parts of the record and we need to try to recreate it. Wow. And the thing that stuck me too was in this, in a New York Post article on it, they interviewed his ex-wife and she said it was that job that caused him to start drinking in the first place. And I'm like, amen. Because I got to tell you, I can't think of too many more stressful jobs that don't involve an actual human life in your hands, like say like a heart surgeon or something, than a court reporter. You think? Yeah, man. The pressure to get everything right, not miss anything, not fall behind and stay like that for eight hours at a stretch,

you know, every day that you're working that, that sounds like a very high pressure job. I don't know. I think from that thing that, that account you sent of what they, it was another insider account was, it seemed a little more zen to me than that, because what they, he talked about was hearing but not listening. Yeah. So you kind of have to go into this fugue state almost, where you're hearing words, but you're not listening as if you're in a conversation with someone, because then you're investing, even if you're not trying to, you're probably investing emotionally and that'll get you out of your rhythm. You just have to, you just have to hear and let the words flow through your fingers. Yeah, yeah.

Pretty interesting. I think, yeah, it is like a zen thing, but I... Takes a certain kind of person for sure. Yeah, and I'm sure, I'm sure not all of them can do it, but yeah, that would probably be the ideal way to do it for sure. All right, let's take our last break and we're going to come back and talk about those scrappy little sketch artists right after this. 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, 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. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying

to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sketch artists are maybe the most unsung because there aren't many of them. I started to think

about court sketch artists and you don't have them for every trial. It's not like a bailiff or a stenographer. You only get a sketch artist in there when it's something the media is interested in. And there's only so many of those trials. There's only so many big cities where those trials might be taking place. So there aren't that many court sketch artists anymore that are working. No. And yeah, the sketches that are produced, they're not ordered by the court. They're not part of the court record. They exist for the media to have some sort of visual information to accompany reports of court cases, which makes sense. But I never really thought about that before. Yeah. And that's it. And it started because there weren't cameras. In 1859, it was John Brown's

trial in Virginia. And there was a national magazine that sent illustrators to cover this. And that was kind of where the whole thing started. When cameras did come around, they put them in the courtroom. And the trial of the century, the first trial of the century, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping with Bruno Hauptmann in 1935 was chaos with those huge cameras and flash bulbs and court reporter and photographers just like, apparently climbing on tables to get good shots. It was just, it was a zoo in there. So he said he couldn't even get a fair trial because of these camera people. And even though that argument didn't work, the ABA said, you know what, no more cameras in the courtrooms generally. This is the American Bar Association, so they

don't, they can't lay down the law. Right. But usually, I mean, some are televised and sometimes there's cameras. I know we all watch the OJ trial. But most times you're going to see a sketch come out on the five o'clock news. Yeah. I mean, because the ABA said there shouldn't be cameras in the courtroom, a lot of states and the federal government said, yeah, you're absolutely right. And so that actually was one of those rare instances where like the predecessor came back in style. And I guess in the 60s, TV news was not a huge thing until the civil rights era, until the assassination of JFK and the ensuing assassination of Jack Ruby. Like the 60s is kind of supercharged the reason for there to be TV news. And the people who were doing the news

needed, like if they couldn't get cameras in the courtroom, they still needed some visual. And so that gave like a real boost to courtroom sketch artists as well. Yeah. I think the Jack Ruby trial is a man named Howard Brody very famously sketch that one. And he went on to do RFK and MLK's assassinations. Then there was a man named Bill Robles who's done some pretty famous ones. I like his stuff. He did the Manson trial. And if you look at those sketches online, he kind of has a Ralph Steadman quality to him. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. Is that the guy who did the Manson leaping at the judge? Yes. Yeah. So yeah, so I think there are courtroom sketch artists that have kind of made names for themselves, especially among the media. But what they will

do is sit there and draw the scenes in a court, believe it or not, that's what these sketch artists are doing all day. They sit around and draw. But it's harder than it sounds because very frequently there's not a lot of visual action going on in the courtroom. It's not rare necessarily, but it's not happening every moment. You can't count on Charles Manson to always be jumping over a table. Exactly. So the court sketch artist has to basically have a real eye for nuance and facial expression and to figure out how to capture visually a subtle exchange that can maybe change the momentum of a court case or something like that and then present it. Then they have to do it in a way that looks good and they have to do it quickly. And then when

they're done, they have to run out up until probably the last few decades. They had to run outside and the TV news crews would film the sketches that they made for that day for the evening news. Yeah. And you know, they don't have a special chair like this stenographer does or a special place to stand. I mean, I think in some courts, they accommodate them as best they can. I think there was this one article from Mental Floss where one of the court reporters, Vicki Ellen Behringer, said that they would give her a place to sit sometimes in the jury box if there was room. But sometimes you're just out there with everyone else and you're, you know, you might have somebody with a big giant head in front of you. You got to really work on

the fly. And like you said, work fast. I mentioned it's not a whole lot of people doing it. I think Robles was interviewed like three or four years ago and said he's working a lot, but he's just one of two in Los Angeles. So, and I thought that just sounded astounding. But again, if you think about the media covered trials, there just aren't that many of them. So you don't need hundreds and thousands of sketch artists around the country. Yeah. Just to pick up work, sketch artists are becoming bailiffs. The bailiffs like got the gun in one hand and sketching on the other. It's tough, man. It's tough out there. So one of the places you can get work if you're a reliable sketch artist is by drawing the Supreme Court because you just

aren't going to get a camera in there. Like anybody who listens to NPR news is familiar with Nina Totenberg's like play by play of Supreme Court arguments and discussions. And she's kind of like a verbal sketch artist. But the point is, is there's not any media allowed in the Supreme Court chambers. Yeah. Just today with the abortion proceedings, I was looking at pictures. I saw some last night of the sketch artist and it was probably done by Arthur Lean. Arthur may be the only person to do them for the Supreme Court, but I know that he does the SCOTUS blog and for NBC. So maybe they probably let more than one in for something this big. But apparently it's court reporters have round or I'm sorry, sketch artists have roundly said it's a lot easier to

draw someone like Charles Manson than it is to draw some just sort of normal looking normal. Like I don't know like Tom Brady or something like that. Yeah, that was very famous. Jane Rosenberg sketched Tom Brady almost at Tom Bairinger during the deflate gate proceedings. Tom Brady is traditionally a handsome person and he looked a little bit like Lurch and it became a meme and it was pretty funny. The best one I saw, the best meme I saw was that sketch of Tom Brady photoshopped on to the Hunchback from Hunchback and Notre Dame the Disney movie. Oh really? It was perfect. I mean it fit perfect. She got a lot of press out of that. She did. The other best one I saw was that sketch of Tom Brady's head on the potato

Jesus meme. Oh right, right. It fit pretty well too. The final little thing here that Livia found which I thought was pretty great in a testament to how good of work that she's doing for us so far but she found that they sometimes attorneys, and this doesn't surprise me, they will buy some of these sketches. I guess sometimes either if it's a famous case or early in their career and have it framed. So I think it's just sort of a symbolic thing because even though they have different styles, you can always tell a courtroom sketch. Oh yeah. I think to have a framed courtroom sketch of yourself and you finally make it as an attorney is probably a pretty big deal. Yeah, especially if you're standing and pointing

at the accused. Yeah. Something really dramatic like that. Sure. I've always wanted the Wall Street Journal to do a piece on us so we could get a drawing of us like that. That's a really easily recognizable type of drawing too. Yeah, totally. Come on Wall Street or Mad Magazine maybe. It's defunct Chuck. I know but this guy's still draw. They bring him out of retirement. I want Mort Drucker. I think he passed away but oh god to be drawn by Mort Drucker. That would be pretty amazing. Or I'd take Jack Davis too. He did the UGA football guy in the 70s. Yeah, that's right. I got that Coke bottle on my bar still. There you go. Maybe someday Chuck. Commemorative Coke bottle.

Well, since Chuck said commemorative Coke bottle, I think that's it which means it's time for a listener mail everybody. I'm going to call this another dentistry email. This is from Kayla. Hey guys, really enjoyed your episode about dentistry. I'm currently a fourth year dental student in the U.S. graduating in May and I want to add a couple of things here. Green Black was one of the fathers of dentistry that you mentioned but you didn't say much about him. Green Black, commonly known as GV Black in the dental realm, invented the pedal driven dental drill and also outlined the best way to prepare tooth for cavity filling which is still the method used today. And secondly, since you focus on the history of dentistry, I wanted to

mention Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentistry. In the year 249, Apollonia a deaconess was beaten for refusing to renounce her faith and the beating caused all of her teeth to shatter and fall out. She then elected to be burned alive instead of renounce her faith and even jumped into the fire herself. After her death, she was made the patron saint of dentistry and two thanks and there's even a painting of her in the Louvre. And this is from Kayla who was just introduced to the show last year by her brother and now is a big fan. Nice. Thanks Kayla. Good luck with dentistry school. Yeah, for sure. That's one of those examples. I knew of both of those. I just didn't make it in the show and it's just so excruciating

to be called out about those later on. It's okay to miss things. Well, thanks a lot Kayla and good luck with dental school and thank you for writing in and welcome to the show. Right, Chuck? That's right. Well, if you want to be like Kayla, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts.ihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way

more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.