0:02

We are Ken Jennings and John Roderick.

0:14

We speak to you from our present, which we can

0:16

only assume is your distant past. The

0:18

turbulent time that was the early 21st century. Fearing

0:21

the great cataclysm that will surely befall

0:23

our civilization, we began this monumental

0:26

reference of strange and obscure human knowledge.

0:28

These recordings represent our attempt to compile

0:31

and preserve wonders and esoterica that

0:33

would otherwise be lost.

0:35

So whether you're listening from an advanced civilization

0:37

or have just reinvented the technology to decrypt

0:40

our transmissions,

0:41

this is our legacy to you. This

0:43

is our time capsule. This

0:45

is the Omnibus. You

1:14

have accessed entry 686.DE2407. Certificate

1:21

number 25468. Kids

1:24

on Milk Cartons.

1:26

Memories of missing children appeared everywhere

1:29

from milk cartons to pizza boxes, grocery

1:32

bags and envelopes. Their faces

1:34

underneath the troubling question, have you seen

1:36

me? Do you have memories of

1:39

what's your first memory of strangers

1:43

as an as an evil force? Were you

1:45

raised in America and in America where

1:48

where kids were being indoctrinated against strangers?

1:51

Do you want to do you really want to do you really want

1:53

to go here? Does

1:55

it end with you in a van? I don't know

1:57

my for up until. this

2:00

event, none

2:02

of us locked our doors, no

2:05

one cared where kids were. And

2:07

then- People preferred not to know where they kids were. They really

2:10

did. People were slightly drunk, 12 to 15

2:12

hours a day. You don't wanna be thinking

2:14

about your kids. The hours between 9 a.m.

2:16

and 8 p.m. are mom

2:19

and cigarettes smoking hours. Get

2:21

out of the house and don't come back.

2:23

We've got guiding light and cigarettes. And

2:26

then a man in a Volkswagen at

2:29

Lake Sammamish was

2:34

reported to have asked a

2:36

teenage girl for help putting his boat on

2:39

the back of the car and the girl disappeared.

2:43

This is the local er stranger, Lake

2:45

Sammamish man in a Volkswagen. And it was Ted

2:47

Bundy. Oh, well. And

2:50

we didn't know it was Ted Bundy, but

2:53

there was this, like a

2:56

teenage girl got into a car with a man and disappeared.

3:00

And then it happened again. You

3:02

have to imagine a world where this had not

3:04

occurred to people. No. You

3:07

know, if you've been raised in a post Bundy,

3:09

post Milk Carton world,

3:11

post stranger danger, you can't imagine

3:13

this. And none

3:15

of us could imagine it. And

3:18

then somewhere around,

3:19

I

3:23

have a very distinct memory of

3:26

driving, you know, the

3:29

road to the 520 bridge, the

3:31

turn there that goes under Harvard. Yeah.

3:35

This is good content for our non capital hill listeners.

3:39

Well, the side of that hill was overgrown

3:41

brush. And

3:44

the green river killer started,

3:49

well, I guess that was early eighties. Anyway,

3:54

the concept that you could find a body

3:59

had never happened. That had never happened either. Like, you

4:01

know, other than whatever truckers, but

4:04

you know, the idea that there was a killer and

4:07

that they were hiding bodies. And

4:09

I remember watching a team of

4:11

volunteers going through

4:14

the brush and saying,

4:16

what are all those people doing on the hillside? And

4:19

my mom said, oh, they're searching

4:21

for bodies, like

4:23

teenagers. And are you young enough at this point that

4:26

that changes how you were parented? No,

4:31

my parents still, well, it just changed the whole

4:33

energy up there. Sure, but

4:36

did it affect you? I mean, were you getting

4:38

the sit-down talks? Because I also grew up here

4:40

and I got the sit-down talks. My sister was

4:44

up at the bus stop on Dayton

4:46

and 183rd. Yeah.

4:50

How's this for content? Yeah, who

4:52

hears from Ines Arden, anybody? Dayton

4:55

and 183rd, she was at the bus stop and a man

4:58

pulled up

4:59

in a car and told her to get

5:01

in. And she was

5:05

six and we

5:07

had already had the talk. And she ran. She

5:09

remembered. She did. And it was just right

5:12

a block from our house. And she ran to, and

5:14

I was, she was up at the bus stop. I was on my way

5:16

to meet her.

5:17

And then I and my little

5:21

band of lost boys, you

5:23

know, with our homemade bows and arrows, all

5:25

ran up there and we're like, gonna

5:27

fight this guy.

5:29

But the Ines Arden killer was gone. And I think

5:31

I still, years after,

5:33

whenever I would go by that bus stop, I would have that

5:36

visual of my sister in her little yellow

5:39

dress being accosted

5:41

by a man. We were the first generation

5:43

to be given very specific

5:46

rules, like incredibly specific scenarios.

5:49

Now you're gonna be at home and somebody's gonna knock

5:51

on the door and they're gonna say they're here to

5:53

read a meter.

5:54

And not only do you not let them in, you don't

5:56

say your parents aren't here. And,

6:02

you know, somebody's gonna come try to

6:04

pick you up at school. I remember

6:06

my mom telling somebody, and they're gonna say that

6:08

I gave permission to pick you up, but I

6:10

didn't. So you're gonna ask them

6:13

what the secret safe word is.

6:15

This has to sound crazy to anyone

6:17

younger than us, because they're like, yeah, this is just- Of

6:19

course. What it's like to- What do you want,

6:21

to get in the car if they don't know the secret word? But

6:24

when, because I was already,

6:27

by the time of the secret safe word

6:30

stuff, I think everybody thought

6:32

I was already too old

6:33

to not- Too old to kidnap, like a lot of them had-

6:36

Well, or too old not to know

6:38

to get into a car with somebody that

6:40

was telling me that they were a friend of my dad's, you

6:42

know? He will pick a younger, juicier kid.

6:45

But I definitely remember my sister

6:48

hearing this,

6:50

and it

6:52

was all new, brand new, the

6:54

idea that strangers were unsafe.

6:57

They're gonna have candy, John. Strangers are the

6:59

ones that are supposed to help you when you get lost in the mall.

7:01

Strangers are your fellow

7:03

Americans who are- That

7:05

was how the previous generation was raised. It takes a village,

7:08

and you just need to find a trusted

7:10

adult. Yeah, that famous boomer phrase, it takes

7:13

a village. The boomers were all about

7:15

communal good, famously. That's

7:17

why they all moved to their little tiny suburbs

7:19

and their big lawns. But

7:23

this is an age difference between you and me. And

7:26

was this true also in Korea? Kind

7:29

of a military- I mean, we're living in

7:31

some apartment complex. I don't know if my parents

7:33

had a good sense of what the risks are, but by then, everybody

7:35

had been trained

7:35

by the media to assume the

7:37

worst. And better safe than sorry,

7:40

of course. I mean, you don't want all six of your kids

7:42

to get kidnapped because

7:46

you didn't choose a safe word with a number and a special

7:48

character in it for the afterschool pickup. I've thought

7:50

about this so much because I'm a father of

7:52

a daughter. It's newly relevant now. As the father

7:54

of a daughter, Ken. Let's hear your definitive ally

7:57

take.

7:59

I live a mile from her

8:01

mother and it's a

8:03

mile through a safe subdivision in

8:06

the suburb.

8:07

But every time she leaves to make that trip,

8:10

I've trained

8:13

myself to not be- What if? Yeah,

8:15

to not what if, but the what if is

8:17

in the back of your head all the time. So she

8:20

and I have spent

8:21

several years talking about situational awareness,

8:24

talking about never let yourself get caught

8:26

between a rock and hard place. Always

8:29

be aware of cars on the street and

8:32

which houses are closest that you can get

8:34

to. I mean, all this stuff, and we've

8:36

always, we gamified it. So it's like

8:39

a secret agent thing,

8:40

but I don't let her walk with headphones

8:42

on. I mean,

8:45

cars are the real threat, especially

8:47

this kind of sidewalk free neighborhood. But I see

8:50

people with headphones on walking at night.

8:53

And I always am like,

8:54

that's just bad ops. Do

8:57

you feel like it did anything to your brain to grow up in this

8:59

world of the specter of constant

9:01

threat that adults were always scaring you with?

9:04

Yeah. And I think it really

9:06

does something to the kids brains. That's

9:08

what I mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

9:11

Like how did it change your childhood? Well, just think of how different

9:13

the world is now than it was for us.

9:15

I mean- Well, the result is, kids who

9:17

don't, as you say, don't have as wide

9:19

a radius to explore. My daughter has eaten

9:22

a negligible

9:22

number of worms. And

9:25

by her age, I had eaten hundreds of worms.

9:28

This is why she's gonna get some crippling gluten allergy.

9:30

She's gonna get celiac because she didn't have enough grams

9:32

of worms per day. The number of neighborhood

9:35

bullies that held me down in a sticker bush

9:38

is, it's an uncountable

9:40

number. And she's never been held in

9:43

a sticker bush by a bully. I

9:45

can't even name all the bullies. I like how disappointed you

9:47

are. My daughter, I'm

9:50

sorry, I'm sorry about, this

9:52

is a very sore subject to me. Nobody holds

9:54

her down in a sticker bush. I'm

9:57

sure I was shaped by this in some way, but honestly, a lot of

9:59

my memories were about-

9:59

about how goofy the whole thing seemed. I

10:02

had cousins who were always listening to this

10:05

cassette tape of the safety kids. The

10:07

safety kids would, I'm sure it was some free government

10:09

giveaway, singing

10:12

chipper songs about how, no, you shouldn't

10:14

let anybody touch you in your bathing suit area. And

10:17

it was funny. Stay outside of my line or I'll

10:19

tell on you. I'll tell on you. I mean, it

10:21

wasn't designed to be funny. It was designed to be catchy. But

10:23

to us, we were like, what is this goofy

10:26

stuff?

10:26

Just because it seemed

10:29

so shrill

10:30

and weird.

10:32

But that was the

10:34

climate. No parent wanted to not

10:37

be the one to teach best practices.

10:39

And we had been assured by nonprofits

10:42

and by

10:43

municipalities and states and the

10:46

federal government

10:47

that this was what good parenting was. In

10:49

Bundy happened when I was six.

10:53

So I kind of did

10:56

grow up in a post Bundy Northwest. And

11:00

this wasn't a national thing yet, but it was

11:02

very much, for whatever reason, we're so

11:05

ahead of the curve with serial killing

11:08

up here. Well, I didn't think about this

11:10

when I was putting this together because in the

11:12

Northwest,

11:14

maybe this was actually

11:16

a more real threat. We

11:19

did have some pretty high profile guys

11:22

collecting scores. They

11:24

weren't kidnapping kids. They

11:26

were kidnapping teens. And

11:29

that's the thing about child

11:32

kidnapping. The National Center for Missing and Exploited

11:34

Children

11:35

will release statistics, scaring

11:38

parents with the fact that 2,300 American kids

11:42

go missing every day. Every

11:44

day? 2,300 American kids go missing

11:46

every day. That's 800,000 kids a year. And

11:51

you're laughing already, but

11:53

if you're the average scared American parent with no

11:56

sense of numeracy, you're like, oh no, 800,000 kids

11:59

your wife's not.

11:59

No one, this shit. This shit.

12:03

Why is this not driving all domestic

12:05

and foreign policy? Every decision

12:08

I make. Like at the- 800,000 kids.

12:11

You know, you leave boards, you leave them all in the food

12:13

courts like, wait, are there six fewer kids

12:15

than there were when I walked in? I

12:19

love statistics. So these numbers, I

12:21

mean, there are years where those are defensible

12:23

interpretations of the numbers, but

12:25

I think it's well understood now- How many of those are being

12:27

kidnapped by their dads? That's the problem. Exactly

12:29

the problem. First, 99% of them are found quickly

12:32

and they were just eating bugs in

12:35

a neighbor's basement or something. Highly recommended.

12:37

Right, or you know, whatever. They were out

12:39

back and they didn't come back to the playground

12:41

when called. This happened once

12:43

when my younger kid was little.

12:45

Mindy freaked out because we couldn't find the group of friends

12:48

at the playground.

12:49

They were right there. And were yelling

12:51

and yelling and yelling. And finally, it turns out

12:53

they're just sitting in a bush having a tea party. Exactly.

12:56

Or yeah, that's what they were doing. Wow.

13:00

You also live in a cynical post Bundy

13:02

world. In

13:05

my family, the famous story, my mom was on

13:07

the phone

13:08

and she was not, she had been mean to me

13:10

already that day. And I wrote a letter,

13:13

which we still have,

13:16

I'm running away forever. I

13:18

am gone and not coming back was

13:21

the final sentence. And I ran

13:23

away and I went all the way from 183rd

13:25

all the way to

13:27

the QFC in Innes Arden.

13:29

Wow. Walked on my bike,

13:32

walked around the store mad, sure

13:34

that there were already helicopters out searching

13:37

for me, rode around, went

13:39

to the 7-Eleven and got a Slurpee. And

13:41

finally was like, I'm gonna go back and watch

13:43

the rescue effort. You know, I'm

13:46

gonna Tom Sawyer this. Just like 45 minutes later.

13:48

Go to my own funeral, hide in the bushes. And

13:50

I snuck all the way back into the

13:52

yard and no hullabaloo

13:54

at all. I got back in the house and she was still.

13:57

Kids

13:59

are small. kids are always wandering off, 99% of

14:01

this 800,000 a year, they

14:04

are immediately found. And as you say, the

14:06

other 98% of them

14:10

are either just runaways or as

14:12

you said, non-custodial parent, typically a

14:15

father who doesn't like

14:17

the custody arrangement or

14:19

whatever it is. And a

14:23

fight with a spouse or an ex-spouse turns into

14:25

a police report. So how many legit

14:28

like missing kids are there?

14:30

Let's look at the most recent numbers from the FBI. In 2019, when

14:32

there were 75 million children in America, a

14:36

lot of kids, the FBI says, depending

14:39

on how you count, no more than between 52 and 306.

14:44

It's oddly specific given the margin of error. It's

14:46

not 51 and it's not 307. Between 52 and 306

14:48

kids in America were kidnapped

14:51

by non-family.

14:54

And 2016, you see Irvine study

14:58

looking at what is the risk of a child or teen

15:00

being abducted and not returned

15:03

says that every year your child has a 0.00007%

15:10

chance. Jeez. So of

15:12

every 1.4 million kids,

15:15

one every year is actually gonna get kidnapped

15:18

by not as dad or a stepdad. And how

15:20

many of those kidnappers are

15:23

family friends or people they know? Yeah, and

15:25

many of those are acquaintances. Like the stranger

15:27

is even rarer than those because this is now split

15:29

between

15:30

canonical guy in a windowless van

15:33

and just weird neighbor.

15:35

Creepy uncle. Yeah, the funny thing is I remember

15:37

my mom telling us when she gave us whatever the secret word

15:40

for pickup,

15:41

I think it was like Superman or something. We decided

15:43

on a superhero. She said, if

15:46

it's just me,

15:48

obviously I don't have to give the secret word. But

15:50

then she said, and if it's anybody from church, that's fine. And

15:52

I feel like that's a very blinker 1970s view of

15:56

who to trust. Exactly. Yeah, here's a random group

15:58

of a hundred people, but you worship with them.

15:59

them. So yeah, probably,

16:02

right? Yeah, there's never an instance where a

16:04

minister or a youth pastor... Luckily, there

16:06

has not been a single case in the news of any

16:08

ecclesiastical person doing

16:10

anything untoward to kids.

16:13

So statistically, what the UC Irvine

16:15

says is, your odds are effectively zero.

16:18

Like if you were an actuary, 0.0007% would be,

16:23

this is de minimis, this does not exist. First

16:26

of all, I love the word de minimis. Let's say that

16:28

more. Thank you so much for giving me that

16:30

today. This way to reduce people. But

16:33

okay, so... And

16:35

it's getting better, by the way, because

16:37

we know that despite popular perception,

16:42

both violent and property crime have been cut in half

16:45

since the early 90s. Yeah.

16:47

So the risk is lower now

16:49

than it ever was. So what am I supposed to

16:51

think about? I mean, because I'm also

16:54

not a particularly helicopter dad,

16:57

but as you're saying this, I'm thinking

16:59

about the

17:01

U-Haul boxes of anxiety I

17:03

have stored in the basement about my

17:06

daughter being kidnapped. What am I supposed to do

17:08

with all that apparently

17:12

misplaced fear? Maybe just redirected

17:14

into web searching for Ukraine, truth

17:16

of the word. How about climate change? What if I just put

17:19

it all in my climate change? Load it all into climate

17:21

change. I mean, that's an interesting question. The emotional

17:24

investment of parenting is just so

17:27

intense in your lower brain

17:29

that maybe statistics are not going to convince

17:32

people. How much of that

17:35

low number is a product of all of us being

17:37

hyper paranoid? Well, that's the question.

17:39

That's what people will often say. Because there are

17:41

today anti-helicopter parenting

17:43

advocates, free range parents.

17:46

Our kids, our generation turned out better because

17:49

we got to bike around and eat worms. But doesn't

17:51

that feel like one of these generation

17:53

X Facebook memes where it's like, yeah, yeah,

17:56

okay. The reply is often, well, yeah, of course

17:58

our kids are

17:59

because we locked him down.

18:02

But I think the problem with that is that the crime

18:04

numbers have gone down with adults

18:06

as well. Yeah, so it's not like

18:09

the world got saved for four kids just because we taught

18:11

them all the secret school pickup password. Okay,

18:14

so a de minim,

18:16

what was the word? De minimus? De minimus,

18:18

a de minimus chance.

18:21

Am I using that correctly?

18:22

I think so. A de minimus- I think

18:24

it's adjectival. A de minimus chance of being kidnapped.

18:27

I just saw your kid upstairs like 20 minutes ago. Not

18:29

kidnapped, presumably. Not kidnapped at the time. Reading

18:32

a book about Victorian fashion

18:34

paper dolls, I think. That was the one. That's

18:37

my child. If we go up now, like will she be one

18:39

of the 800,000 kids that'll disappear this year?

18:41

I bet she's, I bet not. I bet she's still right there. Well, especially

18:43

since, I mean, we've talked about it so

18:45

much that she kind of is looking forward to being

18:48

able to kick a grown man in the peanuts. I

18:50

thought you were gonna say, well, yeah, I guess. She's

18:52

looking forward

18:52

to being kidnapped. There's one chance you're gonna have in

18:54

life to really nail somebody and it's

18:56

this. If a stranger touches you

18:59

in public, you can kick him as hard

19:01

as you want. It's your big chance to take down the patriarchy.

19:04

Nobody's gonna stick up for that guy. You are not

19:06

allowed to do it in so many other instances. Even

19:09

the internet will not say, let's not ruin

19:11

this guy's promising school career.

19:14

But yeah, as you say, like

19:16

maybe numbers are not gonna, I mean, we're still thinking

19:18

the same way about this decades later, even though

19:21

we have the statistics, but I think

19:23

it's because stories are just more convincing

19:25

to people than numbers.

19:27

And you've got the stories, the creepy

19:29

guy that

19:30

leered at your sister on

19:32

Dayton and

19:34

everybody knowing, I mean, maybe the Northwest is the exception

19:36

because we actually did have Ted Bundy and the Green River

19:38

Killer. Teens probably shouldn't

19:40

have been hanging out and parking lots at night. Right.

19:44

But yeah, I'm

19:46

really kind of swamped with emotion

19:48

right now trying to figure out,

19:51

knowing this, am I less likely

19:53

to worry about her

19:54

walking that mile and a half? You should, you

19:56

should feel freed. I know, but I'm not sure.

19:59

The problem's so.

19:59

I'm so in this cult. Yeah, I mean, I think, well,

20:02

plus the problem with a near zero probability

20:04

is. It's not zero. Yeah, when you're on a plane

20:06

and you're like, this is so much safer than

20:09

driving, but still, you know, then you hit turbulence

20:11

and you're like, boy, there's really nothing under me right now. But

20:14

statistically, driving her that

20:16

mile and a half is more dangerous to her. Well,

20:19

I think the most dangerous thing, like the thing that really

20:21

does kill kids and is probably on the

20:23

rise. Pesticides. Hurricanes.

20:26

No, is car accidents, you

20:28

know. American cars are getting

20:29

bigger, sight lines are worse.

20:32

People aren't really bad at driving. People

20:34

are antisocial now after

20:36

COVID. And

20:39

I think, yeah,

20:40

car accidents, pedestrian accidents are actually

20:42

on the rise because they're making the car safer for the

20:44

driver at the expense of whoever's

20:46

under the wheels. Well, especially now

20:49

that cars don't make any sound. Oh, yeah. That's

20:51

really great. I can sneak up. I run over

20:53

so many kids in my electric vehicle. Yeah, your car goes,

20:55

ooh. I think that's federally mandated.

20:58

They have to add a little weird hum because

21:00

otherwise you'll just run over too many old ladies

21:02

in the parking lot. Your car makes more,

21:05

the tires make more noise than any other car. It's

21:07

true. You realize how much, I'm on the freeway and I realize

21:10

this is still kind of loud. The tires, at

21:12

high speed, the tires are making much more noise in your car

21:14

than the engine probably. Or at least you're closer

21:16

to them.

21:17

So I guess by the numbers, that's what you

21:19

wanna teach your kid. Please, please, please

21:21

look both ways. Always crossing

21:24

the crosswalk.

21:25

But at some point, somebody's gonna offer

21:27

you a jolly rancher, but that will have been laced with the

21:29

following things.

21:31

I mean, that's the fantasy.

21:33

But these stories are powerful. So a very small number

21:35

of them were enough to change the course of history.

21:38

You mentioned the Northwest cases, but nationwide,

21:42

I think the highest profile two were

21:45

two very sad cases of six year old boys.

21:47

In 1979, Eton Pizz's parents send him

21:49

off to school. They

21:54

live on Prince Street in Soho.

21:56

In New York. Lower East Side of Manhattan.

21:59

And this is the first time he's ever

22:02

walked by himself. And

22:04

he's very excited. I know none of these are not great.

22:07

He's very excited about it. He's gonna walk the two blocks

22:09

to the school bus and his worried mom stands on the fire

22:11

escape and watches him head off in the right

22:13

direction. And there's gonna be, you know, other moms are at the

22:15

bus stop.

22:16

So this is the perfect kind of test case.

22:19

And he never makes it to

22:22

the bus stop. You know, there's a, at the end of

22:24

the day, he doesn't come home from school. And that's the first time

22:26

the parents realize he's not at the school

22:29

realizes he's not at home. And

22:31

that's when, you know, the manhunt begins.

22:35

Eitan's dad is a photographer, which means

22:37

there are tons of

22:39

current and winsome photographs of this

22:42

like

22:42

photogenic young kid. And they are everywhere

22:45

in New York staple to telephone poles and they're

22:47

on TV and they're projected on the big

22:49

time square screens. You know,

22:51

this becomes a big story because it's

22:53

got all the, you know, besides all the heartstrings

22:55

of a worried parent, it's got just the mystery

22:58

of,

22:58

it's almost a judge crater kind of thing.

23:01

There was just one block. What could have happened? How

23:03

did he disappear off the map?

23:05

The other case, two years later

23:07

in 1981, a six year old

23:10

named Adam Walsh gets

23:12

taken to the mall by his mom. She's gonna

23:14

go to Sears. We should probably explain that people- Went

23:17

to Sears. His mom needs a lamp.

23:18

And back then, if you needed a lamp, you had

23:21

to walk into a Sears.

23:22

I remember this kid.

23:24

Yeah, this was a big deal. He

23:26

is distracted immediately by the real villain of our

23:29

story, an Atari 2600. Oh.

23:33

Some boys are at the entrance playing at the new video

23:35

game display and he's immediately distracted

23:37

and his mom says, okay, I'll go get the lamp. You

23:40

watch the video gaming. She gets the lamp

23:42

and comes back only to find that no kids are now

23:44

in front of the game

23:45

of Air Sea Battler or

23:48

Pac-Man or whatever it was. And she asks the security

23:50

guard, he's right there.

23:51

And he's like, yeah, they started, the

23:53

older kids started scuffling over who had

23:55

the next turn at the joystick.

23:57

And I kicked them all out.

23:59

And the mom said, well, what?

23:59

about the much littler, one of the six-year-olds that was

24:02

with them, and he was like, and Adam

24:07

is just gone. Like it's

24:10

suspected that he, you know, being told to

24:12

leave by a trusted adult, he won.

24:14

In uniform. In uniform, or less, you

24:16

know, because one thing all American children learn,

24:19

always, the cops are no problem.

24:21

Trust the police. You know, walks out of some unfamiliar

24:24

exit of the Sears or of the mall and suddenly-

24:26

Following these boys, probably. Yeah, and suddenly finds himself

24:28

on some curb. He doesn't know where he is. And

24:31

at

24:31

that point, question mark, question

24:33

mark, question mark,

24:35

many decades later, it comes

24:37

out that Jeffrey Dahmer was actually living in

24:39

Miami Beach at the time.

24:41

And Dahmer

24:42

swears up and down that he

24:45

had no- and there's actually some, somebody

24:47

says, I think, that Dahmer confessed to

24:49

the Walsh kidnapping. Really? But

24:51

he always- His modus operandi

24:53

was not

24:54

little children. No. And he was not

24:57

shy about

25:00

his abomination. You know, he's a guy

25:02

who's like, well, of course I ate them with a, you

25:04

know, like they were so delicious. With

25:07

a shirah. Yeah, exactly. Baba

25:09

beans.

25:10

And but, you know, so the

25:12

believers will say, well, of course he's not, this guy's going

25:14

to serve a long prison term. The last thing he's going to do is confess

25:17

to his pedophilia

25:20

phase. But

25:22

the Adam Walsh case became huge. And this is kind of the ur-case

25:25

of all of the, what happens in a department,

25:27

so all the urban legends you heard. I heard they grabbed

25:29

a little girl and dragged her into the men's room and shaved her head

25:31

so she looked like a boy and changed her clothes and walked her

25:33

out right under her mom's nose. She never heard

25:35

that one, but that's terrible. Oh, you didn't get raised with

25:37

all of these? No. Oh man, like I can't,

25:40

you know, I think of it in every box store, even if I'm not

25:42

with my kids. This is 82? I mean,

25:44

I was already- Yeah, 81. I was already 13. You

25:46

probably had two kids. You should have been terrified. By the

25:48

time I was

25:51

selling drugs in those grocery stores. Yeah,

25:53

you knew where the security guards were. So this

25:55

actually becomes a TV movie. Adam,

25:58

you know, about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

25:59

Daniel Travanti of Hill Street Blues playing, because

26:02

the parents were very critical of, the investigation

26:04

I think had been botched at every level, at

26:07

the enforcement, you know, at the mall for sure, at the law

26:09

enforcement level later,

26:10

maybe at the prosecutorial level, you know, they

26:12

were very skeptical of the whole system.

26:15

So you could watch a crusading Daniel Travanti

26:17

from Hill Street Blues and Joe Beth Williams from Poltergeist

26:20

bemoaning their missing

26:22

son. I didn't see the television

26:25

spectacular, but I remember the

26:27

hype, the hoop law. And I think at

26:29

that age was probably like, why

26:31

is everybody paying attention to this kid? Nobody pays

26:33

attention to me. That's

26:36

your take on child kidnapping. Well,

26:38

yeah, sure these kids are gone, but I'm

26:40

a latchkey kid over here. Something

26:43

like 35 million Americans watched this

26:45

TV movie because it was a different time

26:47

and not a lot going on. Yeah, I mean, those are big

26:49

like water cooler

26:51

numbers. And what they did at the end of the show is they would

26:53

show every time this aired on whatever network

26:55

it was, they would put up

26:56

photos at the end of the show, like, hey, do you recognize

26:59

these kids?

26:59

And apparently from

27:02

various rebroadcasts, 13 of

27:04

those missing kids

27:06

were found.

27:07

One of them was no less than Busy Bone,

27:10

the youngest member of who would become the youngest member

27:12

of Bone Thugs and Harmony. Future rapper Busy Bone

27:15

had been,

27:16

I think abducted with his sisters by

27:18

his abusive

27:21

stepfather. And so, you know, and subjected

27:23

to, you know, years of just misery and I think sexual

27:25

assault

27:26

and his birth father was looking for him everywhere.

27:29

And it was actually an airing of this TV

27:31

movie that

27:32

brought Busy home and got him out

27:35

of that terrible

27:36

situation. But this leads

27:38

to some fear. A

27:41

national fear starts to spread and it reaches,

27:44

obviously it's a political winner.

27:46

So it reaches DC and

27:48

particularly the Reagan administration

27:50

very quickly.

27:52

You can see the appeal to a law

27:54

and order, tough on crime, sheriff

27:56

kind of candidate like Ronald Reagan in.

27:59

in creating a scary other that's

28:02

out there threatening your good American

28:04

families. I was just thinking about this the other day

28:06

that at some point along the way, I don't think

28:08

this was true in the

28:11

60s, but at some point along the way, the right

28:13

started to equate

28:16

liberalism with degeneracy in

28:18

a sort of like third reiki

28:21

way. Well, I was about to say, that starts with gearing, right? I

28:23

mean, but like in the US,

28:27

I guess beatniks or

28:29

whatever, but nobody said like, oh, beatniks are

28:31

molesters. Yeah, exactly. But

28:33

the idea, yeah, that there were missing kids

28:36

and...

28:37

It's pedophilia is immediately the trump card, right?

28:39

Like if that's the threat, of course you'll do anything.

28:42

Of course you'll

28:43

change systems, give up liberties, vote

28:45

in weirdos, whatever it takes because

28:48

kids are getting molested. Oh, it was Manson.

28:51

That's what it was.

28:53

To equate hippies with

28:56

creeps started with Manson. I

28:58

mean, the hippies already were creeps. I mean, Manson's just...

29:03

We're gonna hear it. We're gonna hear from the hippie lobby.

29:06

Ken Jennings is anti-hippie. Hey

29:08

man. Like the hippies are gonna be too chilled to write us

29:10

emails or too confused. Hey man.

29:12

So

29:13

in 1983, Reagan

29:16

announces that May 25th,

29:18

which I think is

29:20

the anniversary of Adam's disappearance or of his

29:22

birthday, I think that becomes National

29:25

Missing Children's Day. So it's

29:27

on the calendar every year, this awareness that

29:30

kids are leaving and then they're gone and we need to remember them.

29:32

We need to find them. We need to safeguard our

29:34

kids.

29:34

I was at the end of my freshman

29:37

year of high school

29:38

and I do rem... You're safe. Well, this was

29:40

the era of mad. This was the era

29:44

of parents' music resource,

29:46

whatever. I mean, this was just the

29:48

beginning of that time where it was like, our kids.

29:52

Yeah. And the democratic Congress is not going to be left behind.

29:55

The democrats are not going to be the party of, we

29:57

like your kids getting snatched from Sears.

29:59

Which was the previous slogan. That's

30:02

why Adlai Stevenson lost. Yeah, that's right. How

30:05

is Carter gonna run again? In 1984,

30:07

the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

30:09

is created by

30:11

Congress. It's a nonprofit devoted just

30:13

to, you know, and they pour tens of millions of dollars into this

30:15

agency to raise awareness of protecting

30:17

our kids. You're blowing my mind right now. None

30:19

of this existed before 1984.

30:22

Whoa, little ominous there, 1984, am I right? The

30:25

hippies were right. Yeah, double plus bad.

30:29

The old thing is let your kids ride

30:31

bikes.

30:32

A rash of state laws start to appear

30:34

that are designed as memorial laws

30:37

for these kids. Like this is Douglas's law,

30:39

you know? Oh, I'm kind of getting mad now.

30:42

About how this is getting weaponized. Terrible

30:44

weaponization of it, yeah. These are family

30:46

tragedies. Because this is what ends up with the preschools.

30:51

The satanic panic. Yeah, all of this. That's

30:53

exactly where that, and obviously like, I

30:55

can't blame the crusading parents

30:58

who are appearing in front of state legislatures and saying,

31:00

you know, how

31:01

did we let down Elaine? You

31:04

know, like, and so these, but the laws

31:06

are a little bit dubious, as we'll

31:08

see. You know, you got the ACLU saying,

31:10

well, some of these are things you can't actually do.

31:13

And this is the environment that leads to,

31:16

what, are we like an hour in? No, half hour. Kids

31:20

on milk cartons. Oh, kids on milk cartons.

31:22

Suddenly, why are kids on milk cartons

31:24

of all places? In hindsight, it seems

31:26

a little inexplicable. It's so funny because

31:28

do you remember in the 70s, you

31:31

may or may not, in the 70s,

31:35

the milk carton boat race on

31:37

Green Lake? Yeah, are they still, do they still do

31:39

it? Do they still do it? Or maybe they don't. Well,

31:41

there aren't any milk cartons anymore. I

31:43

assume they would just use those big plastic gallons. Oh,

31:45

the big plastic ones. But in the old days, so

31:47

those of you playing along at home, whatever

31:50

bingo card this is, they actually

31:52

would make rafts out of paper milk

31:55

cartons and use milk cartons

31:57

and race across

31:59

Green Lake. And sink. And sink,

32:01

because that's a terrible thing to make a boat of. But if, you

32:04

know, the race was,

32:05

was who can go the furthest before their boat

32:07

sinks? That's a good metaphor for life. You're

32:09

like, nobody actually wins. Nobody makes it to the other

32:11

side. So when you, when I first saw the title

32:14

of today's show, I was like, oh, kids on milk cartons,

32:16

this is going to be like some crazy, like a

32:18

milk carton race. Soapbox derby. No,

32:21

it's much bleaker than that. I apologize. I hope

32:23

I, I hope I ever want, but you do remember the specter

32:25

of a, of a milk carton and one of those wax paper

32:27

milk cartons on your breakfast table. With two

32:30

kinds of kids in braces grinning out

32:32

at you, not knowing that they're a year away from disappearing

32:34

with their stepdad.

32:35

And we were the kids that were staring at

32:37

the faces of those kids and, and

32:39

wondering, Am I

32:41

next? Yeah, what if that were, where

32:44

are they now? Are they living, are

32:46

they going to an elementary school?

32:49

But.

32:49

Because sometimes the dates were just heartbreakingly old.

32:51

It would be like missing since. And then you'd see some

32:53

year that was seven years ago, like, well,

32:55

that kid does not look like that anymore. Right.

32:59

But the, it's weird, right? That they were on milk cartons.

33:01

You have to imagine

33:03

this is a much slower news time with

33:05

a, you know, a much slower news cycle, fewer,

33:08

you know, less crowded media

33:10

landscape.

33:11

How do you get

33:12

urgent news

33:14

in front of the most

33:16

eyeballs? You

33:18

know, what's a delivery mechanism that actually

33:20

reaches

33:21

people and dare. Milk expires.

33:23

Milk expires and dairies are regional, you

33:25

know? So here's a regional concern, the kid that went missing

33:27

from the next town,

33:29

Hey, the local dairy can get it in

33:31

front of, you

33:32

know, a hundred thousand breakfast tables by

33:34

in two weeks.

33:35

Is that how it worked? They used to have ad, they

33:38

used to sell ad space. Milk cartons would have ads

33:40

and they decided to be do-gooders. And

33:42

I think if you're being cynical, they were also maybe claiming

33:45

some kind of tax write off because

33:47

they were supporting the, you know, this

33:50

worthy cause and this nonprofit. Listen, we

33:52

are not cynical on this program. I'm

33:54

sure they also wanted the kids to come home. But I

33:56

think in hindsight, a lot of the writing on this has said also

33:59

they were probably.

33:59

their accounting department's probably very happy about this

34:02

arrangement.

34:04

John, this is kind of exciting. We

34:06

don't normally- Oh, that's quite a- That's quite

34:08

a- Quite a promise. Yeah. Well, I'm

34:11

gonna live up to it.

34:11

Now we don't often record

34:14

ads for books on Omnibus, but

34:17

what better product to put

34:19

on a podcast than a book? It's like a podcast

34:21

you can read. It's the most exciting

34:23

thing. And, you know, I think,

34:26

as podcast advertising goes

34:29

through its 11th identity crisis,

34:31

it's starting to dawn on me that

34:36

the familiar podcast

34:38

friends that we have that advertise on the show,

34:40

there are a lot of other

34:42

people and things, businesses, that could advertise

34:44

on podcasts and reach,

34:47

in our case, a global audience.

34:50

An extremely like-minded audience. It's

34:52

actually an omnibus listener. Dr.

34:54

Brian Vilmore

34:56

is Associate Professor of Anthropology

34:59

at the University of Las

35:00

Vegas, a paleoanthropologist,

35:03

and he has a new book out from Cambridge

35:05

University Press- The Evolution

35:07

of Everything. That he thought would be of interest to

35:09

omnibus

35:11

listeners. And I was paging through it today, and I

35:13

agree. This is right down the plate for

35:15

someone who listens to omnibus, because like

35:17

we do on the show, except with the benefit of his

35:20

actual authority and

35:22

scholarship, he's kind of taking a big

35:25

picture look at human history.

35:27

I just flipped open to just a random

35:29

page. And here

35:32

he is comparing the planned construction

35:34

of a cathedral to a termite

35:36

mound. And there's

35:39

a graphic comparison here. And

35:45

that couldn't be more up our alley.

35:48

Extremely flattering to the termite. Well,

35:52

what the people have done here is they've covered the termite

35:54

mound in plaster,

35:57

and then hosed off the dirt. that

36:00

what you have is a plaster

36:03

portrait of the inside of a termite mound.

36:06

Pretty smart. It's one of these big history...

36:08

Looks just like a cathedral. Exactly. It's

36:11

a cathedral to termites. It's one of these big history

36:13

nonfiction books that encompasses world

36:16

history, but it begins with the Big

36:18

Bang Theory. Oh, and page...

36:20

What page are you on there, John? 200 and... Page 330, is that right? Let's

36:25

see. Appears to be very compatible with Marxism.

36:28

That's right. 330 begins the Marxism

36:31

component of Chapter 21, Economics.

36:33

But so there's chapters

36:36

on trade, on exploration,

36:38

on all these different phases of human behavior in world

36:40

history, but

36:42

through the big lens of how

36:44

it fits into the universe, our evolution

36:47

as a species, our evolution

36:49

as a planet, it's structured

36:51

kind of like a freshman-level college textbook,

36:54

but

36:55

with all the scientific rigor of

36:58

Dr. Villemore's background, but it's written

37:00

to be read as a popular science

37:02

book. So it's not for subject

37:04

area experts. It's very easy to read. If you

37:06

read one book this year, I would

37:08

read The Evolution of Everything,

37:11

the Patterns and Causes of Big

37:13

History

37:14

by Dr. Brian Villemore. An omnibus

37:16

fan who has a good enough sense

37:18

of our listenership to think it might be of interest

37:20

to you as well.

37:21

Chapter 8, The Cambrian

37:24

Explosion. It's out now. It's an explosion. I'm

37:26

having an explosion of excitement right now. It's an explosion.

37:28

It is an explosion of species.

37:32

You can buy it anywhere books

37:34

are sold. It's out from Cambridge University

37:37

Press now, and if you want to find out more about it,

37:39

you can go to brianvillemore.com. That's

37:41

Brian, B-I-L-L-M-O-A-R-E.com.

37:46

John and I recommend it. Omnibus

37:48

approved.

37:50

The thing that kicked off the

37:53

milk carton phenomenon was a specific

37:56

incident in Des Moines in 1982, and then later, two

37:58

years later,

37:58

it was a new phenomenon. in 1984 in

38:01

nearly identical incidents, in

38:03

the early morning hours, two boys,

38:05

two years apart, who were out delivering the Des Moines Register.

38:08

There's your first mistake. Having

38:11

a paper route? This was, that's what

38:13

we're celebrating about this simpler time. Kids could-

38:16

Did you ever have a paper route? I helped

38:18

my

38:19

aunt and uncle with theirs, but that was

38:21

a weird kind of family endeavor. It wasn't a kid

38:24

out on a bike. They would go out in the minivan

38:26

every day just to make a little extra scratch for a

38:28

Disneyland trip or something. That is the most Mormon thing I've

38:31

ever heard you say. They would always sing together.

38:34

It was a South Park episode. So

38:37

these two kids go missing and it leads

38:39

to a local panic. It's

38:41

in a very nice sheltered

38:44

suburb of Des Moines.

38:45

And so the subtext of all this becomes,

38:48

well, we're the good ones. I mean, obviously

38:50

this can happen to those people in those

38:53

cities, but nobody

38:55

says, but we're white. But that's

38:57

kind of the subtext. We

38:59

pay property taxes

39:01

for the good part of town where the criminals and

39:03

the, they would actually say terrorists.

39:05

And terrorism came to Des Moines. But

39:08

this is something where the idea

39:10

is that a monster lives among us? Yeah,

39:13

the mom actually, the kid's

39:15

name was, let me see, Johnny,

39:18

not Bosch, Johnny Gosh.

39:21

That seems fake. Johnny

39:22

Gosh. I'm just gonna invent a kid named Johnny Gosh.

39:25

Oh, it is Johnny Gosh. How is that the real name? I don't

39:27

know, that's a great character name though.

39:29

Too bad it's taken. It's got a C, so it's not

39:31

like Bogosh, but Johnny Gosh's

39:34

mom is apparently, I

39:36

don't wanna say she's a coop, but she's certainly driven

39:38

to

39:39

extremis, not de minimis, but in extremis

39:42

by the kidnapping of her son. You're

39:44

saying that it was a panic, but these

39:46

two kidnappings happened two years apart. So a slow

39:49

panic, a rising panic.

39:51

Well, the second incident is definitely the,

39:54

there's, yeah, something's gone wrong in

39:57

our safe, protected, Lily

39:59

White. area. One kid could have fallen down a

40:01

manhole, but two kids? Two

40:04

kids is clearly a manhole clown. But

40:07

this mom, actually, Noreen actually testifies to Congress

40:09

to the effect that

40:10

it's an organized pedophilia

40:13

ring across America. And

40:15

have you heard? Yeah, this is the early awakenings

40:18

of Q and I. And then in fact, the National American

40:21

Man-Boy Love Association admits

40:24

that so there's this whole homosexualist axis

40:26

that is of course, that is

40:29

grabbing your kids.

40:30

She later says, I mean, after the

40:32

second kidnapping, a little boy named

40:35

Martin, I think, after the second kid

40:37

goes missing two years later, Golly

40:39

G. She

40:41

says that, oh yeah, that's exactly what happened. My

40:44

private investigator that I hired after the police

40:46

botch, this told me that a second kid

40:48

would go missing and it would also be the third weekend

40:50

in August and it would be an early morning paper

40:52

out. So she's a full on conspiracy

40:55

theorist. This is the dawn of profiling too.

40:57

So that's got to be exciting

40:59

for everybody. Yeah. Keep an eye out. You know, this

41:01

is, there's no next door yet, but it really is the early

41:03

days of who's

41:04

wearing the wrong hoodie on your street. Do

41:07

you know that kid? I

41:09

think, I think the same,

41:13

yeah. So, and Reagan makes a campaign stop

41:15

in 1984. He comes through Iowa and in Cedar Rapids

41:18

gives a speech about the good hearted

41:20

people who broke the sod of this prairie

41:23

and how they now have to face all these inner

41:26

loafers. You know what I mean? Not

41:28

the good Scandinavian stock.

41:30

And you know, it really was kind of a, they're

41:33

coming for your kids and we got to get tough

41:35

on crime. The same month

41:37

that Reagan gives that speech in Cedar Rapids, a local

41:39

dairy, Anderson Erickson,

41:41

makes this pivotal choice, like inspired

41:44

perhaps by the gipper. We

41:46

need to root out these,

41:49

this new evil among us. We

41:51

got to find Johnny and

41:53

these other two subsequent kids that may

41:55

or may not be related. And they start putting photos

41:58

of these kids on there. milk

42:00

cartons every morning. And so

42:02

you have this suit. So it's a virtue signal

42:04

a little bit.

42:05

Yeah, and attacks right off and a virtue signal. I'm

42:08

sure it's a guy who is watching

42:10

the nightly news, because everyone would watch the nightly news and

42:12

people would get very involved in,

42:15

I mean, it's kind of the beginning of true crime.

42:17

Fascination is these,

42:20

you know,

42:21

moms saying, we didn't get the real

42:23

killer and Adam, people

42:26

watching this TV movie about

42:29

getting this voyeuristic thrill of, boy, what did

42:31

happen? We still don't know. You know, that led to

42:33

a million podcasts. At this point, were

42:35

there instances where kids had been rescued

42:38

by public,

42:41

but you know, by phone poll

42:43

posters and stuff, had

42:45

a quick response

42:47

actually saved any missing kids? As

42:50

far as I can tell, like the only real cultural

42:52

footprint of that starts with milk cartons. Like

42:55

milk cartons are the first case where news stories start

42:57

to get written.

42:58

Because hundreds of dairies

43:00

immediately follow suit all over the country, you know,

43:02

the idea spreads. And

43:05

you start to see news stories of,

43:07

this kid was reunited with his parents

43:09

after, in this grocery store,

43:11

you know, this woman spotted this carton of milk

43:13

and said, well, that kid looks

43:15

just like Daisy. Her name's not Daisy, but

43:17

that's Daisy from my daughter's school. And

43:21

in one very famous case, a girl named Bonnie

43:23

Lohmann actually recognized herself

43:25

on a milk carton

43:26

and found out that daddy wasn't actually daddy,

43:29

it was her abductor stepfather or something. Whoa!

43:32

Because she'd been kidnapped at a young enough

43:34

age that she... Yeah, like, you know,

43:37

years later, she sees her own baby picture and

43:39

her dad doesn't want to freak out. He's like, oh yeah, weird.

43:41

Well, let's clip that and you can keep it. But it turns

43:43

out to be the,

43:45

his undoing. Wow. And

43:48

so these stories start to be written and it starts to become,

43:50

the idea begins to spread that this works, you know,

43:52

if you can just get the picture in front of enough people.

43:55

I wonder, you know, a lot of the time when you look back at

43:57

something like this and it turns out that there was a... milk

44:00

producers convention. It's

44:02

like one. Like 10 days

44:04

after the first one and they're all standing around

44:06

in the lobby and two weeks later

44:08

every milk carton in the country.

44:10

I wonder if there was something, I mean, you mentioned virtue

44:12

signaling. I wonder if there is some unwillingness to

44:14

be the last dairy that's still running ads

44:17

in a world where everybody else is doing this

44:20

urgent public good. If you think of all

44:22

the dairies in America, they're all called

44:24

Erickson, Anderson, Spinson.

44:27

By law. So

44:29

it might've just been like a Norwegian Brotherhood meeting

44:31

that happens. You mentioned, it's funny that it's milk,

44:33

right? Cause what could be more wholesome than, America's

44:36

Dairyland providing you with this wholesome, kids

44:39

are told how important milk is to their safe upbringing.

44:42

So it goes with the brand, the families all

44:44

together at breakfast and

44:46

it's the perfect branding

44:49

for this effort. But that doesn't

44:51

mean the pictures don't start to appear everywhere. Do you remember

44:53

the

44:54

spread of missing kid pictures? Milk

44:56

cartons were such a success that,

44:58

you couldn't go through your day without seeing every

45:00

public space being filled with

45:02

photos of seven year olds missing.

45:05

What's crazy? Don't let me

45:07

derail you. No, no.

45:09

Reagan gave that speech in Cedar Rapids. Yeah.

45:12

Cedar Rapids is the home of Cap'n Crunch

45:14

cereal. The Quaker Oats

45:17

plant is in Cedar Rapids. So

45:19

this is like a big cereal milk

45:21

thing. Big Crunch wants you to use more

45:23

milk. It's Big Crunch. So

45:27

as I'm saying, it wasn't just milk cartons. You started to see

45:29

them on the paper bags you'd

45:31

get at the supermarket would have two kids, pizza

45:34

boxes, any place,

45:36

phone books would have space for

45:38

it. I think sometimes your utility bill had

45:41

a little kid. Would have kids on the back. Before

45:43

I was taking the utility bill. Or even like a toll

45:45

ticket on the turnpike. You get your ticket

45:48

and then it's like, but also keep an eye out for

45:50

Sam. You

45:52

have to wonder if there was, and I think people

45:54

at the time said,

45:56

is there not just beyond the hysteria

45:59

aspect that we're... that comes to mind now for us,

46:01

is there a numbing effect of just

46:03

like, yeah, yeah, yeah, six more missing kids.

46:06

There's always missing kids.

46:08

You no longer are we shocked by, we

46:10

can't be living in a society that allows this. But

46:12

the numbing effect does have

46:14

an effect on your imagination because

46:16

at a certain point when you're like, ah, there's 800,000 missing kids in

46:19

America. Every year. What you're

46:21

imagining is like sex dungeons

46:25

and children being ground into hamburger.

46:27

Because where could they be going? Yeah. Imagine

46:29

the football stadiums you would need to hold 800,000 missing

46:31

kids. And so

46:33

it becomes a kind of like a pernicious

46:36

sense that the world is absolutely

46:38

full of torture caverns and

46:41

monsters everywhere. And you believe the

46:43

report that

46:43

there might be one under this pizza parlor. Right.

46:47

Or in this daycare. Or doubles. Or in this daycare, you know, because.

46:49

Hillary Clinton may be eating one right now. They've

46:52

got to be somewhere, right? But

46:54

you know, you think about QAnon, sure.

46:56

But just this sense we all have

46:59

that the world is crazy and that

47:01

people are evil, awful. It

47:04

leads to every kind of conspiracy theory

47:06

and cynicism. This low lying hum

47:09

of feeling like, ah yeah, kids

47:12

go missing all the time. It's a

47:14

fallen world. Yeah.

47:16

And none of those, wow. I

47:18

mean, this is why I was so shocked

47:20

when we started this episode. And it turns out it might be 50

47:23

kids a year. It's just getting more and more,

47:25

I'm just thinking about all the ramifications of

47:27

that numb

47:29

feeling that this is no

47:31

longer something we're worried about because.

47:33

Because it's clearly out of control. And

47:36

that's why we don't let, that's why I don't let my daughter walk

47:39

a mile because of

47:41

the white vans

47:42

and sex dungeons and. It

47:44

means the free range activists have

47:46

to actively say not just, you know what, this is a very

47:49

small risk. Because that's not gonna convince people with this

47:51

kind of mindset. Yeah, it's a small risk, lady.

47:53

You have to actually actively say, and there's

47:55

trade offs. You're making paranoid kids.

47:58

You're making kids that can't navigate the world.

47:59

You know, uh, but also when you have a dispute

48:02

with somebody, you just, I mean, when

48:04

I think of my own neighborhood, I'm like, well,

48:07

you know, one out of five of these people probably

48:09

is,

48:10

is killing cats and it becomes self-fulfilling

48:12

because then every traffic accident

48:14

or, or road rage incident does end in somebody

48:16

pulling a gun because everyone's thinking, yeah, this

48:18

guy's probably going to pull a gun. The world's full of, of,

48:21

uh,

48:23

irredeemable, uh, sociopaths.

48:26

What is the, there's gotta be a name for this where

48:28

something starts with great

48:31

intentions. Cause there's no,

48:33

at the beginning, the,

48:35

the people there at the big oats.

48:38

Yeah. They weren't like, they're not like, this'll make

48:40

everyone paranoid and bummed. Uh,

48:42

but then, and I'm sure there are people looking back were

48:44

like, yeah, it was always a Republican plot to make us

48:46

hate each other, but clearly

48:49

wasn't. Yeah. It just seems like it's an organic, everyone's

48:51

trying their best at every moment for what seems to be

48:53

a, an inarguable proposition that fewer

48:56

kids should get kidnapped. And then down the line,

48:58

it has created at

48:59

some level is a, is a part of

49:01

creating a divided society.

49:04

Speaking of a phenomena that are runaway

49:06

trains, the apotheosis of this kind of,

49:11

do you remember the video?

49:12

Apparently

49:15

you don't remember the words, lack of, or

49:17

you're singing a reggae cover of it. All

49:23

I remember is when Noda Ryder was going out with that

49:26

dreadlock dingaling and I was like, when Nona

49:28

I'm right here. Soul Asylum was

49:30

a Minneapolis, uh, kind of punk

49:32

band of the replacements mold. Yeah. They were

49:34

pretty good. That first couple of soul asylum records,

49:37

pretty good, but they had kind of flamed out a bit and it

49:39

seemed like their career might be over.

49:42

Justifiable. And then they had a crossover

49:44

power ballot hit in 1993

49:46

with runaway train.

49:47

I think Dave Perner wrote the song

49:50

about his, that's him. He wrote the song

49:52

about his, yeah, he wrote the song about his dreadlocks. That's my

49:54

Nona stealing dreadlock.

49:55

If not for him, you feel like you were number

49:58

two. Show

50:00

us your Winona Forever tattoo. No, I

50:02

got it. I got it traced over with some

50:04

checkered flags. You can't put Wino. Yeah, you

50:06

have to put something else. No forever. No

50:09

Wino. Win forever. Wins.

50:13

So wait a minute. Yeah, I... So David Perna had

50:15

written a song about his depression. The train

50:17

is just a metaphor for his mental

50:19

health struggles. Yeah, his runaway train. But

50:23

they hired this British guy named Tony Kay

50:25

to direct the video. And I think

50:27

he's a deeply eccentric guy given what later happened

50:29

with him, his direction of the movie American History

50:32

X, which effectively

50:34

was so eccentric that it ended his career.

50:36

It's worth it. That's worth a Google. That's a really

50:38

good movie, I think. It is, but in

50:40

some, it was almost credited to Humpty Dumpty because he tried

50:43

to take his name off it. Oh no. No,

50:46

wait. So this David Perna thing,

50:48

this runaway train thing, I

50:50

get a sense of what you're about to tell me. But

50:53

this was exactly right

50:55

in the heart of the period where I was

50:57

really on drugs and not

50:59

part of the culture. I have never

51:01

seen what you're leading

51:03

up to, which is a music video for this song.

51:06

And you're about to tell me that- You were watching

51:08

so much less VH1 than I was in 1993. Like

51:12

I never, any of the movies that came out

51:14

between 1990 and 1995, you can pretty much rest assured I

51:18

never saw them. I never saw reality bites.

51:20

And that was like basically a film about-

51:23

A fun podcast idea. I mean, it's not

51:25

fun because it involves struggles with addiction,

51:28

but a fun podcast idea would be to take someone

51:30

with five to 10 missing years. Let's take Ringo

51:33

Starr, who probably does not remember anything

51:35

between- 72 and 78. And

51:39

every day you just kind of blow his mind with

51:41

a new thing. Like,

51:42

let me show you a show called Dukes of Hazard, Ringo. Ringo,

51:44

have you ever heard of yellow? You

51:47

probably have. You don't remember.

51:49

So you're about to tell me about runaway

51:52

train- Tony Kay fixated on the word runaway

51:54

on the title and thought, yes, I too, Dave

51:56

Perner, and obsessed with the plight of runaways.

51:58

You know, these sad kids on street corner.

51:59

We must bring awareness

52:02

to this. And Dave Perners is like, whoa. I'm going

52:04

to go to dinner with Winona Ryder.

52:09

And so Kay's idea was to kind of show this already

52:12

black and white kind of kids in trouble kind

52:14

of stuff sprinkled with

52:16

actual stills. I think typically

52:19

during the chorus,

52:20

stills of missing kids with

52:22

their names and then the heartbreaking amount of time that

52:25

they've been gone, you know, ran away, missing

52:27

since 1986, missing since 1985. But

52:30

these are runaways, which are

52:33

also, I mean, it's like Joan

52:35

Jett and Susie Quattro. Okay, that's

52:37

the thing. Like the name of the nonprofit

52:40

is the National Center for Missing and Exploited

52:42

Children.

52:43

Missing for all reasons. So America

52:45

has kind of conflated the idea

52:48

of- Well, an exploited implies teenage

52:50

prostitution. Right. As

52:52

if every runaway kid is

52:54

now getting trafficked in some way

52:57

or, you know, basically the idea is that missing

52:59

kids are missing kids. And I

53:02

guess to some degree, there's some sense to this. It

53:04

doesn't matter if they're on a street corner in Portland

53:06

or if they're, you know, chained

53:09

in a basement in Biloxi. Like

53:11

that's not, the system let them down where,

53:13

you know, they need to be with their families, Biloxi.

53:18

But there is a difference between that and being

53:20

with their father

53:23

in Saudi Arabia.

53:24

There is a huge difference.

53:27

And what happened was the video came out and

53:31

with 36 missing US kids, they

53:33

made different versions for different markets. So on MTV

53:36

Europe or MTV Australia, it would have

53:38

missing kids from that market. Because the idea is what a valuable

53:41

public service we Soul Asylum are providing.

53:43

Oh my God, I'm really mad at David Perners. I

53:46

mean, I already was, but- I'm sure David Perners is

53:48

lovely.

53:49

Yeah, I bet he is. I bet he's a nice guy. Tony K.

53:51

You never, you don't know any of those guys. You never hung out with

53:53

Soul Asylum. I was

53:55

briefly in college radio in the late eighties and

53:58

we played that clam dipping of their delight.

53:59

and it was, I thought, I was really

54:02

into them, them and the Buck Pets. But by

54:04

Grave Diggers Union, they sold out and you were like,

54:06

man, you were like, what if needle drugs? This

54:08

is what's wrong with the world.

54:11

Tony Kay, the director, started to claim in interviews that 21

54:14

of these kids had been reunited with their families

54:16

thanks to the heroic music video

54:18

he'd put on. Humpty Dumpty's taking credit for all

54:20

this? The future of D.W.T. And the

54:22

band, of course, starts to parrot in interviews because they don't

54:24

know, so somebody will ask them, you know, they

54:26

would get asked about this for decades, like,

54:29

hey, what about that runaway

54:31

train video? And they'd be

54:33

like, yeah, I hear a lot of kids found their homes.

54:35

That's great. Why can I have to watch this video this afternoon?

54:38

I really didn't start today thinking this was going

54:40

to happen. It had never occurred to me that you had not seen the

54:42

runaway train video.

54:43

But a recent article kind of

54:45

made me think about this. Nick

54:48

Kepler wrote for Slate where he tracked down

54:51

as many of the kids he could find. Because

54:53

you can find a list. Actually, we now know that four

54:55

of them have since died. Such

54:57

and such, many of them are still missing.

54:59

But, you know, a few dozen of them have turned up. And

55:01

he tracked down as many as he could. And their stories

55:04

were interesting because it really made

55:06

you rethink the, at all

55:08

costs,

55:09

society must get

55:11

these kids back to their

55:12

custodial parents.

55:14

Because as you... Because

55:15

the kids were like, I really hate my parents. Well, yeah.

55:17

I mean, anybody who knows anything about runaways, all these kids

55:19

had stories of, you know, there's a

55:21

lot of mental health issues. There's bullying.

55:24

There's all kinds of unmedicated stuff. But

55:26

there's also a ton of

55:28

sexual assault by my stepfather. You

55:30

know, my toxic mother used to lock

55:32

me outside when it was 20 below. You know, the

55:34

kind of thing where

55:35

sending these kids home is as indefensible

55:38

as, you know, a street corner

55:40

in Portland

55:42

or the Bay Area. And in

55:44

many cases, it seems like these kids had stories of resourcefulness.

55:47

Like, I

55:47

was only 16, but I knew I needed to get out.

55:50

I had to, you know, in two more years,

55:52

I could run out the clock. Right.

55:55

So I got a job somewhere. Exactly. I got a fake ID.

55:58

I'm working at Walmart. I couch.

55:59

I moved to a city where I knew one person

56:02

and couch surfed for a few. And a lot of these stories

56:04

are, and some of them do have angles of, and I ran

56:06

into this guy who probably thought I was 18, or,

56:09

obviously it's not an easy life for a kid

56:11

on the streets, but

56:12

many of these stories, it was so clear that

56:15

these kids had done kind of what they

56:17

had to do just to survive.

56:20

And here's Dave Perner trying to get

56:22

them back with their molester stepfather. What's

56:24

funny is that the culture

56:27

that I was in during these years, the alternative

56:29

rock company. You knew a lot of

56:31

people that had exactly this story. There

56:33

was a documentary about the Seattle runaways.

56:36

I got out of the house at 14 and

56:39

I've been living on my own ever since. And a lot

56:41

of them really, not just

56:43

resourceful, but I don't

56:46

know, I'm friends with a lot of them

56:48

to this day. And I don't think you would

56:50

say, oh, they were well.

56:52

It

56:54

wasn't something to celebrate. No, but when

56:57

they would talk about their childhood home, you're

56:59

like, well, that's worse. That would be worse.

57:02

Clearly the system had already let them down on a couple of levels.

57:05

Being in an orphanage

57:07

or a reform school also worse.

57:10

But

57:13

alternative culture then, there were a lot of warehouses

57:15

full of artists and

57:18

one more kid kind of didn't. It was a softer

57:20

landing pad. Well, or at least there

57:22

was a kind of communal punk rock underground

57:25

that was

57:26

kid friendly. And you love punk rock.

57:30

Number one fan. Number one fan.

57:33

You got that big foam finger that says number one

57:35

punk rock fan. But I do think, it's

57:37

so funny that we think about it

57:40

differently in different contexts because

57:42

I know a lot of runaways

57:44

that are now full grown adults with kids and families

57:47

that you think of their runaway

57:49

teenage years as like, oh

57:51

yeah, that was. And yet if one of our

57:53

kids or one of their friends were to run away. It

57:55

would just be the end of the world. And

57:58

I'm also looking at milk carton kids.

57:59

probably in that same era and

58:02

going like, oh man, that kid is tied

58:04

up in a dungeon somewhere. It's like, no, they're

58:06

the exact same age

58:08

as your buddy over here that's like

58:11

in a really good band. I feel

58:13

like we think about parenting differently now. I just,

58:15

have you noticed this as well? This idea that, you

58:17

know,

58:19

I think 30 years ago when this runaway

58:21

train comes out, there's just this general assumption

58:23

that

58:25

these kids need, the kids are screw ups and need their reliable

58:27

parents. And I think today we're much more

58:30

aware of the narrative of,

58:31

well, no, my mom was a terrible narcissist

58:33

actually. And like getting

58:36

away from that was like the number one most urgent

58:38

thing I needed to do. You know, we kind of understand

58:40

now that when parents have these sob stories about how none of their kids

58:43

will talk to them, we no longer think,

58:45

well, those ungrateful kids. We kind of think,

58:47

hmm, what did you do to those kids? But

58:50

one of my dad's best friends grew up in

58:52

an orphanage, proper

58:55

like Montana unheeded

58:57

orphanage

58:58

in the 1930s

59:01

and late 20s and 30s. And he

59:04

would tell stories, he ended up becoming a judge.

59:06

He would tell stories about all the amazing

59:09

times he had with his four brothers

59:12

in this like little

59:14

orphan, Annie. It was just kind of a Mark Twain. Yeah, it

59:16

was, you know, yeah, nobody

59:18

was watching them and

59:21

they were home on the range.

59:24

I mean, obviously there were- I don't think that exists anymore.

59:27

We talked about, no, that's something

59:29

else we should have. I mean, did the institutions get worse

59:32

or are we just- Yeah.

59:34

Okay, I assume so. The,

59:38

you

59:39

know, we've talked about what some of the downsides of this culture

59:41

were, you know, it made the parents paranoid.

59:43

And as you point out, just prone to all kinds of

59:45

catastrophic thinking about the world.

59:48

That's us. It made kids probably

59:50

neurotic, just the specter of danger

59:52

everywhere. And there's some research

59:54

showing that the more sheltered a kid is, the more prejudiced

59:57

they become because they just believe

59:59

the small number.

59:59

of data points they've been given. They can't actually navigate

1:00:02

in the world and see like, oh,

1:00:04

like actually

1:00:05

sometimes this is good and sometimes it's bad and here's how you

1:00:07

navigate it. And even if all the statistics

1:00:10

are like, there really aren't that many black

1:00:12

serial killers. The ones that

1:00:15

we find typically are suburban

1:00:17

white

1:00:18

youth pastors. Yeah. But

1:00:21

if you're gonna be xenophobic,

1:00:22

let's have the xenophobia, you know, it kind of

1:00:24

reinforces your other xenophobia.

1:00:27

Like I can only imagine that it plays

1:00:30

into like, oh, and we also don't like.

1:00:32

Well, think about how many of those milk carton kids were white. I

1:00:35

mean, statistically more kids were going missing

1:00:37

in disadvantaged communities. But the ones that

1:00:39

showed up on the milk cartons were

1:00:42

the winsome white kids. And there's a whole Eddie

1:00:44

Griffin- It's called the Anderson-Svenson- Erickson

1:00:46

bakery. There's an Eddie Griffin comedy

1:00:49

routine about this that's pretty famous about like why

1:00:51

all those kids were white and what that kind of tells

1:00:53

you about America. The milk was also

1:00:56

white. Maybe chocolate

1:00:57

milk should have had more diverse

1:00:59

photos. I'm just spitballing here. You're gonna get canceled

1:01:01

for that. Possibly. But

1:01:04

milk cartons are also, milk carton kids are obsolete

1:01:06

today, not because nobody's

1:01:09

getting kidnapped by their

1:01:11

mom's ex or whatever. Because nobody ever

1:01:13

was. But because, well, a few were, but because of

1:01:15

Amber Alerts. Oh,

1:01:17

that, of course. The media landscape changed, and now

1:01:19

there is a more real time way than

1:01:22

a box of milk

1:01:23

to tell people,

1:01:25

keep an eye out for this kid that

1:01:27

just vanished from school pickup or from

1:01:29

Target. You know who figured out how to opt

1:01:32

out from Amber Alerts on his phone? This

1:01:34

guy. That's right. Who has two thumbs

1:01:36

and- No, thanks. Well, that was kind of the early

1:01:38

worry about Amber Alerts. Like, is it gonna be numbing

1:01:40

the way milk cartons were? If you keep getting these

1:01:43

push notifications.

1:01:45

But in fact, they seem to be working. In the year 2014, this

1:01:47

is well, almost 20

1:01:50

years into the Amber Alert era, 186 Amber

1:01:53

Alerts were issued in America and 154 of them led to a positive ID. You're

1:01:57

kidding. So Amber Alert nearly always-

1:01:59

How? Oh, because it's so instantaneous.

1:02:02

It's like, this kid's been missing for two hours, and

1:02:06

he was last seen in a red car. Because you can

1:02:08

get there before the... The kid... You

1:02:11

know, the guy skips town, or the kid

1:02:13

goes in the river or the dogs... Who

1:02:15

invented the Amber Alert? It was

1:02:17

Bob, uh, Amber. It

1:02:21

wasn't originally a phone push notification. It wasn't named

1:02:23

after a girl named Amber? It was named

1:02:25

after a missing girl, yeah. It was?

1:02:28

It's also a... It's also a backronym. Like,

1:02:30

it's also the alert to meteorically

1:02:34

banish real evil or something,

1:02:36

but... I always thought it just was like an Amber

1:02:39

police light. Like a... Like a spinning... Like

1:02:41

that's the color of awareness? Like a... Yeah,

1:02:44

I didn't realize it was actually named after a name. I

1:02:46

think it was a famous case, and then they re-engineered the acronym, the

1:02:49

way Congress always does. Well done, Congress.

1:02:51

This was... Originally, it was just the emergency broadcast

1:02:53

system. You know, we have this tone that will tell you

1:02:55

when, uh... Weather systems coming

1:02:58

in. It was

1:02:58

always about the nukes. But when it gets

1:03:00

used... It never got used for nukes yet. Aspirational.

1:03:04

But it did get used for, look out,

1:03:06

there's a flood, the river's flooding

1:03:09

or, you know, whatever. For instance, a western state

1:03:11

hurricane. For example, hypothetically.

1:03:14

Um,

1:03:15

and they just started using that same tone for, hey, keep

1:03:17

an eye out for this late model, whatever, with this

1:03:19

kid and... And

1:03:21

that totally worked. And of course, today,

1:03:23

many of these kids have phones, which means they're so

1:03:25

much harder.

1:03:26

I'm sure you find, John, so much harder to kidnap. Well,

1:03:30

the first thing I do is grab their phone. You gotta grab the

1:03:32

phone first. Well, no, this is, again, one of the arguments that

1:03:34

we have for... We're... Our

1:03:36

daughter is right at the age where...

1:03:39

It's like, do we... Last kid without a phone, right? Yeah,

1:03:41

do we or do we not give her a phone? And

1:03:43

we really don't want to. Every grown-up

1:03:45

I've talked to, including you, has

1:03:48

said, yeah... It will break their little brains.

1:03:50

Have fun. Giving the teen a phone was

1:03:52

something we wish we didn't have to do. And

1:03:54

so we're like, well, we're the... Exactly

1:03:57

the kind of parents that wouldn't.

1:03:59

And... And yet, what

1:04:01

do we do? Just get her a pager. A

1:04:03

pager. Do they still make the pagers? She's

1:04:07

not a weed dealer. Just

1:04:10

to close the circle on some of this stuff, the

1:04:13

Adam Walsh case was closed in 2008.

1:04:17

Closed just

1:04:19

like presumed dead? No one was, in

1:04:21

the Walsh case actually, remains were found

1:04:23

in a nearby canal fairly

1:04:26

quickly, I think less than a week later.

1:04:28

You can look up the details. It's

1:04:30

pretty ugly. But

1:04:33

confirmed that it was him? It was

1:04:35

him, yeah. And

1:04:37

I guess a drifter named Otis

1:04:40

Toole, that almost seems impossible

1:04:43

to believe, seems like

1:04:45

he confessed to it, but then

1:04:47

he's a guy who confesses to a lot of stuff.

1:04:50

We don't talk about drifters

1:04:52

anymore. There was blood in his car, but the police

1:04:54

department lost all the evidence. It's just kind of your

1:04:57

classic American Keystone Cop

1:04:59

story.

1:05:00

But the interesting part- But he looks like a creep

1:05:03

Otis Toole. Wow, that's, see,

1:05:05

I'm glad you weren't the, oh wait, you were the generation

1:05:07

raised more prejudiced, John.

1:05:10

But Adam's dad, played by Daniel Travanti

1:05:13

in the show, decided to become a full-time advocate

1:05:15

for victims' rights. And as many will know,

1:05:17

he is John Walsh,

1:05:19

who created America's Most Wanted. Is that

1:05:21

the guy? Yeah,

1:05:22

and that was how he got into the,

1:05:25

how he got

1:05:27

motivated, how he became an activist. In 2012,

1:05:30

a New Jersey Bodega

1:05:33

worker named Pablo Hernandez confessed

1:05:36

to killing Aiten Pates in

1:05:39

Soho in 1979.

1:05:41

Apparently

1:05:43

it had been an op- He had just been telling family

1:05:45

and parishioners for decades that he had been done. And he was

1:05:48

kind of a

1:05:50

oddball, arguable

1:05:52

whether he had the intellectual

1:05:56

wherewithal to even face trial.

1:05:59

And finally, somebody went to the cops

1:06:02

and said, this guy's been telling people for years that he kidnapped

1:06:04

that famous kid.

1:06:05

And he received life in prison in 2017.

1:06:09

In Iowa, the Gosh and Martin cases are still

1:06:11

unsolved. But

1:06:13

to this day, despite the actual statistics,

1:06:16

28% of American parents tell Pew they are extremely

1:06:19

worried

1:06:20

about abductions.

1:06:22

And this is the hysteria that, as we've said, led

1:06:24

to the satanic panic of the 80s,

1:06:26

QAnon conspiracy theories today, just credulous

1:06:29

parents believing any

1:06:31

wild accusation because to

1:06:33

not take it seriously might endanger

1:06:36

their children. And I

1:06:38

wonder how many of our listeners to this

1:06:40

program have been

1:06:43

shocked by you and me kind of

1:06:46

laughing throughout the episode.

1:06:49

We're not laughing. Not laughing at

1:06:51

all of the missing kids, but just

1:06:53

a taking the lighthearted take on it. And we're downplaying

1:06:56

the seriousness

1:06:57

of it just

1:07:00

because statistically it is extremely rare.

1:07:02

The cases are horrific. They

1:07:05

just appear to not be something to build a parenting strategy

1:07:07

or a

1:07:08

society around. Right, a social

1:07:11

contract. Social contract around. But

1:07:15

yeah, this is another

1:07:18

building block in this world that we are

1:07:20

trying to document where

1:07:23

a lot of the conventional wisdom about how bad

1:07:26

people are to each other

1:07:27

just doesn't hold water. And

1:07:30

there's another example of the knock on effect

1:07:32

of this is a writer named Paul Renfrew a few

1:07:34

years ago wrote a book about America's struggle with

1:07:36

mass incarceration. And he

1:07:38

draws the line directly between 1980s era politicians,

1:07:41

the Reagan

1:07:43

administration, for example, being able to weaponize

1:07:45

these high profile cases,

1:07:47

scare people into

1:07:50

vastly changing a system and passing all

1:07:52

these new tough on crime laws, memorial

1:07:54

laws, each of which

1:07:57

was extremely well intended and

1:07:59

you know.

1:08:00

Only in aggregate do you see the pattern

1:08:02

of

1:08:04

suddenly America has a different

1:08:06

opinion of, you

1:08:07

know, if you would ask somebody back then, hey, should

1:08:09

there be this many million people in jail?

1:08:12

People would say, no, there's not that many million bad

1:08:14

people in America. And this was, I think this was kind

1:08:16

of the tipping point

1:08:17

that made it acceptable in America to believe, yeah,

1:08:20

I think tens of millions of people could be in jail, especially

1:08:23

if they're not

1:08:24

my color or complexion, like that,

1:08:27

I'm okay with that. I don't know if you could have gotten there

1:08:29

without threatening a bunch of people, you

1:08:31

know, people feeling like their children were threatened.

1:08:33

Right.

1:08:35

So, you know.

1:08:37

There shouldn't be that many people in

1:08:39

jail, but the bad people should be in

1:08:41

worse jail.

1:08:43

We need fewer but worse jails.

1:08:45

Fewer jails, but make them worse. I

1:08:47

love this radical centrist approach.

1:08:52

What's the name of your political party?

1:08:55

Fewer, worse jails. Fewer,

1:08:57

but worse jails. Vote

1:08:59

John Roderick.

1:09:01

And that concludes Kids

1:09:04

on Milk Cartons. Entry 686.de2407.

1:09:10

Certificate number 25468.

1:09:14

Are

1:09:16

you seeing these numbers for the first time? I'm

1:09:19

seeing. What's this one with two circles on top

1:09:21

of each other? Having a stroke. 25 in

1:09:24

the omnibus.

1:09:29

Futurelings,

1:09:29

in the unlikely event that you

1:09:31

are a missing child, or in the

1:09:35

unlikely event that you are drinking milk.

1:09:39

Knock twice on the heater pipes and

1:09:41

someone will come. Make sure to go

1:09:43

on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and

1:09:46

write a very, very panicky post about

1:09:49

Pizza Gate.

1:09:50

Is that still a thing? It is.

1:09:53

There's a whole. There's some offshoot of it. There's a

1:09:55

whole part of America that really still believes

1:09:57

that. That Washington.

1:09:59

Deep staters are harvesting

1:10:02

the glands of children. The

1:10:04

glands because of adrenochrome?

1:10:07

You wouldn't want to harvest an adult's glands. You

1:10:09

know, that's years of hard living. This

1:10:12

is really like a fear and loathing in Las

1:10:14

Vegas

1:10:15

plot point. Yes. Adrenochrome,

1:10:17

but it's monkey adrenochrome. These are people believing

1:10:19

it without drugs.

1:10:21

As far as we know. Go

1:10:24

on the Omnibus Facebook

1:10:26

group. You can don't. I'm

1:10:29

going to take Twitter out of this because a Twitter

1:10:31

doesn't exist anymore. And B, I don't want to direct

1:10:33

anyone there. Do you concur?

1:10:36

Yeah. All right. As we record

1:10:38

this, Elon just said you can't block people anymore.

1:10:41

I saw that. That seems great. Let's

1:10:43

all agree that we're not going to go there

1:10:45

anymore. I'm sure it's a coincidence that he is like the

1:10:48

most blocked person on Twitter. I'm sure that had nothing to do

1:10:50

with the policy change. Have you? Do you

1:10:52

continue to post there?

1:10:53

No. Maybe careerist stuff, but

1:10:55

probably not that for long. Yeah. Well,

1:10:58

anyway, Facebook and Instagram

1:11:01

and TikTok. What are the other? I don't even. I

1:11:03

have so little interest. Threads, Mastodon, Blue

1:11:06

Sky.

1:11:07

Go to those places, I guess. Don't.

1:11:11

Just get off of it all. Just

1:11:13

come here to Omnibus. But if you want to hang out

1:11:15

with people, go to Facebook and

1:11:19

look for futurelings. I'm at

1:11:21

John Roderick. Ken is at Kent Jennings.

1:11:24

You can email us. Maybe

1:11:27

what we should do is start just publishing all the

1:11:29

emails we get on our

1:11:32

Patreon page. Yeah. It's

1:11:34

not exactly a message board. It's just kind of like.

1:11:36

Classified ads or something. Yeah. You kind of get your

1:11:39

email posted as long as it has no swears.

1:11:41

I like it. Go to email

1:11:44

us at theomnibusproject at gmail.com

1:11:46

or go to our Patreon page, patreon.com

1:11:49

slash slash slash

1:11:52

slash omnibusproject.

1:11:54

And look for exciting

1:11:57

new developments where we just start publishing really.

1:12:00

everything we get because we already take

1:12:02

pictures of all the mail that we get.

1:12:04

We, our show notes are available there.

1:12:06

If you're ever flummoxed by us just describing

1:12:09

some weird item we got in the mail, worry

1:12:11

no longer. You know what we should do? We should, we should

1:12:13

put up a map of the Northwest

1:12:16

and a map of Seattle neighborhoods and

1:12:18

then put little pins. No, it can be a, it

1:12:20

can be a fan thing. When John says 183rd

1:12:23

and Dayton, I think somebody is maybe keeping a map of

1:12:25

geotagging omnibus. Yeah. If you, if,

1:12:27

if, if, uh, if somebody's geotagging

1:12:29

all the Northwest, locate all the street

1:12:32

corners that Ken and I mentioned, uh,

1:12:34

that would be a fun, it'd be a fun thing to spread

1:12:37

around. Uh, but go to patreon.com

1:12:39

slash omnibus project and, uh, uh,

1:12:42

really like a donation,

1:12:45

not a donation, a, uh, uh,

1:12:47

joining our Patreon at any

1:12:49

membership level

1:12:51

gives you access to this. Uh,

1:12:53

what's already an incredible database of,

1:12:57

of a Denda show where we talk

1:12:59

about all the letters we get from angry people who say

1:13:01

I was a missing kid, almost, it wasn't fun.

1:13:03

Almost 50 of these. We have 50 episodes.

1:13:06

Almost. We're, we're getting there. We're in the forties

1:13:08

somewhere. And they're great. They're really fun.

1:13:10

We're going to actually record one this afternoon.

1:13:12

Probably better than the show. No,

1:13:15

every show is equally good. No, the one you have to pay

1:13:17

for is a little better. Oh yeah. That's right. Why would the

1:13:19

free ones be better? Okay. You

1:13:21

can't just give away the milk. But

1:13:23

we really do appreciate your membership over

1:13:25

there. And, um, and it really is kind

1:13:27

of the future of, of media

1:13:30

to support the things that you love with,

1:13:33

uh, what ends up being a nominal

1:13:35

contribution. Or they don't exist. Um,

1:13:38

you can send us actual mail, which we will

1:13:41

then photograph and put up for our

1:13:43

Patreon subscribers at P.O. Box 55744

1:13:45

Shoreline, Washington 98155.

1:13:47

I

1:13:51

got a raft of postcards last time I checked

1:13:53

the mail. Do you know someone? Like a milk

1:13:55

carton raft? Yeah. And we made a raft

1:13:58

out of postcards and it sunk. Do you?

1:13:59

You know someone named Rai from Kirkland?

1:14:02

Because he just went to Japan and he sent you postcards

1:14:04

at every stage. He sent them to

1:14:06

me? John Roderick, care of omnibus.

1:14:09

What the what? What's going on Rai? The

1:14:12

messages include the following. Howdy from Tokyo.

1:14:14

Howdy. Thank you for being you. I bought

1:14:16

more postcards and stamps, so here's another. Do you like the

1:14:18

Moomins? I do. Who doesn't like

1:14:20

a Moomin? It's like a Japanese shroom. The Japanese do too,

1:14:22

except they're not, they're not. They're like, what, Finnish

1:14:25

or something. Oh, that's right. Sweet-o Finnish.

1:14:28

And then his final note, I can't wait to get

1:14:30

home. Did he get home? We

1:14:32

may never know. So Rai, and these

1:14:34

are that, these are messages that are that short. Yes.

1:14:38

They're directed to me. He just wants, he just wants you

1:14:40

to know he was in Japan. Do we know that Rai is a he? I

1:14:42

thought of you. Oh, I guess it's true. I assumed

1:14:44

it was short for Rai and but I guess there are women named

1:14:46

Rai. It could be a they. I bought more postcards

1:14:48

and stamps. Rai Jones. We

1:14:51

occasionally hear from the Center for Land Use

1:14:53

Interpretation and they

1:14:55

want us to know they have a new exhibit

1:14:57

at

1:14:58

their Culver City, California center

1:15:02

about Harper's Ferry and the interpretive

1:15:04

infrastructure of the National Park Service.

1:15:07

I like it. So if you're interested in national park

1:15:09

infrastructure, get the to 9331 Venice Boulevard

1:15:11

and go to

1:15:13

the Museum of Jurassic Technology down

1:15:15

the street while you're there. It's crazy.

1:15:17

Let me see our correspondent Sparky

1:15:19

sends us something from the clink, Eastern State Penitentiary.

1:15:22

Oh, eek. It is. He

1:15:25

is not in fact interned there. He is

1:15:28

he visited it. He

1:15:30

says, apart from the physical legacy of the

1:15:32

prison, they do an excellent job of laying out the

1:15:34

history and flaws of the U.S. prison industrial complex.

1:15:37

That's on on topic this week's entry.

1:15:39

You know, Rai is a

1:15:40

is a guitar player. Rai Kooter? No,

1:15:43

well, Rai Kooter is a guitar player, but Rai Jones

1:15:45

is also. I know I know who this. Do you think all

1:15:47

guitar players are named Rai

1:15:49

on some level? You

1:15:53

know, the the last one that's not Keith

1:15:55

Rai. It's

1:15:57

not coming to mind. The last alcohol. I

1:16:00

ever drank was rye. Is

1:16:02

that true? Before I got sober, it

1:16:04

was rye that put me over the edge.

1:16:07

You're like, no way. I

1:16:09

thought all booze would

1:16:11

do it for me, but I finally found one bad enough to

1:16:13

get me to quit. Yeah, I drank rye, I got into

1:16:16

a gun battle, and then it was over. That's

1:16:18

what they should tell people fighting

1:16:20

addiction. Just

1:16:21

drink rye. Just drink rye, and

1:16:23

you'll be done. And then Gabe

1:16:26

and Haley sent us a note from Gabe and

1:16:28

Haley. K. Pataras National. Why are you saying

1:16:30

Gabe and Haley? I just like it. It just rolls off

1:16:33

the tongue, Gabe and Haley. Well, I'm glad because they got married.

1:16:35

Gabe and Haley got married? They better stay together.

1:16:38

Oh, Gabe and Haley. Okay, this is funny. It's

1:16:40

written in the voice of Gabe, but apparently,

1:16:42

Haley wrote it because she has better handwriting.

1:16:44

And it's true, it is beautiful little...

1:16:46

It looks like she's lettering a cute

1:16:51

newspaper comic strip or something. I want you to

1:16:53

right now just spend like two seconds

1:16:55

trying to get inside the relationship of Gabe

1:16:57

and Haley, where he makes sure to write his postcards. Well,

1:16:59

no, where Gabe is like, hey, let's write

1:17:02

a postcard, and Haley's like, I'll write it. Okay,

1:17:05

okay. All right, what are we going to say? And Haley's

1:17:07

like, I got the penmanship. You've got the

1:17:09

story. It's the 1960s D'Andre

1:17:12

per dream, marry your stenographer. This is so

1:17:14

beautiful.

1:17:15

They got married in June

1:17:17

at this very lighthouse.

1:17:19

They took a tour before the summit ceremony, and apparently, they

1:17:21

thought of us because the park ranger told us, of course, the

1:17:23

lighthouse has a Fresnel lens.

1:17:26

The original 1871 lens still in use today.

1:17:29

I thought you were going to say that it

1:17:31

had seven sides. Wait, this is funny. My

1:17:33

wife and I love lighthouses and would love to hear an episode

1:17:36

on the wild history of Outer Banks lighthouses, especially

1:17:38

the moving of Cape Hatteras.

1:17:40

No, I don't want to tell. I don't

1:17:43

want to start their marriage off on a bad note, but Gabe and

1:17:45

Haley. Gabe and Haley, go back and listen to

1:17:47

her. Didn't we do that? Showed like

1:17:49

two years ago? Maybe

1:17:51

they came into Omnibus

1:17:53

fairly recently, and they're not one of these, like, we're

1:17:55

going to go back and listen to everything. But you think it would be

1:17:57

like during their courtship if this is their very favorite?

1:17:59

thing, at what point did

1:18:02

they not notice that the podcast they

1:18:04

listened to actually covered their

1:18:06

favorite topic? Boy, I don't know. You know, you

1:18:08

and I both have trouble sometimes remembering all

1:18:10

of the omnibus episodes. It's true. What

1:18:13

was it the other day? You were like, I'm going to do a show on this. And I was

1:18:15

like, that's great. You did it three years

1:18:17

ago.

1:18:18

I can't remember what it was. It's funny because,

1:18:21

you know, we started this show because

1:18:23

we are constantly doing these deep dives.

1:18:26

And so there are often shows where

1:18:28

we're doing a show about something we've thought

1:18:31

a lot about over the years. And

1:18:33

that was one where I was like, oh yeah, I've been thinking about this

1:18:35

for a long time. Yes, you have. Gabe

1:18:39

and Haley, in order to celebrate your marriage, we did

1:18:41

not actually send you anything, but we went back

1:18:43

in time and recorded a podcast

1:18:46

episode just for you. Please check the archives.

1:18:48

Time is a flat, sir.

1:18:50

Listeners from our vantage point in your distant past,

1:18:52

we have no idea how long our civilization

1:18:54

survived. We hope and pray

1:18:57

that the catastrophe we fear may never come. But

1:18:59

if the worst comes soon, this recording, like all

1:19:01

our recordings, may be our

1:19:03

final word.

1:19:05

But with Providence allowed, we hope

1:19:07

to back to you soon for another entry in

1:19:09

the Omnibus.