How Crowds Work

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh.

There's Chuck.

There's Jerry.

He squeezes together in a one meter square space.

We're still doing pretty good on Stuff You Should Know.

You know what's funny?

I was reading, and we'll get to it.

But when things start to become problematic as far as people per square meter, and I started

to panic.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

That didn't get me.

But it occurred to me that some people listening to this are going to feel that way too.

Yeah.

Because we're talking about crowds.

And if even the discussion of being in very close proximity to someone else triggers

you, then consider this your warning.

Yeah.

Great, great job, Chuck.

Yeah.

Sure.

So we are talking crowds today, Chuck.

You spoiled the entire episode by mentioning that.

Yeah.

I'm just kidding, buddy.

And generally, think of this as a huge mass of people, say like at a concert or something

like that, or a show if you're into indie bands.

But it can be any assemblage of people, any group of people, and guessing more than two,

if that all adages correct, about three being a crowd.

But it can be anything from a bunch of people and an elevator to a bunch of people going

to Mecca, flocking to Mecca for the Hodge on any given year.

Yeah.

Technically, just any grouping, who put this one together, by the way, initially?

This was a Julia joint, and thank you for reminding me, before we go further, Kimberly from

the prison labor listener mail is the person who got this one going.

So thanks, Kimberly.

Okay.

Yeah, thanks.

Big time.

Because I thought this was super interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, Julia did some research and basically came back with this.

A crowd is any group of people temporarily gathered in the same physical space, relatively

close to each other?

Elevators.

Sure.

I mean, it's a little surprising, if you think about it, for some reason, I got hooked

on the elevator thing.

But there's a lot of different reasons those people could be together.

They're all going to different floors in the same building, say if they happen to be

on an elevator, or they could all have a shared interest.

They're all at a gun show, or they have a shared goal.

They're trying to overthrow their regime, their ruling regime.

There's all sorts of different reasons people come together and crowd.

Sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes it's not planned by that person, but it just happens.

And one of the cool things is we've been studying crowds through all sorts of different

lenses.

And we've kind of whittled down to the fact that humans are essentially innately good at

navigating crowds for the most part.

Yeah.

You know, some of the stuff Julia came back with was fairly like you might be a little scared

of crowds, but it is good to know that that is sort of outdated thinking.

And while we will talk about bad things that can happen in crowds, the modern understanding

of crowds, you're right, is that people are generally pretty orderly, even in the face

of disaster, and the things that make a crowd go bad a lot of times, it's not the crowd's

fault.

Yeah.

It's blamed by authorities very frequently in retrospect, and then in further retrospect

it turns out like, no, actually the authorities are probably outfault in this case.

Yeah.

I mean, it's almost as if sometimes a peaceful protest can turn bad when an armed military

shows up, right, just the presence of that, just the presence and then other things that

happen after.

Right.

So yes, and we'll talk about that for sure, because there is a huge role for law enforcement

in dealing with crowds.

Like, it's part of their job because crowd, they say crowd control, but that's apparently

an outdated term as well, but dealing with crowds, managing crowds.

So that's part of their job, that's not going to go away, we don't really want it to go

away.

Instead, we want law enforcement to do it in the, using the best practices that have been

proven over and over again, that cut down the chance of a crowd turning ugly by huge

percentages.

Yeah.

But, you know, one thing is for sure, like, people behave differently in crowds and sometimes

it's great, you know, I never, I never dance like this man, but I'm a burning man and,

and look at me all of a sudden, or it can turn bad and we're going to, we're going to cover

all angles.

Well, let's talk about some of the bad ones because there are some famous ones.

This happens, you don't want to say a lot, but it's one of those things like a plane crash

where it seems like it will happen all the time because it's just so shocking details

of it.

Whenever it does happen, it seems like it happens way, way more frequently.

That's just not the case, but when it does happen, like I said, it can be pretty bad.

Yeah.

You know, because people can get trampled, people can be squashed by force, like in a,

in a crowd rush, pressure can reach a thousand pounds of force, which is a lot that can

lead to loss of life, notably, like you said, we're going to mention a handful, but the

Astroworld Festival in Houston, very sadly in 2021, the Travis Scott performance, 10 people

lost their lives and many more were injured.

Yeah.

There was one I hadn't heard of.

That was pretty bad.

Quite bad.

It happened at the coronation of Zarnicholas II in Moscow in 1896.

There was a crowd of half a million people who were all there for the coronation and they

knew that they were giving out free souvenirs, essentially.

I saw half a pound of sausage, bags of nuts, a souvenir cup, and apparently they had

enough for everybody, but a rumor spread in the crowd that they didn't have enough for

everybody.

So the people in the back started pushing the stampede broke out and 1,300 people died.

Yeah.

It feels like concerts and sporting events, it can be dozens of people, which is all incredibly

sad, but when people in the order of thousands are dying from an event that's pretty striking.

And that really follows the model it seems like for loss of life in crowd crushes.

There's some sort of bottleneck toward the front and it's wider and back, so people

in back start pushing and the people in front can't go forward so they get crushed.

That seems to be like the case.

That's what happened in Astro World.

That's what happened in Moscow.

That's what happened in Duseberg, Germany at the world's largest techno festival, the

love parade.

Yeah, I remember that 2010, 21 people died and it was a tunnel in that case.

Yeah.

It also happened, I mentioned the Hage and 2,000 people, 2,000 people died at the Hage as

part of that annual pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are required to do at least once

in their lifetime.

Well, they have like on the order of one and a half million people, up to two million

people every year do this thing.

And in 2015, 2,000 people died because there was bottleneck, people pushed from the back.

And that actually broke the previous record of the most people killed in a crowd crush.

That was also at the Hage this time in 1990.

Yeah, super, super sad.

Because of all these tragedies, people have been studying how people move through crowds,

crowd dynamics.

You know, they use a lot of different sciences, physics definitely is one and we're going

to talk about all these, but also physiology, psychology certainly.

And what they're looking at is human behavior, how people behave when they get in a crowd

because it changes once you have sort of a veil of anonymity going on.

And again, it can be good or bad, but they use this in all kinds of modeling, whether

it's, you know, in city planning or a certainly event preparation, disaster management, crowd

management, all kinds of people, like we'll pay people a lot of money to study and give

their findings.

And you mentioned applying the principles of physics to studying this.

I think that started in the 50s and it's not like tip for tat, but the movement and

the formation of crowds resembles it so much that you can basically use physics terms

like orbital motion or oscillators to basically describe how people behave in a crowd and how

crowds behave themselves, one of the ways of looking at his systems theory and complex

adapted systems are what crowds do.

It's chaotic at first, but then they start to move together as a whole, lines of communication

develop without speech is just kind of like the crowd learns through feedback and it just

starts, it becomes a cohesive whole rather than just a bunch of people together in the

space.

Yeah, I mean, certainly fluid dynamics is a factor and they kind of use some of that terminology

as well when talking about crowds, because if you're fluid, like let's say you're liquid

or even a gas, the particles are really tightly packed, but they're never actually colliding

because they have electrons repelling each other.

We do a similar thing, but it's called what's known as social force, it's that thing when

you're in a crowd and you just unconsciously, instinctively navigate without like constantly

bumping into other people, at least if you're doing it right, I've been in crowds where

people are a little more unaware and there may be reasons for that, so I'm not like casting

aspersions, but generally speaking, your body is just automatically adjusting because you

want that path of least resistance, you don't want to be banging into people all around

you.

Even in great crowds, like a huge excited stadium after a big sports win or after a big

energetic concert or something, you still find your way out of there, generally not making

contact with other people, maybe slight bumps here and there, but unless someone really

has their head up their butt or they're super drunk or there may be other, you know, some

genuine factor they can't help, they're not just banging right into people constantly.

Yeah, that may be wonder if it's electrons repelling each other that keeps liquids from

bumping into one another.

I wonder if the collective group of electrons in our bodies are what makes us inherently, makes

us inherently avoid it and almost have a sixth sense for that kind of thing.

I like that idea.

It's like the quantum explanation of swerving, a little hippy-dippy.

So there are a couple things that we've figured out about crowds that the way that they behave

is, again, this is spontaneous, I don't even know if we've said it, so maybe not again.

It's spontaneous, it's unconscious typically, and it's collective, right?

So we're actually moving cooperatively with other people, whether we realize it or not.

We think we're just trying to make it to the exit because we want to get to our car first

so we can get the heck out of the parking lot as soon as possible.

But we're actually unconsciously moving in conjunction with other people.

One of the really great ways that that expresses itself is in lane formation, which is, well,

it's exactly what it sounds like, right?

Yeah, it's people kind of gathering and moving in one direction together, forming a lane.

It's no one's taking the lead and saying everyone, this is the United States.

So we generally walk down the right side of the hallway or the corridor and other people

on the left.

That is something when I've traveled abroad, I had to get used to because I didn't realize

the rules of the road typically apply to moving around the world as well.

So I didn't know that until I went over to England for the first time and was bumping

into people constantly.

But yeah, here in the United States is generally right side, left side, or I guess it doesn't

explain it well, but you move along the right side of a hallway.

Sure.

And that's just a difference in the electron spin of people in Europe and the people in

the US.

Oh, man.

I also mentioned orbital motion, too, right?

So apparently in a crowd, people moving in the same direction, or if you're in a crowd

that's just basically in one place, I think they studied the festival of the running of

the bowls in Pamplona to get this information.

You basically, you move in a circle, in an orbit is what they call it, and you complete

this orbit in about 18 seconds.

And when I was reading this, I'm like, that's just not true.

And then I went and watched video of this study.

And yes, people just move around in a tight circle, basically you're moving because other

people are moving, but you're ultimately keeping your same space, this one orbital circle,

which is awesome.

I mean, to be clear, because that sounded slightly confusing.

People are not walking in a tight circle.

You're just moving your body within a circular space, like maybe raising your elbow to scratch

your head or something like that.

Right.

So imagine, imagine the person in front of you.

Imagine the person in front of you is backing up so you back up and then you maybe move

to the right and then they move this way and you kind of come forward to your left and

then you kind of back up a little bit to your left and then you back up center like

that.

So you're facing the same way the whole time, but you're just shuffling your feet in

the way that you're doing this, you're ultimately creating an orbit.

Yeah.

And I think that also applies to just taking up your personal space with general body movements.

Yes.

The electrons.

So this works out pretty great, this idea of social force.

It seems to work pretty well, and even in big crowds, when it starts to get a little

more highly dense is when it's a problem.

And this is where you might get triggered like I was, and I don't even mind crowds.

But when it started talking and getting like denser and denser, I just found myself getting

a little, you know, my breathing sort of increased.

Yeah.

So at two people per square meter, a crowd moves a little slower because they're still

trying to, you know, get that distance between you and the, and your friend next to you.

Four people, you're going to start to bump around a little bit.

And six people things get truly difficult, and at 10 people per square meter, and I

measured that out on the floor, that made me panic a little bit.

That means individual movement is basically impossible and the likelihood of like in a big

crowd that's that dense, something bad is likely to happen.

Yeah.

This is the point where you can't raise your arms.

They're at your side.

If a crush starts to happen, you can't breathe.

So there, like you can die of asphyxiation.

There is a very famous tragedy in 2022 in Seoul, the Teoan tragedy, where kids in their

20s, healthy kids in their 20s died of heart attacks because they asphyxiated in their

heart stopped because of a crowd crush.

Yeah.

And if you're wondering what this all looks like, we didn't do big max.

Should have big max, but six people per square meter where, you know, it's not tragic,

movement is difficult.

That's about 1700 people packed onto a tennis court.

Yep.

So that's a lot.

Yeah.

And that was at six.

We're talking 10 is when you can really be in trouble.

Now, that is not guaranteed that something's going to go wrong.

In a Teoan, there were like this situation was going on for an hour, so before it turned

problematic.

So as long as the people in the back are doing good and not pushing, as long as somebody

in the center doesn't faint and fall over or trip and fall down, this can work.

It's not inherently going to be deadly, but the chances of it becoming dead, it's just

sitting there balancing on the razor's edge at that point.

It's a really dangerous place to be.

Yeah.

It's that one triggering incident is when it can really go south there.

Yeah, for sure.

Scary.

Shall we take a break?

Yes.

All right, we'll be right back with more crowds.

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All right, so we covered partially coverage physics.

We should talk a little bit about psychology because crowds have their own distinct psychology

around them as well.

People can behave in ways that they don't normally behave in a crowd just because of that

psychology.

Early on, the explanation for that was if there's a violent crowd, then it was just full of

violent people.

Right.

There was a French psychologist named Gustave Le Bon in 1895 who wrote the literal book

on this, like the first one, called The Crowd, Colin, a study of the popular mind.

It was very influential, but this is one of those that's a little outdated in a lot

of ways.

Yeah, it's right in some ways, but his whole thing was like, you have any crowd together.

They're inherently mindless.

They form a collective mind.

They become capable of anything.

They're very suggestible.

They're going to kill everybody in their path.

And there are crowds that have done that before.

But that's not the inherent, I guess, trait of crowds.

The crowds are actually the opposite.

They're actually way more peaceful and pro-social than that.

But Le Bon essentially set the view of crowds that's still persistent today in a lot of

borders.

He just had a huge impact on this.

Yeah, absolutely.

If you look at the different explanations over the years of this collective behavior, because

collective behavior is definitely happening.

There are a few different theories.

One is the contagion theory, and that was put forth by Le Bon himself, which is that

this irrational behavior that happened in a crowd spreads like a virus.

That can happen, and it also can't.

So I'm sort of 50-50 on that one.

Yeah.

Again, all of this stuff makes sense.

It's just not like this is the most salacious, rare version of crowds, right?

You can also make the case like good, positive behavior can be contagious in a crowd as well.

Because like you said, people behave differently in crowds.

That's just a fact.

Yeah.

Like that dancing at Burning Man.

Yeah, exactly.

There's also convergence theory, which also makes a bit of sense that explains why crowds

have a collective mind, and it just basically says that's because crowds are made up of

similar people.

Like usually there's not a lot of crowd-like mindless, say, behavior on an elevator, because

everybody there didn't come together on the elevator to protest something.

But if you have a protest, there's way more potential for collective mind behavior.

Because there's people who are there for the same reason.

So they're sharing kind of a wavelength already when they get there.

Yeah.

If you're at that concert together, you're there because you're, you want to see Bob Dylan

in person.

All right.

For the same reason.

Sure.

Or you want to hear David Crosby harang you.

Oh, man.

He will too.

Or he would have.

He did.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So that's convergence.

There's also group mind theory, just a little on the nose.

It's basically saying like, you lose your individual identity and it's replaced as a part

a cog of this larger group's identity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, like this is.

Yeah.

It's not totally off.

The official identity theory seems to be the prevalent dominant view of, I guess kind

of de-individuation in crowds.

Yeah.

That's where you just, you're acting like everyone else is acting because you just want

to fit in.

Yeah.

But you can't really put it better than that.

So how do you become a crowd member?

There are a few key concepts there.

First, you have to get training.

Go to school.

Got to go to crowd school.

Right.

And the first thing you need in crowd school is a lot of people in a very tight spot.

It's called panic school.

I'm okay.

And it's weird because I don't have like, what's it called, claustrophobia necessarily?

I think it's more for me just like, I can't wait to get out of that crowd because I just

want to have a little space.

Maybe I do have a little claustrophobia.

Yeah.

I mean, it sounds like it, but I think everybody does to a degree.

It's just.

I guess that's it.

Yeah, but I've never, you know, I can accept hugs and I was never one of those kids

like under the dog pile that was like freaking out or anything like that.

Oh, yeah.

I did not like that.

Yeah.

Well, you have a little claustrophobia, right?

Yeah.

A little bit.

I've kind of outgrown it a lot, but yeah.

If you put me in like a sewer culvert or hearing about like a caving accident, I'll

start.

Yeah.

I can't handle that.

You have a fear of dying, that might be what's going on, which is rational.

But what are we talking about?

We're talking about the three key concepts that form these foundations of collected behavior

and they are D and D individuation, yeah, emotional contagion and suggestibility.

And that first one, D individuation is basically like kind of what you were hinting at

earlier is there's this new social identity and your individual identity is taking a break.

Yeah.

And this is a good example of how this stuff can kind of make sense, but it's also like

you really just paid attention to the worst part of it.

And this came from Philip Zimbardo, member of him from the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Oh, yeah.

That was all about D individuation.

So he focused some work on crowds and essentially what he said is that, yeah, you just basically

leave your own identity at the door.

You take on a new identity of crowd member, group member.

And basically whatever the group's up for, you're up for too.

You feel anonymous, you feel unidentified, you also feel connected to those other people.

And so if those other people start, you know, looting or something like that, you would

probably never loot by yourself, but since you're in that group, you've lost your individual

identity that would prevent you from looting now.

It's like, well, yeah, I mean, I'm part of this group and we're looting.

So let's get to it.

I think that's fascinating.

And I think that is so true and happens all the time.

And we've seen it in all across, like I feel like in recent years, especially with various

protests and, you know, things that people might call riots, things that people might call

insurrections where people that normally wouldn't behave in a certain way, like, hey, I was

going down to the capital building to, to voice my opinion about how this country is being

run.

And next thing you know, I'm beating a cop down with a flagpole and that normally I would

not do something like that.

Exactly.

And that's a great example of that.

On the other side of it, you might never dance with your shirt out wearing nothing but

a loincloth.

Burning man.

Yes.

But in a different situation, you could be having just one of the greatest moments of

your life.

Totally.

And that's not just the ecstasy speaking friend, that is you being a part of a crowd and feeling

that kind of exhilaration of being part, you're connected to something larger than yourself.

So it's the same thing in a sense, you're de-individuated one way or another.

It's just how is it going?

Is it going positive?

Is it going negative or is it even neutral?

Yeah.

I think this is all just very fascinating.

The second one we mentioned was emotional contagion.

And that is just the fact that emotions in a crowd are heightened anyway.

If you're there at that concert or that protest, you're highly emotional probably for whatever

reason you're there.

Or if your team just won the big game and you're leaving in a big crowd.

So you're aware of the people around you.

That one person, you've seen it before in any of those circumstances where one person

again triggers something because they're extra emo and all of a sudden everyone rises

to meet that level of emotion.

Yeah.

One thing I saw that I think it's part of social identity theory is that that depends

on the mood of the group or the norms of the group.

So it's like a group that is generally saying like we're a peaceful protest.

Somebody can come up and throw a ball of top cocktail and everybody else in the group is

going to look at them like what the heck are you doing?

They will isolate that person, ostracize that person and continue on with their peaceful

protest.

But if the norm of the group is like yeah, we're being like repressed here and somebody throws

a ball of top cocktail, there's a good chance that that that crowd will change its norms

to include throwing ball of top cocktails and more people will join in.

Yeah.

I mean, you used to hang out in a mosh pit or two back in the day.

I'm sure, right?

Yeah.

Here and there.

I mean, I think they could be and they probably have been studied within the crowd dynamics

because it's sort of just a microcosm.

But I remember in those days and I wasn't like, oh man, I can't wait to get in that mosh pit.

But if one broke out around me, I would find myself in it like having a good time.

And the same thing would happen.

I was in mosh pits where there was one jerk throwing elbows and everyone's like, get out

of here, dude.

And then I've been in others where all of a sudden that one dude triggered another dude

and then all of a sudden it got a little scary in there.

And that's when Chuck took a walk.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Yeah.

And then also there's often that jerk that's like not even in the pit.

He just pushes people in who weren't planning on joining.

Yeah, that should be a choice.

That guy needs to soak his head.

Yeah, I had a quick story here about the first or not the first law of blues.

The one with the Beastie boys.

And at Lakewood amphitheater, big outdoor amphitheater on the lawn, the mosh pit

behind us.

I wasn't in this one, but it got so big it was about a third of the size of the amphitheater

lawn and it was swirling in the circle and people started throwing up their cups and stuff

and the trash around them.

And that stuff formed a whirlpool, a tunnel of trash as if a tornado was taking it up.

That's amazing.

Or at least that's what I saw.

You know what I mean?

That's a world-class mosh pit right there.

It was, I've never seen anything like it and I've been around a lot of big shows like

that and I've never seen anything like that.

That's like that part from a American beauty where the kid sees the plastic bag caught up

in the little whirlwinds like this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, I used to think that was the best movie I ever hit.

I don't think it's aged well.

Not just because of Spacey.

Not just because of Spacey.

The whole thing is kind of corny to me now.

What do I think about it?

Well, I'm not going to watch it again then.

Yeah.

Okay, there's one more, I guess key aspect that you mentioned too, which is

Suggestibility.

Mm-hmm.

And this is, I think, another LeBon thing.

Who, by the way, as far as I can tell, is not related to Simon LeBon.

Can that be great?

Yeah.

But LeBon basically was like, they're de-individuated.

They are basically capable of anything.

And if there's, like, you could tell them whatever and they'll go do it.

This definitely, I mean, just from recent experience,

like, this can happen, but it requires typically a central leader or organizer that people

are looking to, a charismatic speaker.

Somebody who can actually tap into that collective mind and push it one direction or another.

That is possible.

But again, that is fairly rare when something like that happens.

But it is possible.

It does happen sometimes.

Well, I mean, I don't think we mentioned earlier, Hitler and Mussolini both studied the works

of LeBon.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, they mobilized it to their own ends.

They used it to generate nationalism and xenophobia and essentially create, like, their

own fascist states, because it does work if you do it right and you have a crowd in the

right mindset.

That's right.

That's nuts, dude.

Should we break or keep going?

I say we...

Oh.

Okay.

All right.

We can break.

You have my permission.

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When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

We didn't worry about what went on outside.

It was like stepping on another world.

Inside Charlie's place, black and white people danced together, but not everyone was happy

about it.

Can you saw the KKK?

Yeah, it was dressed up in that uniform.

The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here.

Charlie was an example of power.

They had the crush in.

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, and visit Myrtle Beach, comes Charlie's place.

A story that was nearly lost to time.

Until now, listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Welles Adams with By Order of the Faithfuls podcast alongside my fellow

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The three of us have been watching the season of the traders, and we've been inside that

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So one of the great things Chuck about studying crowds is that you can figure out what makes

crowds do what.

They have in a lot of ways, not just how they behave like physics or what the psychology

is behind crowds, but what triggers crowds to say change their mood.

Remember I said, depending on the norms, they may or may not behave violently or unlawfully,

and that can change with the same crowd depending on the circumstances.

One of the good example of that is that if you have been, if you're a law enforcement

officer, and you're there and you basically your whole squad is like, it's a protest, so

of course they're going to turn violent and they're going to throw rocks at us and stuff

like that.

Just being primed to believe that actually makes it more likely that the crowd will behave

that way.

It's not like we have it reversed.

Like you said, just the presence of a law enforcement group or force in riot gear makes

it more likely that a crowd will turn violent.

Yeah, for sure.

They have this new, I don't know how widespread it is yet, but one of the newer developments

in this kind of quote-unquote crowd control is something called a dialogue team.

And that's when you get your nicest cop, I guess.

Make them the public facing face of that unit and they put them out in the lead and they

communicate their purpose there, their presence there, how they'd like things to go.

And apparently it works a lot better than just showing up and standing there beating that

Billy Club into your hand and staring down at people in all your heavy gear, apparently

that has quite a great calming effect on crowds and can even see the police presence as

a little more benevolent and cause the crowd to maybe self-police a little more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the chances of the crowd turning ugly is way decreased when you have that kind of,

like you said, public facing kind of law enforcement.

Like you still have the riot gear, you may even still have a line of guys with assault rifles

with rubber bullets and there's like the M-Rap, like often the distance, but it's not,

that's not what you have up against the crowd.

You have friendly officers that are explaining that they're there to protect your first

amendment rights, but also keep you safe.

And yeah, like you said, self-policing, getting a crowd to police itself is, I mean, that's

just the pinnacle of crowd control and it isn't very widespread here, but it's a model

that Europe as a whole has adopted since the early 2000s, the odds.

And so it's starting to spread over here, but it feels like it's more being, it's being

handed over from Europe to the academics in America who are trying to give it to law

enforcement in America to take and run with.

Yeah.

And the key to any, you know, regardless of the dialogue team out in front, the key to

any sort of peaceful situation in a protest and dealing with cops, is these cops have

to be trained like super trained.

Training is the key to every officer interaction that they take.

And most of these big tragedies that you can point to and not just in protest, but just

any kind of these like crushing tragedies is the result of untrained officers in a lot

of cases.

Yeah.

Sometimes even the people who are in charge of all of the police there might not be trained

in what they're doing, like the Sheffield tragedy.

And I think 1989, the police were blamed for that, although the police initially blamed

soccer hooligans.

And it was like, no, the cops who were in charge of this had no reason to be in charge

of this.

They had no training whatsoever.

Yeah.

So that is a huge one for sure.

A couple of sociologists came along to do a lot of the sort of official refutation of

Le Ball in the 20th century.

And was it, was the Italian guy you mentioned this guy in Rico?

I didn't.

Did I mention an Italian guy?

I thought you mentioned Italian guy, but regardless, whether he's showing up for the first

time or the second, a guy named Enrico Quarentelli, he looks at a lot of emergency evacuations

and studied them.

And he basically came to the conclusion that usually people flee from these things obviously

because it's the sensible thing to do, but it's not necessarily a panicked, irrational

group of people.

They do so generally order in an orderly fashion.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Let's talk about emergency identity because one of the things, one of the ways that crowds

kind of create like a different way of thinking is, let's say you have a group of people

on a subway and the subway, like it's running normally, they are just a group of strangers

trying not to make eye contact with one another on their way home, on their way to work,

on their way wherever.

They have no affiliation with one another aside from the fact that they're currently

sharing space with one another, but that subway breaks down.

Those strangers become a group almost instantly.

Once they realize, okay, we're stuck, the human tendency that recent scholarship has found

is to come together as a group, help one another, start to actually care what happens to

every other member of the group, trust one another, treat one another with respect, and

that that happens in disaster after disaster after disaster or subway break down after subway

break down.

There was another sociologist that I don't have his name, but he studied like 180 different

peacetime disasters and basically found, yeah, there's jerks in every crowd, but for the

most part, they are the vast majority of people pro-social and positively to come together

as a group in the face of a disaster.

Yeah, that was Charles Fritz, and I couldn't help but think of Elaine Bennes, the second

you mentioned the subway stopping.

Oh, I don't remember that one.

Oh, it was the great Seinfeld episode where Elaine was stuck out of work subway.

Out of work.

A malfunctioning subway.

That was pretty great.

Okay.

Experience in New York years ago, and I might have told this one before, but where there

was a guy kind of stomping up and down the subway platform, saying he was going to shove

someone onto the oncoming train and just instinctively a group of 20 New Yorkers and me went and

gathered together in a group with a mother and her baby at the center of that atom at the

nucleus.

And it wasn't no one said, all right, everyone, let's get together here.

We all just stood together, got just wandered closer to one another, and probably all making

our way toward that woman and her baby.

And before you know it, there was a big group of us standing in a circle.

And that's the one where I went and met the cops upstairs and led them to the guy.

Awesome.

I was pretty obvious who it was, but I was like, hey, he's down here.

Boy, the New York City's finest.

They acted with intention.

That's what I'll say.

Yeah.

So what you just said, that story undermines a very famous misguided idea about crowds

the bystander effect, which we talked about a great length in our episode on Kitty Genovacy.

That's right.

But one study I saw recently found that they were studying all sorts of fights that were

caught on like security cameras or whatever.

And I think 90% of these fights, at least one person intervened, most of the time more

than one person intervened.

And so the bystander effect says the more people there are, the less likely anyone is to act

to help, they found the opposite was true.

The more people there were, the more people helped intervene in this violent fight.

So that whole idea that people just don't do that is actually untrue.

It's based on misreporting by a New York Times article.

That's right.

There's evidence that there are other reasons people might not necessarily not render aid,

but say not speak up or share their opinions because they're in a group too, right?

Yeah.

That's sort of like if you're in a classroom and the teacher asks if anyone has anything

else to say or whatever or has any questions and nobody says anything, even though they

might have questions.

I remember doing that.

Sure.

It would still do that.

Yeah.

I'm sure I would too in a classroom setting, but I would just assume like I was the only

one who didn't get it or I and probably a lot of other people were just ready to leave.

Well, in a classroom, I don't think that factors in, but as an adult, I think you're right

on the money.

I've been in situations where it's a, oh, I don't know.

If you're in a public meeting for something or if you're on the board of a local garden

or whatever, and everyone wants to go home, yeah.

You don't want to be that person that's like, well, I have another point at the end of

it.

Right.

So difference between asking a question and liking to hear yourself talk.

Well, very good point.

So yeah, that's called pluralistic ignorance where you feel like even though your opinions

differ, you are making an assumption about the rest of the group that they feel this way

so you don't want to make waves when it turns out most of the group probably feels the

same way you do.

Yeah.

For sure.

I did want to follow up with a stat that you found.

Yeah.

I want to follow up with your information because when you were talking about Fritz, I think

this idea that, you know, if you watch the news, you might think every protest leads

to violence or, you know, the summer of violence with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter

and stuff like that or pro-Palestinian campus protests.

There are stats on this stuff like there's raw numbers and of the 553 pro-Palestine campus

protests between April and April 18th and May 3rd, 2024, 97% were what was classified

as overwhelmingly peaceful.

And the same with Black Lives Matter, there were 2,400 demonstrations after the murder

of George Floyd and I think it was 93% of them remained entirely peaceful.

They were less than 220 out of the 2,400 that had any kind of violence whatsoever.

Right.

So that's good news.

I mean, yeah, that's great news.

And I think that the Black Lives Matter George Floyd protests were one of the things that

really kind of changed a lot of scholarship or gave a lot of weight to some of the emerging

scholarship that crowds actually aren't bad necessarily and they can be beneficial socially

too.

Yeah, because they don't, the news doesn't cover 2,400 peaceful protests.

Right.

They cover the ones, you know, and I guess I get it because it's the news and if it's,

I guess I get it, it's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I want to do an episode on how the news affects the world and how it has

so far because I think it's done a lot of damage.

Yeah.

I agree.

There's one other thing too.

We mentioned like say the presence of police in riot gear can actually trigger violence

that otherwise might not have taken place in a crowd.

That's not the only thing.

If there are weapons of whoever has the weapons, that can change things.

And then another really big one that cannot be overlooked is the presence of a lot of

people on alcohol.

Yeah.

That has caused a lot of riots.

It just has like you're not going to set a couch on fire in the street normally.

But if you're drunk and you're part of a crowd that whose basketball team just lost in

the final four, there's a good chance you're going to do something like that.

And alcohol fuels a lot of the problematic unlawful crowds that turn ugly.

Yeah.

But it's a lot of times it's the winning team and that just it's always very frustrating

to see the news after a city has won a big important championship, important to the fans.

And then there's a big group of people like I've been among those parties.

I remember in Athens when the Braves, when their first World Series back in the day.

Oh, that was just a great night.

The streets flooded and it was amazing.

But you know, we've seen that same thing.

All of a sudden people are flipping over cop cars.

Yeah.

It's setting them on fire.

It's like.

I'm so happy that I'm going to set this car on fire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a shame.

It's like ruining it for the best for the rest of us and the best of us.

I saw that that same kind of thing ruined the keen pumpkin festival years back.

I think we talked about that.

Did we?

I think years ago, we definitely mentioned that otherwise I don't see how it would have

known.

Yeah.

I don't remember it at all, but I'll go with your interpretation.

Yeah.

We've been during our early pumpkin chunk and coverage days.

Didn't we do a whole episode on pumpkin chunk?

Oh, yeah.

We worked for Discovery Channel.

We sure did.

They made it so.

Yes.

Uh, you got anything else?

Uh, I got nothing else.

I thought that was super interesting.

Yeah.

You picked that one.

Yeah.

Well, thank Kimberly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks, Kimberly.

Uh, but it was interesting, Chuck.

And thanks for doing that.

And I'll thank myself from you as well.

Okay.

Just thank myself on behalf of Chuck.

I think it's time for Listener Man.

Uh, that's right.

I was thinking about the way you diverted that to Kimberly.

Okay.

He deflected.

Uh, hey guys, I was listening to the short stuff about color psychology.

And I got to say I was a little disappointed.

There was no mention of drunk tank ink.

Hmm.

Did know this.

Uh, if it's not obvious, it gets his name from being the go-to color of choice for

drunk tanks.

Sure.

Because of the noticeable calming effect it has on belligerent people.

Hmm.

I was freaked by this that I painted my bathroom drunk tank pink.

This is Hannah.

Hannah sent in a picture too.

Hmm.

I didn't ask Hannah why she felt the need to do this, but she did it.

Okay.

Uh, there's a book called Drunk Tank Pink by author Adam Alter that dives into the

psychology behind it.

And I think you would both find this super interesting.

Man, I'm sorry we missed that because that is awesome.

I agree.

Uh, and by the way, Hannah got tickets to our show in Akron, Ohio as a birthday present

for her partner.

Awesome.

I've been listening since he was 15 years old.

Wow.

And now 72.

That's right.

Uh, and asked if we could give an on-stage shout out.

And Hannah, sadly, we don't do that because we get a lot of requests and it's no fun sitting

around as an audience member for 10 minutes while we read people's names.

Really is.

So we're going to do it right here.

Oh, right.

A very future happy birthday to, uh, Isaac, uh, Kines.

Nice.

Happy birthday, Isaac.

That was quite magnanimous of the joke.

Yeah.

Because we usually don't do it on the episode either.

But since drunk tank pink was such a great email, Hannah, we want to say happy, happy birthday

to Isaac and, uh, we hope you both have a great time in Akron.

Yes.

Yeah.

We'll see you guys there.

Make sure you stand up and go drunk tank pink in the middle of the show.

Oh, no, don't.

If you want to be like Hannah, you can send us an email to say whatever you like in it.

Uh, and we will love it.

Just send it off to stuffpodcast.

At iHeartRadio.com.

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Let's go places.

When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his

own rules.

Aggregation and the day integration at night.

It was like sipping on another world.

Was he a businessman, a criminal, a hero?

Charlie was an example of power.

They had to crush him.

Charlie's place from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach.

Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Wellz Adams with by order of the Faithfuls podcast alongside my fellow

Faithfuls and co-hosts, Tamra Judge and Dolores Catania.

The three of us have been watching the season of the traders.

And we've been inside that castle.

So we have insight unlike many others.

This season of the traders may be the best we've ever seen.

Listen to by order the Faithfuls on America's number one podcast network iHeart, followed

by order the Faithfuls and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

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