The Numbers

When Fannie Davis and her family moved to Detroit in the mid-1950s, they hadn’t prepared themselves for how hard it would be. They had trouble finding steady work. So, Fannie found a way to take care of her family. She started small, but built a robust and lucrative operation… a business that a lot of people knew about but no one talked about. Bridgett Davis’ book is The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers. This episode was originally released in 2019. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:40Speaker 04

  The sound of the phone ringing is embedded in my sort of memory of life growing up. The phone was always ringing, and it wasn't just one phone. At one point, we had three lines. And my mom tried to keep them separate, so to speak. One was a business line, one was a personal line, one was the children's phone line. But of course, you know, if people couldn't get through, and these are the days before call waiting, if people couldn't get through and they were anxious, some of them had access to a personal number and they'd start calling that one. So yeah, ringing phones.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  This is Brigitte Davis. Her mother, Fannie Davis, was born in Nashville in 1928. Fanny's grandfather had been born into slavery there, and her father owned a successful plastering business in the early part of the 20th century.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  And that enabled him to buy property. And so he was both a businessman and a property owner. And so my mom witnessed his entrepreneurial spirit and was highly, highly influenced by him. She really admired her father's life.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Fanny grew up in Nashville and married Brigitte's father when she was 18.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  But like many African Americans, she decided to migrate north with her family in the mid 50s so that they could have better opportunities and more liberties. And so they chose Michigan and ultimately Detroit.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  And they hadn't prepared themselves for what was awaiting. One, the racism in Michigan was so virulent and distinctive from the southern sort of discrimination they'd known about, that it took them off guard. They weren't prepared for that. And the way it manifested was in all the key ways. They couldn't find decent housing. They were charged exorbitant rent. My father was unable to find steady work. And so, these things really plunged them into poverty. So she, very early, realized she'd have to step in and figure out something.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Fannie Davis found a way to take care of her family. She started small, but built a robust and lucrative operation. A business that a lot of people knew about, but no one talked about.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Which happened to be illegal.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  It was called, "The Numbers." I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. What were the numbers?

• 5:26Speaker 04

  The numbers? The numbers are an underground lottery business or operation that has been in place since the early 20s. It moved across the country, and it was designed by, created by, a black man in Harlem, and really was a black business. It thrived. It was a, it was a true economy, actually.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  By 1970, police estimated that one in every 15 people in Detroit played the numbers daily, and that it was generating $94 million a year. Here's how you play.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  You get to choose a three-digit number, and if that number is the winning number, you actually win a 500 to 1 payout. So if you bet a dollar on that three-digit number, and it came out, as we call it, then you actually would get $500. And so, my mom knew about the numbers. Most black Americans knew or know about the numbers.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  And she played a bit herself. She played a few coins on numbers. But she noticed in her community, where she was living in Detroit, that people were playing those numbers a lot. And she thought, hmm, they could, they could actually give me their bets. So she was very small scale at first, what she called a penny business, and eventually worked as a bookie for a large banker. So there were hundreds of bookies. You are a bookie if you take other people's numbers. Maybe you just sit at your kitchen table and you have five customers who call you and turn in their numbers to you. You're a bookie. The thing that distinguished her, the thing she did that almost no other women in Detroit

• 7:18Speaker 04

  did, was she was a banker. So that meant she paid out hits.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  So she wasn't going to the bank to collect on. She, the bank was her.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yes, ultimately.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Before she could graduate from bookie to banker, Fanny needed a pool of money to pay out winning hits. So she asked her brother for help.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  And so she entered his home, as he tells me. She didn't even take her coat off. And she stood there and told him, John, I want to bank the numbers. And he said, are you sure about that? She says, yes, I've thought about it. And she explained how she would do it. And he said, OK. It made sense to him. She said, the only thing is, I need you to loan me $100. Can you do that? And he said, yes, Fanny, I can do that.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Being a banker wasn't something that women did often. What do you think gave your mother the confidence to do this?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  I don't think it ever occurred to her that she couldn't.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  I don't think it ever occurred to her that I'm a woman, so I can't do this. She thought, I have a, I have a head for numbers. I am clear about my goals. I, I have all the skill sets in place. I can command respect, so I'm not worried about that. So why not? There was something about her. Not everyone could have done it. She was really perfect for this role and she had the qualities that made it possible to thrive at it. And that has everything to do with her, just who she was.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Tell me about your mother's schedule, how the day would go once the business picked up. What was the day's schedule?

• 9:14Speaker 04

  My mom was up taking numbers in the morning, early. Some of her customers wanted to turn their numbers in before they went to work and so she had to accommodate them. I remember someone in particular, a customer who would love to go fishing on Saturday morning. So she liked to turn her numbers in at 6:00 a.m. A lot of people turn, like to call in their numbers during lunchtime. You know, there were these busier periods and then these sort of slow down periods and then busy again. And it got a lot more hectic as the afternoon wore on because there was a cutoff time. So that was often the busiest time of the day, that time right before the evening.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  So that was really how her day went, a lot of taking people's bets. And also there were people who liked to come to the house and give their numbers directly to her. So there was that piece of it. There were people who liked to come in weekly and pay her directly, you know? So there was this mix of collecting the money and then receiving it from people who, who showed up at the house.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  How were the winning numbers chosen, decided?

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Each city came up with its own way to determine a winning number. And many of them landed on this idea that they would get the number from racing forms, daily racing forms, from various racetracks across the country. Because those numbers also changed all the time. And there was a calculation that was done to determine each digit of these winning, three-digit winning numbers.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  The calculation was made using an elaborate formula based on horse race winnings from racetracks. Those results wouldn't be tabulated until after Fanny's bets were closed. So there was no way to cheat. So how would people find out if they'd won?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I always say it's a little bit like a game of telephone, but it has to be accurate. So the numbers bosses would sign off on these winning numbers based on these calculations. And so the word would go out that, OK, it's official. These are the three winning digits for today. And the numbers bosses, employees, would then make the calls to various bankers, who would inform various bookies, and they would inform their customers. And so the word would go out on the street. It would go out in a telephone call. You know, it really was word of mouth. And it was really an incredible system when you think about it. But that's how it was done.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Brigitte remembers that when the winning numbers would come in each night, things could get stressful in the house. If someone won big, her mother would have to pay out.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  That was a big part of sort of the business. Luckily, it wasn't daily. She didn't get hit daily. But there were times when she got really, people won big. And so that was a whole process, you know, gathering that money to pay off, which was her policy, to pay off the next day by noon. So that was also a big part of the business.

• 12:37Speaker 03

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• 14:53Speaker 03

  Do you remember being a little kid and helping out with the business? What were some of the tasks that you were given?

• 15:03Speaker 04

  So I wanted something that I could do to contribute. And so she decided that my job would be to call all the customers and give them that day's numbers. And she paid me $20 a week.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  That seems like an important job.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  It was great. And guess what? You know, the customers loved hearing from me because I was this child calling, hi, this is Fanny's daughter, and I'm just letting you know today's number is 697. And they'd say, oh, thank you, baby.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Do you remember customers coming over?

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Oh, I vividly remember customers coming over all the time, all the time.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  One of my favorites of her customers was a woman who had been a lady of the evening in her youth. And she had an extraordinary wardrobe of clothes from that life. And she liked to talk to me about fashion. And she knew fashion. She knew real fashion. She knew designers, et cetera. So I really learned all these things from my mom's customers that went above and beyond just seeing them, you know, engaged in transactions.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Do you ever remember anyone sitting around the house and kind of talking with your mother and saying, well, I think maybe 532 this week? And what do you think about that? Or 478? Or back and forth about the number that they wanted to play?

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, so much of the reason that people like to come over and turn their numbers in directly is they wanted the social piece of it. You know, they wanted to be in conversation about the numbers. It really generated a kind of sort of like communal experience. So customers are like, what are you feeling is a good number? And I was thinking about this. And oh, I dreamed, I actually dreamed about fish. And so then a customer could say to my mother, Fanny, what does fish play for? And what does that mean? That means that the customer's asking, what does the dream book?

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Say, the three-digit equivalent is for fish.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  What is the dream book?

• 17:20Speaker 04

  And you might ask, what are dream books? Yeah. What is the dream book? You know? The dream book was a publication, a little book, that really was more like the Bible for numbers players. And it essentially was encyclopedic. It really listed every person, place, or thing you could imagine, as well as experience that someone could dream about. And I mean, just about anything. And so, again, as I was saying, these experiences, or places, or persons, or things, all had three-digit sort of numbers assigned to them. And so, that's how you figured out, again,

• 18:05Speaker 04

  what does fish play for? Well, the dream book says it plays for 497. I think, because I dreamed it, I'm gonna play that. And there were many different versions of dream books. Dream books date back, way back, into the 19th century. And so, the more popular ones in my household were two in particular. The Red Devil Dream Book and the Three Wiseman Dream Book. And so, a customer might have a preference for one over the other and say, well, Fanny, I don't know about that. I don't really know about what the Three Wiseman says. Tell me what the Red Devil says it plays for. And then, the customer might say, okay, I'm feeling lucky. I'm gonna put that number in today.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Did your mother also believe in the dream books and use that type of mystical numerology in her own life and around your house?

• 19:04Speaker 04

  My mom believed in luck, and she believed in conjuring luck. And so she had these rituals that she followed. There, I might add, there was a proliferation of sort of paraphernalia that you could purchase around the numbers business. There were shops designed to sell all these things to you. And one of them was candles, lucky candles, the kind that can burn for a week, the nice tall ones. And so my mom often had these candles burning in the household in strategic places. The idea was that, once the candle burned down, there was actually a three-digit number at the bottom.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  And there were lucky oils, and there was incense that did the same thing. Once it burned down, there would be a three-digit number at the bottom. And that's maybe a number to play. So, yes, in many ways, as a child, I found our home so magical. And I felt that she was at the center of that magic, that she herself was magical.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Fanny wasn't just running the numbers. She played them, and she was lucky. In one especially large hit, she won enough money to put a down payment on a house. She wouldn't tell anyone how much she'd actually won. Brigitte says that owning the house meant a lot. Her mother's policy was, feel free, feel welcome, be happy. And she wanted her children to feel proud.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  I went to school one day, and my teacher said to me, you sure do have a lot of pairs of shoes. And it was true, I did.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  I didn't know how to answer her. I was concerned, because the week before, she had asked me, what does your father do? And I told her, he doesn't work. My father actually was disabled. So she naturally asked, well, what does your mother do? And I said, this time, I was lying. I said, I don't know. Because I knew she was in the numbers, but I knew I wasn't supposed to tell anyone that. So I suspect, looking back, that she was already looking at me and thinking, this little girl is really dressing well. This little black girl. And I think that prompted the questions. But I was naive, I didn't know that. I just knew that on this day, she was telling me I had a lot of pairs of shoes. And I agreed. And then she really stunned me by saying,

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Name every pair of shoes you have. Do not sit down until you do that. Go ahead. And I was so nervous, I thought it was a test and I didn't want to fail it. And I worked really hard nervously and named 10 pairs of shoes. I was being so diligent. And she said to me, "What? That 10 pairs of shoes, that's an awful lot." Again, I didn't know how to answer her. I sat down. The surprising thing for me was the next day, she called me to her desk again. And this time, she said, "You did not tell me that you had a white pair too." And I had forgotten to tell her about the white pair I was wearing that day. And I apologized. I didn't know what else to do.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  She dismissed me with a flip of her hand. But at that point, I thought, "Oh, boy. I'm in trouble and I need to tell my mom because I've clearly done something wrong." And I told my mother that evening. And I can't even begin to describe the look on her face. I still remember it. She was furious. I thought she was angry at me. But she said, "That is none of her damn business. Who does she think she is?" She was so angry. And she told me, "Get in the car now." I, of course, thought we were going back to the school to confront my teacher, Ms. Miller. And I was really frightened. I did not want to do that. But that's not where we were going at all. My mom took me to Saks Fifth Avenue.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  And she took me to the children's shoe department. She pointed to a gorgeous pair of yellow patent leather shoes. And she said, "Those are pretty." She pulled out a $100 bill and paid for those shoes. And then told me, "Listen, you're going to wear these shoes to school tomorrow. And you're going to tell your teacher that you actually have 12 pairs of shoes. You hear me?" And I did. And Ms. Miller never spoke to me again.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Was it just accepted knowledge in your house that you didn't talk about your mother's business?

• 23:39Speaker 04

  We never talked about not talking about it. It was just understood. There were no conversations around it. It was clear. It was clear. You don't talk about what happens inside of this household. And of course, we understood the implication that we could get busted by the, you know, authorities. And that's not good. Someone could hear about it and try to rob us. Not good. So there was no need to work and sort of struggle with keeping the secret. It was natural and easy to keep that secret. And we all did.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  When did it become clear to you that your mother's business had become very successful?

• 24:24Speaker 04

  I don't think I processed it that way. For years, we lived well from my memory. It was my normal. And so I didn't think about my mom, oh, she's successful. I thought, she's doing, we're doing well at this. That's how I looked at it. And so that's how I always viewed it until I was an adult and began to see the toll it was taking.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  We'll be right back.

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  Quince also makes thoughtfully designed clothing, home essentials, cookware, and furniture. I love my organic cotton t-shirt from Quince, and I'm really excited to try their organic cotton bedding, too. Make your bed your favorite place to be this season with Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know Criminal sent you. It's the best way to support the show. In 1962, there was a massive raid at the Gotham Hotel, the hub of the African-American

• 27:19Speaker 03

  numbers operation in Detroit. Police conducted a room-by-room search and confiscated numbers tapes, adding machines, hundreds of boxes of bet slips, and 30 safes. And then, one night in 1970, 200 FBI agents conducted raids all over the city of Detroit, making arrests in 58 different locations.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  J. Edgar Hoover called it "the largest gambling raid in history." Bridgette was in elementary school.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  My mom never made it known that that was going on. And that's why I always call her "an incredible domestic magician." The sleight of hand she had to use to make sure none of us were constantly stressed out by the possibility of these sort of busts happening. Now, she did do some practical things. She had a big safe that she kept, a combination safe that she kept in her closet. That's where she kept the money. That's where she kept the day's business. We had an incinerator in our basement, and she burned her tickets and proof of the business on a weekly basis. You know, she was in no way reckless. That was not my mom.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Do you have any complicated feelings about the fact that it was a crime, what your mother was doing?

• 28:39Speaker 04

  I have no complicated feelings around that because, for me, it wasn't a crime. This is a country that put a lot of laws in place to keep black people down. Let's be clear and blunt about it. It was very clear to me intuitively and now literally that there's a difference between a legitimate business and a criminal one. It's criminal because, you know, laws were put in place to say it shouldn't happen. But it was legitimate, and that was proven because the state decided, all these states, almost every state in this country now has a lottery. So obviously, it was a legitimate business.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  It just happened to be illegal. Well, there are all kinds of laws that were put in place in this country that were not legitimate, that were not fair. But they were laws, so technically, you'd be breaking the law if you didn't do what you were supposed to. So that, to me, is never a complicated sort of question.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  What is the history of the lottery? It was legal and then illegal and then legal again?

• 29:54Speaker 04

  It turns out that the 13 colonies had lotteries. And they used those lotteries because they were cash poor and they needed them for capital improvements. Like a precursor to the stock market, in fact. They proliferated these lotteries, legal. And in fact, slaves could play these lotteries too and win. And one in particular did just that, a famous slave, Denmark Vesey, who went on to lead a slave revolt years later. But at the time, 1799, he bought his freedom from the proceeds of a lottery he won, $1,500.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  So that was incredible and extraordinary. However, that and other incidents like that really prompted

• 30:49Speaker 04

  the, you know, new government and the state governments to essentially ban lotteries and make them illegal. It was too egalitarian. And so the answer was to just outlaw it. And that's what they did. For like 100 years, until the mid 60s, they decided that, you know, state officials decided that there was too much money being made in this underground lottery business, this numbers business that black folks were running and profiting from. And that they wanted that money. They wanted in.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  What was the role of the numbers in the black community?

• 31:36Speaker 04

  I mean, it's hard to overestimate how important the numbers were in the black community. But the big thing, besides the social piece, which is huge also, it was a communal, social experience, and that was important. But also, those big numbers men were race men. And they believed that they should take their wonderful largesse and reinvest in the community. That was just what they did. And that was vital because discrimination and segregation had made it so that Black folks had a lot of services that were not available to them. And numbers men stepped in to provide them, something as important as providing a home loan

• 32:20Speaker 04

  for, you know, a Black person or family that cannot get a traditional mortgage. Numbers men would provide the loan money for that. Also, numbers men started insurance companies. They started newspapers. They bought and owned and ran hotels where Black folks could stay. You could not, as a Black American, go to a Detroit hotel downtown and stay in it in much of the 20th century in this country. You couldn't do it. And so, numbers men, one in particular, he basically ran a beautiful hotel in Detroit

• 33:04Speaker 04

  that was for African Americans. It was incredible.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  In 1972, the state of Michigan legalized the state lottery. The Michigan lottery was drawn every week, rather than every day, like the numbers. So, people played both. But in 1977, a new game was introduced, the daily. It happened every day. You could choose your numbers. You could get paid the next day. And the payout was 500 to 1, the same as Fannie's.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  She kept some of her loyal customers for a while, but then they started to peel off. And here's why. That state-run lottery did have one distinct advantage. It had a lot of disadvantages that worked for a while for my mom. You didn't have to pay taxes if you played with Fanny. You could play on credit and pay once a week with Fanny. So there were these things that were an advantage. But the big disadvantage ultimately made it impossible for her to compete. And that is that the state lottery was able to broadcast its winning numbers on the local TV show every evening, local TV stations. And people absolutely loved to learn the winning numbers

• 34:24Speaker 04

  every night publicly at the same time. And so that's when my mother really started to try to figure out, what can I do? And she came up with something. She did. She decided, hmm, if you can't beat them, join them. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take those winning numbers that the lottery provides and make them the winning numbers for my informal lottery business. And it worked. It worked.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  The state lottery kept changing, and Fannie Davis kept changing her business right with it. It was getting tougher to compete. She started holding poker games to help make up for lost revenue. But when Michigan introduced the Lotto, the prizes were bigger than she could keep up with. Fannie Davis ran her numbers business for 30 years. She died in 1992. Brigitte says she can still picture her mother seated at their dining room table, working.

• 35:34Speaker 04

  Of course, everyone thinks that her mother is beautiful, but mine really was. And I loved watching her work. You know, she was just there, and she was doing her thing. And I was just going around, you know, getting ready for school or having my sugar frosted flakes in the morning and just comforted by her presence and the sight of her doing her business. It was like all's well in the world.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  The money Fanny earned put Brigitte through college. It allowed her to buy a home of her own in Brooklyn. She says she plays the numbers now in the form of the legal lottery almost every day. She usually plays 313, the area code for Detroit. But sometimes she plays 788, her mother's favorite.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Couldn't you do an impression of what it was like when your mother on the phone, when she would pick up the phone to take a number? What she would say? What was the interaction like?

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Oh, I loved the sound of her taking numbers. You know, she'd be on the phone and she'd say, "Hi, Ms. Queenie, I'm calling to take your numbers. Are you ready? Okay, good. All right, I'm ready. Come on. 542 for a quarter? Uh huh. 693, straight for 50 cents? Is this both races, Ms. Queenie? Detroit and Pontiac? Okay. 388, straight for a dollar? Uh huh. 475, straight for 50 cents? 110, box for a dollar? Hmm, okay. I got it. All right, Ms. Queenie, well, listen. Do you have any more numbers? No? All right. Okay, I'll take that one more. 684 for 50 cents? Uh huh. And 972, box for 20? Got it. All right, Ms. Queenie, you have a good day.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Zdžeko, Lilly Clark, Lena Silasen, and Megan Cane. This episode was originally mixed by Rob Byers. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where you can also find information about the book that Brigitte Davis has written about her mother. It's called "The World According to Fanny Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers." You can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  We hope you'll join our membership program Criminal Plus now on Patreon. Don't forget to keep listening at the end of this episode to hear an excerpt of our latest episode of Criminal Plus. If you want to hear even more, sign up for a free seven day trial at patreon.com/criminal. It's the very best way to support our work. We're on Facebook at This Is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  This is something that I can see myself doing so quickly. So I'm not going to call it a crime. Did you hear about the retiring pilot?

• 39:36Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Couple of weeks ago, there was a pilot, Iceland air pilot, who was retiring. It was his final flight. And he was flying from Frankfurt back to Reykjavik. And on that route, he happened to pass over his hometown in southern Iceland. And he decided for his final flight that he would take a full passenger jet on a very low flyover of his hometown.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  With passengers?

• 40:05Speaker 03

  With passengers.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  No.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  And the town thought that they were under attack because there was a passenger jet flying incredibly low over, over this little town. He did it. He landed the plane. It didn't go over so well.

• 40:22Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  But I think if there's a way to go out, I absolutely, what a wonderful thing.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Can you imagine just looking out your window and seeing a low, a huge plane, low? You would think it was the apocalypse. You'd think it was falling out of the sky.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  In video footage of the flight, shared by the Iceland Monitor, the aircraft can be seen flying directly over houses and other buildings, with the outlet noting the aircraft appeared to be at an altitude of 328 feet.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  No.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Isn't that so? And then he just, there's a little detour to say goodbye. I think it's wonderful.

• 41:02Speaker 05

  I mean, that was your birthday dream, right? Was to like tip your wing?

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, my dream's always been, I still don't have my pilot's license. I've got to do it. My dream has always been to fly over our house and have Sarah on the front lawn and dip my wings to her as I fly past. I've got to make that happen.

• 41:21Speaker 05

  Did you hear about the adjunct professor at College of Charleston?

• 41:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  He was busted by the police for possession of almost $3,000 of petrified wood samples.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  What is it about petrified wood?

• 41:36Speaker 05

  And it was, they found it in a box that said, quote, "Definitely not stolen mineral samples."

• 41:42Speaker 03

  People, am I missing it about petrified wood?

• 41:45Speaker 05

  Do you think that he heard our episode?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Triassic Park. I don't, I mean.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  He was charged with breach of trust and grand larceny. He also had some other things he wasn't supposed to have, like a rare shark skeleton. Or no, a jawbone, fish jaw fossil, 3D printed whale skull. The jaw was worth more than $4,000 and is one of the only known species in existence.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, what do you do with petrified wood?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  Well, as I recall, when we did our live show at the Bell House a long time ago, when we did this petrified wood story, we had some pieces of petrified wood, which we gave to some members of the audience.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yes, it's my father brought.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  I mean, that's a real interactive, talk about the good old days, right?

• 42:28Speaker 03

  We were handing out favors.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  At the live shows.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Treats.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  I know.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  I remember we discussed whether, I think it was on Halloween and we discussed, I suggested we could have a pumpkin on the corner of the stage and you said, absolutely not. Phoebe hates pumpkin Halloween aesthetics. What have you been enjoying lately?

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Something I've been enjoying lately, and I don't know if I have talked about this before, but there is a show, I recently subscribed to BritBox.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  I know, but I did this really great thing. We were looking for like a police procedural. I can never, Sarah and I can never find a show to watch together. We can never finish a show together. So we were trying. So I looked up best British police procedurals. And there was a show called Line of Duty that came up, which is very popular in Britain. And so you get on BritBox. That's not why we got BritBox. We got BritBox because there's a show called Gardener's World, which is a really wonderful, calm show. Monte Dawn, I think I've talked about it. And he just takes you through the garden. He tells you how to garden. It's been on for 25 years. It's one of the most popular shows in Britain.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  We watched it a lot with my mother. Sarah watched it a lot with my mother. And it's kind of garden, spring season. And she said, I would love to watch an episode of Gardener's World. And I said, we could get BritBox. And the way that, sometimes does this ever happen to you when you are going to subscribe to something new that the 1099 feels like this is the most reckless? Like, are you sure we're going to do this? That's what happened. But we did it. And then I said, well, let's get our money's worth. Found Line of Duty. I canceled it. Here's another pro tip. I said, we only did one month. I'm going to cancel the next day. Tried to cancel the next day. They offered me three months at 99 cents.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  I took it. But, so in this BritBox, I was looking around, and there's another show that I've seen a few times. It's called Escape to the Country. Do you know about this show? Why are you laughing?

• 44:33Speaker 05

  No, I don't know about this one.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  What's so funny about this?

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Nothing, please.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  It's really wonderful. It's my pace. People usually living in London or other parts, go and look for a country house. So they're going to leave their house and they're going to escape to the country. And they're shown, why are you laughing, Lauren?

• 44:55Speaker 05

  Please.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Am I doing some accent or something?

• 44:59Speaker 05

  No, not at all, please.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  So they, and so they're shown these three country houses in parts, different parts of, of England, and you learn about the county that they're moving to, and you learn about the wonderful things that are there and the history, and then you go on these houses, you see these houses, and it is the most relaxing show. It's called Escape to the Country. That's my number. I'm gonna just.

• 45:24Speaker 05

  Can you say it one more time?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Katie, can you turn the video off? Because why? Because I don't want to see her laughing anymore.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  No, that sounds great. I would love to have that BritBox login, please. I'll swap you a Hulu login.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  I already have it.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Well, I have been watching something on Criterion Channel, which is one that I pay for, and they have a new category that you might enjoy called Corporate Thrillers. We're talking Primal Fear, Devil's Advocate, The Firm.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Hmm, that's good.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  Michael Clayton, The International, and then the one I watched, which I'd never seen before, was Wall Street with Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, James Spader, Martin Sheen, who really has a really heart-wrenching performance. And I had never seen this movie, and it felt like the high 80s aesthetic was a lot of fun, and then the movie ends on a very peculiar note, and I just feel like the movie would never be made the way, it was Oliver Stone movie, it would never be made this way today. But that was a really fun sort of time capsule on Criterion, which I'm paying who knows how much a month for.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  I know, I know. Second thing I've been enjoying lately, and I, have I recommended this before? Johnny Pops?

• 46:38Speaker 05

  Yes, but I'd like to hear about it again, because whenever I see them in the store, I think about this recommendation. So Allison, if you're listening, this is another way I hear Phoebe's voice in my head. I'm a Harris Teeter, I see Johnny Pops, I think about her talking about Johnny Pops.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Well, should I not recommend it?

• 46:53Speaker 05

  No, you should. It's a good recommendation.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  It's a good recommendation. So I get, we get the Johnny Pops that are seven different colors. Oh, you know, it's different flavors. And the bottom two are pretty bad. It's a grape and a blue. It doesn't, but it's such a great thing. Yesterday, I'm running a race this weekend and it's a, um, going to be very hot here, like 95, pretty wild. And it's very hilly. And so I was training and I was trying to run on hills because I actually have been using your treadmill, Lauren, often. Uh, because I'm trying to say.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  It's good that someone is using it.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I really have been. I ran 10 miles on your treadmill the other day and you thought that that was like, that was an insane person.

• 47:34Speaker 05

  That's a, I mean, talk about a depression move. Just go outside.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  I, I needed it to be more controlled. Anyway, uh, but I had this very long run and it was very hilly and it was very hot. And I came home and I had a Johnny Pop and it was the best treat you could ever imagine. So I've done it before, but I'm saying again, Johnny Pop.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  Have you ever heard of this ice cream sandwich called Fat Boy?

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like it.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Whenever. It's just like a very classic ice cream sandwich with the funniest name and the cutest box. Fat Boy. Second thing I've been enjoying lately is, I already foreshadowed it, but my very favorite show in the whole world stars Lisa Kudrow on HBO. The first season was in 2005. Second season, 2014, and now the third season is with us right now. 2026, Lisa Kudrow in the comeback.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I've been, I've been watching it.

• 48:26Speaker 05

  It is.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  It's pretty good. It's pretty.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  It is.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  It's Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque. Yeah, it's very, very, very funny. I'm just watching the first season.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  I would say it's more dry and more understated and more subtle than Curb Your Enthusiasm or than anything in that genre. It is so, it is so subtle.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  I have, I have really been enjoying it.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  And she is just a really undervalued comedic actress. And it's wonderful to see her after all these years.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  The third thing I've been enjoying lately, it's also, it's a, it's a. I was just thinking, should I, should I try to talk about the academic journals that I've been reading, or the obscure French films on Criterion? But I'm not going to. I'm going to talk to you about ice water with a splash of fruit juice.

• 49:18Speaker 05

  Okay, just we're talking about not seltzer?

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Well, I'm gonna tell you, well, I don't want, well, you're blowing it for me lately, Lauren, with this PFAS conversation. But last night, I have one seltzer every morning, and I have one seltzer every night after dinner, always. Two seltzers a day, two cans a day. And last night, I opened the refrigerator, and there was no seltzer. Forgive me. There was one seltzer, which meant that if I had it last night, I wouldn't have any seltzer this morning. And I made the decision, I took it, I had it last night, knowing that this was going to cause a problem. And I woke up this morning, and I thought, Phoebe, what the, I mean, it was really like the shakes, you know, like, what are you gonna do? And I put some ice in a mason jar, I'm doing it right now, this is my second, put some

• 50:05Speaker 03

  ice in a little mason jar with water and a tiny splash of real grapefruit juice. Fantastic. I had a long interview this morning, I had like an hour and 45 minute long interview, and I had this little treat, and I just was delighted by it. And I think this could be the way that I might cut down on my seltzer.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  What if you made fruit juice ice cubes?

• 50:27Speaker 03

  Great idea.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  That would be such a treat, and it would look good.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  That's a great idea, that is a great idea.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is a great idea.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  You could even put little rosemary or basil in with the-

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Little rose petals.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  No, rosemary and grapefruit would be good together, Lauren.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Yes, it would be good.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  So that's my number three, and yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  My number three, this is a really serious recommendation, trash can buckles. Have you ever seen this? If you live in a suburban area, as we do, what'd you say?

• 50:56Speaker 03

  You're talking about this? I didn't know what you were talking about, I didn't follow up.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  The pleasure, it costs $12 for two of them, and the pleasure that I've gotten from that $12, because for years, I've been trying to weigh down the lid of my trash can with heavy, whatever heavy objects are available, but then you go out to take your trash out, and you have to put the trash down, and move the heavy thing, and open it, because we have so many raccoons, and who knows, like, animals get into the trash. So you can buy these little nylon buckles to keep your trash can closed.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  The brand I got is called Pato, P-A-H-T-T-O.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  That's a good idea.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Oh, it says bear-proof trash bin lid lock. I have to say, I can imagine a bear could get in there still, but a little tiny raccoon cannot. That's my number three. It's given me enormous pleasure. I've been deeply enjoying it.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Well, Lauren, we have gone around the bend today.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  Yes. Please send your idea for the next Criminal Plus Reading Club.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Yes, you can always, you can send it, you can Patreon, or you know, if you're not on Patreon, you can write to us at [email protected], 833-822-7850. Let us know with your complaints or suggestions, or we'll take anything. Lauren, what's next? You and I have a meeting in 17 minutes, just enough time for me to pop downstairs and get a Johnny Pop.

• 52:28Speaker 05

  Bye.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Bye-bye.