The Numbers

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Burn your five pound weights. I'm a better son, I'm an athlete and fitness instructor and I am telling you. Unless you have been limited to lighter weights by a medical professional, they're honestly inexcusable. You need to be lifting heavy, and I'm talking especially to the women out there. F*** toned arms.

What can your body do? This week on Project Swagger, what heavy means? And rules to bring into your routine. Listen now. Hi, it's Phoebe.

“Today's episode is a little longer than usual, because we're sharing an excerpt from the latest episode of "Criminal Plus" at the very end.”

"Criminal Plus" is the show that "Criminal Co-Creator" born spore, and I host together. It's where we get to talk about things that we don't get to talk about here on "Criminal". The alleged health benefits of small talk. Neighbors, so in neighbors, for putting out peanuts to feed squirrels, a mass poisoning in France, airline industry gossip. We recently took a microphone to Costco, and I showed Lauren my route.

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Your direct support means more than you know. Learn more at patreon.com/criminal. Now, here's the show. 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, 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.

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

Fannie grew up in Nashville, and married Brigette's father when she was 18. 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. And they hadn't prepared themselves for what was awaiting. One, the racism in Michigan was so virilid and distinctive from the southern sort of discrimination they know about. 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. 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, which happened to be illegal.

It was called The Numbers. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.

It moved across the country and it was desired by a black man in Harlem and really was a black business.

“It thrived. It was a true economy, actually.”

By 1970 police estimated that one and every 15 people in Detroit played the numbers daily.

And that it was generating $94 million a year. Here's how you play.

You get to choose a three-digit number. And if that number is the winning number, you actually win a 500-to-one 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. 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 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 were 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 did, was she was a banker. So that meant she paid out hits. So she wasn't going to the bank to collect on.

She the bank was her. Yes, ultimately. Before she could graduate from bookie to banker, Fannie needed a pool of money to pay out winning hits. So she asked her brother for help.

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 said, "Yes, I thought about it and she explained how she would do it." And he said, "Okay, 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, Fannie, I can do that." Being a banker wasn't something that women did often. What do you think gave your mother a confidence to do this? I don't think it ever occurred to her that she couldn't. 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 head for numbers. I am clear about my goals. I have all the skillsets 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. Tell me about your mother's schedule. How would the day would go?

“Once the business picked up, what was the day's schedule?”

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. 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 their numbers in at 6 a.m.

A lot of people turned like to call in their numbers during lunchtime. You know, there were these busy your periods and then these sort of slow down periods and then busy again. And it got a lot more hectic as the afternoon war on because there was a cutoff time. So that was often the busiest time of the day that time right before the evening. 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 showed up at the house.

How are the winning numbers chosen decided?

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 3 digit winning numbers. 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?

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, okay, it's official. These are the three winning digits for today. And the numbers bosses and boys would then make the calls to various bankers who would inform various bookies. And they wouldn't 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.

Reject 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. 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. We'll be right back to listen without ads. Join criminal plus.

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“Do you remember being a little kid and helping out with the business?”

What were some of the tasks that you were given? 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. That seems like an important job.

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 say, "Oh, thank you, baby."”

Do you remember customers coming over? Oh, I vividly remember customers coming over all the time. All the time. 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.

Then went above and beyond just seeing them, you know, engaged in transactions. Do you ever remember anyone sitting around the house and kind of talking with your mother and saying,

“"Well, I think maybe five, three, two, this week."”

And what do you think about that? Or should 478 or back and forth about the number that they wanted to play? Yes, 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 as 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 customers asking, "What does the dream book say?" The three-digit equivalent is for fish.

What is the dream book? What is the dream book? 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 numbers assigned to them.

“And so, that's how you figured out, again, what does fish play for?”

Well, the dream book says it plays for 497. I think, because I dreamed it, I'm going to play that. And there were many different versions of dream books, dream books and 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 Wise Men 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 Wise Men says. Tell me what the Red Devil says it plays for. And then, the customer might say, "Okay, I'm feeling lucky. I'm going to put that number in today." Did your mother also believe in the dream books?

And use that type of mystical numerology in her own life and around your house. 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. 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. Fanning wasn't just running the numbers. She played them and she was lucky.

In one especially large hit, she wanted enough money to put a down payment on a house.

Brzez 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. 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. 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, "What?”

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, "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. 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 didn't have one to do that. But that's not where we were going at all. My mom took me to sex with the avenue. And she took me to the children's shoe department. She pointed to a gorgeous pair of yellow, patterned 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.

Was it just accepted knowledge in your house that you didn't talk about your mother's business? 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 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 in sort of struggle with keeping the secret.

It was a natural and easy to keep that secret. And we all did. When did it become clear to you that your mother's business had become very successful? 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 well with 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.”

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In 1962, there was a massive raid at the Gotham Hotel, the hub of the African-American 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 saves. And then, when 1970, 200 FBI agents conducted raids all over the city of Detroit, making arrests in 58 different locations. Jay Edgar Hoover called it the largest gambling raid in history. Bridgett was an elementary school.

“My mom never made it known that that was going on, and that's why I always call her an incredible domestic magician.”

The slight of hand she had to use to make sure none of us were constantly stressed out by the possibility of these sort of bus 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.

Do you have any complicated feelings about the fact that it was a crime, what your mother was doing? I have no complicated feelings around that, because for me it wasn't a crime. This is a country that play 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 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. 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.

What is the history of the lottery?

“It was legal and then illegal and then legal again?”

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 won in particular did just that.

But at the time, 1799, he bought his freedom from the proceeds of a lottery he won, $1,500.

So that was an incredible and extraordinary.

However, that and other incidents like that really prompted the new government and the state government 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 me in this underground lottery business. The numbers business that black folks were running and profiting from, and that they wanted that money, they wanted in. What was the role of the numbers in the black community? 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.

Also, those big numbers men were race men, and they believed that they should take their wonderful largest 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 for, you know, a black person or family that cannot get a traditional mortgage.”

The numbers men would provide the loan money for that. Also, numbers men started insurance companies, they started newspapers, they bought an 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 wanted, particularly, he basically ran a beautiful hotel in Detroit that was four African Americans. It was incredible.

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 fannies. 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 love to learn the winning numbers 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. The state lottery kept changing, and fanny 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 loto, the prizes were bigger than she could keep up with. Vanny Davis ran her number's business for 30 years. She died in 1992.

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 side of her doing her business. It was like all's well in the world. The money fanny earned put Bridgette 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 3-1-3, the area code for Detroit.

But sometimes she plays 7-8-8, her mother's favorite.

Can 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 would she would say, what was the interaction like?”

Oh, I love the sound of her taking numbers. You know, she'd be on the phone, and she'd say, "Hi, Miss Queenie, I'm calling to take your numbers. Are you ready? Okay, good. All right, I'm ready. Come on. 5-4-2-4-4-4-4-1-6-9-3-strait for 50 cents. Is this both racism and screening Detroit and Pontiac? Okay, 3-8-8-strait for $1-4-5-strait for 50 cents, 1-10-box for $1-10.

Hmm, okay, I got it. All right, Miss Queenie, well, listen. Do you have any more numbers?

No, all right, okay, I'll take that one more, 6-8-4-5-10-sins, 1-10-9-7-2-box for $20. Got it. All right, Miss Queenie, you have a good day. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me, Nadia Wilson is our senior producer, Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Zegico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kineen. This episode was originally mixed by Rob Byers. Our show is mixed in engineered by Veronica Seminetti. 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 Bridget 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. 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 your next episode 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 thisiscriminal, an 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.

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? No. A couple 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. With passengers? With passengers? No. And the town thought that they were under attack. Because there was a passenger jet flying incredibly low over this little town.

He did it. He landed the plane. It didn't go over so well.

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

Can you imagine just looking at your window and seeing a low, a huge plane low?

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. No. Isn't that so? Isn't that so?

“And then you just do a little detour to say goodbye. I think it's wonderful.”

I mean, that was your birthday dream, right? It was to tip your wing.

Yeah, my dream has 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. Did you hear about the adjunct professor at College of Charleston? No. He was busted by the police for possession of almost $3,000 of petrified wood samples.

What is it about petrified wood? And it was, they found it in a box that said, quote, definitely not stolen mineral samples. People, am I missing it about petrified wood? Do you think that he heard our episode? Triassic Park.

I don't, I mean, he was charged with a breach of trust in Grand Blerson. He also had some other things he wasn't supposed to have like a rare shark skeleton or no, a jaw bone. 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. Yeah, what do you do with petrified wood?

Well, as I recall, when we did our live show at the Bellhouse a long time ago and we did this petrified wood story,

we had some pieces of petrified wood, which we gave to some members of the audience. Yes, it's my father brought.

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

We were handing out favors at the live show. Treats. I know. I remember we discussed weather. 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, "Alp, slowly, not."

Phoebe hates pumpkin, Halloween aesthetics. What have you 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.

Wow. I know. But I did this really great thing. We were looking for a police procedural.

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 procedures. And there was a show called Line of Duty that came up. It was in 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 Gardeners World, which is a really wonderful calm show. Monty Dawn. I think I've talked about it. And he just takes you through the garden and tells you how to garden.

It's been on for 25 years. It's one of the most popular shows in Britain. We watched it a lot with my mother Sarah watched a lot with my mother. And it's kind of garden spring season. And she said I would love to watch an episode of Gardeners World.

And I said, we could get Britbox. And the way that sometimes does 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, let's get our Monty's worth. Found line of duty. I canceled it. Here's another pro tip.

I said, we only did it in one month. I'm going to cancel the next day. I canceled tried to cancel and I said, they offered me three months at 99 cents. Wow. 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 the show? Why are you laughing? No, I don't know about this one.

What's so funny about this? Nothing, please. It's really wonderful. 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 showing, why are you feeling like nothing more in? Please. Why?

Am I doing some accent or something? No, I'm not at all, please. So they're shown these three country houses. And parts, different parts of England. And you learn about the county that they're moving to.

And you learn about the wonderful things that are there in the history. And then you go on these houses. And it is the most real relaxing show. It's called Escape to the Country. And that's my number.

I'm going to just get to say it for more time. Because I don't want to see your laughing anymore. No, that sounds great. I would love to have that Britbox log in, please.

I already have it. Well, I have been watching something on Craterian 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. That's 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 all of our stone movies.

It would never be made this way today. But that was a really fun sort of time capsule on Craterian, which I'm paying who knows how much I'm on the floor. I know. I know.

So I can think I've been enjoying lately. And have I recommended this before Johnny Pops? Yes, but I'd like to hear about it again.

“Because whenever I see them in the story, I think about this recommendation.”

So Allison, if you're listening, this is another way I hear Phoebe's away from my head. I'm a Harris Teter, I see Johnny Pops, I think about her talking about Johnny Pops. Well, should I not recommend it? No, you should. It's a good recommendation.

So yeah, I get we get the Johnny Pops that are seven different colors. You know, it's different flavors. And the bottom two are pretty bad. It's a great and a blue. But it's such a great thing yesterday.

I'm running a race this weekend. And it's 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 law and often. Because I've been going to someone as using it. Yeah. I really, I ran 10 miles on your treadmill the other day. And you thought that that was like it.

That was an insane person. That's a good tip. I mean, talk about a depression move, just go outside. I needed it to be more control. Anyway, but I had this very long run.

It was very hilly. And it was very hot. And I came home. And I had a Johnny Pops. And it was the best treat you could ever imagine.

So I've done it before, but I'm saying again, Johnny Pops.

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

Yeah. I like it. 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 Cudro on HBO. The first season was in 2005. Second season, 2014, and now the third season is with us right now. 2026, Lisa Cudro in the comeback. Yeah.

I mean, I've been watching it. It is pretty. It is. It's curburent. So funny.

Yes. Yeah, it's very, very, very funny. I'm just watching the first season. I would say it's more dry and more understated and more subtle than curburent.

Or than anything in that genre. It is so subtle. I have, I have really been enjoying it. And she is just a really undervalued comedic actress. And it's wonderful to see her after all these years.

The third thing I've been enjoying lately.

It's also, it's, it's a, it's a third thing I've been, 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. Okay. Just, we're talking about not seltzer. Well, I'm going to tell you.

Well, I don't want, well, you're blowing it for me lately, Lauren. With the PFAS conversation. But last night, I have one seltzer every morning. And I have one seltzer every night after dinner. Always.

Two seltzers today, 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?”

I mean, it was really like the shakes, you know, like what is going to do. And I put some ice in a mason jar. I'm doing it right now. This is my second. Put some 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. What if you made fruit juice ice cubes? Great idea. That would be such a treat. And it would look like it's a great idea.

That is a great idea. Yeah. It is a great idea. It could even put little rosemary or basil in with little rose petals.

So that's my number three in that.

Yeah. 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 do you say? You talking about this.

I didn't know what you were talking about.

I didn't follow up. The pleasure. It cost $12 for two of them. And the pleasure that I've gotten from that, 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 who animals get into the trash? So you can buy these little nylon buckles to keep your trash can closed. The brand I got is called Potto. P-A-H-T-T-O. That's going to do.

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

Yes. Please send your idea for the next criminal plus reading club. Yes. You can send it or you know, if you're not on Patreon, you can write to us at hello at this iscriminal.com.

833-8227850. Let us know with your complaints or suggestions or we'll take anything. Warren, 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.

Bye. Bye. Bye.