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At the right time, the right story can work magic. And right now you could all use a boost. I'm acted on Obamacare and on my new podcast on Obamacare. I will share stories with you from my life, from growing up in the Himalayan foothills, collecting in over 500 Bollywood films. I will also be bringing you stories of untold heroes from around the world. Lift our spirits and remind us that anything can happen. Financial them on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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We are back and black on the black African network. Hey, y'all, is Tamika Mallory and my song The General. It's Me and Street Politicians is the podcast for the culture. We will be breaking down social and civil rights issues, pop culture and politics on our podcast every winter. We will have special guests as well with local activists to join the show discussing political issues going on in their community. Listen to street politicians on the I Heart radio at Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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It's. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, the legal eagle Clark, there's Chuck Debra Winger, man that was going to be Cherrie's. OK, all right. Well, Jerry can be Robert Redford. So Chuck Debra Winger Bryant and then Jerry Robert Redford. Roll it.

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And this is stuff you should know. I never saw that movie, really? Yeah, it's this one, you know, I was kind of too young for a legal procedural, I think, and then I just never caught up to it.

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Not just the legal procedural. A romance one, too. Yeah, boring. I saw a bunch of times when I was younger for some reason, I guess my mom must have been into it or something. I was just along for the ride. Right, exactly. Yeah. But it was good if I remember correctly. Great ones were. Yeah.

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It was a good I mean you can't go wrong with either one of those two, you know, when they're a third. Legal Eagles three, Olympus has fallen, I think, well, it's their third person in that one little romantic triangle, or am I just making that up?

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I don't know.

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I think, yeah, there's the last days of disco.

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I'm looking now Daryl Hannah is on the cover, so.

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Oh, yeah, she might have been popped in for a tasteful nude then she probably places she convulses on the floor. You know, she's married to right now, Neil Young.

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I didn't know that I could totally see that now that you say it, though. Yeah, they're the reason that Neil Young and David Cross or David Crosby, David Crosby don't speak to each other anymore.

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Why did David Crosby used to like Daryl Hannah? Now he's he's just a big jerk. And he, like, said something about her in an interview that wasn't nice, like, right when they got together.

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Is the problem dead to me? He's he's a notorious jerk.

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I didn't even know that, but I could kind of see it, you know, he admits it.

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That's even worse. I think that's worse. People who are like, I'm just I'm just a jerk. Deal with it. It's like, no, why don't you change your personality a little bit to conform a little better to the rest of our expectations? You so be.

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Well, let me rephrase that. And this is all coming from the great, great documentary about him recently. And he is he admits it and has deep regrets over how he treated people.

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Oh, that's good. So he's man Tricia. Yeah. He regrets his behaviors.

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That makes it easier to kick somebody when they're down. You know, if they're like, deal with it, you can't bring them down to your level and kick them. Yeah, but if they're like, I really regret everything, you'd be like, yeah, you should write, really rub it in, you know, especially if it's an old man.

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Sure. Exactly. So obviously today, Chuck, we're talking about class action lawsuits. I think anybody who could read the stuff you should know tea leaves could have discerned that or they could have just looked at the title of the episode.

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Yeah. You know, something occurred to me while we were doing researching this, like most about most, but many people listening to this show have maybe even unknowingly been a part of the class action lawsuit. Sure. I know. I have I have to I've gotten those little emails that say, you know, you got seventy five cents coming to you from whatever. Right.

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You're like every bit of your personal information was stolen from Equifax breach. So Equifax is going to give you some identity theft protection.

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Right. Or a discount, which is that's always the rub. Yeah. A lot of people probably have been a part of a class action lawsuit, and you may not have may not have paid attention to it. You may have gotten one of those things in the mail and just been like, what is this? Who cares? Or even if you read the fine print, you might have been like, this is literally not worth my time and responding for.

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But there's a lot of things that happened in the by virtue of you not responding to whatever card or something you saw or even like an ad on TV apparently qualifies as notifying somebody that, hey, you may be a member of this class action lawsuit.

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Yeah, I mean, this kind of came up recently in my life and that I've mentioned before that I'm on a Facebook page of a community in rural Georgia where I have some land in rural Georgia. And there are some Donald Trump supporters that were pretty upset, that were asking if they could bring a class action lawsuit to overturn the election, presumably because they don't like the result.

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But I didn't get involved. They didn't jump in there and say, you know, you like what kind of damages are you going to prove or whatever? Because I think it would be interesting to try and prove emotional and psychological damage for an election result. That would be an interesting case.

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But that is I mean, it would be like most of the cases around the election, it turns out. But with the with with that, though, like you've kind of hit upon a few things here. The idea that there's a group of people who were wronged in some way, in similar ways, who on their own might not get anywhere with the case, but collectively, like pooling together their their resources or their the multiple harms done, like taking those individual harms and turn them into one big, mushy pile.

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That's the basis of a class action lawsuit. And it really kind of gets to the heart of why they exist. And that is that a lot of times you're suing like like a big giant corporation with enormous resources at their disposal. They can fight you all day long until not only this lawsuit go away, but you don't have any money left. And when you really look at at the end of the day, you might have really just been after a hundred or a thousand or even 10000 or even a hundred thousand dollars worth of damages, which might seem like a lot to you, but might actually be less than the amount that you would spend on that case.

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And so when you when you face those kind of odds, that kind of child, you're just not going to file that suit. Any reasonable, reasonable person wouldn't file a lawsuit like that. But the problem is, is if that's the case, then that means that giant corporations who are doing ill stuff can just keep doing ill stuff, which is. New phrase I'm working on, I'm taking it out for a walk right now. The Beastie Boys going that term, OK?

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Well, this is an homage to the Beach Boys. But the idea that that if, you know, people are just going to let them get away with it because it's like they can't afford the court fees, that's a problem, which is one of the big things that that is one of the big benefits that class action suits provide is you can take all the separate people, put them together, and all of a sudden you have a formidable opponent.

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Yeah.

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And it's obviously a part of civil law as opposed to criminal law where I mentioned you have to have some sort of injury. It could be physical, could be emotional or psychological, obviously financial. And it's what's known as a device in civil litigation. And all that means is sort of that it doesn't really it's sort of the same thing as any other civil case, but it just allows multiple people to take part. And, you know, we'll go over all the little minor differences, but.

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It's sort of like treating that big body of people as a single plaintiff, and in fact, they do have to even have a representative plaintiff like it can't be, you know, all Volkswagen owners versus Volkswagen it would be.

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And then, of course, we'll talk about that real case. But I'm just making this up. It would be Josh Clark versus Volkswagen and then Josh Clark would have a million angry German standing behind him to win in this in this theoretical lawsuit. Tell me, what's the I shouldn't a big Volkswagen, because that was a real case that we'll talk about. But it was, oh, I don't know, a Yugo.

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Just clerk versus Yugo. OK, remember those cars?

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Yeah, sure. I don't think Yugo was trying to advertise itself as anything but Ugo's.

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That was their whole shtick. You know, Supercheap, you don't see those on the road much anymore, do you?

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Oh, no. I think after just a couple of years, you start seeing those on the road. But yeah, you have a representative plaintiff or a lead plaintiff. And theirs is the name that appears on the case, even though and then we'll learn later, too, that they in fact, also they get a little bump or extra money for being the lead plaintiff.

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Yes, they do get a little because they're the ones who have to go through all the stuff they might have to show up to court. They're the ones who have to coordinate with the lawyers. They're the ones actually suing. But the thing is, is if you show up and say, I am a well, we'll take we'll take a recent example. I use I'm a woman here. This in this situation, I have a vagina. And every day for 50 years, I've been using Johnson and Johnson's baby powder on my vaginal region.

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And as a result, I have ovarian cancer. And the doctors have said, yeah, talcum powder is really bad for you. Johnson Johnson's done this forever, but they just didn't tell anybody. So I want to sue Johnson and Johnson and the legal offices that I walk into and say this to the first of all, the lawyer is going to jump up and click his heels in to say, I'm very sorry that this is happening to you. But the lawyer will probably think, you know, there's a lot of people who use Johnson and Johnson and Johnson's baby powder.

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I wonder if there's anybody else like you will start to do research and all of a sudden you're one lawsuit is going to include a lot more people and will probably become certified as a class action lawsuit. But you, the person who initially filed this, will remain that represented the plaintiff.

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Yeah, boy, I got to say that that story had a lot of emotional peaks and valleys. Thank you. I'm doing much better now, by the way. Good. I'm glad everything's okay down there. Yeah. And, you know, it does usually, but not always, because there are also cases like Enron, which we'll talk a little bit about. But a lot of times it involves product liability when Bridgestone Firestone had stuff going on there in the early 1990s.

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Right. And I guess for a decade, the U.S. came down and the judge said from anyone who had car owned or leased 91 through 2001, you had a Ford Explorer during those years, then you are part of this class. They call that the class. Right. And then the attorney who represents that class. And we'll talk about how they get selected. They are many times referred to as class counsel, which sounds very much like some middle school title that you would run for or something.

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But whenever we say class counsel, just think that's the attorney representing all these people right in the class. Yeah.

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So you want to take a break and then talk a little bit about the history of this stuff? You know, let's do it. OK. Hello, Earthlings, it's Kasur here, bringing you the devilish sounds and twisted treats of my new podcast, Kesha and the Creepy is where I, your host Kesher, bring you into my twisted universe, where the supernatural as well, quite natural. Kesha and The Creepy's explores supernatural subjects and alternative lifestyles with today's most exciting pop culture guests and experts in the occult.

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You may know me from my party jams like Tic-Tac.

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We are who we are, but it's my curiosity for the unexplainable and mystical that drives these fascinating conversations that span non-traditional spirituality, psychedelic art and all things creepy. Listen and follow Cashen. The creepy's on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcast.

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Hey everybody, it's A.J. McLean from the Backstreet Boys. Check me out with my girl, Cheryl Burke and my boy Rene Elizondo on Ihara. Radio's pretty messed up. This show talks about pretty much anything, everything, love, life, drugs, sex, rock and roll, you name it, and a little bit of dancing as well. So, you guys, we're into this now work for deep. Yeah. And I really like what's happening with us.

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Apparently we're connecting with people. Not everyone has to have a drug problem to understand what it feels like to feel less than because we're also talking about mental health. Right? We talk about stuff that people don't really want to talk about or that they feel maybe they're alone when feeling certain things. And I've never been this vulnerable and open, especially on Dancing with the Stars. Do you guys see an edited version of me? But we you know, we get pretty deep and we just talk about everything.

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So just make sure you listen to pretty messed up on the I Heart radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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You know, you you know, you, you know, you should stop. You should know.

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So, Chuck, you said that class action lawsuits are a type of civil law, right. Which is not criminal law. But even more specifically than that, because they're a part of civil law, they're actually based on common law, which is the the legal body that's been formed over the century starting in England. And even further back than that, it turns out the Vikings are really the first court that was ever set up in Europe, that they actually started a lot of legal precedent that made its way over to England.

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That, in turn, made its way over to America. So helmet tip to the Vikings for all that. But the common law is like the the sum of all the judicial decisions made over those centuries that set precedent that was built on and expanded on and refined. That's common law. And common law is the basis of originally of hearing these kinds of cases, which are class action lawsuits. Yeah. And these they didn't call them class action suits in eleven, twenty five, but they had them and it wasn't, you know, thousands of people against a tire company.

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It was a few people. But in England they allowed a handful of people to get together occasionally in the in the village. Yeah. And you know, maybe I'm not sure.

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I didn't really find why exactly they did this initially. My guess would just be efficiency of the court, maybe early on. Yeah. Which is sort of how it still is. And a lot of ways, rather than trying thousands of cases or even hundreds of thousands of cases. Yeah. You can just get everyone together in one room. And that's what they did in England. They allowed a few people to file a single complaint against the court. And this kind of carried over over the years, eventually into colonial America, along with some other stuff dealing with law.

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Like like you said, a lot of it, sort of some didn't stick. Some did. Yeah, no.

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There's like a period apparently from about the middle of the I guess about the 1500 to the fourteen hundreds to the middle of the 19th century where this just kind of went away in England, but it persisted in colonial America and then carried on and then went back to England and found purchase. And about the middle of the 19th century in England, equity courts, which is a specific kind of court, it's now part of regular civil court now. But for a little while it was its own thing where if say like you hired a tinsmith to make a gravy boat for you and like 1758, you you would take that guy to civil court.

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If he if he gave you one that was like, you know, only half of a gravy boat, you couldn't hold gravy in it. So what are you going to do with this thing? It's totally useless. So you take the tinsmith to court? Well, you would probably expect money for damages. The money that you gave him returned to you. Civil court would handle that. If you wanted to, say, make the tinsmith finish the job to complete this this gravy boat, then you would probably take him to equity court.

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Equity court was court that had to do with everything except monetary damages or criminal court. It was the creative kind of court where it really kind of called on a judge's fairness and imagination to solve whatever problem was brought before it. And this these equity courts, like we said or like I said, were were eventually fused into regular civil court. But they are where our understanding, like the modern understanding of class action lawsuits, were born in some of the 18th century gravy.

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Man, I love gravy. I don't care what century. It's good. Bad name, too.

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So the problem with equity courts even early on, is that there was really no kind of codified procedure for everything, especially as these cases got bigger and bigger. As far as people grouping up, there was no standard procedure. And one of the biggest challenges with that, our I guess, biggest controversies was whether or not people that weren't a part of that case technically. But we're still a part of it because they had the wagon wheel made by the the local tinsmith that was faulty, whether or not they signed up or not for that case, whether they were bound by that decision.

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Right. And it's a little counterintuitive to think about that. Like, who cares if if Goodey Smith isn't a part of this case? Maybe he doesn't care that his wagon wheel is faulty or not, but what this does, if you look at it on the other side, is Goodey Smith can't like once they settle this thing, Goodey Smith can't come along and then say, well, I want to see you separately. Right. So then Gary Smith couldn't come on, come around later or I guess until they changed it, he could come around later and sue again, but they had to work all this out.

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They were like, that's not fair. You can't have this big civil case, have someone technically be a part of it, but not assigned to it. And then later on try and get their own separate damages. Right.

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So but but I mean, that's, I think how it was for a good almost a cinch a little over a century where you could say, like, I didn't have anything to do with this thing. Goodey by the way, short for good wife. So it's like Mrs. Smith.

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Well, I was just kidding around anyway, so.

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Yeah, but like the ninth grade Crucible reader in me could not just let that pass. Remember that play. I do. I love it so that the thing is like for a good century, like if you if even if you were considered somebody who would be a member of that class, if you hadn't signed on to this lawsuit, you could come back around and say, I didn't have anything to do with that, like I want to sue you myself.

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And they did kind of make things unwieldy because one of the purposes nowadays for filing a class action lawsuit, at least as far as like the defendant, like, say, the big corporation is concerned, is to just settle this once and for all. And so eventually they came up with something called Rule 48, which started to kind of include it was like the birth of the rules for class action lawsuits and rule 48 morphed into rule 23, rule 23.

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Eventually 1966 said, you know what, we're just going to say this. If you qualify as a member of a class action class, even if you have nothing to do with this, if you don't sign on, you're considered bound to the decision, which means if you if, like, the people suing these people lose, you can't go back and sue them again and try yourself. You're bound by that decision. And in 1966, they said, well, how are we going to do this?

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And they said, well, we need to just notify people, give people the option to say, I don't want to have anything to do with the suit because I do want to sue these people on my own. And as long as you give them that option, the whole thing seemed pretty fair.

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Yeah. 1937 was when the Supreme Court first adopted these rules of civil procedure and the beginnings of rule twenty three. And this is when they sort of just dissolved a lot of the separation between the law courts and equity courts. But it was until 66 that they finally realized that was an issue. And they also I mean, it's a pretty it's a pretty dense thing. Roll twenty three. There was a lot that went on. And then that was amended again in 2005 with the Class Action Fairness Act, which, among other things, said that, you know, if it's over five million bucks, then this has got to go to federal court.

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Right. A federal district court, because that's too much money. Another one of the things from the Fairness Act of 2005 is it laid out some other criteria, aside from the five million bucks, it said that any case involving plaintiffs or defendants from like a bunch of different states. So if it's like all across the country, basically. Yeah. And they call that diversity jurisdiction, then the federal court can actually it has to go to federal court under that case.

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Right.

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And then also, if it's a hundred people are over, it typically are one hundred one hundred plaintiffs are over. It typically goes to federal court. And I get the impression federal courts is basically like we're a little more equipped for this. This the complexities and intricacies of a class action lawsuit. That's the impression I have to you.

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Yeah, I mean, I think they're just set up for it.

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I imagine it would be tough for a state court to handle a case like Firestone Bridgestone.

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With that many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, I don't know how many eventual plaintiffs there were, but that's a lot of tires.

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So I think that's true. But I also feel like this whole thing smacks of federal courts is basically being like, you know, let's just admit it, that state courts are run by hayseeds in yokels. That's what it smells like to me. There's definitely that undercurrent.

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Federal court rules, state court rules. That's right.

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So that rule 23, which again, is very dense, as you say, but it's also ominous sounding, if you ask me, rule 23. Sounds like it's going to mess you up pretty good. But it's basically the the the body of understanding for class action lawsuits that's been established, you know, since the 30s, up to 2005 with the Class Action Fairness Act, like you were saying. And if you read it, you can basically get a pretty good idea of what has to happen for a class action lawsuit to go forward.

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Apparently, each state has its own rules. But as far as the federal districts are concerned, rule 23 is, is it? And the first thing you have to do is you have to become certified as a class like your your lawsuit has to go from. It's just me suing, you know, Exxon for the oil spill to I've got all these other neighbors in Kandari owners around here who are all affected by this oil spill. And we think we have a good case against Exxon.

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And very importantly, we all have the same kind of harm. We have a common complaint, which is Exxon spilled a bunch of oil, messed up our livelihood and our lives. And we all, you know, because we all have the same kind of case, the defense, Exxon could mount the same defense against all of these complaints. So we would probably be certified as a class.

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Yeah, like, you know, the common defense in the case of like Erin Brockovich, that movie, I can't remember the name of the company that was the defendant, but the jury, who was it? Pacific Gas and Electricity, the one who keeps setting off wildfires out in California.

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So they couldn't then have a defense, one defense against like a certain number of people in a certain kind of person in town. Let's say it's probably more applicable. And then another for another kind of person in town, they had to mount a common defense. It's basically, I think, all about equity or making things equitable kind of for both sides. Yeah. Which I thought was pretty interesting. And only, you know, you have to get certified and only 20 to 40 percent of lawsuits that are filed is class action.

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Even get certification to begin with.

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Yeah, and the reason that was lower than I thought, but I guess it also makes sense. What I could not find is this, Chuck, what happens to the original lawsuit, the original plaintiff, if they're not certified as a class, there's a class action lawsuit, because if you just go sue on your own, I don't know. I cannot find out. The way they couldn't find out was the case that first piqued my interest about that was Dukes versus Wal-Mart.

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I think it was Dukes at all versus Wal-Mart, which turned out to be the biggest class action class ever created. It consisted of one and a half million women. Wow. Who had been employed. It's bigger than the U.S. military, by the way, but they were every woman who was employed by Wal-Mart between, I think any time after nineteen ninety eight.

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And the whole the whole lawsuit was that Wal-Mart was basically promoting men more quickly and giving men more resources to advance into management positions than women. And the idea was that if you were a woman, you were harmed by this equally. So it made sense that that this would get certified as a class action suit because any woman who worked for Wal-Mart would have been harmed by not having the opportunity to advance. But then Wal-Mart argued and said, well, you know, there's no national or company wide policy that says you can't advance women.

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You can advance more quickly that all of these advancement decisions are made up of thousands and thousands of local decisions. So since there were so many different decisions that affected all these different women, this class doesn't make sense. And they actually went all the way to Supreme Court and Supreme Court said Wal-Mart's right. This is this doesn't make sense is a class action suit, because all of the harms could have been for different reasons carried out by different people. But the reason that does make sense to have that that certification clause is because any defendant has a right to defend themselves against any accusation in court.

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And so if. Everybody's accusing them of the same harm, then it makes sense of certifying them together as a class. If there's different harms that aren't quite the same, then the defendant should be able to defend against that. That accusation, that accusation, that accusation. And you shouldn't lump all those people together into a whole class.

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Right. So the judge is in charge of defining the class. And like we said, it's got to you know, it's got to be specific to the problem at hand.

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It can't be all Bridgestone tire owners. It was, unless it's all Bridgestone tires. But it turned out it was just this one tire on this one car. And so you have to really define that. Like, if you had this car during these years, then you are part of this class. Right? And from that point, it has the notification that we talked about has to take place, whether it's you know, you've seen TV commercials probably that have this kind of thing.

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Yeah. You see advertisements in the newspaper. You probably get a mailer. It depends on how broad it is. They're not going to do a TV commercial if they don't need to because that costs money, obviously, and that's an expense. But they're going to notify everyone in pretty quick order because what they want is for everybody. You know, they're a part of this class that's a part of that class. And whether or not you want to opt in or out and if you opt out and you are within the scope of that class, you can you can do so if you want to.

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If it's I'm not sure why anyone for these kind of small things that seem to happen, a lot would opt out. Right? I think they probably just count on people ignoring that kind of thing. Well, they're check for five dollars in the mail. Sure.

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But Berlinale not doing anything. Yeah. You can't opt out if you're I don't know if you're a person who's just like, I don't want my name on any list and I don't want to be a part of any you know, if you're kind of a paranoid type as far as the government and court cases go, you may want to opt out just to not be a part of something so small, you know?

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Well, the I think the reason that they included is because if you are, let's say you were somebody who whose house was washed away by the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez. But the class action lawsuit was everyone who was affected by the oil. So it would include people whose houses lived or whose houses were a mile away, whose front yards got covered in oil. Well, you'd be like, oh, wait a minute, whatever they're going to get is nothing like what I need the damages that I'm seeking.

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So I'm going to opt out. And because you can't.

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Yeah, and because I mean, there's tons of real reasons to opt out. I'm sorry. Right. Right. The five dollar check coming from the credit card company. Sure.

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But I'm saying, like, they can't differentiate who's who's getting that mailer from who's not, which is why they put the onus on the person getting that mailer, seeing that TV commercial to say, oh, I need to opt out because I need to sue them on my own. I can't be part of this class because when that settlement is reached and they say everybody's going to get five dollars for the for the trouble, that's what you got for your house being washed away, you know what I mean?

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Yeah.

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So then the judge is actually going to appoint the counsel, which is different than how it usually works. The judge is going to look at this and say, and this is for I think for defense only. Right.

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I guess the judge can change the plaintiff, but it's typically the lawyer who actually files the case. I think it's unusual for the judge to overrule that. Unless it's someone who just doesn't have the responsibility or maybe that kind of background, sure, yeah. I think like if somebody walked in with Johnson and Johnson complaint in the you know, the lawyer was just like a local ambulance chaser. They probably would get replaced with like a larger national firm that had the resources or the understanding that had like contacts in like the professional witness field.

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As far as like medic medicine and cancer is concerned, like that guy just wouldn't have the resources. So he might be changed. But yeah, I'm guessing it's probably rare. But the point is that the judge has the ability to decide who is the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the class action.

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Yeah, I think it's probably more rare because lawyers understand this and they probably wouldn't file if they knew that they would be replaced unless it's just to get it going and they know they're going to be replaced.

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Like in what was the Breaking Bad spin? A better call, Saul, when they I think in like season two or something, when they figure out that the nursing home is taking advantage of the seniors, overcharging them, like the first thing that Saul Saul did was go to the larger firm and say, like, we need to partner up because he knew he couldn't handle it himself. That's what I'm guessing happens.

[00:33:46]

Yeah. And then I didn't see better call Saul, but that sounds right to me.

[00:33:50]

Oh, you didn't. It's pretty good. It's not Breaking Bad, but it doesn't seem to be Breaking Bad, you know what I mean?

[00:33:56]

Yeah. I've heard a lot of people like it better, but I could see that that's a different show. And then eventually the judge and again, you know, if you haven't noticed and it's sort of like in the early days, the judge has a lot of a lot more say in class action cases than a lot of other kinds of cases, really making a lot of decisions that they don't get to decide in other kinds of cases. In this case, one of the final things they get to decide is the distribution of damages.

[00:34:22]

Yeah. And they you know, they use other people for insight. They develop a plan with people on their team, but they develop this plan to distribute whatever monetary damages. If it's, you know, three billion dollars, they're going to figure out how to approve that settlement and how to distribute that settlement, including and this is a very key thing, as we'll see later, including how much those attorneys are going to get paid.

[00:34:48]

Right. So you want to take a break and then come back and talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of class action suits.

[00:34:55]

Yeah, let's do it. Get ready to laugh and laugh. I'm Nick Smith, I am Flamin Row, I am hishe we cash a check, she make the money, we spend it. Laugh and Learn is a weekly podcast bringing you the latest headlines. The infighting within the LGBT community is ridiculous. Baby, let me tell you about that rainbow in the front. Check the back of potholes, thunderstorms, gunshots, all that keeping you politically informed because that's what we do.

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[00:37:18]

You know, you should you know, you know, you should stop. You should know.

[00:37:32]

So one of the big advantages, obviously, something we already mentioned, a lot of people, there's power in numbers, a lot of people is more significant than one person. And a lot of people pooling their resources is more significant. Lawsuits cost a lot of money. And in many, many cases, it is not worth it for someone to go after a company for, you know, you kind of just have to do the math. Like, how much is this going to cost me?

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What's a potential payout? Is it worth the risk? Whereas if you can band together with a bunch of other people, it's a huge, huge advantage. Right.

[00:38:08]

One of the other advantages is the more people you have, the more damages are going to be awarded if the plaintiffs win, which means you're going to start attracting increasingly higher caliber lawyers to your cause, who could be your your class counsel. And the reason why is because in cases where you're seeking damages, lawyers often don't get paid unless they win. But if you win, then the lawyers get a big, fat payday out of it. So the bigger the class, the better the law firm or legal team representing that class is probably going to be at least more experienced, you know.

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Yeah, for sure. Another huge advantage is, is that you're going to get your case heard if individual cases, they go first come first serve. So if an individual brings a big lawsuit and they win, that company might be out of business before you can even get your suit going. Right. And if you're part of a class action lawsuit, it's going to make sure that everybody gets their piece of the pie, basically.

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Exactly. So there's a lot of reasons to do this. And another one, too, is it makes sense for corporations. They have an incentive to try to settle fairly with a class action suit because it will handle it'll make this big years long, sometimes decade long problems go away finally once and for all. Yeah.

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And, you know, there's a lot of press that comes along with a class action suit. Yeah. Far more press than than an individual case. So it definitely behooves the defense to try and get these things wrapped up quickly because it's just bad news for them.

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Yeah. And on the same on the other side of that same coin, Chuck, like that large amount of press that gets generated by these big, big cases also kind of keeps corporate malfeasance in line, you know? Sure. It makes a company. It probably does more than if we didn't have such things as class action suits. But that's one of the theoretical byproducts. How about that?

[00:40:12]

Yeah, I got some property to show you here. Is it called the Brooklyn Bridge? It's yeah, it's wonderful. So there are some problems with class action suits. They're not the the Candyland that we've described them as entirely. Instead, there are there's a lot of frivolous class action suits that have been filed over the years by lawyers who are looking to make a fast buck, in part using that bad press as a threat. Like, do you really want this to be, you know, to get dragged down in court?

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Just go ahead and settle. And, you know, I'm the lawyer. I'll take my big fat cut. And that's a that's a big problem, actually. And it's a big perceived problem to that class class counsel walk away, you know, whistling and laughing all the way to the bank while the individual members are just getting five bucks for their their problems, even though they're the ones who had the thing befall them in the first place. Yeah.

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And also, you know, if you choose like let's use that Exxon example, if you get bad legal advice in your house was destroyed more than other people's property and you don't opt out, you can't then say, oh, well, you know, I only got this much.

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My whole house was destroyed. I really want to bring a lawsuit again. You can't do that now unless you opt out. So that is a disadvantage that you that's sort of your one shot basically at any compensation.

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Yeah, I think the rule of thumb is if you didn't even know that this wrong had befallen you, it's probably not that big of a deal. And you're not going to want to opt out because then that means you have to hire your own lawyer and go through the trouble of suing somebody which is never pleasant or fun. Totally. So like I was saying, like, those those class lawyers are a favorite target of tort reformists and critics because the the if the plaintiffs win and the judge rules in the plaintiff's favor, one of the things the judge will do is figure out what the common.

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Station is for the lawyer is going to be a lot of times that comes out of the settlement, right? Like if everybody gets ten billion dollars, the judge will say, well, you attorney who led this case in your law firm and your legal team, you're going to get this fee. And I was reading up on it and it sounds like it's fairly arbitrary. There's no good rule of thumb. And in fact, lawyers who represent class actions may actually get a lower percentage fee than they would if they were representing somebody on an individual basis.

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But the thing is, these payouts can be so huge that even if it's a really small percentage, it's going to be just this incredibly large amount in real numbers. And so a lot of people are like, this guy didn't earn that. They didn't they didn't deserve that, especially when they find out that, you know, a million people got a coupon for half of a free tire from Firestone for having deadly tires on their car for 10 years.

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Yeah, those are. And they you know, they tried to they tried to rectify that in part of the the cafe, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. These coupon settlements. Those really rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't a class action suit, but there was something involved. At one point I was a season ticket holder for the Atlanta Falcons and I can't remember what the deal was. Now, it wasn't a class action suit, but there was something to where they wronged the season ticket holders in some financial way.

[00:43:46]

Terrible playing.

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We should have brought in a class action suit for the past 35 years. Those North Georgia people would join. Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:55]

But they they did that coupon thing and they were like, well, because of whatever it was this upcoming season, your season ticket holders will get twenty five percent off anything from the Falcons merch store. Oh no.

[00:44:08]

And that just really rubbed me. It's like because they're just you're spending more like the people that fall for that. Right. Are just giving them even more money.

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That's a big criticism. Is that it it establishes or keeps established an ongoing commercial relationship between the person who wronged you and you, the person suing them. And that is a big criticism. Some people say a good a good reply to that is just have cash settlements or you could have a whole product settlement like rather than you having a coupon for some percentage off. So you start to give them money. They say we'll give you the jersey of your choice free and clear, and you never have to see us again or maybe even like from the NFL dot com.

[00:44:53]

So it doesn't have to be like a a Falcons jersey. That's a solution to that, too. But one of the big problems was lawyers who were representing these coupon cases. They were taking a percentage of the entire value of the coupons of all the coupons. Right. And so what Kafa in two thousand, five or six to change was saying, like, you really shouldn't do that because a lot of people don't actually redeem that. So you shouldn't get a percentage of the people's coupons who are never going to redeem that coupon.

[00:45:26]

You should get a portion of the coupons that are going to be redeemed. And that is just as hard. Figuring out how many coupons are going to be redeemed is as hard as it sounds, from what I understand.

[00:45:38]

Yeah, and this there's one case in twenty thirteen that you sent over that was pretty interesting. There was a teenager, his name was that guy who measured his Subway sandwich, his foot long with his Australian.

[00:45:52]

So say it in Australia he was that guy. Nice any measured his foot long and it was only 11 inches long and he took it to attorney Jackie Chiles. And Jackie Giles didn't take the case. And so the kid went away and then another kid measured his sandwich and his name was, well, actually, and he actually got this thing taken to court because he didn't have a 12 inch sub on his from his Subway sandwich. It it backed up a little bit short.

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Yes. And and that was an actual case. Of course, I'm kidding around about those names, but. Although I wish I wasn't the attorneys there. We're going to get over a half a million dollars in fees, right, for what ended up being no payout whatsoever, just subway saying, well, we'll make these things back up to 12 inches now.

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Well, Subway even said we can't guarantee that we cannot like bread doesn't bake in exactly the same way. It's just not how it works. And the court even tended to agree with that. But the point was, no one was going to get anything, not even a free six inch sub. Nothing a free inch. Yeah. Now you've been afraid you're just going to get you know, Subway will stay in business. But these lawyers, we're going to get a half a million dollars in the judges like, you know, forget this.

[00:47:12]

We're just going to dismiss this entire case.

[00:47:14]

That's right. Jackie Chiles was very disappointed. There was also similar a similar one where when the Center for Science in the Public Interest hired some lawyers to sue Coca-Cola, who owned vitamin water at the time, vitamin water used to have this hilarious ad campaign promise, all these ridiculous health benefits that any reasonable person knew were not true. And they were suing for that. They were actually suing because vitamin water didn't disclose how much sugar it had in it, even though it was ridiculous health claims, it was still kind of purporting to be healthy.

[00:47:50]

And these the Center for Science in the Public Interest was like, this is not healthy at all. And so they sued Coca-Cola, didn't do anything but stopped, I think, advertising the way that they were. But those lawyers still got two point seventy three dollars million in fees, even though no one else got anything, 32 grams of sugar and vitamin water.

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Yeah, I believe crazy tastes delicious.

[00:48:13]

I don't I don't I didn't know it had sugar in it. That's why I'm offended. That's why they got sued. And, you know, there have been some very famous civil class action suits over the years. The largest ever, obviously, were the tobacco settlements. Yeah. And that was by tenfold next to the second highest when tobacco settlements. And I don't think it's over yet. Even two hundred and six billion dollars so far. Yeah. From that nineteen ninety eight decision, 46 states, the attorney generals from 46 states were involved and they obviously couldn't pay that all at once.

[00:48:50]

But what they were ordered to do was pay out for medical costs, for smoking related illness over the course of twenty five years. Yeah, the next highest was the BP spill for 20 billion. Wow. Volkswagen comes in at number three with fourteen point seven billion. And that one was pretty significant in that it wasn't a coupon payout. It was it was a pretty good restitution, I think, in that they said, you know what, we will actually buy back.

[00:49:18]

We'll fix your car for nothing or we will buy back your car or end your lease with no penalty. Right. And this is when Volkswagen cheated the software to try and cheat US emissions tests. This scandal so wrong, it was a big scandal. There's plenty of that are still unfolding as we speak, like the Johnson and Johnson talcum powder one. If you watch Svengali or anything else on TV, you're probably well, well versed in the Boy Scouts of America sex abuse case that's ongoing.

[00:49:52]

Yeah, apparently, my brother was one of the first plaintiffs in that case. Oh, I think I remember you talking about that. Yeah. And now there's like 70000 members of that class and growing. And then if you've ever heard that ad for mezo book, that's actually a mesothelioma guide that you will get sent to you by the lawyer of that class action settlement who's still looking for plaintiffs against the asbestos manufacturers. So there's still plenty ongoing. Like now that we've talked about this, it'll be like that Bider Minoff thing will you'll see class action ads on TV all the time now.

[00:50:34]

Yeah, I mean, Enron was a big one. Remember, fence in the diet drug. Oh yeah. That was the big one. That was a three point eight billion dollar payout. The silicone breast implants.

[00:50:46]

That was a big payout.

[00:50:47]

Yes, but that one, from what I understand, was total B.S. It was it was based on medical hysteria. And later, science backed up the company's claims that they had nothing to do with I think it was connective tissue disorder, the science. Nobody was carrying out the science. It was all basically paid testimony for the plaintiffs who were not necessarily even scientists. And on the other side, nobody had any science. And then science came later on.

[00:51:15]

But it was after the settlement had been reached for billions of dollars. Did they don't want a bit of a scam, it turns out. Did they get it back, I don't I don't think so. Probably not. That's not how it works. I don't think so. Action suit, right?

[00:51:32]

Yeah. It's one company doing to millions of people. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to know more about class action lawsuits, just watch me TV. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[00:51:49]

Hey, guys, this is another coincidence e-mail. And this one, you know, we had a lot of these like, hey, I was listening to the show when there was a tornado near me or whatever on tornadoes, but I thought this one is special. Hey, guys, I was listening to the Fort Knox episode in the listener letter about wetlands and having to be happening to be at a wetland. And my share, I've had two very random, coincidental things.

[00:52:13]

A few years back, I was driving into this small town, into a small town in southwest Colorado where I live in. One of you mentioned a penny farthing.

[00:52:22]

If you don't know what a penny farthing is, dear, listening to is that the bicycle with that giant giant front wheel and the tiny little back wheel from the 19th century, I guess.

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Yeah, early 20th one the two.

[00:52:37]

I glanced over to the bike lane and sure enough there was a guy riding a penny farthing said is that is the most amazing thing I've heard in a long time.

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I've never seen one in real life even I don't think I have.

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I think I've seen like an antique in the store or something like that, but I've never seen somebody riding, although this would not be nearly as amazing. If the person turns out to be writing from Brooklyn kids, I'm sure that's a pretty common sight.

[00:53:04]

From Brooklyn to Colorado. There'd be something else. Yeah, I guess so. But what are the chances this guy is listening to that? That's amazing. That's it is astounding. I mean, why would we be talking about penny farthings in the first place? You know, it's a good word. Sure. It was the first time I had seen one of those in that town I've lived in for twenty five years. Next was this summer after dropping off some clients to put on your episode about ice climbing, just as I was driving out of town to a to a Mecca destination for ice climbers around the world, it's a little less impressive.

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I like the Sherpa thing. Yeah, I do too.

[00:53:36]

And that is from Shawn in Telluride, Colorado.

[00:53:41]

Very nice, Shawn. Thank you for the first day and the second one. Thanks for nothing. If you want to get in touch with us like Shawn did, and tell us your best anecdote. We want to hear it. You can get in touch with us via email at Stuff podcast that I heart, radio, dotcom.

[00:54:01]

Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts, my heart radio is at the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. We are back and black on the black African network. Hey, y'all, is Tamika Mallory and my song, The General Hits Me and Street Politicians is the podcast for the culture. We will be breaking down social and civil rights issues, pop culture and politics on our podcast Every.

[00:54:35]

We will have special guests as well with local activists to join the show discussing political issues going on in their community. Listen to street politicians on the I Heart radio at Apple podcast or wherever you get your pie. That's right. It's pretty easy these days to feel disconnected, we're pulled in so many different directions and that can leave us feeling incredibly fragmented, but together we can grow more connected to ourselves and to each other. And that is what my new podcast is all about, coming home to our Hoeness.

[00:55:11]

Listen and follow Holy Human with me. LeAnn Rimes on the I Heart radio at Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.