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Short Stuff: Phone Books · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh, Chuck, cherit, Dave,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: let's go nostalgic.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, there's a slew of websites you
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: used to research this, but I mean, honestly, we could
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: just say from our own brains because there wasn't a
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: lot in here that like, we just didn't know as
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: growing up in the time that we grow up again
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: because it is about phone books, and if you're of
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a certain age, you know exactly what we're talking about.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: If you're not of a certain age yet, you might
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: be surprised to know that. At a certain point in time,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: if you wanted to, I don't know, take your car
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: to the shop or find a florist or a dry cleaner,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: you couldn't just go on the internet to do that
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: or whip out your phone. You would bring out a
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: seventeen pound book that was eight inches thick, drop it
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: on your kitchen table and wake up your entire family
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: on a Saturday morning, and you would start letting your oh,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say it. You would start thumbing
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: through that thing, looking under the florists section or the
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: laundromat section to find a business to give your money
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: to Yeah, it's very cute.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That is how you found businesses. It's how you found
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: people too, because the business part was in the second
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: half of the phone book. It was all in yellow pages.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: The first part was white pages, and those were residential listings.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or they were two different books entirely.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It could be if you lived in a fancy pants area,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: you know, like Atlanta, like Westchester or something like that. Yeah,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the white pages. This is another thing. The reason I
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: love doing this one, Chuck, is because this is to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: me the first time we can be like you have
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: grown up in a world where you can't really understand
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the world that this thing existed in in Shakesure. This
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: is a great example of it. And one of the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: things that stuck out to me was explaining the white pages,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: where you you could go and say, I'm looking for
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. So I'm going to go to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the B's of the white pages and start looking through
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the Bryan's until I find all the Charles. And I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: know Chuck lives in Atlanta, so I'm going to find
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Chuck's address in Atlanta, and then at the end of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that is Chuck's phone number and I'm going to pick
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: up my phone and dial the numbers that is in
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: this publicly available book. Maybe even I'll get tired of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: waiting the for him to answer, I'll hang up and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: just drive to his house, which I now know exactly
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: where it is, because his address is listed under his
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: full name with his phone number in the phone book,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: along with everybody else in town.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you would just knock on my door if
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: you wanted to speak to me. And I know that
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: we were sending a large number of our listeners into
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a complete and utter panic. Yeah, at the thought of
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: someone knocking on their door just to pop in and
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: say hello or whatever.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: But just think about how much the world has changed
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: in that respect.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you don't even call someone anymore without texting
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: him to say, can I call right now? No, it's
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: very strange.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: It is. This is a different world.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: It was a totally different world. The uh well, you know,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: another funny tangent to that is, I also remember a
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: day where if you were like, let's say, you knew
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: someone's name, but you didn't really know where they lived,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: and you didn't know them that well, so you needed
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: their phone number, so you looked it up and they
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: were like six Josh Clark's and you would start calling
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: random Josh Clark's and say, are you the Josh Clark
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: that I met at camp summer camp this summer or
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the parents of so like you would go like, you know,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that's the whole plot of the Initial Terminators. He's killing
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: random Sarah Connors. Oh yeah, because he looks up Sarah
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Connor in the phone book.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you would totally do that. I did that too.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I mean like you would do something like that and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: it was and.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: People understood would be like, oh, that's a different guy.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Sorry, good luck, good luck.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Oh man, so quaint and this is not like three
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: hundred years ago. The other thing I did not know.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Actually when I said, I knew all this in my
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: brain and it totally makes sense now all this. You know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the businesses themselves were advertised within the floral section or
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: the laundromat section. And that's why you would see like
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: a one plumber or a one florist is because they
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: would be listed first. I never knew that, and I
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: feel like a dummy because it's so obvious.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I mean like that's but yeah, that's what
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I would call my business we should have called this
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a one stuff you Should Know.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Podcast, right, A one podcast?
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. It was called
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: gaming the system. I think that's right. So for about
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: one hundred years, like this is how you made contact
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: with the outside world. This is how you searched for
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: things in the outside world. It's really hard to wrap
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: your head around now, but you just pull a book
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: out and I say, we take a little break, come
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: back and talk a little more about the history of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the phone book after well this break, let's do it. Well,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I want to learn a thing or two from Josh
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: pm Chuck.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: It's stuff you should.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Know, all right, All right, we're back. We're talking phone books.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: The first phone directory we talked a little bit about
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: in our Telephone episode. I think it was published in
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: eighteen seventy eight New Haven, Connecticut and had about fifty
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: subscribers that's what they were called at the time, on
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: a single piece of paper, listed as phones, you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: spread around. Obviously, the phone book got bigger and bigger,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to the point where, like I mentioned, we had a
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: full white pages and a full yellow pages, and they
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: were very big books. I think the last editions of
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: the New York City. Well maybe not the last, because
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: there are still phone books if you have a landline,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: believe it or not, But the New York City phone
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: books came in multiple volumes at the last quarter of
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: the twentieth century, and they were so thick that like,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: if you were a kid in high school, you might
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: have a strong person team come around to do a
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: little show for you at an afternoon assembly, and inevitably
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: they would blow up a hot water bottle and burst
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: it and till it burst, and they would somebody would
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: rip a phone book in half, which was seemingly really
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: hard to do.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, I do I have no recollection of seeing an
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: assembly like that, Like did you see that? It sounds like,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's a first hand to count.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we had a strong strong man team come
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: around and do like feats of strength for the high
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: school afternoon.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Did they like legitimize it by just saying like, also
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: don't do drugs at the end? Oh?
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Probably?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Wow, that's really something. Yeah, I don't remember we
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I don't remember anything like that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Where'd you think they ripped up phone books? Just like
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: that's incredible or whatever?
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I got to see it live. Buddy.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Wow, go Redan hs. That's right, the Redan Redheads.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Raiders.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: That was close. Yeah. So one of the things like
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: if you were if you had a phone, like you
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: just got a phone book, it was free, like they
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: were disposable, Like you just thought nothing of the phone book.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: But it turns out they were like big, big business
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: for AT and T and then later on for a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: bunch of other companies, but AT and T, according to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty six article. The article said that eighteen
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: T made seven billion dollars just off of the money
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: it charged businesses across the country to be listed in
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the Yellow Pages. And that's like thirteen billion dollars today.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's like lunch at Apple.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a ton of money. And I
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: even looked up. I was like, I wonder if there
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: was a sort of a weird little hidden search charge
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: for like the customer to be listed. And apparently not.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Apparently you were never ever charged to be listed in
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: the phone book. You did have to pay to get unlisted,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: which a lot of states eventually like introduced like house
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: bills and stuff. They're like this is a scam. You
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: can't just list somebody's name and address and say you
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: got to pay us to not do that extortion. Yeah,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: so I think a lot of those ended up being successful.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: But you know, AT and T was selling those not
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: only just a spot in the Yellow Pages, but you
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: could pay a lot more money to get like larger
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: ads and stuff in the Yellow Pages to get more notice,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and they would market that stuff. And you know almost
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: said it earlier, but I didn't want to let it slip.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: But a very famous one it was in nineteen sixty two.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I could have sworn it was the seventies, because it
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: clearly went through the seventies was let your Fingers do
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the Walking ad campaign, the idea of, hey, let your
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: fingers do the walking instead of your body, Like, don't
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: walk around downtown looking for your florist, just let your
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: fingers do that and then give them a call instead, exactly.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And I mean that was kind of revolutionary as far
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: as things went, at least in the mid century. And
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I said that AT and T made a bunch of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: money off of the Yellow Pages. The reason why it
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: was just them is because they had a monopoly on
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the phone system in the US, which I'm sure we
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: covered as well in that phone exchange up. So, but
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it was finally broken up. The government granted monopoly. They're like,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: you guys are too big. We're going to break you
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: up into regional providers like Northwestern Bell, Southern Bell, that
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And so all of those companies, these
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: subcompanies now were printing Yellow Pages and they were making money.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: But because Bell no longer had a monopoly, that also
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: opened the door for private companies to start making their
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: own Yellow Pages. There was just a lot of money
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and walking around because this is how people found businesses.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: It was either driving past and seeing a business that
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: had their phone number on the sign, or you went
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to the Yellow Pages. It was as simple as that.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So you had a lot of incentive to advertise in
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the yellow Pages, and so companies had a lot of
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: incentive to publish Yellow Pages. And so the number of
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: phone books that came to one person's house started to boom.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I think in the nineteen nineties in some parts of California,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you might get ten different phone books delivered to your
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: house every night. Year. Yeah.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, obviously, especially in a place like California,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: or you know, Washington State, Seattle, Washington. People would be like, hey,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, this is like a pretty awful thing
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: to do, like the amount of waste that's happening here.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: I remember early I mean this is a long time
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: ago now, but not that long ago. But the Internet
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: was around, and there were still phone books being delivered,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: and I remember seeing a comedian joke about I think
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: the joke was something up printing a small portion of
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the Internet and throwing it on my porch once a year.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: I thought that was pretty funny. But everyone, you know,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: it's pretty clear, like what a wasteful thing. I think
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: half a billion phone books were being delivered six hundred
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: and fifty thousand tons of paper every year by nineteen
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: ninety one, enough to fill up two million cubic yards
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: of landfill space, even though you could probably recycle that stuff.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So they initially started doing like recycled paper and stuff
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: like that. Seattle, like I mentioned, I think was one
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: of the first ones to say, like, you know, we're
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: gonna start charging phone book makers fourteen since per phone
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: book delivered within the city. And if people elect to
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: not have a phone book, but they still throw one
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: on your porch, like that's a one hundred and fifty
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: dollars five Yeah.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Knowing me, justice police, I would have been I would
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: have immediately gone to the trouble of filling out like
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the five page form to complain, to make sure that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that company got fined out.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I totally would. Yeah, I opted out.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: You've got a touch of the justice police in Youtuo
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: for youah for sure?
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah neither. Yeah. We don't like bad guys getting
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: away with stuff justice. Yeah.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So despite the environmental thing, I think basically converting to
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: recycled paper helped a lot of people in training. People
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: like you said, like these things can actually be easily recycled.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: That kind of simmered people down about the environmental part.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So that's not what did away with phone books. There
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: were like three things in pretty quick secession that really
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: started to take the Yellow Pages down at least so
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: four on one that was information all of a sudden,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: you could dial that for free starting in the eighties,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: and now you didn't even have to look in the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: phone book. You could just call up and be like,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: just start reading some plumbers' names off to me in
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: their phone numbers.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you would call someone to read you the phone exactly,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: that's right. And then, of course, you know, the Internet
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: coming along had everything to do with it. And also
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, Congress passed a law that
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: said you can't put cell phone numbers in phone books,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: so they were on the way to doing that. So
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: it basically was whittled down to just landlines. And then
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: once the Internet came around, as far as businesses go,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: the Yellow Pages wasn't as necessary. But you know they're
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: all still around because there are still landlines. And you
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: know who advertises in the Yellow Pages? Still who ricks
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: in a bogan? Emily's dad and Seneco Glass, his auto
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: glass repair shop in Cayuga Falls, Ohio. Unless it's changed.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: We were talking one day and he was like, yeah,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I still advertise in the Yellow Pages. A lot of
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: people around here still use landlines, still look stuff up
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: in the Yellow Pages.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There was a poll that found, I think in
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, more than fifty million homes in the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: US still have a landline. So that means that unless
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: they go to the trouble of opting out, they still
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: get a phone book delivered to them every year, and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: that ten percent of all Americans still use Yellow Pages
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: If you just zero in on fifty five and older,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: almost three quarters of them use the Yellow Pages to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: find business like old habits die hard. So like your
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: father in laws, like, he has an incentive to still
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: sure advertising the Yellow Pages, which means there's an incentive
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: for Yellow Pages to still exist as long as people
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: use them. You know.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm What I'm really mad about is I'm now
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: in the age group where they're like, but this is
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: what the olds are doing, right, freaking yellow Pages. Come on, nobody.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I know my age looks in the Yellow Pages, So
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: I take issue with that number.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You're a twenty six percenter.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so. But I have to say, if
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: you're looking for autoglass repair in the Cayuga Falls, Ohio region,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: and you want to avoid big Auto glass, go with
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the mom and popper in this case, the pop and
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: go check out Seneco Glass. Tell Rick we sent you.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Very nice man.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: They do great work.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I can't think of any better way for short stuff
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to be out.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: That's right, We're out. Stuff you Should Know is a
• 14:45
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• 14:51
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