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1-800-PODCAST · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
0:02
Speaker 1: you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
0:05
Speaker 1: you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
0:07
Speaker 1: going to love it and you can preorder it now.
0:09
Speaker 1: That's right. It's called Stuff you Should Know, Collen, an
0:14
Speaker 1: incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been a
0:18
Speaker 1: lot of fun to work on and we're really, i
0:20
Speaker 1: mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together.
0:23
Speaker 1: It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
0:27
Speaker 1: to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
0:30
Speaker 1: are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
0:34
Speaker 1: the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
0:36
Speaker 1: out this November and you can order it now, pre
0:39
Speaker 1: order everywhere you get books, So do that, and we
0:43
Speaker 1: thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
0:47
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:56
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W.
0:59
Speaker 1: Chuck probably there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff
1:02
Speaker 1: you Should Know. Thank you for calling my eight hundred podcasts.
1:07
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Collar, Oh, that would be great, Chuck, right
1:10
Speaker 1: to get that. We need to get that before we
1:13
Speaker 1: released this episode, because some somebody, somebody, maybe a rest
1:19
Speaker 1: boorg person is going to snag that and we'll have
1:23
Speaker 1: to pay through the nose for it. I thought there
1:25
Speaker 1: were so many very interesting things about this very seemingly
1:29
Speaker 1: mundane topic. And uh, I just think it's interesting that
1:34
Speaker 1: eight hundred numbers seem like something that would have gone
1:39
Speaker 1: the way of nine hundred numbers, but they're still around
1:43
Speaker 1: in the days where the Internet is thriving and the
1:46
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages or I don't even did they still have
1:49
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages? I think, yeah, I don't know. I think
1:53
Speaker 1: I think I remember this one comedian years ago, I
1:56
Speaker 1: was talking about the phone books when people are still
1:58
Speaker 1: getting phone books, and he was like, the joke was
2:02
Speaker 1: something about dropping out. Let me drop off four pound,
2:07
Speaker 1: very small portion of the Internet on your front board.
2:11
Speaker 1: But then they just stopped doing that altogether. Yeah, I
2:14
Speaker 1: know that they were doing it as recently as a
2:16
Speaker 1: few years back, because they say would get dropped off
2:19
Speaker 1: once in a while at the mailboxes that are condo
2:21
Speaker 1: and um so I mean within the last ten years
2:25
Speaker 1: for sure, five years maybe, I think is the last
2:28
Speaker 1: time I saw one. So maybe they stopped because I
2:30
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in a little while, but yes, so
2:33
Speaker 1: toll free numbers, eight hundred numbers, they persist, they do,
2:36
Speaker 1: and they really do. So this this how stuff works article.
2:40
Speaker 1: I think the last the last number they had was
2:43
Speaker 1: from two thousand eight, and it said that there were
2:46
Speaker 1: twenty four million working toll free phone numbers in North America.
2:50
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're
2:52
Speaker 1: talking about free phone numbers. Apparently in the United States
2:55
Speaker 1: we call it toll free numbers. Everywhere else in the
2:58
Speaker 1: world is called or the English speaking roll. At least
3:00
Speaker 1: it's free phone numbers. So, um, there were twenty four
3:05
Speaker 1: million in two thousand and eight. But get this, since
3:09
Speaker 1: the advent of eight hundred numbers, they've released one, two, three, four, five, six,
3:15
Speaker 1: seven different prefixes of toll free numbers, everything from eight hundred, eight, seven,
3:22
Speaker 1: seven all the way down to eight three three is
3:23
Speaker 1: where we're at now. And I did it, did a
3:26
Speaker 1: little math. I'm kind of proud of myself for this one.
3:28
Speaker 1: Chuck Sell. If you bear with me for a second,
3:30
Speaker 1: for a seven digit number, you have nine million total
3:35
Speaker 1: possible combinations because it starts technically with one million and
3:40
Speaker 1: goes up to nine million, nine ninety nine, So you
3:45
Speaker 1: have nine million total combinations in there. So each of
3:48
Speaker 1: those prefixes allows for nine million combinations. So there's at
3:52
Speaker 1: least there's seven prefixes. That means that there's at least
3:55
Speaker 1: fifty four million plus a toll free number is in
4:00
Speaker 1: use in America to day. To justify that many prefixes,
4:04
Speaker 1: you know what, I can't wait for what that mass
4:08
Speaker 1: person to write in and correct you do it? No, no, no, Josh,
4:14
Speaker 1: that's you forgot about blank. I will argue with you
4:17
Speaker 1: all day long. I got this right. I got it
4:20
Speaker 1: right for once. Uh, lots of toll free numbers, and
4:23
Speaker 1: like you said, they go down to eight three three
4:25
Speaker 1: Now I think eventually they're going to get eight to
4:28
Speaker 1: two eight eight oh eight eight seven at eight eight
4:30
Speaker 1: nine involved never eight one one or eight nine nine.
4:35
Speaker 1: Apparently yeah, supposedly. Uh, someone found an ancient text in
4:40
Speaker 1: Aramaic that predicted that if eight one one were ever instituted,
4:44
Speaker 1: that's when the universe ends. Can't do it so when
4:49
Speaker 1: you dial a number. What this is all about, and
4:53
Speaker 1: actually two things. What it used to be about was
4:57
Speaker 1: largely for when calls costs money to make long distance
5:02
Speaker 1: it was a way to route that charge back to
5:07
Speaker 1: the person you're calling. Yeah, it was automatic collect calls.
5:11
Speaker 1: That's right. So if you were you know, they advertise
5:14
Speaker 1: it as toll free. You don't have to pay a
5:16
Speaker 1: toll on it. We're gonna eat that cost and you'll
5:18
Speaker 1: know it because it's an eight hundred number. Then, over
5:21
Speaker 1: the years it became more and more of a sort
5:26
Speaker 1: of just if you want to be a legitimate business,
5:29
Speaker 1: and especially a regional business or national or international business,
5:33
Speaker 1: then you kind of had to have an eight hundred number.
5:36
Speaker 1: Even once tolls, uh, phone charges and things and long
5:41
Speaker 1: distance kind of became a thing of the past, it
5:44
Speaker 1: just became sort of a i mean, sort of a
5:47
Speaker 1: calling card, for lack of a better word, as Hey,
5:49
Speaker 1: we're a legit, big company. We've got an eight hundred number.
5:54
Speaker 1: We're the third largest maker of bonking trundle beds. Here's
5:58
Speaker 1: our eight hundred number. And in the old days, I
6:01
Speaker 1: mentioned the yellow pages where you would advertise it's so
6:04
Speaker 1: quaint to think about now is where you would advertise
6:07
Speaker 1: in this big yellow book about your business and let
6:10
Speaker 1: your fingers do the walk in. But back then it
6:12
Speaker 1: was also eight hundred numbers were away that you could
6:15
Speaker 1: save money by not having to advertise in the yellow
6:18
Speaker 1: pages because you've got you know, one eight hundred you
6:22
Speaker 1: know house painter right. Or this article, this how stuff
6:26
Speaker 1: Works article cites a construction company called Asphalt Sources, Inc.
6:31
Speaker 1: Which got I guess that catchy eight hundred number and
6:34
Speaker 1: downsized their Yellow Pages add and saved more than twenty
6:37
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars by doing so. And to be honest,
6:42
Speaker 1: it probably didn't hurt that they were also cited in
6:45
Speaker 1: a house stuff Works article about toll free numbers. Yeah
6:48
Speaker 1: that was that was clunky, but definitely an example of
6:51
Speaker 1: how things used to be. Yeah, but but that's the
6:54
Speaker 1: point of eight hundred numbers. And that's also from what
6:56
Speaker 1: I can tell. The reason that they still persist today
6:59
Speaker 1: is that if you have a catch eight hundred number,
7:01
Speaker 1: like you said, it makes you seem like a player
7:03
Speaker 1: as far as business goes. But also, um, it's a
7:07
Speaker 1: way to advertise, like I haven't seen the Empire today
7:10
Speaker 1: add in three to five years, but I can tell
7:14
Speaker 1: you that the numbers still eight hundred five eight eight
7:17
Speaker 1: to three hundred Empire today. You remember that one cars
7:21
Speaker 1: for kids? I don't remember that one in eight seven
7:24
Speaker 1: seven cars for kids. I've never heard that one, really,
7:28
Speaker 1: but I would probably remember that one. Yeah, I mean,
7:31
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that a little in a little
7:32
Speaker 1: more depth. Those are called vanity numbers, UM, but yeah,
7:36
Speaker 1: and there are statistics and they are pretty um stark
7:40
Speaker 1: and how much people remember that compared to just some
7:43
Speaker 1: regular old number. Right, So there's reasons for eight hundred
7:46
Speaker 1: numbers and the fact that they're still around. There's reasons
7:49
Speaker 1: for that too. But they started all the way back
7:52
Speaker 1: in seven. And it's like you said, it was a
7:56
Speaker 1: way to UM to make it easy for people to
7:59
Speaker 1: place collect calls, which was there were two ways to
8:02
Speaker 1: to make a long distance call. Either you paid for
8:04
Speaker 1: it yourself it showed up on your phone bill, or
8:07
Speaker 1: you could call the person you were calling collect, which
8:10
Speaker 1: meant that you could you dialed the operator you said
8:12
Speaker 1: you wanted to place a collect call. The operator called
8:15
Speaker 1: that number for you and said, hey, I've got Josh
8:18
Speaker 1: and Chuck on the line. Um, will you accept the charges?
8:22
Speaker 1: Is what they asked, and the other person would inevitably
8:24
Speaker 1: say no and hang up. If it had been somebody else,
8:27
Speaker 1: they might have said yes, and then that person who
8:29
Speaker 1: was receiving the call, they would be build for that.
8:32
Speaker 1: That takes a lot of time and effort for a
8:35
Speaker 1: phone call or for a phone company's operators to do that.
8:38
Speaker 1: So the whole point of eight hundred numbers was to
8:40
Speaker 1: automate the process, to take the operator out of it.
8:43
Speaker 1: And so the person would say, I'm receiving these calls
8:46
Speaker 1: at this number, go ahead and build me for them,
8:49
Speaker 1: just without even asking. Yeah, and and I think that
8:52
Speaker 1: story illustrates why I believe my theory is correct that
8:57
Speaker 1: Gen X is the greatest generation. So great man, because
9:00
Speaker 1: we we saw those early days that now feel like
9:04
Speaker 1: we were in the nineteen twenties with stuff like this
9:08
Speaker 1: and three TV channels growing up or three major networks rather.
9:13
Speaker 1: But we're also we're young enough to where the um
9:17
Speaker 1: technological boom didn't confuse us or pass us by or
9:22
Speaker 1: pass us by, and we we've got we could dip
9:25
Speaker 1: our toe into both. You know, we could grow up
9:28
Speaker 1: on seventies music and also go to a E. D
9:32
Speaker 1: M concert right without like being weird. Yeah, I think
9:37
Speaker 1: you're right, Chuck. We we might be the greatest generation
9:39
Speaker 1: where the perfect generation perfect, That's right, I guess greatest
9:42
Speaker 1: generation is taken. So yeah, of course, um in sixty
9:47
Speaker 1: seven it started, like you said, in the very first
9:49
Speaker 1: business to have an eight hundred number apparently was a
9:52
Speaker 1: company that just hosted numbers for other companies, mainly like
9:57
Speaker 1: car rentals and hotels and stuff like that. I think
10:01
Speaker 1: they were like a call center. Yeah, and so they
10:03
Speaker 1: went out of business, and then all those businesses that
10:05
Speaker 1: were using them said, oh, well, we gotta get eight
10:07
Speaker 1: hundred numbers now ourselves. Right. But the thing is is
10:11
Speaker 1: a T and T was the only one with eight
10:13
Speaker 1: hundred numbers because back in the day, a T and
10:15
Speaker 1: T also known as mob Bell was like the basically
10:20
Speaker 1: had a monopoly as far as telephones were concerned in
10:23
Speaker 1: the United States. And so yeah, and so, um, if
10:28
Speaker 1: you wanted an eight hundred number, you went to a
10:31
Speaker 1: T and T. You got your eight hundred number, and
10:33
Speaker 1: then you paid through the nose for it. They would
10:36
Speaker 1: charge many, many times more than they would have charged
10:39
Speaker 1: the caller had the caller just had been build themselves
10:42
Speaker 1: for placing this long distance call, just for this toll
10:46
Speaker 1: free service. Um. And that's just the way it was
10:49
Speaker 1: until I believe it was four when truss Buster Ronald
10:55
Speaker 1: Reagan saw to it that mob Bell was broken up
10:58
Speaker 1: into all the regional else Yeah. So then, of course
11:01
Speaker 1: when that happened, that opened up the world of competition
11:05
Speaker 1: and the telephone industry in the United States kind of
11:08
Speaker 1: for the first time. And then, of course what happens
11:10
Speaker 1: is the cost to get an eight hundred number goes
11:13
Speaker 1: way way down. You can get a lot more businesses
11:16
Speaker 1: getting them, and then it just sort of became the
11:18
Speaker 1: standard for any business that wanted to be even like
11:23
Speaker 1: I said, a regional business. There was also a really
11:26
Speaker 1: big innovation that gets overlooked too that was actually created
11:30
Speaker 1: by a guy named Roy Webber who was an a
11:32
Speaker 1: T and T engineer, and Roy Webber basically figured out
11:35
Speaker 1: how to use eight hundred numbers, not as phone numbers
11:39
Speaker 1: that were connected to a certain point in the telephone system,
11:43
Speaker 1: but as a basically a code that could be translated
11:47
Speaker 1: at a database into instructions. Are like, hey, here's this
11:50
Speaker 1: number they put in, what are the instructions for this?
11:53
Speaker 1: And in doing so he figured out how to make
11:56
Speaker 1: toll free numbers go from regional to truly now, because
12:00
Speaker 1: up until nineteen eighty you had to have a regional
12:03
Speaker 1: toll free number for each region, and if you were
12:06
Speaker 1: a national company like say Hurts or something like that,
12:09
Speaker 1: you had a dozen or more toll free numbers that
12:12
Speaker 1: you had to manage. Thanks to Roy Weber, who patented this,
12:15
Speaker 1: but a T and T owns the patent um, so
12:18
Speaker 1: he saw jack from it besides the salary um. This
12:21
Speaker 1: changed everything and made a truly national thing to where
12:25
Speaker 1: one one single eight hundred number could serve the entire
12:28
Speaker 1: country for a business. And it made the whole thing
12:31
Speaker 1: a lot um technically smoother too, from what I understand. Yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: that was sort of one of two big things that happened. Um.
12:39
Speaker 1: The other one was in nineteen ninety four when the
12:40
Speaker 1: law was passed that said you can port your phone
12:43
Speaker 1: number between carriers. So if you're with one carrier and
12:47
Speaker 1: you're not too happy back in the old days pre
12:49
Speaker 1: ninety four, that meant you had to change your telephone number,
12:51
Speaker 1: and that was no good for a business that was
12:54
Speaker 1: trying to grow or a business that was already big, especially,
12:58
Speaker 1: And so that law ga and teed that portability, Uh,
13:02
Speaker 1: you could take your phone number with you, and that
13:04
Speaker 1: was a really big, big kind of sea change in
13:06
Speaker 1: the industry. Yeah, you could pick up your phone number
13:08
Speaker 1: and carry it across land to the next body of water.
13:13
Speaker 1: That's right. Should we take a break? Yeah, all right,
13:16
Speaker 1: let's do that, okay, chuck um. So we're at when
13:43
Speaker 1: we could poured our phone numbers. Yeah, And that was
13:45
Speaker 1: kind of the last big change. That's when things started
13:48
Speaker 1: growing so much that they had to I think in
13:50
Speaker 1: ninety six they introduce eight eight. It seems like every
13:55
Speaker 1: couple of years they started introducing new um what do
13:59
Speaker 1: they call prefixes? Yeah, yeah, prefix exchanges. So we're down
14:04
Speaker 1: to eight three three, right, I think that's where we
14:07
Speaker 1: are currently. And then I've never seen that I have not,
14:11
Speaker 1: not that I've ever noticed. But now I don't I
14:13
Speaker 1: don't even pay attention. I don't call anything. I just
14:16
Speaker 1: go online if I have to call out call. But
14:19
Speaker 1: I don't like it at all, And most of the
14:21
Speaker 1: time when I do, I'm just looking it up on
14:23
Speaker 1: my phone and clicking like the call thing. I very
14:26
Speaker 1: rarely type in a number anymore. And yet, bizarrely, E
14:30
Speaker 1: numbers haven't gone anywhere, and again, apparently it's because of
14:33
Speaker 1: the the whole um marketing thing UM, which is why
14:37
Speaker 1: they're still around today. And then one other kind of
14:40
Speaker 1: like um connection to the information age, the age of
14:45
Speaker 1: the Internet and computers and all that stuff. Um that
14:49
Speaker 1: eight hundred numbers have is that there was a period
14:53
Speaker 1: from about two thousand seven, eight nine maybe up until
14:57
Speaker 1: about two fourteen where the cons sept of uh uh,
15:02
Speaker 1: say like a provider paying for your data when you
15:06
Speaker 1: went on too a certain website, say they had a
15:08
Speaker 1: website where they wanted to teach you all about their
15:10
Speaker 1: new phones or something like that. You would not be
15:15
Speaker 1: you you wouldn't be using any data while you were
15:18
Speaker 1: on that site. And they originally called it one eight
15:21
Speaker 1: data for interesting, and then they dropped that around two
15:24
Speaker 1: fift and that was that. So here's something that I
15:29
Speaker 1: found that is so boring, that I found so weirdly fascinating,
15:35
Speaker 1: and that is the notion of the responsible Organization. Uh
15:40
Speaker 1: maybe it's because it's the name. It just sounds really weird.
15:44
Speaker 1: It sounds like a scientology like subsection or something the
15:49
Speaker 1: rest org. So when you call a well, first of
15:55
Speaker 1: all, all all these all these numbers, all these eight hundred
15:56
Speaker 1: numbers are housed in a database called the eight hundred
16:00
Speaker 1: Service Management System, the SMS eight hundred, and they know
16:04
Speaker 1: every single exchange of the eight hundred variation and if
16:09
Speaker 1: it's available, if it's being used, and how to route them.
16:13
Speaker 1: And if you want one of these, you have to
16:16
Speaker 1: contact something called a responsible organization. And that's just not
16:20
Speaker 1: a descriptor like alright, I'll contact UNI SEF because they're
16:24
Speaker 1: pretty responsibles. It's called a responsible organization. It's it's basically
16:28
Speaker 1: like a domain name registrar for telephone for eight hundred numbers.
16:33
Speaker 1: And it could be a company that does this, or
16:37
Speaker 1: you could be a human being at home in your
16:39
Speaker 1: basement that has set yourself up to be a rest org. Yeah,
16:43
Speaker 1: you just have to be certified by the FCC. Um,
16:47
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how. I didn't get to see how.
16:50
Speaker 1: But once you are certified, then you have access to
16:53
Speaker 1: this database and you can legally say, now this number
16:56
Speaker 1: is now taken by this person, right as nicely. Right, Um,
17:03
Speaker 1: they're watching you, and if if you help an old
17:06
Speaker 1: lady or man across the street in front of the
17:09
Speaker 1: FCC building in DC, they take notice you're responsible. Just
17:13
Speaker 1: one big test. But the the rest borg, I think
17:16
Speaker 1: what bothers me is that stupid abbreviation for yeah, rest
17:22
Speaker 1: boorg and the O is capitalized even though it's one
17:24
Speaker 1: word and as an abbreviation. But the point is it
17:28
Speaker 1: can be anybody. At first, it was just phone companies
17:31
Speaker 1: that were able to do that, and then it kind
17:33
Speaker 1: of became more democratized in the nineties. Um, and that
17:36
Speaker 1: from that point, at the moment it became democratized, it
17:39
Speaker 1: became corrupt almost immediately. Yeah, I mean corrupt in the
17:44
Speaker 1: sense that, um, it's I think some ne'er do well,
17:49
Speaker 1: some non responsible people. Hey, this would be a pretty
17:53
Speaker 1: easy way to take advantage of people, um by acting
17:57
Speaker 1: as a middleman and charging someone fifty bucks to say,
18:00
Speaker 1: I can find them a toll three number. Here you go,
18:02
Speaker 1: here's your number, right, which that in and of itself,
18:05
Speaker 1: there's no problem with that, And apparently the SEC doesn't
18:08
Speaker 1: have any problems with that. If you set yourself up
18:10
Speaker 1: as a service, if you're really doing it. Yes, so
18:12
Speaker 1: if you if you say, okay, you can come to
18:15
Speaker 1: my website and you can look up a number and
18:17
Speaker 1: I will try to find it for you, and if
18:19
Speaker 1: it's available, I will I will get it for you,
18:21
Speaker 1: and I'm going to charge you a fee for that.
18:24
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that morally, legally or otherwise. The
18:27
Speaker 1: problem comes in where some of these rest boards say yes,
18:31
Speaker 1: it's fifty bucks to search, and then oh, yeah, this
18:34
Speaker 1: this number that ends in pain p A I in
18:37
Speaker 1: that's gonna cost you an extra grand. That totally flies
18:41
Speaker 1: in the face of the FCC rules surrounding phone numbers
18:45
Speaker 1: of any kind, including toll free numbers, which is that
18:48
Speaker 1: they're they're meant to be totally neutral. You're not supposed
18:51
Speaker 1: to be able to profit off of a phone number whatsoever. Um.
18:54
Speaker 1: You can profit off of like the search and all
18:56
Speaker 1: that stuff, but a particular phone number is not. Its
18:59
Speaker 1: supposed to be doled out on a first come, first
19:01
Speaker 1: serve service basis with zero zero dollars attached to it whatsoever.
19:07
Speaker 1: And that's just not how it works. Yeah, so you
19:10
Speaker 1: can't goose somebody if Dr Paine once eight d or
19:15
Speaker 1: tea pain, tea pain, tooth pain, No, just tea pain.
19:19
Speaker 1: Your dentists can't get that one because t Pain's got it. Well,
19:23
Speaker 1: they like you might get it, but they can't pay
19:25
Speaker 1: extra for it. It's first come, first served always. Um.
19:28
Speaker 1: You were only allowed to subscribe to the amount of
19:33
Speaker 1: toll free numbers that you actually intend to use, so
19:36
Speaker 1: you can't just go get a bunch, like lock up
19:37
Speaker 1: a bunch, kind of like you can do with domain names. Actually,
19:40
Speaker 1: now that they think about it, yeah, you can't do
19:42
Speaker 1: that with eight hundred numbers. Can't do it. Uh. You
19:45
Speaker 1: also to prevent this kind of hoarding, the mandate that
19:49
Speaker 1: you allocate that reserved number within eight months, So it's
19:52
Speaker 1: got I guess it's got to be in use within deadlines.
19:55
Speaker 1: They have terms for this. Actually, brokering is selling and
19:58
Speaker 1: profiting from numbers. There's hoarding, and then there's warehousing. Warehousing
20:03
Speaker 1: is where you you take numbers even though there's there's
20:06
Speaker 1: no one that you're directly getting at four. And then
20:09
Speaker 1: hoarding is getting a bunch of numbers, sitting on them
20:12
Speaker 1: and selling them. And this is a big no no.
20:14
Speaker 1: But for a very long time it seemed to UM
20:18
Speaker 1: the FCC and the people running the FEC that it
20:20
Speaker 1: was not worth enforcing until I guess it got kind
20:24
Speaker 1: of um kind of wild westy, and there was a
20:29
Speaker 1: company called I T Connections that was fine three point
20:33
Speaker 1: seven million dollars into the Oh yeah, these are all
20:37
Speaker 1: like spam kings who came up with a sideline of
20:40
Speaker 1: like selling telephone numbers, and their whole thing is no,
20:43
Speaker 1: they're just performing a service. And then when the FEC says,
20:46
Speaker 1: well then why isn't your service the same regardless of
20:49
Speaker 1: any number, they say, well, this is all just supplying demand. Well,
20:52
Speaker 1: there's not supposed to be any supplying demand. It's supposed
20:55
Speaker 1: to be first come, first serve um. But that's and
20:59
Speaker 1: apparently they just look the other way until I believe
21:01
Speaker 1: two thousand seven ten, when the I T connect or
21:05
Speaker 1: Connection Company got hit with that fine. You know, those
21:09
Speaker 1: types of places discussed me more than just about anything. Yeah. Yeah,
21:14
Speaker 1: it's the ones that like, uh, you know what I'm
21:17
Speaker 1: talking about, Like the people that are like looking just
21:20
Speaker 1: looking for the loopholes to exploit so they can rip
21:24
Speaker 1: someone off the Yeah, the kind of people who carry
21:27
Speaker 1: like a neck brace in their back seat at all
21:29
Speaker 1: times in cases, or like I P trolls and uh yeah,
21:35
Speaker 1: I mean we can't go down that road too much.
21:37
Speaker 1: But the podcast industry, you know, kind of went through
21:39
Speaker 1: a pretty famous situation like that a few years ago.
21:42
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, people that just just go
21:45
Speaker 1: out and do some hard work. Yeah, you know, stop
21:48
Speaker 1: stop speculating, don't look for the angle, right, do you
21:53
Speaker 1: know to get rich? Yeah, because you're not creating anything.
21:56
Speaker 1: You're just sucking the life out of stuff. God, it's
21:58
Speaker 1: just so upsetting. Uh. Like you said, the FCC wasn't
22:02
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention. So these things have been
22:04
Speaker 1: sold on eBay two at big fat price tags. Um.
22:08
Speaker 1: And beyond just the FCC not paying attention is apparently
22:13
Speaker 1: there's rest boards. It's it's just hard to keep track
22:15
Speaker 1: and they can be disorganized. There's no real system to
22:18
Speaker 1: get it all cleaned up, and so inadvertently this can
22:21
Speaker 1: happen to Yeah. There was one famous case though, two
22:24
Speaker 1: that that went to circuit court. I think maybe I
22:28
Speaker 1: don't remember, but there was a Mercedes dealer in in
22:31
Speaker 1: Minneapolis and St. Paul who had since the eighties eight
22:36
Speaker 1: hundred Mercedes, and it went to his gold his Yeah,
22:40
Speaker 1: when he said that, he think he he cites that
22:43
Speaker 1: as reviving um just kind of a ho hum Mercedes
22:47
Speaker 1: dealership that that phone number. So he wasn't about to
22:49
Speaker 1: give it up. When Mercedes came around and said, hey,
22:52
Speaker 1: we want that for our national customer service, he said no,
22:56
Speaker 1: and they sued him for it. They basically tried to
22:58
Speaker 1: get him on copyright and for a mint, and I
23:01
Speaker 1: guess the judge of the jury found like, no, you
23:03
Speaker 1: can't like, like a toll free number is not copyright infringement.
23:07
Speaker 1: And so Mercedes to this day you have to call
23:10
Speaker 1: eight hundred four fo R Mercedes, which does the other thing? Chuck?
23:15
Speaker 1: You know my famous um dislike of acronyms that don't
23:19
Speaker 1: include a word. Yeah, a phone number, a toll free
23:24
Speaker 1: phone number that includes letters that go beyond the number
23:28
Speaker 1: of possible numbers you can use. That really bugs me too,
23:32
Speaker 1: I think because it was it wasn't until I was
23:34
Speaker 1: in my twenties that I figured out what was going on. Yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: Like I would type the whole thing out and be like,
23:40
Speaker 1: you know, connect and I'd be like, I'm not done
23:42
Speaker 1: dialing yet. I But it was satisfying for that judge
23:45
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot down a big corporation like
23:48
Speaker 1: that under the you know, prior settled law of you snooze,
23:52
Speaker 1: you lose, Sorry Mercedes, just because you're huge sorry finders
23:58
Speaker 1: keepers and you snooze you loose. Man. Wouldn't court be
24:01
Speaker 1: like kids Court? I didn't that a show Captain Kangaroo Court? Yeah?
24:06
Speaker 1: Come on? So um, I think it's high time, Chuck.
24:10
Speaker 1: Since we were talking about the eight hundred Mercedes case,
24:14
Speaker 1: that very famous legal case in the United States, we
24:18
Speaker 1: talked about vanity numbers because that is as vanity and
24:22
Speaker 1: number as there ever has been. The singer Vanity could
24:25
Speaker 1: have a phone number and it still wouldn't be more
24:27
Speaker 1: of a vanity number than eight hundred Mercedes. Yeah, and
24:31
Speaker 1: you know we we mentioned it earlier. These are pretty
24:34
Speaker 1: tremendous advertising perks for a company if you get it.
24:40
Speaker 1: If you land on a eight hundred Flowers or one
24:43
Speaker 1: eight hundred go fed x um, you've struck gold because
24:47
Speaker 1: that will stick in someone's head. They have done studies
24:51
Speaker 1: over the years. There was one where they showed an
24:53
Speaker 1: eighty four percent improvement and recall over newmeric phone numbers
24:57
Speaker 1: and from like a TV ad or a billboard, and
25:00
Speaker 1: if you're listening to the radio, it goes from SEV
25:05
Speaker 1: recall to five recall. If it's got a catchy little jingly,
25:12
Speaker 1: especially when there's a song attached to it, a toll
25:14
Speaker 1: free vanity number. Yeah, that's it. I'm a huge, huge difference,
25:18
Speaker 1: absolutely true. I can't imagine how much money F t
25:21
Speaker 1: D has gotten from that Flowers phone numbers that there's Yeah,
25:27
Speaker 1: I think they even have I think their website is
25:30
Speaker 1: Flowers dot com. They got in there early. I guess
25:33
Speaker 1: all these yeah, all these generic ones, you're there. They
25:36
Speaker 1: know how to work the system and push people around
25:39
Speaker 1: better than Mercedes lawyers too. Yeah, they send in the
25:42
Speaker 1: guy with a little winged hat and loincloth, what starts
25:47
Speaker 1: shoving people around? Didn't that One't that? F tds uh
25:50
Speaker 1: oh yeah yeah, describing You're like, why do you have
25:55
Speaker 1: a video camera on me? Right? Yeah? No, it totally was.
25:59
Speaker 1: He was that herms Hermes are Mercury. I think, um
26:03
Speaker 1: so I mentioned, you know, those good generic ones. It
26:07
Speaker 1: is great if you have one eight hundred Flowers, of course,
26:09
Speaker 1: but uh they interviewed someone for this house stuff works
26:12
Speaker 1: article who knows a lot about this stuff, and they
26:15
Speaker 1: say and Quimby says, yeah, you know, these generic ones
26:19
Speaker 1: are fine, but they're all taking. What you really want
26:20
Speaker 1: these days is to get in there and actually try
26:23
Speaker 1: and say something about your company as well. So instead
26:27
Speaker 1: of one eight hundred car loans, it's one eight hundred
26:31
Speaker 1: quick loan or one eight hundred fast Closer. That to
26:35
Speaker 1: me would be a red flag to stay away from
26:37
Speaker 1: that mortgage company fast closer. Yeah, one hundred fast closer, Yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: which is and you'll note that it doesn't have to
26:45
Speaker 1: be seven digits. It can be over seven digits. Obviously
26:48
Speaker 1: drives me bad. Why just because the extra number. Yeah,
26:52
Speaker 1: it's it's just not it's not it's not it's missing
26:58
Speaker 1: the mark. Anybody can be one to three, so that
27:01
Speaker 1: would be fast cloth. Yeah, just go with that, and
27:09
Speaker 1: then and then make it part of your ad that
27:11
Speaker 1: this is silent or one eight quick loan would be
27:16
Speaker 1: one eight hundred kuai kakloa. Yes, I would remember that.
27:23
Speaker 1: I would remember that. I feel like we should get
27:25
Speaker 1: an eight hundred number. I had the same thought. Actually,
27:29
Speaker 1: did you really? Yeah? What could we do with it?
27:31
Speaker 1: Eight hundred podcast is actually perfect? But we do with it?
27:35
Speaker 1: I don't know. We could We could leave messages on
27:37
Speaker 1: it once in a while. We could do a nine
27:41
Speaker 1: hundred number. Yeah, it makes some cash and we'll talk
27:43
Speaker 1: about that right after this, So chuck your right. A
28:08
Speaker 1: nine hundred number makes way more sense because we could
28:11
Speaker 1: be rolling in it if it were. Yeah, I think
28:15
Speaker 1: younger listeners might not fully appreciate the fact that there
28:18
Speaker 1: was a point in time. How many years did this?
28:23
Speaker 1: This was less than ten even hey, yeah it was.
28:25
Speaker 1: The heyday was basically seven to I think about ninety.
28:30
Speaker 1: People really figured out what a rip off it was
28:33
Speaker 1: about six years. There was a time, a six year
28:35
Speaker 1: period in this country where you could set up a
28:38
Speaker 1: nine hundred number that was it could be anything, but
28:44
Speaker 1: it was basically an audio message of some kind and
28:48
Speaker 1: people would pay a ton of money to call in
28:55
Speaker 1: to speak to hear about the Kiss Army, or to
28:58
Speaker 1: hear about Iffany the Singer, or Grandpa Munster, or the
29:05
Speaker 1: Psychic hot line or the board sexy roommates like you
29:11
Speaker 1: name it. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them especially were
29:14
Speaker 1: um uh what would they call them? Phone sex That's right, No,
29:21
Speaker 1: well they so there was this, there was this idea
29:24
Speaker 1: that so early on a lot of them were, and
29:26
Speaker 1: then it spread out into more and more ideas, but
29:29
Speaker 1: it was stuck. It was kind of saddled with that
29:32
Speaker 1: idea that it was all just phone sex lines unfairly,
29:35
Speaker 1: but that was the reputation it had. But yeah, you could,
29:38
Speaker 1: you could do anything. And the whole thing started very
29:41
Speaker 1: simply and primitively, I believe, with um not it wasn't
29:44
Speaker 1: the first one. NASA wasn't the first one, but NASA
29:46
Speaker 1: had one of the first successful ones, which I just loved.
29:50
Speaker 1: It was called dial a shuttle and one nine nine NASA.
29:55
Speaker 1: You could listen to conversations between ground control and the
29:59
Speaker 1: astronauts on the S shuttle, which was a huge There
30:02
Speaker 1: was like a million people called in in nineteen eighty
30:05
Speaker 1: two alone, um, and every single one of those people
30:08
Speaker 1: were paying, from what I saw, a minimum of two
30:11
Speaker 1: dollars a minute when you call the nine hundred number.
30:13
Speaker 1: Two dollars was the was the base that I think,
30:16
Speaker 1: like your phone company was going to charge for the service,
30:20
Speaker 1: and then whatever extra beyond two dollars it was was
30:23
Speaker 1: what the the entrepreneur, the nine hundred number information provider
30:28
Speaker 1: was charging. So if you paid a minute for every
30:31
Speaker 1: minute of content that you sat there and listened to
30:33
Speaker 1: on your phone, you were paying that person who was
30:36
Speaker 1: just some schmo who record, had somebody record some stuff
30:40
Speaker 1: for a nine hundred number. They were getting a dollar
30:42
Speaker 1: a minute for every single person that called in. And
30:45
Speaker 1: very quickly from when this started in seven, when AT
30:48
Speaker 1: and T started a program that said you can provide
30:52
Speaker 1: your own content and get your own nine hundred number. Um,
30:55
Speaker 1: it made a lot of people very rich, like very quickly. Yeah,
30:59
Speaker 1: it was a way to make a lot of dough fast. Um.
31:03
Speaker 1: I think there was this one meeting. Uh, I don't
31:05
Speaker 1: I was about to call it a famous meeting. It
31:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't famous at all. It was Appalachian. Yeah, it was
31:09
Speaker 1: this meeting that they referenced in this article. At least
31:12
Speaker 1: where'd you get this price snomics? Priceonomics? Man, God bless them?
31:15
Speaker 1: This is by Seawan Revive. Yeah, it was a good article.
31:18
Speaker 1: It's very cool, the rise and fall of the nine number.
31:21
Speaker 1: But this was a telecom strategist named Bruce Kushnik who
31:25
Speaker 1: helped Sprint start their own nine hundred service in the
31:28
Speaker 1: late eighties, and he said that he remembers a meeting
31:32
Speaker 1: where they had twenty five or so of the first
31:35
Speaker 1: developers that did this in a room and said raise
31:37
Speaker 1: your hand if you're a millionaire, and like almost everyone
31:39
Speaker 1: raised their hand, and they were just they were They
31:44
Speaker 1: had to know that it was a short window, I think,
31:46
Speaker 1: which is probably why they they weren't just like, yeah,
31:48
Speaker 1: I'll just do this one number. They were like, it's
31:50
Speaker 1: a gold mine out there for probably five years. Yeah,
31:53
Speaker 1: and if you were like a celebrity like Whole Cogan
31:56
Speaker 1: or yeah really any w w F Wrestler, Glow Wrestler
32:00
Speaker 1: or New Kids on the Block or DJ Jazzy Jeff
32:03
Speaker 1: in the Fresh Prince, like some guy would come up
32:07
Speaker 1: to you and say, Hey, I've got this business idea
32:09
Speaker 1: for you, and we're gonna charge three and we're gonna
32:12
Speaker 1: split a dollar ninety five. All you have to do
32:14
Speaker 1: is read this you know, five minutes script, you know,
32:18
Speaker 1: once a week or once every two weeks or something
32:20
Speaker 1: like that, and then that's it. We're gonna split this money.
32:23
Speaker 1: And it made a bunch of money. It was really
32:26
Speaker 1: popular for for a very brief time. And the reason
32:30
Speaker 1: why it was popular was because it was um as
32:33
Speaker 1: Sean Revie puts it, it it was like a proto Internet,
32:37
Speaker 1: except rather than everything being free and then advertising driven
32:41
Speaker 1: where you get the content free, but you you know,
32:44
Speaker 1: have you're subjected to ads. Sounds vaguely familiar for some reason, Um,
32:49
Speaker 1: you paid for this free content. Yeah, and it but
32:53
Speaker 1: it had such a range, like you were talking about
32:56
Speaker 1: everything from like Dj Jazzy Jeff doing something too, uh
33:01
Speaker 1: vote for Miss America or some legitimate things like and
33:04
Speaker 1: I don't know how good or legit it was, but
33:07
Speaker 1: you can get tax helper, insurance advice or whatever, or
33:10
Speaker 1: tech support to play wheel of fortune like Interact a
33:14
Speaker 1: Wheel of Fortune, or farm commodity prices. It was just
33:18
Speaker 1: all over the map. People realized we can get information
33:23
Speaker 1: to people and charge a lot of money for it,
33:27
Speaker 1: and especially if there are children involved, you can basically
33:30
Speaker 1: trick them into running up a huge bill that their
33:34
Speaker 1: parents are gonna have to pay. Yeah, man, that's Santa.
33:36
Speaker 1: When do you remember that? I remember, man, totally. So
33:40
Speaker 1: there was this Santa line, Chuck, you gotta tell about
33:42
Speaker 1: the Santa line. Well, the Santa why because I called it? Yeah? Yeah.
33:48
Speaker 1: This was a Santa Claus hotline that asked kids to
33:51
Speaker 1: hold up their phone to the screen, and when they
33:54
Speaker 1: did that, there was a tone, a programmed tone that
33:58
Speaker 1: automatically dialed the number that I guess your phone would hear.
34:03
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, this kid was hooked
34:04
Speaker 1: up to Santa Claus hotline where it was probably I mean,
34:08
Speaker 1: what do you think? It was probably just some Santa
34:09
Speaker 1: Claus saying that he was working very hard on everyone's
34:12
Speaker 1: gifts to be a good boy for minutes and minutes
34:16
Speaker 1: and minutes for two or more a minute, So the
34:19
Speaker 1: kid didn't even dial the number like the ad dialed
34:22
Speaker 1: it for them with the tones. Yeah, and that was
34:25
Speaker 1: one of the one of the big fraudulent things about
34:28
Speaker 1: a lot of these, And some of them are legit.
34:30
Speaker 1: They might have been dumb, but they weren't like literally
34:33
Speaker 1: ripping you off by causing these long delays. But a
34:36
Speaker 1: lot of them would do these long delays. And I
34:39
Speaker 1: don't know about the Santa one, but I could totally
34:42
Speaker 1: see like, what's your name, son, Well, let me see
34:47
Speaker 1: what I've got for you, and then for the next
34:49
Speaker 1: ten minutes like, well it's not this one. Let me
34:52
Speaker 1: look in this other room over here. Yeah, and like
34:55
Speaker 1: a kid would sit there for thirty minutes waiting to
34:58
Speaker 1: see what Santa had for him. Yeah, there was, there was.
35:01
Speaker 1: It was pretty perennial. Um the headlines or articles about
35:05
Speaker 1: some family that got hit with like a ten thousand
35:08
Speaker 1: dollar phone bill or something like that. Um. There was
35:11
Speaker 1: one girl who famously called um the two Corey's hotline
35:15
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixteen times commercials on YouTube. Yeah, there's
35:20
Speaker 1: actually there's a BuzzFeed article called thirty of the weirdest
35:23
Speaker 1: nine numbers from the nineties, and they mentioned one that
35:26
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of before that I'm not convinced isn't
35:31
Speaker 1: an Internet meme, like a fake Internet meme, But it
35:34
Speaker 1: is the crying number, where this ad mentions it's like,
35:40
Speaker 1: why are all these people crying to find out call
35:43
Speaker 1: this number? And these people are having like this kind
35:45
Speaker 1: of cathartic sobbing cry on the phone, and it looks real,
35:50
Speaker 1: but it's so tantalizing lee wrong that it isn't quite nineties.
35:55
Speaker 1: It's way more of the twenty one century and like
35:57
Speaker 1: the idea of it than interesting than at So I'm
36:00
Speaker 1: not sure it's real. I couldn't find anything about it either,
36:03
Speaker 1: other than there's this ad that exists. There was nobody
36:07
Speaker 1: on the internet who's like I called this and yes,
36:09
Speaker 1: this is totally real. Yeah. Um. The Prisonomics article mentions
36:14
Speaker 1: another one whether it was and I think these were
36:16
Speaker 1: pretty common too, And this is the just the worst
36:19
Speaker 1: when you're like praying on someone that needs work, when
36:22
Speaker 1: you would call a nine hundred number for driver jobs,
36:25
Speaker 1: um at twenty dollars a call. But what they didn't
36:28
Speaker 1: tell you was there was only like two or three positions,
36:31
Speaker 1: so they get all these people calling in at twenty
36:33
Speaker 1: bucks a pop for the same three positions, right, just
36:38
Speaker 1: so mean. There was also a hotline that you could call,
36:42
Speaker 1: a nine hundred number that charged you twenty five dollars
36:45
Speaker 1: to learn how to set up your own nine hotline. Yeah,
36:49
Speaker 1: that one makes sense that one might have paid off.
36:52
Speaker 1: And then the phone sex it was that was a big,
36:54
Speaker 1: big thing. And um, I never called any of those,
36:57
Speaker 1: but those uh. In the in the Robert All movie Shortcuts,
37:00
Speaker 1: you know, Jennifer Jason Lee was a phone sex operator,
37:02
Speaker 1: and some very funny scenes of her, like with a
37:06
Speaker 1: baby in one arm and a cigarette and like doing
37:08
Speaker 1: her ironing and okay, house cleaning while she was like,
37:12
Speaker 1: you know, talking dirty. I was trying to remember what
37:15
Speaker 1: what movie it was. It was Shortcuts. I was thinking
37:17
Speaker 1: it was. It isn't um Punch Drunk Love. Yeah, there's
37:21
Speaker 1: a sex line subplot in that one too. Who is it?
37:26
Speaker 1: Who's the love interest in that? Uh? In Punch Drunk Love,
37:30
Speaker 1: the love interest is it was Emily Watson, Okay? And
37:34
Speaker 1: she was she yeah, she was. She was the one
37:37
Speaker 1: who was doing the phone sex line and then Philip
37:40
Speaker 1: Seymour Hoffman was like the owner of it. No, I
37:43
Speaker 1: don't think she worked for him. Philip Seymour Hoffman was, Oh,
37:47
Speaker 1: he was blackmailing Adam Sandler that way. I finally saw
37:51
Speaker 1: Uncut gems Man. Jesus, Oh, yeah, did you like it
37:54
Speaker 1: or hate it? I hated it? Did you really? I
37:57
Speaker 1: hated it more than I've hated any movie in a while.
38:01
Speaker 1: And because it's possible, those brothers listen to this, and
38:05
Speaker 1: I know it must it was clearly they worked very
38:07
Speaker 1: hard on it, and like they must be very proud
38:09
Speaker 1: of it. But I hate that movie. Oh man, it
38:11
Speaker 1: was my favorite movie the year. You're crazy. I'm not crazy.
38:14
Speaker 1: It's a lot of people's favorite movie. Wow, I'm no.
38:17
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, Chuck, I'm surprised that you think it
38:20
Speaker 1: was the I loved it. Well, we disagree on that one. No,
38:25
Speaker 1: I mean it's a divisive movie. I haven't met many people.
38:29
Speaker 1: We've been a lot, We've done a lot of stuff
38:31
Speaker 1: on that on movie Crush, and I haven't talked too
38:33
Speaker 1: many people that are like, I don't know, I could
38:35
Speaker 1: take your leave. It was all right. Most people are
38:36
Speaker 1: like I loved it and I loved that those guys
38:39
Speaker 1: bring that kind of intensity and stress to a film. Uh,
38:43
Speaker 1: and some people are just like, uh uh it was
38:46
Speaker 1: it was almost exclusively the ending for me, the very
38:50
Speaker 1: very end. Yeah. Oh, I loved the ending. No, you
38:53
Speaker 1: don't get to do that. That's against all the rules. Man.
38:56
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I thought it was so great. Now and
38:59
Speaker 1: I liked Good Time. I thought that was a cool movie.
39:01
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, this but now this is a good good
39:04
Speaker 1: Time followed the rules. This one didn't follow the rules,
39:06
Speaker 1: and I hate that movie for it. I loved it. Well.
39:10
Speaker 1: Since we um started talking about movies, I guess that's
39:12
Speaker 1: it for toll Free and nine hundred numbers. Yeah, I
39:15
Speaker 1: don't have anything else. It's uh, it's pretty think about that.
39:17
Speaker 1: They're both sort of relics. But eight hundred numbers survived
39:20
Speaker 1: and nine hundred numbers? Are there any anymore? I don't know.
39:24
Speaker 1: We're gonna find out if there are. We might set
39:26
Speaker 1: one up. Let's look into all right, okay, nine seven
39:29
Speaker 1: six evil? But ours could go to charity or something. Sure,
39:32
Speaker 1: sure half of it? So uh, I guess then, what
39:37
Speaker 1: chuck is time for listener mail? It is this is
39:42
Speaker 1: a WASP related the band. Oh if only Hey, Josh,
39:48
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry or whoever is producing. That's what it's
39:52
Speaker 1: come to see. I've been a listener for seven or
39:55
Speaker 1: eight years, ever since I got an internship that put
39:56
Speaker 1: me in a car four hours a day, five days
39:59
Speaker 1: a week. You're some story about wasps reminds me of
40:01
Speaker 1: my own childhood experience with a wasp. I was around
40:04
Speaker 1: six or seven. I was swinging at my neighbor's house
40:06
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden, my butt started to hurt,
40:08
Speaker 1: like really bad. So I did what was natural, ran home,
40:12
Speaker 1: screaming for my mom. I'm not sure where she was,
40:14
Speaker 1: but my dad was upstairs and asked what was wrong,
40:17
Speaker 1: and I just said, my butt really hurts, and he
40:19
Speaker 1: sort of laughed, but he could tell I was in
40:21
Speaker 1: serious pain. So he told me to drop my shorts
40:23
Speaker 1: and he gasped. Uh. He said it was really red
40:26
Speaker 1: and there was a wasp still in his underwear, still
40:29
Speaker 1: stinging me. I guess he killed it. I don't really
40:32
Speaker 1: remember that part, just being in the tub afterwards. Uh.
40:35
Speaker 1: And you mentioned a wasp and sting up to ten times.
40:38
Speaker 1: We counted thirteen stings on my left butt cheek. Gosh,
40:42
Speaker 1: and that is from Michael Brown in Portland, Oregon. Man, Michael,
40:47
Speaker 1: glad you made it through that one. I wonder how
40:49
Speaker 1: you feel about wasps even after our episode on it.
40:53
Speaker 1: Do you imagine being a little kid and running home
40:55
Speaker 1: with a wasp in your underwear? No, I can be
40:58
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being a wasp and some little kids
41:00
Speaker 1: underwear while they're running home either. Yeah, because you know
41:03
Speaker 1: that's not gonna come to a good end. You might
41:05
Speaker 1: as well tell all the stings and you can I
41:07
Speaker 1: feel a bath coming. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Michael.
41:11
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, like
41:12
Speaker 1: Michael did to let us know some horrible traumatic thing
41:15
Speaker 1: that happened to you when you were a kid, we
41:16
Speaker 1: love that stuff. You can send it in an email
41:19
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41:25
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41:27
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41:33
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