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Prohibition: Turns Out That America Loves to Drink · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: from housetof Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. And that makes the Stuff you should know
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the podcast the sequel, or it makes it a greasy
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Wednesday night on top of a rooftop brewery. Yeah, you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: want to do a little recap for everybody? Yeah, let's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: do a very brief recap of our trivia night. Pack
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: it away. I don't remember it. It was awesome. It
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. It was jam packed, overflowing
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: with people, just like New York was. We had John
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and Joe and Dave and everyone had a blast. We
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: lost again. We were in the lead until the last question,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and I ruined it for everybody if I remember correctly. Yeah,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: but you know what, you did not ruin it because
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: no one had the right answer on our team, thankfully.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: That would have been crushing. Do you want to you
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: want to do this? The question? What was the last question?
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  Speaker 1: The last question was what is the second leading album
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of all times sales? Wise second behind three selling album
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of all time. And I believe you said Dark Side
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of the Moon, which I thought was a really great guess. Uh,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: someone else, Joe Randaza said the Eagles greatest hits, another
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: great guests and both of us were wrong, or both
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of you were wrong. But we went with Dark Side
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of the Moon, didn't we? Wasn't that our team answer?
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  Speaker 1: I think so? Um, it was a C D C's
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: back and black. Yeah, and you know what, I somewhere
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: in my brain, I knew that that was really high
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  Speaker 1: up the list. It didn't come to me, but yeah,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: we were in second place. We end up losing on
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the last question first and going into the last but
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: no one wants to see his win. It's no fun
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: if we're like, yeah, that's what I told Hodgman. He went, no, No,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I want to win and I want to rub it
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: there face well, get a better team than Hodsman. What
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: are you doing hanging out with us? It was a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: lot of fun though, and thanks to everyone who came
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: out and hopefully will be coming too a city near you.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: We're still trying trying to get that together. Okay, so
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: while we're doing this, um, I think we need to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: let more people know about our Facebook page. I suspect
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: that there is a small but substantial and by that
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I mean really large segment of stuff. You should know.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Listeners who don't necessarily go all the way to listener mail,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: don't listen to the whole podcast. That's where the gold is.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: We call them s y S listeners. That's right. Um,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: so we always talk about our Facebook page there, So
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: there's it's possible if people out there who don't know
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that this thing exists, right, Chuck, that's right. And it's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: good for us if you go there and click like,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: And it's not only good for us, but it's a
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  Speaker 1: it's a good Facebook page. It is you know, it's
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: like fun and people contribute and chat back and forth,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and we talk back and forth with We come down
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: from our ivory tire everyone and walk around gland hand
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: people and then like have some people beat up for
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: amazement and then go back up to our ivory tower. Know.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We we put great music videos on there, and by
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: music videos I mean music on YouTube. Uh cool, interesting
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: links to great articles and studies and stuff like that,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: as do most of the people who are on this page.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So go check it out. Facebook dot com slash stuff
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you should know. Yeah, and if you if you click like,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you can hide us still if you don't want it
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in your news feed, well you are buddy in Afghanistan.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Rhodes Uh send us an email. You saw this right,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: He's saying you can like us, so we still get
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the like, which again makes us look good. Um, but
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: you you you can also select and not receive updates
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: from whenever we update if you want to feed, so
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you won't be bothered by us, and you can come
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and check at your leisure, but you could still like
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: it too. And then Twitter real quick, Chuck, Um, we
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  Speaker 1: are on Twitter and we're at s Y s K podcast. Okay, yes,
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  Speaker 1: all right, so Chuck, this wonderful time that we had
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: on Wednesday night, Yes, ah, at a brewery. Yeah, there
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: was one of the darkest periods of American history. There
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: was a time not too long ago where that could
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: have never happened, or if it had, we would have
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: been outlaws. Yeah, it would have been on the We
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: couldn't have publicized it on a podcast. That would have
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: been on the down low at a private place. We
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: would have to just whisper it on the street or
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: we could have drawn in chalk like speak easy this way.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Sure the s Y s K speak easy trivia night
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: this way. This dark period in American history is also
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: referred to as prohibition, also referred to as the Noble
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Experiment by some. It was a noble experiment. The reason
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: why is because the whole reason prohibition was ever enacted,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: or largely one of the reasons why, was because we realized,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: remember the addiction podcast. Did that come out yet? I
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: don't think so? Okay, so look real the addiction podcast.
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  Speaker 1: But consider this. It wasn't until about the nineteenth century
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  Speaker 1: that people started talking about um being addicted to alcohol.
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  Speaker 1: An awareness of that there was such thing as alcoholism
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  Speaker 1: came about. When there was there were some really nice
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: people in the world who said, you know what, since
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  Speaker 1: you can't give it up, we're gonna all of us
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  Speaker 1: are going to give it up together, so you won't
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  Speaker 1: be tempted any longer. Because I mean, consider nowadays, being
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: an alcoholic and trying to give up alcohol and seeing
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: it everywhere, it's gotta make it that much harder. So
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: that the goal of prohibition of this um. The temperance
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: movement that eventually lead to prohibition was to not tempt
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: alcoholics any longer. Yeah. You know what's funny too. When
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I was reading this, a lot of the reasons, which
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: we'll get into, they mentioned, are you know that the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: alcohol can lead to, um, domestic violence and child abuse,
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  Speaker 1: and Henry Ford said it leads to a lack of
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  Speaker 1: productivity at work. And I was reading all this thinking, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know, that a lot of great points, but that
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  Speaker 1: still didn't mean that you should try and prohibit people
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  Speaker 1: from drinking. It was just a bad idea, even though
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  Speaker 1: a lot of the points they had were solid. Of course,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it leads and they remain. If you look at the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Old House Stuff Works employee handbook, one of the things
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that says specifically is don't drink at work. I know,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I almost didn't take the job for that reason, but
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I did. But no, there were a lot of very
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: solid points that everybody's kind of realized about alcohol. That, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's directly connected to physical violence in the home
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  Speaker 1: and outside arrests. Um. Also you know moonings then all
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  Speaker 1: goes up when alcohol is around, right. Um. But as
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: you were saying, it was a failed noble experiment, It
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: was a bad idea, but it was one that we
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: had to learn the hard way, and we've learned much
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: from it. Right. Sure, Even people that I thought it
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was a great idea at the end of the Noble
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  Speaker 1: Experiment said that wasn't such a good idea. I guess
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: still hate alcohol, but that you just can't do this. Um,
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk about this. From nineteen thirty three, the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: United States had on the books an amendment, an amendment
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: to the Constitution that's huge, and plus it makes this
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Congress look ridiculous that they did this. Um. The Eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: Amendment went on the books, was enacted in ninety and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: it forbade the sale, manufacturer, and transport of alcohol and importation. Okay,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: which transport, Well, no, you can still transport within Like
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  Speaker 1: you couldn't carry it from Kentucky to Georgia, right, nor
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  Speaker 1: imported from Canada to the US. You see what I'm saying.
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  Speaker 1: But you could keep it in your home and you
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  Speaker 1: could drink your face off. Well. The cool thing is too,
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  Speaker 1: is they I believe it was passed and then a
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  Speaker 1: year later is when it went into effect. So they
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: basically were like, you got a year, right, you can
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  Speaker 1: fill your basement full of booze. Yeah, And we don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not be breaking the law. That's I didn't actually
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  Speaker 1: realize this that it wasn't that you were allowed to
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  Speaker 1: drink at yourself. And did you you didn't get the pictures?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Did you know? There is a haunting photograph on page
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: zero of this article, the first page. It was taken
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: in ne and to speakeasy and like the people are
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  Speaker 1: all wearing it looks like the photo and the shining
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and there's this one gentleman who's not even necessarily the
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  Speaker 1: focus of the photo and he is just staring out
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty one into your soul. That's a very
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: creepy pick. That alone is reason enough to go check
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: out this this photo because he's on the stunt gravy,
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  Speaker 1: the jazz juice, the giggle juice, giggle water. So Josh started.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: But we have to go back in time just a
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: little bit um when it really started century pretty much,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: yeah and eight in the eighteen thirties. The idea of
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  Speaker 1: getting rid of alcohol is is when it first started
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to pick up from Steam and the temperance movement got going.
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  Speaker 1: Society started springing up, and by the time they actually
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: had the Federal the Amendment to the Constitution. I believed
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: there were, um, how many states had already h sixteen
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  Speaker 1: sixteen states had already banned alcohol in some way, so
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  Speaker 1: it was already going on, Chuck this nineteen states of
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  Speaker 1: the towns in America had some sort of ban already
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: going on. It was a very popular movement, UM And
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of reasons, but one one reason
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: is that these people have been doing this for a
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  Speaker 1: century before it finally took place. UM And as early
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: as eighteen thirty eight, Massachusetts UM created i think the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: country's first law against alcohol, where basically they said, you
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  Speaker 1: can buy all the alcohol you want, but it has
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to be in no less than this quantity, and that
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  Speaker 1: quantity just so happens to be more than any of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you drunks can afford. So we're de fact though banning
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  Speaker 1: alcohol because we're putting it out of your price range.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: The m surprise Massachusetts was one of the early states
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: because really come around lately. Yeah, because most of the
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: temperance movement had a lot of support obviously in the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Bible Belt in places like New York and Boston. In
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: these larger cities, they were kind of like, I'm not
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: so behind this, right, well, don't forget Massachusetts not too
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: far before this was burning, which is at the state
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: as guess it's a good point, right. So that was
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty six, Maine became the first state to pass
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a statewide prohibition law. That makes more sense sure being
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Maine teetotal Maine. Yeah. Um. And so this temperance movement's
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: going on. And remember this is the women were at
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the forefront of this movement. In large part. They weren't
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: they certainly weren't the only ones, but they were, um
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: at the forefront, not just because that they were, you know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: nagging people. Um, they they actually this is before they
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: had the right to vote, and prior to having the
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: right to vote, women figured out, you're not gonna give
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: us the right to vote. Well, we're gonna learn. We're
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: gonna be one of the first groups to learn to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: organize effectively. Um. And it wasn't just with the temperance movement. Um.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The women women uh basically created this movement alongside the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: labor movement in the early twentieth century or nineteenth century,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that was the consumer movement, and they were extremely effective
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in promoting consumer rights and they were also really big
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: into rabble Rousing like Them Committee against the High Cost
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: of Living in Detroit. That was the name of the committee.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It was a woman's organization UM and they would they
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: would do basically, they would do everything from consumer education
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: on the street like you deserve government protection of milk standards,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to um boycotts of local grocers, to actually storming meat
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: packing plants and pouring kerosene on thousands of pounds of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: meat so nobody could buy it. And they had these
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: really effective campaigns. And the Temperance Movement came about at
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the same time at this where women like had to
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: organize they have their voice her because they didn't have
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: the right to vote yet they didn't have suffrage. That's right, Josh.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And specifically, the Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed in
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three in Ohio. Uh years before that, eighteen
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: sixty nine, the Official Prohibition Party was formed because there
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: are people are like Democrats and Republicans are kind of
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: dragging their feet on this, so let's actually form a party.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Right in Holland, the the Women's Christian Temperance Movement right union,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yes union that that woman who led that Carrie Nation
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is an excellent example like the kind of boisterous nature
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of this, this kind of organization and protest. She was
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: known um for hanging out around saloons, praying on the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: front steps save these people's souls, and the people who
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: tried to come in, she would ward them off with
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the hatchet and she was arrested, um a couple of hundred.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: She was a rested thirty times between basically said busting
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: up bars. Yeah, she basically said, I can't vote, so
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to become a huge thorn in your side
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and you can't stop me. And she had direct experience
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: from it. They credit her um feracity ferociousness. I think
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I just made up a word. Her ferociousness against alcohol
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: for um, due to a short lived marriage to an alcoholic,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: left an imprint on her that, you know, being a
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: motivated individual. Yeah. What what's that bumper sticker about guns
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: don't kill people? I do know something about well behaved
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: women rarely make history something like that. Yeah, yeah, I
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: like that. It's good. Um, civil war comes along, Josh
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Jerry laughed at that for some reason because she has that. Okay,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the Civil War came along and that kind of slowed
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: things down a little bit. But it was just temporarily
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: because the war ended in people like the liquor industry
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: started booming again, which you would think would slow it more.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: But what really happened was it started booming such that
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the temperance movement got even more active to try and
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: take care of business basically right. And one of the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: things that really as as usual, I'm I'm loath to say,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: but one of the things that really drew popular support
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: together um was finding the proper scapegoats Germans and Irish immigrants.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: This country has a long standing tradition of forgetting that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: we're all immigrants and targeting the most recent immigrants to
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the country as the source of all of our worries,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and then our political parties go, yeah, it's their fault,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and that it just kind of goes down to hell
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: from there because Irish like to drink, the Irish like
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to drink, and the Germans love to brew beer, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: that they became the the sources we should we should
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: go ahead and correct that. There was a popular perception
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: that the Irish likely drink exactly and the Germans really did.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Um run most of the breweries still reason necessarily, but
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of German owned breweries in the US,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So the popular perception was the Germans are ruined, the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Irish are drinking. We need to target these two groups. Sure,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: so everybody hate them. And then that's how prohibition ended
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: up being passed in large part, right, Uh yeah, I
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: mean there were some a lot of groups against it
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: as well as as many as there were for it.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know about as many, but there were also
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: groups like the Association Against Prohibition Amendment and the Women's
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Organization for National Prohibition Reform exactly. So it wasn't everybody,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: but it gathered enough support where eventually Congress, that awful,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: awful Congress of nineteen nineteen, basically said, uh, you know,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: we kind of have to do this, and you've got
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a year to get all your booze, and what we're
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: gonna do to enforce this is past the Volstead Act
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: as well. Well. What was what really put it over
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the top, because this is nineteen nineteen and the in
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: World War One had just ended. But what really whipped
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: up prohibition pro prohibition sentiment up was World War One.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: We're fighting the Kaiser and these Germans are sitting here
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: using all the grain that we could feed our soldiers
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: with the brew beer and you're not in American if
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: you're drinking beer, right, right? And Mr Anheiser and Mr
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Bush were like no, they were like dis day night. Yeah.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So that led to, like you said, Chuck, the eighteenth Amendment,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and the eighteenth Amendment and of itself didn't do anything.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It had no teeth. It was a paper tiger. Well, yeah,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that's why the Volstad Act, right, and what did that do? Well?
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't enforce anything unless you have a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: way to do it, and that's what the Volstad A did.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It um define like the penalties if you were caught
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: doing this, exceptions which uh they had exceptions for medicinal
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: use and religious ceremony use. Yes, and apparently a lot
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of doctors prescribed alcohol during the prom how many? How many? Uh?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: They estimate that more than one million gallons of liquor
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: were consumed a year from prescription whisky. Wait till what
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: is it? Prop nineteen passes. Yeah, they got nothing on me. Naffodil, daffanel,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: medefanel menaffodil. You're thinking of monodyl and I bet there
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: were a lot of religious ceremonies going on to you
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. Well, yeah, you got to think
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: about the Catholics. I'm sure we're like, whoa, hey, yeah,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: blood of Christ and everything over here, right, yeah, we
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: need to do this like twice a week now. And
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: then they went enchanted. Now they did their communion, and um,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: that also defined what qualified as an intoxicating limit, which
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: was anything more than point five percent alcohol. And you
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: know what, that's actually still the case. Um. Back when
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I was for near beer. Yes, for back when I
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: was a strapping, fat ten year old boy, I used
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to cross the road tracks and go to open pantry
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and I would enjoy six packs of Kingsbury non alcoholic beer.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Who woa, whoa you drink not alcohol beer? Wet age
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: ten eleven? Secretly no secret right from your parents? No. No, Sometimes,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: like I go back and I look at some of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the stuff that I did, and I'm like, I had
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of freedom as a child. See, alcohol was
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: like a big no now in my house hold. On Um,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the reason why is because I knew I was in
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: the right. Another reason point five right is non alcoholic.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I can buy any non alcoholic beverage. Why this root
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: beer is non alcoholic and I can buy that and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I actually had an argument once with a clerk at
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: open pantry, and I think just the fact that this
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: ten year old was like stating his case. Finally, the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: guy was like, I finally care, just get out of here.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And yeah, no, I don't think my family liked it,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: but they just didn't want to get into it with me.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I would have gotten in big trouble for even that
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: because alcohol was stun gravy to my household. It was bad,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: it was the devil's juice, and it was not allowed
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: in the house. It was a really big deal. It's
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: amazing that I ever touched the stuff, you know, when
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I like, I didn't drink it all in high school.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I was a straight edge. What's more amazing to me
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: is that you didn't. You weren't more likely to touch
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: this stuff because it was prohibited. That was well. That
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: was one of the major effects of prohibition was that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: alcohol use when it did increase, overall, alcohol decreased as
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: an effective prohibition, but when it did increase, brother it
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: increased big time. Right, Yeah, let's talk about some of
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the effects, because it had effects on what you could
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: call the good side and the bad side, both medically
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and economically. Actually, most of the economic effects were pretty bad.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: They were bad unless you were al capone. But alcohol
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: trafficking obviously increased things like speakeasies and this will alcohol rings,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: bootlegger rings are pretty much comparable to today's drug dealers.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Rum runners. Yeah, there were European rum fleets is what
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: they call them, right, because no prohibition in Europe most
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of Europe. UM. So they just sail out into international
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: waters and people there at midnight and then they would
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: offload their cargo two bootleggers and you know that was that. Um.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: They the one reason they knew that things were really
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: getting pretty bad on the bootlegging scene that I didn't realize.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: This is pretty funny to me. Demand for ten thousand
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: dollar bills reached a high in the United States and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: nine and basically that was a pretty clear sign that
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: people wanted very large bills so they didn't have to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: have trunks full of money to make their switches in
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: international waters. Um. Political corruption was huge. In fact, there's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: a very famous quote from Mayor LaGuardia, who was running
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: New York at the time, who said this is a
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: great one. He said something along the lines of it
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: this country, and they're going to name an airport after
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the guy. Another awesome, awesome fact, Josh, as far as
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: when you said it started booming in a big way
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: prior to this. Prior to prohibition, there were less than
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: fifteen thousand bars legal bars in the US. After prohibition
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: in I'm sorry, in the midst of it, there were
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: more than thirty thousand, more than double the amount of
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: illegal speakeasies, and there were an estimated hundred thousand people
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: brewing alcohol of all sorts in their homes illegally. I
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: can tell you they were probably like ten prior to prohibition,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: people who like went to the trouble making their own right.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: But I mean, it's the same thing, like, don't you
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: think that if California legalizes pot, don't you think that
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: all those people who have a couple of plants growing
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: illegally in their house are gonna stop doing that and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: just go buy it at the store like everybody else.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know. The artisans would probably still grow their own,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: but maybe so, but in much the same way that
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: people homebrew beer now like there's a lot of trouble
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to go to that not everybody wants to do. You know, well,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you mentioned the non enforcement, and there's another stat here that, uh,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: it's pretty startling. At one point, they said, in New
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: York City, New York City, Yes, New York City, seven
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: thousand arrests were made for alcohol violations and seventeen of
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: those ended up in convictions. Even when they tried to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: enforce it, it wouldn't make it all the way through
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the legal system. That was the guardiest town by the way.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Well exactly, and they said in nineteen five, by nine
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: six states had laws that basically said quit investigating prohibition
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: cases or we're bust you down to private or whatever
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the police entry level is. We're gonna bust you down
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: to Keystone cop level. That's right, Chuck, Josh, you were
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: speaking economically, that was illegally. All that crime came up
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and corruption developed directly as a result of Prohibition al capone.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It was big for him, as you said, he turned
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: a I don't want to say two bit, but a
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: fledgling empire from Johnny Torrio into a hundred million dollar
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: a year enterprise, which that's a lot of cheese by
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: today's standards. Well, yeah, and he he was doing a
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: pretty good job of it there in Chicago until the mayor,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: who was in his hip pocket, said I want to
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: get out of your hip pocket. I'm you're You're done here.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I can't believe he lived. But that led to component's downfall, right. Um.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: On a much larger scale economically, prohibition was a very
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: terrible idea, especially in the midst of the Great Depression. UM.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Some companies, some brewers specifically, like Anheuser Busch, as you mentioned,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: UM said, you know, we Germans also like to supply
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you with things like root beer and ice cream and
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and corn syrup. So don't don't round us up, okay. Um. Well,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that allowed him to keep their doors open. Basically that
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that did not everybody could do that. Not everybody could
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: make that switch. An Huser Busch was already I think,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: pretty big at the time. UM So in St. Louis
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: alone before prohibition, there were twenty two breweries operating. After
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: prohibition was repealed, I just gave away the spoiler. UM
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: nine reopened so that it had a huge hit just
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: on the brewing industry. Um. It also took away all
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the tax revenue that America was making before prohibition taxing
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: legal sales of liquor. All of this was on tax
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: bootlagers weren't paying any taxes. They're getting rich. And then
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: so in the when the depression came along, Um, that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: really kind of turned the tide as far as America
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: was concerned, Like, Okay, we're sick of this. A lot
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of crime has come about, a lot of corruption. The
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: US is in the depression and we're losing out on
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: viable taxable income and this is just stupid. Everybody's drunk anyway,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and the ones who were just kind of moderate drinkers
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: before are big time drinkers. Right. So for example, um,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: apparently the they by the end of the twenties, there
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: were more alcoholics than there were before prohibition, right, like
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: clinical alcoholics. Um, adult rated or contaminated liquor brought on
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: more than fifty thousand deaths, not to mention cases of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: blindness and paralysis. Remembering it was either the Hangover podcast
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: or the Moonshine podcast, we talked about coningers, the impurities
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: and alcohol that can kill you. Yeah yeah, yeah, uh
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: those did kill a lot of pre prohibition. On the
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: flip side, though cirosis declined from ten point seven men
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand to twenty nine. All right, I'm sorry,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: it dropped to ten point seven from twenty nine point
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: five per one thousand over from nineteen eleven to twenty nine,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So you just mr silver lining. Well no, that's my
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: point though, is they'll point to some stats that will say, well,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: si rosas strap, but then fifty thousand people died because
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of can you know, making liquor in your tub, right
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and again and again. Overall alcohol consumption across the board
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: dropped from between thirty and fifty, which is substantial, but
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the ones who it didn't drop in it kicked their
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: drinking into hyper drive. Yeah. I think some people just
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: like to be bad, Like this is forbidden, right, so
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it all the time. You know that. Actually,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the parallel there with the marijuana movement in this country
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: now is pretty striking, pretty similar because the recent economic
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: downturns that we've had. I don't know if you noticed,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: but a lot of states started saying, like California, you
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: know what we could make revenue wise if we legalized spot.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: It's a very interesting. Uh. I think it's Cato Institute.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: You know, they're a libertarian think tank, and they issued
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: basically like you want to know exactly how much you
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: can make and save by decriminalizing marijuana. Here it is,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and it was all the money spend in the legal system,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: plus all the revenue that can be grace taxes comes
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: up to like fourteen billion a year or something like that.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: It's a fourteen or forty four or something. There was
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a four in there. Same thing with the stunt Grady.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: We should give credit to that. That's John Hodgman's words
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: from his book The Area of My Expertise. But you
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: can get on Amazon. I don't want people to think
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Chuck is so funny. He thought it's stun gravy because
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I did not. Um, Chuck comes around. Everybody's sick and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: tired of prohibition. Uh. And Congress, a new Congress says,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you know what, we're going to repeal this a much
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: hip or drunker Congress. So they created the twenty first
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Amendment because it takes an amendment to repeal another amendment right.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And in the history of the United States, this is
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the first time an amendment was passed to restore the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: rights taken away by a previous amendment. She on that one. Yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You know what's funny is just about two weeks ago,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I was having a conversation with my friend Kirk about prohibition,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and I said, why don't they just remove the eighteenth
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and twenty first Amendment now? And just I mean, why
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you even have that in there anymore? And he got
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: he got kind of upset, and he's like, this is
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the U. S. Constitution you're talking about, And I said, well,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I know, but it's just it seems silly now to
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: still have that on the books, unless I guess it's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: just you know, the constant reminder of this is what
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: our country went through, and see we repealed it. But
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to me, I'm just like, just take them out. It's
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: kind of like, don't be stupid in there. It's a
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: clear message to the people of today. But I wasn't
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: trying to like desecrate the Constitution by doing that. I
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: just thought it made it a more efficient document. You
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: just remove this too useless, So Chuck. They that Congress
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: passed the twenty first Amendment, they had to wait for
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: two thirds of the states to ratify it, which happened
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: on December five, ninety three. Uh. John d Rockefeller comes
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: out with the famous quote, drinking is generally increased. The
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: speakeasy has replaced the saloon. A vast army of lawbreakers
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale. A
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: clerk stamped the document and everybody went back to drinking
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: legally again. In it that that night probably resembled our
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: trivia night recently would be my best cast. Uh So
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: after that, Josh went to the states to decide how
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to govern this and a lot of states. Twenty ones
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: probably a pretty good day to start drinking a lot
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of states, or some said, like, I think Louisiana and
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: held out for a long time. Georgia even was eighteen
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: for a long time. I remember Georgia's I remember when
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Ohio did there. That was like in the mid eighties.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And and um, because my sister was in between there,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: she was like nineteen at the time, she was like
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: no um. And I remember Louisiana also finally caved because um,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the Feds were holding out on their highway funds. They
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: may have been the last one there, and they finally
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: were just like, we can't take these potholes any longer,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: so they caved. So Josh, since prohibition so long ago
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: was repealed and done away with, you would think that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: now in the United States you can go anywhere you want,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: any day you want by your boost, you would You
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: would be wrong. And I know that you know what
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: that's wrong because you live in Georgia. Pal Georgia has
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a blue law. No Sunday sales. Nope, you can buy
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: it in a restaurant after twelve thirty. So if you
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: like to go to brunch early und very funny how
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the brunch crowd really turns up around twelve fifteen. Before then,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: you can get a seat anywhere on a Sunday um
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: but because of the fear of enticing people away from
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: church with booze or partying too hard on a Saturday
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: night leading to a desire to keep drinking Sunday morning
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: in the mischurch, there's that blue law. Yeah, and they
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: said that. I didn't know this. They said that, And
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: this is not just in Georgia, but period in the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: United States. That was that came about during the colonial times.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: They said, you know what, they let's keep the Sabbath dry. Yeah,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: And what you've just made reference to is the last
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: sentence of this article Um, it is, in my opinion,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the strangest sentence ever used to end a half stuff
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: works article. Would you do me the favor of reading
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: that sentence verbatim? This law was the up in colonial
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: times to honor to honor the Christian Sabbath day in
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: colonial times. The end it's a little redundant, isn't it,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: don't you think? Let's talk about some of these other
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: states though, Um, about half of Mississippi's counties are dry.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And you can't even drive through a dry county with booze,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: even if you're just taking it home unless you feel
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: like paying a bribe to the sheriff. Yeah, or if
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: you sneak it. But you can't go to a wet
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: county and say, oh, I'm gonna get my Sunday or
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: my beer for the week. You can't drive. You have
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to take a circuitous route certuitous kircuitis if you want
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: to even take your beer to your house. Right, it's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty serious. Kentucky dry dry law, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Virginia,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of these states, Alaska, Alaska. Actually you've found
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: like this pretty cool supplemental article, um about Alaska having
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty nine of the dry towns that's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: mentioned in this article you found an all. It explains
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: why because apparently there's a strong tradition of binge drinking
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: brought over by Russians and Finns, and Finland actually had
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: its own a bout with prohibition as well, right, Uh,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: yeah they did. And I should also point out that
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: this is introduced me to my favorite new expression that
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I've never heard before, frontier drinking style. Yeah, they had
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: frontier drinking style. It usually ends with bear wrestling. Bear wrestling.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: And uh, it's interesting though that they they've done a
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: lot of studies and they've shown that the volume and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: pattern of how you drink correlate with your your culture. Yeah.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So there's the European the Southern European wet culture, which
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: is frequent but moderate drinking, like basically like French kids
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of age seven drinking wine at dinner exactly, right. And
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: then you've got the Northern European culture, the dry culture,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: which is like you don't drink very often, but when
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: you do, you drink like NonStop for three days frontier style,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and then wrestle a bear exactly, and then you commit
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: some sort of crime or something over and over again.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: In the midst of this well and in the end, um,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: places like Canada followed America and had prohibition for a
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: little while. Um, really punch we we inhibition in nineteen nineteen.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Canada's prohibition lasted from nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen. Exactly.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: It's just like the beer bearing episode of The Simpsons exactly. Uh.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And in Finland, Josh, they appeal In Finland, it really
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: really backfired. They enacted prohibition in nineteen nineteen. It was
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: all going on at the same time. It's pretty interesting
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: all over the world. And um, basically people publicly and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: privately thumb their nose at it. And they said that
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: they estimate the alcohol consumption tripled perhaps in Finland after prohibition,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: and not only that, people were originally drinking vodka, and
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: during prohibition people started drinking basically moonshine like spirits. Yeah,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: they said, you know what you're gonna do, prohibition, We're
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: gonna get drunk er more more often than we ever
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: have before, and we're gonna get in our saunas and
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get wasted, and you can't do anything about it.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: That that seems like a bad idea. I've been sauning
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: like crazy lately, and I found out that heat cuts
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: off the circulation in my calves. And Josh Finland uh
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: clearly had a failed experiment and they repealed it in
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, so it did last a while. But Alaska,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: they say, to this day, Native peoples of Alaska and
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Native Americans, they still a lot of alcohol problems, just
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: proportionately so um. And the sad thing is that it
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: was brought by Europeans. The bench drinking, the frontier style
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: band drinking was introduced to the Inuits and the Natives
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: of a last goodbye Finns, Russians and yeah, um, I
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: guess old timey uh clean jumpers who came up from
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the Western United States. Gabby Johnson. Russia actually experimented for
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: a little while too in nineteen fourteen. Through that's I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: figured Russia would have been the one that was like
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: six months later. And though they must have vodka, do
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like the average lifespan of a Russian male
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: these days is down to like fifty nine because of vodka. Really,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: because it's drinking, like they just drink like fishes. Apparently
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: even even um, yeah, the knows yeah, I mean it
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: would look like a that wasn't a gin blossom, that
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: was a bluemn onion. That's the end of that podcast.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about prohibition, type that
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: word into the search bart house to works dot com again.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: It's going to bring up that really super cool picture
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: on page zero. I'm glad you showed me that. That's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. And click
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: all the way through to the last page two to
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: find these strangest sentence ever used to end in the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: house Stuff Works article. Uh and since I said search
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: bar at some point in the not too distant past,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail. Josh. I'm gonna
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: call this email from a guy whose life has eerily
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: resembled our podcast Slate. I discovered your podcast with my
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: two friends and I went on a road trip from
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: our school and Providence, Rhode Island to Minnesota. Go Golden
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Gophers in that Minnesota. Yeah, it was according to the Fargo,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I was looking for something to listen to in a
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: car on the way and randomly downloaded a bunch of
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: your podcasts. So, by sheer luck, Josh, how often does
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: that happen, you think, and people continue to listen. Yeah,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: never this one time. Uh. Then we began our epic
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: quest across the country. Whatever we listened to came true. Guys,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: we were in Toledo when Josh said he was from Toledo.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: We were with a katie from Wisconsin. When you read
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: a listener mail from a katie from Wisconsin, we're not
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the same person, and we want a trivia contest because
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of your Habeas Corpus podcast. The winning answer was the body.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Our brakes failed in Pennsylvania and we hung out with
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: some Amish while we waited for them to be fixed,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and we even felt the membranes connecting our brain and
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: skull being stretched in Chicago, what is a hangover? A stretch? Yeah,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that's what I thought. We also met some friends along
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the way and combined our knowledge from the Redheads and
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Flirting podcast. On the way back from our week long honyssey,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: we reminisced about our favorite parts of the trip, and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: all three of us mentioned your podcast on our list Alight,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: So thanks for helping us out such a great time.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Then he goes on to suggests we do a podcast
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: on the School of America's which we have one right
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. No, the School of the America's supposedly
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and now defunct assassins school that we have at Fort
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Benning that was used to train Latin Americans in the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: basically an insurgency. Is he completely wrong about this in
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the School of the Americas is just one place, but
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting and scary. Well, then, Paul, I've have
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: some words for you, my friend. You've just misled us,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: intentionally mislead you, and I would like to recant every
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: bit of the enthusiasm I showed for your previous email.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Are you sure he wasn't just misinformed? I don't care. Okay,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: there's something called fact checking, even for emails. If you do,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: you want to try to mislead chuck Er I, we'd
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: like to hear that. No me, chuck Er, me, mislead me,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: mislead chuck or me we want to hear it in
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: an email. And if you don't feel like doing something
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: that mean, you could also actually don't even try to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: mislead us. It takes us off. Lou bega um. If
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you have a favorite strange sentence that you've ever come
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: across in your life that can beat this law, was
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: developed in colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath Day
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: and colonial times. We want to hear it. Wrap it
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: up in an email, spanking on the bottom. Send it
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
• 39:10
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