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How License Plates Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Do Do Do yay. You know what that means. Everyone.
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Speaker 1: It's been a while since you've heard it, But after
0:07
Speaker 1: three long years, we're finally going to return to the
0:10
Speaker 1: live stage, starting well, actually ending with Sketch Fest in
0:13
Speaker 1: San Francisco in February three, and then on February one
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Speaker 1: and second. We haven't quite nailed it down, but it's
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Speaker 1: going to be Seattle in Portland. Uh, not sure of
0:22
Speaker 1: the order, but we were gonna be putting all this
0:25
Speaker 1: information out on our social media channels right yep. And
0:28
Speaker 1: on Friday, October seven, tickets will be on sale for
0:32
Speaker 1: all three shows, and you can watch our social media
0:36
Speaker 1: handles for information and ticket links. How about that? That
0:39
Speaker 1: sounds great. Can't wait to be back on stage. We
0:42
Speaker 1: really really missed it, yea. And we'll see you guys
0:44
Speaker 1: in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
0:50
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:58
Speaker 1: I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Harry's here too, providing
1:01
Speaker 1: us with last minute facts and informations and tidbits. And
1:05
Speaker 1: that makes this a banger of an episode of Stuff
1:08
Speaker 1: You Should Not It's a banger? Is that how they say?
1:11
Speaker 1: At the brutes. Yeah, is that your British accent? That
1:16
Speaker 1: was that your John Klice by way of Chicago. M
1:21
Speaker 1: Uh can I make a quick announcement? Sure, it just
1:25
Speaker 1: occurred to me that I'm clean to announce us now
1:28
Speaker 1: that I go into the recording studio of my basement
1:30
Speaker 1: which is now full of my wife Emily's business. Oh yeah, okay,
1:37
Speaker 1: because you've you've known this for a while, Jerry too.
1:39
Speaker 1: But Emily shut down her business everybody. Uh and rather
1:43
Speaker 1: than me trying to stumble through her thought process, uh,
1:47
Speaker 1: she has here. She is now. Um, she has it
1:51
Speaker 1: her full like statement on her website, I love your
1:55
Speaker 1: Mama dot com and all the handwringing that went into it,
1:58
Speaker 1: and uh, she had a twenty year run. It was
2:01
Speaker 1: a great thing. And she's going to keep her website
2:03
Speaker 1: going though, because she's gonna she's gonna still do like
2:07
Speaker 1: she said, She's gonna make things from only from things
2:09
Speaker 1: she can grow. So the business itself as a hey,
2:14
Speaker 1: I gotta dominate the world because I'm ambitious type of thing. Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 1: I'm an into pet woman of the es that has
2:21
Speaker 1: gone away, But she's gonna still do probably some uh
2:25
Speaker 1: face prays and things like that anything she can grow
2:27
Speaker 1: from her own herb garden on a very small level,
2:31
Speaker 1: very limited things she's got. It figured out that she's
2:38
Speaker 1: not retiring anything, but um, just big thanks to every
2:40
Speaker 1: She got a lot of support from the stuff you
2:42
Speaker 1: should know Army over the years, both emotionally and by
2:46
Speaker 1: buying things every time we mentioned her, so it really
2:50
Speaker 1: meant a lot to her. Uh and she wanted me
2:52
Speaker 1: to pass that along. That was very nice. And congratulations
2:55
Speaker 1: to Emily on a twenty year run. That is rather
2:58
Speaker 1: respectable for a small business, I think so, and we're
3:01
Speaker 1: all proud of her. And now I'm the walls are
3:04
Speaker 1: closing up here in the basement right so because she
3:07
Speaker 1: couldn't get rid of everything, we have two storage spaces
3:10
Speaker 1: in now our basement, so she'll be working on that
3:14
Speaker 1: getting rid of that stuff for a while as well.
3:16
Speaker 1: I'll bet it smells amazing. At least it smells better
3:19
Speaker 1: than it ever has down here, you know what. I'll
3:21
Speaker 1: bet it smells better than chuck a dirty old license plate,
3:25
Speaker 1: that's right, especially one that's a Sportsman's Paradise from Louisiana
3:30
Speaker 1: that they got out of the stomach of a shark
3:32
Speaker 1: and jaw right or asked man from New York City.
3:36
Speaker 1: It's the ass man. You got that straight. So, by
3:40
Speaker 1: the way, since you brought up Steinfeld, I went back
3:43
Speaker 1: and started watching um uh Larry Sanders show on HBO. Great,
3:49
Speaker 1: like maybe the greatest. Actually, like I'm rewatching, I'm like
3:54
Speaker 1: this is this is even better than it was years ago.
3:58
Speaker 1: And I've come to believe that Jerry Seinfeld is a
4:02
Speaker 1: twee impression of Gary Shandling. Gary Shandling is the legit
4:07
Speaker 1: o G and Seinfeld is just a aberration of him.
4:13
Speaker 1: I think Seinfeld would certainly own up to being influenced
4:17
Speaker 1: by Gary Schandling. He probably really punched me in the
4:19
Speaker 1: stomach for calling him twee though. Uh No, he would
4:23
Speaker 1: just say will you again? That's right, and I just
4:27
Speaker 1: go home devastated. Now, great show, but I think ahead
4:31
Speaker 1: of its time as well, Larry Sanders. Yeah, absolutely ahead
4:35
Speaker 1: of its time for sure. It's definitely worth watching. If
4:37
Speaker 1: you have HBO Max it's all over it and just
4:40
Speaker 1: go watch it and thank me later, I guess, is
4:42
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. Uh, and uh, sorry, let's
4:46
Speaker 1: let me give it one more kudo. Uh, all respect
4:50
Speaker 1: to thirty Rock, But Larry Sanders is easily the best
4:54
Speaker 1: sort of behind the scenes of a TV show movie
4:58
Speaker 1: set type of thing I've ever seen. Yeah, even better
5:01
Speaker 1: than the Player because it was way funnier. Well yeah,
5:04
Speaker 1: Player was great in some way though. Yeah, but it's
5:07
Speaker 1: no Larry Sanders show correct. Um. So one more thing
5:11
Speaker 1: while we're shouting out TV shows, UM, I also saw
5:15
Speaker 1: both of them are in Netflix, um. And they're both
5:18
Speaker 1: horror TV shows, and they are awesome. One is like
5:21
Speaker 1: straight ahead scare you to death horror, Japanese horror. It's
5:26
Speaker 1: ju on the origins, so you know, the The Grudge,
5:30
Speaker 1: so it was Juan in Japan and this TV show
5:33
Speaker 1: it's like an eight part series, I think maybe six.
5:36
Speaker 1: It's like the origins that lead up to Juan, like
5:39
Speaker 1: The Grudge. It's amazingly well done. It's perfectly tailored to
5:43
Speaker 1: fit it just precisely, so well done. And then the
5:47
Speaker 1: other one is called mary Anne, and it's a French
5:50
Speaker 1: language which story um set in today's time, but it
5:55
Speaker 1: deals with like a sixteenth century which I think, and
5:58
Speaker 1: it's not quite as straight a head scary, but it's
6:01
Speaker 1: really really good. Nonetheless, it's very engrossing. You guys watch
6:05
Speaker 1: a lot of horror. Yeah, yeah, you MEI has to
6:08
Speaker 1: just buy proxy. But yes, I watch a lot of horror.
6:11
Speaker 1: I don't get too because Emily is not into it.
6:13
Speaker 1: But we've been loving the Bear and of course I
6:17
Speaker 1: shouted out a lot, but another shout out to Reservation
6:19
Speaker 1: Dogs b J and the Bear O the Bear Chuck. No,
6:25
Speaker 1: I haven't is the Oh wait, good, wait a minute
6:27
Speaker 1: that the Chicago restaurant I tried, and I was like,
6:31
Speaker 1: it's very stressful. No, it wasn't even that. It was
6:34
Speaker 1: very boring. I thought, oh, that's interesting because it's like
6:37
Speaker 1: the most adrenaline fueled show on TV. I know it's
6:40
Speaker 1: really weird, but I was like, I could not be
6:43
Speaker 1: more bored than I am right now. But I get
6:45
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It was it was a weird juxtaposition
6:48
Speaker 1: because I know I was supposed to be like feeling intense,
6:51
Speaker 1: and I was just like, this is I don't like it,
6:54
Speaker 1: So say what, you've also done some heroin that probably
7:00
Speaker 1: that couldn't stay awake. No, I definitely did not do
7:04
Speaker 1: any heroine. It was just that show was extremely boring
7:07
Speaker 1: to me. But again, I mean, if you like it.
7:10
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm not trying to tell you not to.
7:12
Speaker 1: I'm just that was take on it. So I'm glad
7:15
Speaker 1: we ate up some time because Chuck, I I, this
7:17
Speaker 1: is my pick license plates. And it turns out it's
7:20
Speaker 1: a little more boring than I had anticipated. Like something
7:24
Speaker 1: I do too, I do too, and there's some interesting
7:27
Speaker 1: stuff in there. But something this sweeping, a global, worldwide
7:31
Speaker 1: phenomenon that's been around for over a hundred years, you
7:35
Speaker 1: would think there'd be a little more like crazy stuff,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, associated with it, and there's just not. I mean,
7:40
Speaker 1: Ed helped us out with this, and he did, God
7:43
Speaker 1: bless him, his best work, trying to find anything to
7:45
Speaker 1: make this interesting and he finally did you know, and
7:47
Speaker 1: we found some other stuff too. But it's just not
7:50
Speaker 1: as engrossing as I thought. It's kind of like The Bear,
7:57
Speaker 1: that great show that is so funny too. I was
7:59
Speaker 1: watching that the it's hysterical. Um, I disagree. I think
8:04
Speaker 1: you're selling the short. I think I thought this was
8:06
Speaker 1: really interesting considering it's a show about letters and numbers
8:10
Speaker 1: on a piece of metal on the back of a car. Okay,
8:12
Speaker 1: point made. And also I should say, um, this was
8:14
Speaker 1: also a listener request a J and Tracy in Pittsburgh, Ish.
8:20
Speaker 1: Tracy said they requested this one not too long ago,
8:23
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. And man, that's the kind of
8:25
Speaker 1: turnaround time we have here at stuff. You should know. Yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: and we know it's them because their license plates says
8:32
Speaker 1: PTS B R G I s H. That's pretty great,
8:38
Speaker 1: the great new show. You just did that off the
8:40
Speaker 1: cuff too. Man, I'm impressed. Well, there's too many characters
8:43
Speaker 1: in there, but everyone gets a joke. Okay, So what
8:46
Speaker 1: country do you think invented the license plate? Chuck? Had
8:50
Speaker 1: to be the United States, with the industry and automobiles,
8:52
Speaker 1: you would think so, but no, As a matter of fact,
8:55
Speaker 1: the French had us beat by a good decade, a
8:57
Speaker 1: full decade, not that kind of rough decade. It could
9:00
Speaker 1: be anywhere from like six to eight years, a ten
9:03
Speaker 1: year stretch. The There was actually one guy who who
9:07
Speaker 1: kind of originated him. He was the prefect of the
9:10
Speaker 1: Paris Police Force. His name is Louis Limpin, and in
9:14
Speaker 1: he said, Hey, we're starting to get more cars on
9:17
Speaker 1: the road, and I think we need to kind of
9:18
Speaker 1: regulate them a little better than we are, which is
9:20
Speaker 1: to say we're not doing that at all. Yeah, So
9:23
Speaker 1: they came up with all kinds of stuff plates, driver's test,
9:27
Speaker 1: driver i D. Speed limits, stuff like that, and the US,
9:31
Speaker 1: as we do, look to the French for all things.
9:35
Speaker 1: And in I believe that New York was the first
9:39
Speaker 1: US state to require a law and this was in
9:42
Speaker 1: nineteen o one April that basically said, all right, here's
9:46
Speaker 1: the deal. You need to put your initials on your
9:50
Speaker 1: car somewhere. They need to be three inches tall, but
9:53
Speaker 1: otherwise go wild. It's up to you how you want
9:56
Speaker 1: to do this. If you want to make them out
9:58
Speaker 1: of little garfields that no one will understand for many years,
10:02
Speaker 1: you you do that. Uh. And the New Yorkers did it.
10:05
Speaker 1: And I think that this sort of customization allowed for
10:10
Speaker 1: some kind of creative New Yorkers to do different things,
10:14
Speaker 1: everything from like would to leather and I'm sure all
10:17
Speaker 1: kinds of crazy fonts. Sure, definitely, like a lot of
10:20
Speaker 1: people just went to the hardware store and bought house numbers. Um.
10:23
Speaker 1: Some people just painted them directly on their cars. And like,
10:27
Speaker 1: the one one thing I saw is this is so early.
10:30
Speaker 1: There's so few cars on the road that this was
10:33
Speaker 1: not like a revenue generating move. They were actually using
10:36
Speaker 1: it like you had to put your own initials on
10:39
Speaker 1: the car, so that if you terrorized a horse or
10:43
Speaker 1: drove drove up on the sidewalk, or did donuts in
10:45
Speaker 1: the middle of Times Square, they would know who did that.
10:48
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of like usage that cars were getting.
10:51
Speaker 1: There were a lot of like jerks driving cars initially, um,
10:56
Speaker 1: and that was the way to kind of rain their
10:58
Speaker 1: behavior in. Yeah. And then the tenure mark like you
11:01
Speaker 1: talked about in nineteen o three is basically at the
11:04
Speaker 1: point when they said, all right, we gotta start issuing
11:07
Speaker 1: these things because this initial we didn't really think out
11:09
Speaker 1: this initial plan because people have the same initials. There's
11:14
Speaker 1: a lot more cars, and we can't go around just
11:17
Speaker 1: looking for every you know, g R. L in New
11:21
Speaker 1: York to find out who was terrorizing the horse. Yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: Gary Larson. Wait, Gary Regis Larson. Well, it depends on
11:30
Speaker 1: if you're doing a monogram. Okay, so it could be
11:32
Speaker 1: Gary Larson. Read just I could have been correct. What's
11:36
Speaker 1: the deal of that? Well, we should do a short
11:38
Speaker 1: step on Monica. The idea but a great idea. Um.
11:41
Speaker 1: So nineteen o three it was kind of like a
11:44
Speaker 1: watershed year for license plates in the United States. And
11:47
Speaker 1: also I realized, I'm sad to realize that it was
11:50
Speaker 1: a rough decade from to nineteen o one. It wasn't
11:53
Speaker 1: a full decade, but um, nineteen o three. That's why
11:56
Speaker 1: I thought it was a full decade, because it was
11:58
Speaker 1: just such a huge year where all these other states said, yeah,
12:01
Speaker 1: we're going to get on board. First it was Philadelphia,
12:05
Speaker 1: not a state, but it's in Pennsylvania, kind of near
12:08
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh ish if you think about it. And they were
12:11
Speaker 1: the first city to issue official license plates. Cleveland was
12:15
Speaker 1: technically the first city in the whole country, even before
12:17
Speaker 1: New York, to require license plates, but they didn't issue them.
12:20
Speaker 1: Philadelphia was the first city to actually issue them in
12:23
Speaker 1: the US. Right, And apparently Pennsylvania likes to say they
12:29
Speaker 1: you know, that makes them the first state to do so,
12:31
Speaker 1: technically correct, But the state of Massachusetts was the first
12:35
Speaker 1: state to do a statewide program, uh, and not just
12:39
Speaker 1: the city of Philadelphia. Um so, and this is kind
12:43
Speaker 1: of the cool thing and put a pin in this
12:45
Speaker 1: as for collectibles later on. But Massachusetts did the thing
12:49
Speaker 1: that a lot of other states did was they started
12:52
Speaker 1: at one, and they just started working their way up
12:55
Speaker 1: and apparently the Highway Commission how a commission member named
12:59
Speaker 1: Frederick Tutor got license plate number one and that they
13:03
Speaker 1: still his his ancestors years later still have that number. Yeah,
13:07
Speaker 1: and Frederick Tudor ties in with our transcendentalist episode because
13:11
Speaker 1: his father was the ice King, the guy who harvested
13:14
Speaker 1: ice on Walden Pond while they and shipped it all
13:18
Speaker 1: over the world. So very strange, surprising tie in, Chuck, Um,
13:23
Speaker 1: should we go over what we like to call our
13:25
Speaker 1: bulleted list? I love them. They're so great that it's
13:28
Speaker 1: just packed with information, no frills, you know, man, I
13:32
Speaker 1: used to do a lot of those on the Old
13:33
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works articles. I think Katie, my editor as
13:37
Speaker 1: used to make fun of me because I used to
13:38
Speaker 1: do bulleted list to get the point across, and like,
13:41
Speaker 1: you can absorb them so easily. I love bulleted lists. Buddy,
13:44
Speaker 1: you didn't do them a lot though you were into
13:46
Speaker 1: the pros. Yeah. I'd like to hear myself talk, but
13:49
Speaker 1: I respect a bulleted list. It is funny. Personality wise,
13:53
Speaker 1: I'm definitely a bullet list personality guy. I made this
13:56
Speaker 1: bulleted list. It's in my personality as well. I really
14:01
Speaker 1: took paragraphs and broke them into so I'm bullet too. Okay,
14:06
Speaker 1: I can hang out with the bullet people too. Did
14:10
Speaker 1: you do the bullets his little movie slates? Or was
14:14
Speaker 1: that some accident on my end? There was an accident
14:18
Speaker 1: on your end, but a happy accident. Yeah. When I
14:21
Speaker 1: printed this out instead of little round bullets, there a
14:23
Speaker 1: little you know, movie clappers movie slate. Don't know how
14:26
Speaker 1: I did that, but I'll try to recreate it. I
14:29
Speaker 1: didn't know it was even possible anyway. Uh, what do
14:32
Speaker 1: we got here? First hit the first one? Okay, So
14:35
Speaker 1: the first slogan on license plate was Idaho potatoes, which
14:39
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I mean that would hang around for
14:41
Speaker 1: a while. Um, but they actually embossed a brown potato
14:46
Speaker 1: that took up most of the license plate and it
14:49
Speaker 1: looked a lot like poop. And it didn't It didn't
14:52
Speaker 1: stick around very long. I think that was just a
14:54
Speaker 1: one year thing. Uh. Something that has stuck around is
14:58
Speaker 1: the longest slogan Sreek in the United States, and it's
15:02
Speaker 1: one of my favorite license plates because of this started
15:05
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six in the Great State of uh mean,
15:09
Speaker 1: in the Great State of Maine. Vacation Land also the
15:12
Speaker 1: title of our friend John Hodgman's book, one of Them.
15:14
Speaker 1: And it's been on Main's license plates since nineteen thirty
15:17
Speaker 1: six every year since then. That's quite a streak. That's
15:20
Speaker 1: far and away the longest streak. I think the next
15:22
Speaker 1: longest is like nineteen and I can't remember which which
15:26
Speaker 1: slogan it is. I just love that slogan. It just
15:28
Speaker 1: sounds so welcoming vacation land. Yeah, and the fact that
15:31
Speaker 1: it's like one word too, it's just prints. They like
15:34
Speaker 1: nailed it right on the head, right out of the gate,
15:36
Speaker 1: basically absolutely what else. Florida had a grapefruit. I used
15:41
Speaker 1: to have a grape fruit on their plates starting in
15:43
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, but it just took a year because
15:46
Speaker 1: it looked like the sort of the cartoon bombs, the
15:49
Speaker 1: little little black uh circle with the fuse coming out
15:52
Speaker 1: of it and looks very much like a grapefruit now
15:55
Speaker 1: that you think of it. Yeah, And that license plate
15:56
Speaker 1: became known as the bomb license plate, So that was
15:59
Speaker 1: long before the bomb meant something good, and they just
16:03
Speaker 1: they took it out of circulation. And actually there's um
16:06
Speaker 1: something that that wasn't an error like that was intentional,
16:09
Speaker 1: but they didn't mean for it to look like a bomb.
16:11
Speaker 1: There was a straight up controversial error that happened in
16:17
Speaker 1: in Ohio where they issued the brand new license plate,
16:20
Speaker 1: this beautiful license plate um and there's a banner being
16:24
Speaker 1: pulled by the right Butt Brothers airplane. But after they
16:28
Speaker 1: announced it and it printed thirty thousand of these things already,
16:32
Speaker 1: some people pointed out on the internet, I think on Twitter,
16:35
Speaker 1: that they had the airplane back backwards on the license plate.
16:39
Speaker 1: You can tell it looks like a box kite. It does,
16:41
Speaker 1: and it looks like the way that they had it originally.
16:45
Speaker 1: You can understand how they got it like that, but
16:47
Speaker 1: they just didn't check their work. And then North Carolina,
16:50
Speaker 1: you know, North Carolina and Ohio have been going back
16:52
Speaker 1: and forth about which place actually was the birthplace of aviation.
16:56
Speaker 1: They went on Twitter and they said, y'all leave Ohio owned.
17:00
Speaker 1: They wouldn't know because they weren't there. Yeah, it was
17:03
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good burn actually, but that was very recent controversy.
17:08
Speaker 1: One of the most interesting things about license plates the
17:12
Speaker 1: first vanity plates Great State of Pennsylvania once again. Yeah,
17:17
Speaker 1: what else I think in fifty seven they standardized the
17:22
Speaker 1: size nationwide, which is six, but twelve unless you were
17:27
Speaker 1: riding a motor scooter or a motorbike. And those are
17:30
Speaker 1: those are the cutest plates of all. I love those things. Yeah,
17:33
Speaker 1: and those aren't standardized. Apparently they're just supposed to be smaller.
17:36
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, like something that doesn't look dumb on
17:39
Speaker 1: the back of a motors right, not oversized, you know,
17:41
Speaker 1: you wanted to be proportionate. UM In the nineteen seventy
17:44
Speaker 1: one was a big year too, because that was when
17:47
Speaker 1: three M started supplying reflective sheeting to UM license plates.
17:52
Speaker 1: Like in leading up to that time, at night, you
17:56
Speaker 1: were pretty much s O L. But now you could
17:58
Speaker 1: shine some headlights on these newfangled license plates and they
18:02
Speaker 1: would just glow right back at you and you could
18:04
Speaker 1: see who was driving recklessly in front of you, right, UM.
18:07
Speaker 1: And that actually is going to be kind of controversial,
18:09
Speaker 1: as we'll see in the coming years starting after nineteen
18:12
Speaker 1: seventy one. But I say we take an break and
18:16
Speaker 1: we'll get back to all that right after it. How
18:18
Speaker 1: about that It sounds great. Well, now we're on the road,
18:23
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
18:26
Speaker 1: two from Josh can chuck it stuff you should know,
18:32
Speaker 1: all right, So, Chuck, if you look at all of
18:45
Speaker 1: the license plates in the United States, they the fonts
18:48
Speaker 1: that are actually like the string of numbers or if
18:50
Speaker 1: it's vanity plate, like the actual like word or abbreviation whatever,
18:55
Speaker 1: those look remarkably similar across the United States. But they're
19:00
Speaker 1: not quite the same. I saw somewhere that there's like
19:03
Speaker 1: four different characterizations or four different types, and they're they're
19:07
Speaker 1: characterized by just little changes, like the edges are squared
19:11
Speaker 1: around it, that kind of thing. But they're remarkably similar.
19:15
Speaker 1: And supposedly there's the reason for that is there's one
19:18
Speaker 1: company in the US that's supplied all of the dies
19:22
Speaker 1: for the embossing for many many years, Yes, the John R.
19:26
Speaker 1: Wald Company. And uh Ed points out that he got
19:30
Speaker 1: a lot of ins information from a couple of a
19:32
Speaker 1: few different websites of license plate collectors. And you know,
19:36
Speaker 1: usually we pride ourselves on like super legit sources, and
19:41
Speaker 1: it's not to say these aren't, but for an episode
19:43
Speaker 1: like this, you know, this about as legit as you
19:46
Speaker 1: can get. But he does point out that these collectors
19:49
Speaker 1: are really really serious people about their collecting so it's
19:54
Speaker 1: probably more verifiable than just about anything that we ever
19:57
Speaker 1: look up, you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure,
19:59
Speaker 1: UM I agree, because there is a lot there's a
20:02
Speaker 1: real dearth of information out There's like a list of
20:05
Speaker 1: ten interesting facts about license plates in there, and that's
20:08
Speaker 1: copied and pasted everywhere all over the internet basically. But
20:12
Speaker 1: um ed did turn up something really interesting about European plates, right, Yeah,
20:17
Speaker 1: and it sort of to back up this story, we
20:19
Speaker 1: should talk briefly about its uh predecessor in Chicago. When
20:24
Speaker 1: they started making plates in Chicago early on, they realized
20:27
Speaker 1: pretty quickly that people could fake their license tags, so
20:30
Speaker 1: they started making UM they started issuing numbers to people,
20:35
Speaker 1: like just the metal numbers they had to mount on
20:37
Speaker 1: their own because they were making these metal numbers, uh
20:41
Speaker 1: basically in a in a way that was unique enough
20:44
Speaker 1: to where they were like you couldn't pick it up
20:47
Speaker 1: at your local hardware store, uh, so you could spot
20:50
Speaker 1: the fakes. And this came back later in Europe in
20:53
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies in Germany when a left wing radical
20:57
Speaker 1: group called the Red Army Faction was um doing car
21:01
Speaker 1: bombings and kidnappings and bank robberies and all kinds of
21:04
Speaker 1: bad things, and they were using fake you know, they
21:07
Speaker 1: were faking their license plates. Uh, those cool, cool European
21:12
Speaker 1: license plates that are shorter and longer and just as
21:16
Speaker 1: James bondy as you can imagine. Yeah, because when they
21:19
Speaker 1: flip up, there's a machine gun behind them or in
21:22
Speaker 1: oils like. Um. It's funny because I think a lot
21:26
Speaker 1: of Americans think European plates look super cool, and I've
21:29
Speaker 1: talked to some Europeans that think American plates look cool
21:31
Speaker 1: with the graphics and stuff. So maybe it's just a
21:35
Speaker 1: grassy screener thing, but I think those europan plates are awesome.
21:38
Speaker 1: I'm all about the American plates, I have to admit. Okay.
21:42
Speaker 1: So anyway, they were faking these license plates getting away
21:45
Speaker 1: with it, and they realized that the font that they
21:48
Speaker 1: were using d I N fourteen fifty one was really uniform,
21:53
Speaker 1: and it was you know, I mean, like a lot
21:56
Speaker 1: of fonts, if you take the leg off of an R,
21:58
Speaker 1: you've got a pe. But this was sort of that
22:01
Speaker 1: to the extreme where it was really easy just to
22:03
Speaker 1: sort of remove certain strokes to come up with other
22:06
Speaker 1: letters and still have the plate look believable. Yeah, you
22:09
Speaker 1: could just put like black or white electrical tape over it.
22:11
Speaker 1: And the problem was Germany did use that same font
22:14
Speaker 1: d I n. Fourteen fifty one throughout the entire country,
22:18
Speaker 1: and so um the Red Army faction had the whole
22:21
Speaker 1: country so nervous and scared that the government was like,
22:24
Speaker 1: we need to come up with a new font for
22:25
Speaker 1: our license plates. And they set a calligrapher and design
22:30
Speaker 1: professor named Carl George one word hoofer, and he created
22:34
Speaker 1: something called ffi Shrift, an entirely new font from scratch,
22:38
Speaker 1: in just a few months in the I think the
22:40
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy eight. And you took German in
22:43
Speaker 1: high school, you're gonna say the word even practicing, I
22:47
Speaker 1: was like, I probably shouldn't say this on the podcast.
22:50
Speaker 1: I had to. Yeah, it's tough. I had to break
22:52
Speaker 1: it down, and even with my German experience, I mean,
22:54
Speaker 1: it is a long word. I didn't count the letters,
22:56
Speaker 1: but it looks like the German alphabet basically looks like
23:00
Speaker 1: the American alphabet. I've had it, buddy, So I'm gonna
23:03
Speaker 1: say it's fell schumser schwer unders fell shun ser Schwerinda shrift.
23:14
Speaker 1: Very nice, Yeah, that's it. I think that's right. And
23:16
Speaker 1: the first word before shrift that was all one word, isn't.
23:19
Speaker 1: It's quite a word. It's a long word, and it means,
23:23
Speaker 1: from what I understand in German, either fraud preventing or
23:26
Speaker 1: falsification hindering. And then shrift means font, so it's a
23:31
Speaker 1: falsification hindering font. And the way that um, Carl George
23:34
Speaker 1: Hoofer um came up with this font, or the way
23:37
Speaker 1: that he made it difficult to forge, is he added
23:41
Speaker 1: what are known as sir reefs or seraph's. I think
23:45
Speaker 1: it's Sarah, right, and that's Sarah. I I had never
23:48
Speaker 1: known what a Sarah was until really I started researching
23:52
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, I never knew. Kidding me, no, So
23:55
Speaker 1: Sarah for those of you who are like me, like
23:58
Speaker 1: how I used to be, so I can remember, I
24:01
Speaker 1: can really identify with you, guys. But as Sarah is
24:04
Speaker 1: like a little extra flourish on a letter that gives
24:07
Speaker 1: it a little extra pop, a little oomph. So if
24:10
Speaker 1: you draw a letter I and then you make crossbars
24:12
Speaker 1: at the top and bottom, those crossbars are technically Seraph's right. Yeah,
24:18
Speaker 1: and just let me explain the reason I was shocked.
24:21
Speaker 1: Was because of your uh, your past history and publishing
24:25
Speaker 1: and newspaper things and as a writer, and Sarah's and
24:30
Speaker 1: San Sarah's is just something I would have thought you
24:32
Speaker 1: would have never bothered to go figure it out. I
24:35
Speaker 1: walked around knowing I did not know what a seraph was,
24:38
Speaker 1: or that Sarah was even necessarily a thing I did
24:40
Speaker 1: know and is. I think it's sans serif. And this
24:45
Speaker 1: is why chuck, because songs in French means without, so
24:48
Speaker 1: I think it's Sarah. I knew that sans meant without, Okay,
24:53
Speaker 1: I just never put the two together. This, Yes, it's
24:57
Speaker 1: all very embarrassing all of a sudden. I thought I
24:59
Speaker 1: thought admitting this would just kind of make the episode
25:02
Speaker 1: move along more smoothly. But there's a spotlight on me.
25:07
Speaker 1: I'm sweating quite a bit, and I'm really very uncomfortable,
25:11
Speaker 1: and we took an ad break too recently ago to
25:14
Speaker 1: just go to it. I'm really sorry. This all surprises
25:18
Speaker 1: me because you're very much a song seraph guy. Uh,
25:23
Speaker 1: Like you're like, yeah, I mean, aren't you sort of
25:25
Speaker 1: calibri or like, what's your fint calibri? Is my font calibre?
25:30
Speaker 1: On ten point. See, I'm Times New Roman fourteen point
25:34
Speaker 1: all the way, as you know. Uh so I'm looking
25:37
Speaker 1: at Sarah's all day long, all the time. What's funny
25:40
Speaker 1: is Calibri ten point is way more bullet list ee
25:43
Speaker 1: than Times the Roman on fourteen. So it's funny we
25:47
Speaker 1: kind of cross over to one another side in different places. Yeah,
25:50
Speaker 1: it's funny whenever you do live shows like you're tiny,
25:55
Speaker 1: little fine, I just who reads ten point vont that's
25:58
Speaker 1: so tiny paper, which is great? Yours is so big
26:01
Speaker 1: the front row can follow along with the episode. They
26:05
Speaker 1: can see it. So clearly we should settle at twelve,
26:08
Speaker 1: which is I think the standard. Right, Yeah, it's still
26:10
Speaker 1: too big for me. Yeah, all right, I'm challenging my eyes.
26:16
Speaker 1: All right. Sorry to tease you about the seraph stuff.
26:19
Speaker 1: I forgive you. But the point is he added the
26:23
Speaker 1: seraph's basically here and there to make it to where
26:26
Speaker 1: it was really hard to replicate. Yeah, and again he
26:29
Speaker 1: basically cheering this out in a few months because Germany
26:32
Speaker 1: was in like this emergency state because the Red Army
26:35
Speaker 1: faction was terrorizing literally the country. And then by the
26:39
Speaker 1: time it was ready for production, I guess the Red
26:42
Speaker 1: Army faction had been largely broken up, and they just
26:45
Speaker 1: shelved Effie Shrift until I think the mid nineties, for
26:48
Speaker 1: almost fifteen or so years. It just went away. But
26:53
Speaker 1: luckily they already kind of had it. So when the
26:55
Speaker 1: European Unions started to try to standardize UM license plates
26:58
Speaker 1: across the whole, Germany stepped up and said, hey, we've
27:02
Speaker 1: got this really great font called FFF shripped. What do
27:04
Speaker 1: you guys think about this one? And they're like, what's
27:06
Speaker 1: the FE stand for? In Germany said don't ask. Yeah, yeah,
27:12
Speaker 1: it's twenty two letters long. You don't want to know.
27:15
Speaker 1: I mean it looks Icelandic almost. Yeah. Um. So now
27:19
Speaker 1: we come to the very scintillating part of the episode
27:22
Speaker 1: where we talk about tag fees. UM. There are not
27:27
Speaker 1: standardized tag fees across the country because states handle this.
27:30
Speaker 1: It's not federalized, at least not yet. And uh Ed
27:36
Speaker 1: used New York as an example because Ed lives in
27:39
Speaker 1: New York and but most states are about the same
27:41
Speaker 1: and that you can usually pay a little bit of
27:44
Speaker 1: extra money anywhere from well ten dollars is the low,
27:49
Speaker 1: which is Virginia, which we'll get to that in a
27:51
Speaker 1: second um, although we have to like sixty even I
27:55
Speaker 1: think Washington, d C Is about the most expensive at
27:59
Speaker 1: a hundred, but at least it was recently to get
28:03
Speaker 1: a specialty plate, which one do you know which plate? Yeah?
28:08
Speaker 1: That which specialty plate is a hundred bucks in DC
28:10
Speaker 1: is at the Texas without representation one. Well I think
28:13
Speaker 1: that actually maybe for vanity which you know, we should
28:16
Speaker 1: point out those are two different things. Especially plate can
28:18
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, support the A s p C
28:22
Speaker 1: A or support veterans, or hey, I'm a teacher or
28:26
Speaker 1: I'm a firefighter, or this is an antique car, like
28:30
Speaker 1: any of those sort of standard things. You can pay
28:32
Speaker 1: extra four. But then you can also obviously get to
28:35
Speaker 1: your your vanity plate, which you're going to pay even
28:37
Speaker 1: more on top of that. So I was looking up
28:40
Speaker 1: cool Um specialty plates around the country and um, there
28:44
Speaker 1: are some new ones I found. I think a popular
28:46
Speaker 1: mechanics slide show Montana has this really cool one. It's
28:49
Speaker 1: just black and white, mostly black field with some white
28:52
Speaker 1: here there, and they have a t Rex skull on
28:55
Speaker 1: there's it's like supports the museums in the state. UM,
28:59
Speaker 1: Florida has a great one. It's got a space shuttle
29:02
Speaker 1: taking off, um with you know, on the rockets and
29:06
Speaker 1: all the boosters and all that stuff. Um, and it's
29:08
Speaker 1: it's too um commemorate the Challenger in Columbia disasters. It's
29:12
Speaker 1: very good looking. And then California has one that supports
29:16
Speaker 1: its museums. And um, I guess Charles Schultze's estate lent
29:20
Speaker 1: Snoopy out just to help drum up money. So you
29:22
Speaker 1: can get a Snoopy license plate in California. Yeah, and
29:26
Speaker 1: that's the whole deal is usually some of this money
29:29
Speaker 1: goes toward these organizations. Um, and not just like in
29:33
Speaker 1: the coffers of the state. Uh. Since you brought up California,
29:36
Speaker 1: I can say that we used to love trying to
29:38
Speaker 1: spot when I lived there, the old um blue for
29:41
Speaker 1: my money, the coolest license plate ever, the blue with
29:44
Speaker 1: yellow letter California license plate from the seventies that used
29:47
Speaker 1: to see on chips all the time, and you would
29:49
Speaker 1: occasionally still see those out in l A And it
29:52
Speaker 1: was it was always kind of a cool thing. I
29:54
Speaker 1: think they have that you can get it to throwback. Um,
29:57
Speaker 1: I guess I saw it just like the nineteen SI
30:00
Speaker 1: the five edition and like so you know, there's so
30:02
Speaker 1: many people into like hot rods and stuff out in California.
30:05
Speaker 1: They're like going crazy for that because it makes their
30:08
Speaker 1: car look that much more authentic. I love it. I
30:10
Speaker 1: would totally get one. So vanity plates, like you said,
30:13
Speaker 1: they're a different thing. They're gonna cost you a lot
30:15
Speaker 1: more depending on where you are. And did you see
30:18
Speaker 1: that huff Post slide show that I sent? Yeah, Like
30:23
Speaker 1: I was literally laughing an hour or so after last
30:26
Speaker 1: looking at it, like just could not stop lappy. There
30:30
Speaker 1: was one can you guess what my favorite one was? No,
30:34
Speaker 1: there was one. I think it was either Minnesota or
30:37
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and it was Jay is Lord, as in
30:41
Speaker 1: Jesus is Lord. But that took up all of the
30:44
Speaker 1: spaces on the license plate, so it was one word
30:47
Speaker 1: j I s Lord And like I can't, I could
30:51
Speaker 1: not stop laughing about that yesterday because I'm sure the
30:54
Speaker 1: guy who got a Jesus Lord license plate gets so
30:58
Speaker 1: mad when you point out what else it looked like, um, yeah,
31:01
Speaker 1: And if you haven't just sounded out j I scored
31:05
Speaker 1: all one word. Yeah. I mean a lot of those
31:08
Speaker 1: are um I think well intended that turned out to
31:11
Speaker 1: look like other things kind of like asked man on Seinfeld. Uh,
31:15
Speaker 1: and that was a very popular one in Florida. That
31:18
Speaker 1: was true at least, Nope said so that wash And
31:21
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna spell this one out. You just got
31:23
Speaker 1: to use your imagination, folks. A five five and then
31:27
Speaker 1: remember there's a big uh orange in the middle. It
31:32
Speaker 1: looks like an oh a A five five and then
31:35
Speaker 1: that symbol and then R G Y which just just
31:39
Speaker 1: write it down. I mean they had to like slip
31:41
Speaker 1: past them. They just because there wasn't an O and there,
31:44
Speaker 1: they used the orange for the oh. Surely the people
31:47
Speaker 1: were just like they didn't think anything of it, right,
31:50
Speaker 1: very very creative. I saw it. I saw it. Um.
31:53
Speaker 1: I think a medium article. I can't remember who wrote it,
31:56
Speaker 1: but um the author was talking about how like some
32:00
Speaker 1: d m v s will like use Urban Dictionary and
32:03
Speaker 1: like scroll the internet and like try to figure out
32:06
Speaker 1: what people are saying in these things to decide whether
32:08
Speaker 1: it didn't approve them, especially these days. Um. And actually
32:13
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a second on on free speech.
32:15
Speaker 1: But with vanity plates, there are certain rules. Obviously, you're
32:19
Speaker 1: not supposed to say naughty, dirty things, even though people
32:23
Speaker 1: try and get by it in creative ways, like we
32:25
Speaker 1: just mentioned. You're not allowed to use um like an oh,
32:31
Speaker 1: the letter I'm sorry, like the In fact, some states
32:33
Speaker 1: don't even use the letter zero or the letter oh
32:35
Speaker 1: because you can intersperse the or interchange those to make
32:39
Speaker 1: it look like the other to get around the no
32:42
Speaker 1: profanity thing. Uh. And then as far as vanity plates go,
32:47
Speaker 1: and I was shocked at this number or this list
32:51
Speaker 1: of Virginia being number one in vanity plates, but it's
32:54
Speaker 1: by percentage, which makes a lot more sense because when
32:57
Speaker 1: I went to California for the first time when I
33:00
Speaker 1: was I think eighteen, I had never seen so many
33:04
Speaker 1: vanity plates in my life as in l A. And
33:06
Speaker 1: I was like, this is crazy and and I thought,
33:08
Speaker 1: kind of dumb, but that's your thing. That's your thing.
33:11
Speaker 1: But Virginia has a sixteen point one nine percent of
33:13
Speaker 1: their plate and it's because they're cheap there. It's only
33:17
Speaker 1: ten bucks. Uh. And I think in New Hampshire was next,
33:22
Speaker 1: followed by Illinois, Nevada, Montana, and Texas was the lowest
33:26
Speaker 1: at point five percent. And then Canadians, we don't want
33:31
Speaker 1: to forget about you. Ontario leads the way with four
33:34
Speaker 1: point nine five nine percent, followed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon,
33:39
Speaker 1: and then the lowest was British Columbia at point five
33:42
Speaker 1: nine percent. There don't there's some sociological study just begging
33:45
Speaker 1: to be designed through, right, you know, I'm not quite
33:48
Speaker 1: sure what it is, but I can see it in
33:50
Speaker 1: there somewhere. So yeah, Texas is just like, yeah, we
33:54
Speaker 1: don't care, We're from Texas. UM. So the whole thing
33:58
Speaker 1: with vanity plate and you know, your ability to say
34:02
Speaker 1: whatever you want in the state being able to deny
34:05
Speaker 1: you from getting a plate that you want UM brings
34:08
Speaker 1: up in the United States free speech issues because you
34:13
Speaker 1: are paying for this UM and you're displaying it on
34:16
Speaker 1: your car. It's like you are saying this that's automatically
34:20
Speaker 1: protected by the First Amendment. But it's a little fuzzy
34:22
Speaker 1: chuck because the state is issuing this thing that you're
34:26
Speaker 1: saying whatever you want to say on and in some
34:30
Speaker 1: way you're repping them as well, or they're repped on
34:33
Speaker 1: the license plate, so they may or may not want
34:35
Speaker 1: to be associated with whatever you're saying. Yeah, and when
34:39
Speaker 1: it's come to the courts, they have generally sided with people,
34:43
Speaker 1: uh like ed gave the example there was a license
34:46
Speaker 1: plate issue in North Carolina that said white power w
34:50
Speaker 1: y T E DASH. I guess p w r R
34:54
Speaker 1: P w E R p O w r oh. It
34:57
Speaker 1: was the full the full word, so you know, uh,
35:01
Speaker 1: free speech ehaw uh. And courts generally generally side with uh.
35:07
Speaker 1: And I think when it becomes um, dirty words and stuff,
35:10
Speaker 1: as they get a little more involved, yeah, definitely can't
35:13
Speaker 1: do things like that. But I don't know, it's interesting, so, um,
35:17
Speaker 1: there's there. I saw. It goes both ways. They don't necessarily,
35:21
Speaker 1: as a rule, you know, side with the the individual.
35:25
Speaker 1: Like there was a woman in I want to say
35:27
Speaker 1: New Hampshire or Vermont maybe, and in the nineties I
35:30
Speaker 1: think she, um, she requested s h T hp N
35:35
Speaker 1: S the second part is happens, and her whole thing
35:39
Speaker 1: was like she had it as just a reminder she
35:41
Speaker 1: went through a really terrible year and she had it
35:43
Speaker 1: as a reminder that, like, you know, this stuff happens,
35:46
Speaker 1: you just kind of get through it or whatever. And
35:48
Speaker 1: the state was like, no, those first three letters are dirty.
35:51
Speaker 1: And I think the Supreme Court ruled in the state's favor.
35:54
Speaker 1: They're like, yep, that's dirty, can't have it. And she
35:56
Speaker 1: was like, this is so like think about context and
35:59
Speaker 1: nuance eyes and they were like no, and she could
36:02
Speaker 1: not have her s h T hp N S license plate.
36:07
Speaker 1: I wonder if anyone has s Y s K fan
36:12
Speaker 1: oh man that that's if they do. I want to
36:16
Speaker 1: hear about it, because mine says s Y s K
36:18
Speaker 1: host and mine says s Y s K h s
36:22
Speaker 1: T right uh, and Jerry says me so nice man. Um, No,
36:31
Speaker 1: of course mine doesn't say that, but it's funny. I do.
36:34
Speaker 1: I did have, and I think I mentioned this on
36:36
Speaker 1: on an episode at some point. One of my pickup
36:40
Speaker 1: truck that I still have has six six six accident,
36:45
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of funny. Sure, yeah, I don't.
36:48
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would give you six six six if
36:50
Speaker 1: you wanted it. But it's way funnier when it's accidental
36:53
Speaker 1: six six six or l S T. Those accidental ones
36:56
Speaker 1: are hilarious. Yeah. It is interesting though, the question of
37:00
Speaker 1: what is allowed, um, because I could see some like
37:05
Speaker 1: religious conservatives saying they don't want someone to be able
37:08
Speaker 1: to say Hail Satan on their plate. Uh, But I mean, truly,
37:14
Speaker 1: that's free speech, Like the courts would decide on the
37:16
Speaker 1: favor of the car owner in that case. I would
37:18
Speaker 1: think so because it's free speech and that you're just
37:21
Speaker 1: saying what you want to say. But it's also religion.
37:24
Speaker 1: You can certainly make an argument, and I could see them.
37:27
Speaker 1: I could see the state being like, Okay, fine, you know,
37:30
Speaker 1: I think it tends to be like you said, where
37:32
Speaker 1: it's a foul word according to the state, and or
37:37
Speaker 1: like a straight up like straight up hate speech or
37:40
Speaker 1: a racial slur or something like that. Sadly, in the
37:43
Speaker 1: United States, some people try to get license plates that
37:45
Speaker 1: have racial slurs and they tend to be like out
37:47
Speaker 1: of hand and eyed, and I don't really think a
37:49
Speaker 1: court would would side with that person. I now have
37:53
Speaker 1: a new goal in life. I just realized, I want
37:56
Speaker 1: to get an old uh an old full side is
38:00
Speaker 1: woody station wagon from the sixties or seventies, and I
38:03
Speaker 1: want the license plate to say Hale st n w
38:07
Speaker 1: g N to b g N, not Hale Satan Hale
38:11
Speaker 1: station wagon. Oh nice, but it looks like Hale station
38:15
Speaker 1: Hale Satan. I'm so bad at that. Um I would
38:18
Speaker 1: be like Hale stand wang. So that happened to me
38:22
Speaker 1: in l a lot. I would be like, I don't
38:24
Speaker 1: even know what that means. Yeah, No, I'm with you.
38:26
Speaker 1: That's a very uncle you mean is actually really good
38:29
Speaker 1: at it. And she admitted last night that it was
38:32
Speaker 1: because she practiced so much as a kid. Because there
38:34
Speaker 1: was a game show on I think in the eighties
38:37
Speaker 1: called like Bumper Busters or bumper Buddies, and the whole
38:41
Speaker 1: game show is you guessing what a license plate says.
38:45
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, that was it. I just kept waiting
38:47
Speaker 1: for like the next round to come up, and Nope,
38:49
Speaker 1: that was all they did. That's really funny. Yeah. And also,
38:53
Speaker 1: while we're on at Chuck, just real quick, I gotta
38:56
Speaker 1: shout out, um that Medium article that I was talking about, Um,
39:00
Speaker 1: the never ending free speech fight over vanity license plates
39:04
Speaker 1: by Zara Stone. All right, how about we take a break. Well,
39:10
Speaker 1: I'll dream up a couple of more great vanity plates.
39:13
Speaker 1: Even though hail station Wagon. I think I just came
39:15
Speaker 1: up with something. Breakin. It's wonderful, and we'll talk about
39:18
Speaker 1: whiskey plates and who makes these things right after this. Well,
39:22
Speaker 1: now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
39:26
Speaker 1: to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck it.
39:30
Speaker 1: You should know all right, all right, I mentioned whiskey
39:46
Speaker 1: plates before we took a break, and whiskey plates have
39:50
Speaker 1: nothing to do with whiskey or the whiskey industry. Uh.
39:54
Speaker 1: It is because W is whiskey in the NATO alphabet,
40:00
Speaker 1: and they just call them whiskey plates in Minnesota. But
40:03
Speaker 1: there is an interesting tie in that you get a
40:06
Speaker 1: W at the front of your license plate if you
40:08
Speaker 1: have been uh if basically you've had your is it
40:13
Speaker 1: your license revoked because of a d U? I? Yeah,
40:16
Speaker 1: but they revoke it so hard. They take your license
40:18
Speaker 1: plates too, right, But they can't take your car because
40:22
Speaker 1: other people in your family might need to drive that car.
40:25
Speaker 1: So what they do is they give you a plate
40:27
Speaker 1: with the W at the beginning that basically tells everybody, Hey,
40:30
Speaker 1: I have had my license plate revoked because of drunken driving. Yeah,
40:34
Speaker 1: and UM Minnesota is not the only UM state to
40:38
Speaker 1: do this. Ohio has their own one, and they, they,
40:41
Speaker 1: I guess, very un ironically use scarlet letters or there's
40:46
Speaker 1: no joke. I have family members with that. Do you
40:49
Speaker 1: really know why that? That's amazing? So apparently judges weren't
40:53
Speaker 1: using them as much as they they as much as
40:56
Speaker 1: the legislature wanted. So the legislature changed the law, saying
41:00
Speaker 1: judges had to use them um for I think starting
41:03
Speaker 1: in the two thousand teens. So yeah, I guess you're
41:07
Speaker 1: probably seeing a lot more scarlet letters on cars in
41:09
Speaker 1: Ohio these days. Yeah. I didn't know what it was.
41:12
Speaker 1: And this is uh. I don't want to be too specific,
41:14
Speaker 1: but when I was in Ohio visiting Emily's family, I
41:17
Speaker 1: remember walking up the driveway to a family function and
41:20
Speaker 1: I think my father in law was like, check it out. Look,
41:23
Speaker 1: he's got the scarlet letter, Uncle, glug glug exactly. Yeah.
41:29
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about it, and I but I
41:32
Speaker 1: was confused whether I shoot or not after that rope
41:34
Speaker 1: injury story that I failed to ask you about. So
41:37
Speaker 1: now I'm like all shaky and nervous all the time
41:40
Speaker 1: mentioned stories. I'm like, should I ask God on um? So.
41:44
Speaker 1: Another thing that's happened over the years is people have
41:48
Speaker 1: gotten themselves into trouble for being a little too clever
41:51
Speaker 1: for their own good by having a license plate that
41:53
Speaker 1: says no tags or no plates or something like that.
41:57
Speaker 1: Because when a cop files a report for a car
42:01
Speaker 1: that doesn't have license plate. This is generally what they
42:03
Speaker 1: would write, no plate or no tags, so it gets
42:06
Speaker 1: filed as you know, a violator, and then all of
42:09
Speaker 1: a sudden you're getting pulled over. And this is you know,
42:12
Speaker 1: verifiably happened before. There was a case in the late
42:14
Speaker 1: seventies of a guy who got um a lot of
42:17
Speaker 1: fines because of stuff that he didn't do, because he
42:20
Speaker 1: was like, I got a no plates vanity plate. Okay,
42:23
Speaker 1: so I want to I want to defend this guy,
42:25
Speaker 1: Robert barber Um. He did have a no plates vanity plate,
42:29
Speaker 1: but it was accidental because he was applying for vanity
42:33
Speaker 1: plates and you have to put your three your top
42:35
Speaker 1: three choices. He wanted boating, sailing, and then if these
42:39
Speaker 1: two weren't available, he didn't want a vanity plate, so
42:42
Speaker 1: he unwisely wrote no plates DMV totally humorouss always looking
42:49
Speaker 1: out for dirty words. Just great, this guy wants to
42:51
Speaker 1: no plates license plate. Let's give it to him. Yeah, well,
42:55
Speaker 1: of course, what was it boating and sailing? That's not
42:57
Speaker 1: gonna be on there. He I guess he was just
42:59
Speaker 1: rolling the dice. Jimmy Christopher Cross owns those in every
43:03
Speaker 1: stage he does very famously. So um. Also, chuck. There's
43:07
Speaker 1: a long standing rumor that I think we should put
43:10
Speaker 1: to rest that um prison inmates in the United States
43:14
Speaker 1: make the license plates in this country. True false, it's false.
43:21
Speaker 1: Well no, I was about to say myth or busted. Uh,
43:25
Speaker 1: and I combined false and myth. So I think I
43:28
Speaker 1: just kind of coined a new term. You don't have
43:30
Speaker 1: to say false or myth anymore. You can just say
43:32
Speaker 1: false it is true. Actually, um, And I don't I
43:37
Speaker 1: don't think I crossed the board. But a lot of
43:39
Speaker 1: times prison inmates still do make license plates. And uh,
43:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's part of the the sort of um,
43:47
Speaker 1: little to no wage labor system that the prisons take
43:51
Speaker 1: advantage of in this country. Yeah, so um. Thanks to
43:53
Speaker 1: the thirteenth Amendment, you cannot enslave a person unless they're
43:57
Speaker 1: being jailed for a crime. So most licensed plays, I
44:00
Speaker 1: believe it is most chuck um are produced in the
44:03
Speaker 1: United States by slave labor incarcerated prisoners. Um. And because
44:09
Speaker 1: you can't say, well, I'm gonna fire you, and you're
44:11
Speaker 1: not gonna get any wages because you're not paying them anyway,
44:14
Speaker 1: they coerce them into working in other ways, like like
44:18
Speaker 1: removing their ability to see family, maybe putting them in
44:21
Speaker 1: solitary um, basically punishing them if they won't work for free.
44:27
Speaker 1: And that's how the United States gets most of its
44:29
Speaker 1: license plates. And even worse, it's not just the Bureau
44:31
Speaker 1: of Prisons running this. They usually contract with an outside
44:34
Speaker 1: company who uses slave labor legally to produce these license plates,
44:40
Speaker 1: from which they make a profit that they when they
44:43
Speaker 1: give them to the state. Yeah, it's a terrible, terrible
44:47
Speaker 1: thing and it's something that needs to be changed, but
44:49
Speaker 1: that's not on just about anyone's radar. I think as
44:52
Speaker 1: far as changing laws goes, well, it became kind of
44:56
Speaker 1: a joke, like making license plates you're going to jail. Yeah,
44:59
Speaker 1: especially the ones in New Hampshire where the license plates
45:02
Speaker 1: they live free or die. Well, speaking of that, um,
45:06
Speaker 1: and we're not gonna go over the whole process of
45:08
Speaker 1: how they're made because it's not super interesting. But um,
45:12
Speaker 1: I looked and there was a thing on Reddit where
45:14
Speaker 1: a guy went through I think there was a h
45:17
Speaker 1: or maybe he just did it on its own and
45:19
Speaker 1: made a map of the states that still have embossed
45:21
Speaker 1: plates rather than the just sort of printed on aluminum
45:26
Speaker 1: that we have now in Georgia, arts are not embossed
45:28
Speaker 1: any longer, even though Jerry Wildest she's got an embossed
45:32
Speaker 1: plate from like twenty something years ago. Still back to
45:34
Speaker 1: the podcast and hangs onto it. But uh, from what
45:39
Speaker 1: I could tell, and I lost count because the picture
45:42
Speaker 1: was really small. And then other people chimed in after
45:44
Speaker 1: this was in twenty nineteen then saying like, hey, now
45:47
Speaker 1: Kansas is not embossed anymore, so it looks like it's
45:50
Speaker 1: about roughly half and half of states that are still embossing. Uh.
45:54
Speaker 1: And just one little fun note about this, I did
45:56
Speaker 1: not know we gotta and I know the Vermonters out
45:59
Speaker 1: there just waiting. I will not forget about you, because
46:02
Speaker 1: Vermont is the only state that has d BOSS license plates.
46:06
Speaker 1: Oh no, it is not raised lettering. It is depressed
46:10
Speaker 1: depressed in Vermont. Very very cool. So UM, if you
46:14
Speaker 1: want to kind of take a little nostalgic trip. I
46:16
Speaker 1: found out by accident, there's a title max um dot
46:20
Speaker 1: com post. It's called fifty years of license Plates in
46:24
Speaker 1: the US UM and you can see fifty years of
46:27
Speaker 1: license plates state by state, and if you choose like
46:30
Speaker 1: the decade you were a kid and just go, you know,
46:32
Speaker 1: scroll down. It's like being back on the road again
46:35
Speaker 1: age ten, and like the back of your parents car.
46:38
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. Yeah, I mean I remember when they,
46:41
Speaker 1: as many people do, when they started just including little
46:44
Speaker 1: logos like the Georgia peach, and it wasn't just the
46:48
Speaker 1: straight up letters and numbers, and I remember thinking like, wow,
46:51
Speaker 1: is this is this the future here that we're looking at? Well,
46:54
Speaker 1: speaking of the future, So they went from embossed or
46:57
Speaker 1: d embossed too, flat rented UM license plates. Now apparently
47:03
Speaker 1: there's some disruptors out of Silicon Valley because that's where
47:06
Speaker 1: they come from, and they've come up with digital license
47:09
Speaker 1: plates and some states are starting to be like, yep,
47:12
Speaker 1: you can do that. So for a fee, I think
47:14
Speaker 1: it's like fourteen dollars a month or two fifty dollars
47:17
Speaker 1: for four years something like that. This company keeps your
47:20
Speaker 1: plate up to date. UM you can have it personalized
47:23
Speaker 1: a little bit, and it looks super cool. You know.
47:26
Speaker 1: If you especially if you have an electric car, you
47:28
Speaker 1: could do worse than putting a digital plate on the
47:30
Speaker 1: back of it. But obviously not everybody has two hundred
47:33
Speaker 1: fifty bucks for four years. And I think that's in
47:35
Speaker 1: addition to all of the normal fees that apply for
47:37
Speaker 1: a license plate too, that's right. Uh. And speaking of fees,
47:43
Speaker 1: that's something that you would not be able to collect.
47:45
Speaker 1: But people get really into collecting license plates. Uh. And
47:48
Speaker 1: there are a couple of different ways. One UM is
47:51
Speaker 1: a little well, I'm not gonna say that. One is
47:53
Speaker 1: just collecting license plates, physical license plates, maybe all of
47:57
Speaker 1: them through history in your state, maybe all of them
48:00
Speaker 1: throughout the whole country over the years, or just once
48:02
Speaker 1: you think are super cool. Uh. And you know rare
48:05
Speaker 1: runs UM, like innycollectible are going to go for a
48:07
Speaker 1: lot more money. Um. You can also buy big lots
48:10
Speaker 1: of them on eBay for not much money. But the
48:13
Speaker 1: big money comes in collecting the actual ownership of a
48:18
Speaker 1: tag number. Because if you remember earlier we mentioned UM,
48:22
Speaker 1: license plates in many states started at one and work
48:25
Speaker 1: their way up. There's a lot of rich people with
48:29
Speaker 1: way too much money, I guess, way too much that
48:32
Speaker 1: want to pay a lot of money to have like
48:35
Speaker 1: eight as their license plate, and they will pay hundreds
48:39
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars to get that. Yeah. Apparently in
48:41
Speaker 1: the states, Delaware is the state that's craziest for this.
48:44
Speaker 1: There's a real secondary market where yes, people pay six
48:48
Speaker 1: figures for a license plate number. And it's like, you know,
48:51
Speaker 1: when you buy a car, the plate gets transferred to you,
48:54
Speaker 1: so you can continue to keep this plate over and
48:57
Speaker 1: over again, so you're actually buying it from the person
48:59
Speaker 1: and use really you you get the car with it,
49:01
Speaker 1: but you're like, I don't care about the car, I'm
49:03
Speaker 1: just after the plate. But as crazy as Delaware is
49:07
Speaker 1: for their plates, um and again, I think seven grand
49:10
Speaker 1: is the most someone paid for tag number six in Delaware.
49:13
Speaker 1: Pretty crazy in other countries, especially Dubai, the uae Abu, Dhabi,
49:19
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. There, it's just insane the amount of money
49:23
Speaker 1: they spend on on that stuff. I couldn't believe these numbers.
49:29
Speaker 1: But someone in New York apparently paid twenty million dollars
49:34
Speaker 1: for a plate that said to New York. Yeah. The
49:36
Speaker 1: kicker of that one is it came with the nineties
49:39
Speaker 1: Volvo wagon that it was attached to. I'm not kidding.
49:43
Speaker 1: Oh was it really Evolva? Somebody paid for a Volvo wagon? Uh?
49:48
Speaker 1: And then the one in UH and in the Brits
49:52
Speaker 1: I believe they paid someone in is it Great? Britain?
49:56
Speaker 1: Is it the UK? Is it? England paid twenty million
50:01
Speaker 1: bucks for an F one license plate tag. So if
50:04
Speaker 1: you if you want to get gagged with the spoon,
50:07
Speaker 1: head on over to Lux Digital with an E after
50:10
Speaker 1: the X and just read about the most expensive car
50:13
Speaker 1: tags ever, because you will find little gems like this,
50:18
Speaker 1: said Abdul Gaffar. Kury paid nine point five million dollars
50:22
Speaker 1: for one in Abu Dhabi because quote, it's the best number.
50:26
Speaker 1: And then the Lux Digital says, quote by hanging one
50:30
Speaker 1: from his fenders, coury boldly let the world know that
50:33
Speaker 1: he was a man of confidence and prestige. Someone actually
50:37
Speaker 1: wrote that down and was dead serious about it. Yeah,
50:41
Speaker 1: it reminds me that I'm number one hat on SNL.
50:46
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. Oh you don't like Will Ferrell's ad,
50:49
Speaker 1: like this black tie dinner and he's like showing up
50:52
Speaker 1: all the other men because he's wearing a mesh backed
50:54
Speaker 1: I'm number one hat. It's just completely incongruous with everything
51:00
Speaker 1: he's trying to do, but he's like showing everybody I'm
51:02
Speaker 1: number one. That's pretty pretty great, pretty great stuff. I
51:07
Speaker 1: guess one final thing we put a pin in, so
51:09
Speaker 1: we have to take that pin out or people say
51:11
Speaker 1: what about the pin? As you mentioned three M making
51:15
Speaker 1: the reflective plates. Apparently three M continually lobbies politicians to
51:22
Speaker 1: pass laws making people get license plates more often than
51:25
Speaker 1: they need to so they can get bigger government contracts
51:29
Speaker 1: for those reflective plates, reflective backing, and apparently even police
51:33
Speaker 1: departments are like, we don't need new plates this often.
51:37
Speaker 1: This is we don't shouldn't have to do this. Yeah,
51:39
Speaker 1: and three M's like, come on, you're not paying for it.
51:41
Speaker 1: Your residents are who cares, it's nothing to your residences,
51:44
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to us, just do it like they
51:46
Speaker 1: lobby for that, which is gross. In addition to using
51:51
Speaker 1: enslaved prison labor to create license plates, there are a
51:54
Speaker 1: lot more tawdry than you'd think at first plans agreed.
51:58
Speaker 1: Um so turned out to be a really great pick,
52:01
Speaker 1: Tracy and a j Thank you for the suggestion, Chuck,
52:05
Speaker 1: thank you for turning this into an absolutely delightful episode,
52:09
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. And since I said that, everybody,
52:11
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. Oh
52:18
Speaker 1: this is a good one. Uh, this is a little
52:20
Speaker 1: bit on cultural appropriation because in the Mariachi episode, I
52:26
Speaker 1: talked about wanting a charro suit and said I would
52:29
Speaker 1: fear being accused of cultural appropriation, and he said, nay
52:32
Speaker 1: to that, Nay, uh wear it because people would you know,
52:36
Speaker 1: you're you're celebrating that culture, and uh, we heard from
52:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Um, and I'm gonna read a
52:44
Speaker 1: couple of them from our Mexican friends who and I'm
52:49
Speaker 1: not I'm not patting the results here, but literally our
52:53
Speaker 1: Mexican listeners roundly said, do it, dude, we love it
52:58
Speaker 1: and that would be awesome Mexican and Mexican American. Yes,
53:03
Speaker 1: of course. Um, hey, guys, is a Mexican myself. I
53:06
Speaker 1: listened to the episodes, Um about our country knowing so
53:10
Speaker 1: much on the topic, and you guys are always so
53:12
Speaker 1: spot on. Makes me love the podcast even more. With
53:15
Speaker 1: the Mariachi episode, I love mariachi music and personally love
53:19
Speaker 1: singing Vincente Fernandez music, and I want to let check no, chuck, no,
53:24
Speaker 1: you should definitely dress at least once in that style.
53:27
Speaker 1: Mexican people love when other ethnicities love their culture and style,
53:31
Speaker 1: and I would say in Mexico they would even encourage
53:33
Speaker 1: you to try on a chr os suit. Keep doing
53:35
Speaker 1: what you're doing. That's from Joel Hernandez. And then we
53:39
Speaker 1: received one from Jamie Cavazos Cova rubious, great great name.
53:45
Speaker 1: Actually it's uh, it's himI, okay, right, not Jamie spelled
53:49
Speaker 1: Ji and right. Mexican came to the US when I
53:52
Speaker 1: was twenty four years old. I want to congratulate you
53:55
Speaker 1: on the preparation and pronunciation on the mariachi up. You
53:58
Speaker 1: guys did a great job, especially rolling those ours with
54:02
Speaker 1: your Spanish second Chuck. You should wear a mariachi suit
54:07
Speaker 1: any day and be a champ. I was born and
54:09
Speaker 1: raised in Mexico, and I feel proud when a person
54:11
Speaker 1: likes my culture. Makes me happy that someone is interested
54:13
Speaker 1: in anything regarding the great parts of Mexico, like food, music,
54:17
Speaker 1: and it's folklore and many other good things. I will
54:19
Speaker 1: not call it cultural appropriation because I feel joy when
54:23
Speaker 1: the world likes even a little bit of what I
54:24
Speaker 1: am and want to keep spreading the beautiful roots from
54:27
Speaker 1: Mexican culture. Uh. It actually works both ways, guys. Because
54:31
Speaker 1: I live in the North Alabama area, after seven years,
54:34
Speaker 1: I probably call myself Southern. Now you can ask any
54:37
Speaker 1: Mexican person if they feel offended if you wear a
54:39
Speaker 1: mariachi suit, and I'm confident they will encourage you to
54:41
Speaker 1: keep doing it. Uh. And then they imi encouraged us
54:45
Speaker 1: to talk about in the future Mexican trio Romantico music,
54:50
Speaker 1: which we're gonna look into. Um. And not to poopa
54:53
Speaker 1: on anyone, but the couple of no one really scolded me,
54:56
Speaker 1: but the couple of emails that we did get that,
54:58
Speaker 1: We're like, hey, maybe think to ice, Um, we're from
55:01
Speaker 1: Caucasian people, Uh, taking up the fight for our Mexican
55:06
Speaker 1: and Mexican American friends. So just just laying that out there.
55:11
Speaker 1: Thanks nicely put And who was it in addition to
55:14
Speaker 1: him whose email you read that would be Joel Hernandez,
55:19
Speaker 1: Joel Him and Joel thank you so much for writing in.
55:21
Speaker 1: Everybody who wrote in, thank you very much. Regardless of
55:24
Speaker 1: what your opinion was, We appreciate it, and we're always
55:27
Speaker 1: looking for good emails regardless of what your opinion is.
55:31
Speaker 1: You can wrap it up spanking on the bottom and
55:33
Speaker 1: send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
55:40
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
55:43
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55:46
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