Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - License Plates

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by writer Parker Molloy (‘The Present Age' Substack) and comedian/podcaster Blake Wexler (new stand-up album ‘A Lifetime Of Laughter') for a look at why license plates are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

License plates. Known for being letters. Famous for also numbers. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why license plates are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks! Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Parker Molloy and Blake Wexler are my guests today. Parker Molloy is a journalist, writer, so much more. Her Substack newsletter is called The Present Age. Highly recommend reading, highly recommend supporting. It's a newsletter about communication in the modern age and what that means for

everything, because it impacts everything. You also might know Parker's work from Media Matters, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, tons of other great places. Also, she is in Chicago, so I'm just very excited about that too. And then Blake Wexler is a very, very funny stand-up comedian. He's got multiple killer stand-up albums for you to enjoy. His latest is called A Lifetime of Laughter. That is also a clean album. If you value the podcast that you're listening to being clean, that's also a clean stand-up album. So, you know, show the kids. Have a good time. Blake Wexler is also a wonderful podcaster. He has his very own show called Blake's Takes for God's Sakes, where he free associates an incredible 45 minutes or so

of just very funny stuff from a very funny comic mind, this comedian Blake Wexler. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Parker recorded this on the traditional land of the Potawatomi, Kaskaskia, Peoria, Kickapoo, Miami, and Oceti Shakoing peoples. Acknowledge Blake recorded this on the traditional land of the Leni Lenape people. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, Native people are very much still here.

That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about license plates. That's a patron pick for this month. Thank you to David H. for that great suggestion. Also totally self-explanatory. So please sit back or kneel with one of those tiny wrenches because you need to remove tiny screws to put in your new Snoopy license plates. California offers those. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Parker Malloy and Blake Wexler.

I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Parker Blake, it's so good to have you both. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either you can start, but how do you feel about license plates? License plates. Should I go first? Yes. By all means, I think you should go first. Yeah, I love it. My thought on license plates is that I have one favorite license plate,

and it is the Washington, D.C. license plate. For a while, I worked at Media Matters, which is like a progressive media watchdog group, and would travel to D.C. every few months. And I just love how unbelievably passive-aggressive D.C.'s license plates are. So in case you don't know, the slogan on them is taxation without representation, which is just so passive aggressive. And the way that it happens is even better. So back in 2000, a woman named Sarah Shapiro emailed a radio show to suggest that they change it to that because she was talking to some friends and they didn't know that D.C. didn't have any actual representation in Congress. And so someone took her email, brought it up to members of the D.C. council. And within a few a few months, like this moved lightning fast. The mayor had signed an executive

order changing the slogan on it from celebrate and discover to taxation without representation. And for her efforts, they gave her vanity uh taxation without representation plate that read my idea which i think that's just great and she's just just a normal woman and i love everything about that entire story so that that sticks with me that's great my idea people who don't know that story is like i'm is it cars did they come up with cars what was their idea it was that's really cool um yeah like henry ford gets out of the vehicle i feel like if henry ford could have a vanity license plate though it might not work yeah no we'd have to blur it out yeah

it's a family show so we can't riff on that but um i am a hundred percent with you i i was really excited alex when you picked this topic because i have uh i've been obsessed with license plates since i was a kid to the point where when I was little I got like I must have been like 11 or 12 for Christmas I got like a camcorder which which I should say I'm 33 this sounds like I'm 89 years old a camcorder you know like made of in a box of made of wood but um I uh so, we did, um, Christmas in South Carolina that year. And on the way back on I-95 for 12 hours, I use the video camera not to write, you know, some sort of like little play or, you know, like, like just film myself telling jokes

or something. I just took screen like stills with it of every license plate I saw from every state so I could collect the states and I found it recently and it is the most boring thing anyone has ever created in the history of humanity it's it's just still but they're really long they're like these these six second stills so it's it's unreal I think I got nine or maybe 10 or 11 of them um but yeah i'm so glad you still have it that's great it's it's a it's a treasure it's it's my family has nothing if not that video and then um living in la speaking of vanity plates for 10 years the the while dc has the best one

los angeles has all of the worst ones that exist as well where it is it brings vanity the term vanity that's what they're referring to in the term vanity plate it's it's unreal so yeah love love license plates love the topic uh really happy to to talk about it with you too this this is so exciting all around yeah i i i feel like all three of us are maybe license plate spotter people. Like driving around anywhere, I will just notice out of state plates and I'll be like, oh, hey, look, like we saw DC in the neighborhood in Brooklyn the other day. And I was like, oh, DC. And my partner was like, OK, that doesn't matter. I was like, no, it's very I just I guess I notice these all of the time. I think it's a road trip thing.

I think it's that we took a lot of road trips and that was something to see on the road was, hey, look, North Dakota, you know? And when a state changes one, it's like, when did that happen? You know what I mean? It's like, oh, is this is a brand new one? What do we have here? It's always very exciting. I like when states try to go out of their like comfort zone a little bit when it comes

to like new plates and it just doesn't match up like at one point indiana had like a really super loud like multi-color kind of thing and it's just like indiana that's not you you're trying to be someone you're not just accept that you're indiana i think north dakota has another has one that's like really bold and it's just like you know all right fine it's like is that's like really bold and it's just like, you know, all right, fine. Is that Hawaii's? And it's like, no, North Dakota for some reason. Yeah. Yeah.

And also when I see an interesting one, I wonder if it's one of the special plates that a state offers or if it's the normal one, you know? Like I never know if that's what's going on. Because when we were in North Carolina, we got a special Save the Honey Bee license plate. Like, you know, there's all the special types where you donate to a thing. That's cute. I love that. See, meanwhile, so my wife Kayla has lived in Illinois

since late 2014. She moved here from Washington State let's let's just say that her car in our garage right now is uh still has washington license plates you know it's just like it's one of those things that after after a certain amount of time you're just kind of like well but it's funny though every once in a something will happen. Like she got in a car accident. And I think that she got some extra sympathy because of it's like, oh, you're from out of town. It's like, no, she lives down the street. Someone just rear ended.

But, yeah, you know, fun stuff like that that, you know, we should probably figure out at some point. Yeah, it's just keep putting it off. I haven't driven in a decade, so I am just observing. I am auditing classes of cars, basically. I am sitting in that passenger seat, taking it all in. Yeah, Parker is high up on a Chicago L train, literally looking down on the peons in their cars. These fools with license plates. Traveling around.

So I kept my license plates. And if this is going to cause financial implications for me, please edit this out. But I did keep my license plates from California when I moved to Pennsylvania. And then getting new like there is the whole world of license, but like auto tag people, you know, like which is outside the DMV. Like there's this whole auto tag underground of people who handle transferring titles and, you know, that sort of thing, which I'm still I'm sure I'm going to wind up in jail for a year for some reason, because none of these things were ever taken care of. But I also remember there was a period where when I grew up in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania had this. There was like a classic style license plate that was just navy blue with like the yellow lettering, I guess. And I think Pennsylvania had it. Delaware had it. I believe New York had it. Like sometimes when you go into like a beach bar or something they have like all the license plates up and

it's like wait who had navy blue and gold like they're like six states had them so alex at some point i need all of these questions answered we can do it off the show we can do it off air but yeah i have i have your number and i need i need answers yeah i think well this because this topic was pitched by a patron thank you david h and he partly did it because he wanted to know about california plates like i think everybody has questions about their own state we won't do all of them but he like he wanted to know why a bunch of california plates start with a seven and it turns out it's because the california plates it's a number and then three letters, then three numbers.

But that first number, like they use it for a whole generation of plates. And then they finally turn over to the next number when they've done, I guess, all of the combinations. So for a long time, California plates are going to start with seven until they start with eight. Interesting. It's just weird. Cool. Like why? But every state's different.

Like no other state is doing this interesting and boring yeah interesting boring basically yeah you know it's just like all right cool sure yeah i'm gonna repeat that fact at some point and not say it correctly i'm gonna be six seven because they really like Michael Vick for some reason. I don't know. It's a whole thing. It's a big thing. Yeah, they stuck with Michael Vick. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't make any sense here, but yeah.

But yeah, and we have, there's a lot of numbers and other stuff on this show, partly because license plates are numerical. So I think we can get into them. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called I'm the stats guy. Make you tally that guy. Always have a graph guy. Mean median and mode guy. I'm that stats type. Make your teacher teacher math type might count up your friends type might deduce your graph type i'm the stats guy i was gonna say you took that a lot longer than i thought you would

thank you it was beautiful special shout out this week to elizabeth burns gundall who sent me a demo so thank you that was very helpful and that's separately a similar idea from robot commander Beautiful. Special shout out this week to Elizabeth Burns Gundle, who sent me a demo. So thank you. That was very helpful. And that's separately a similar idea from Robot Commander. Put them together. We have a new name for this every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible.

Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Well, very fun. And the first set of numbers here brings us to a nearby U.S. state, very close to Pennsylvania. The numbers are 1, 2, 3. And 1, 2, 3 are the license plates of the governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state in the U.S. state of Delaware. Delaware, for some reason, they make their license plates numerical and NPR says they count up all the way from just the number one. So the governor of Delaware's car has a plate that just says one on it. And then Lieutenant Governor to Secretary of State three. And then the rest of the plates in the state count up from there.

Is it numerical or do they spell it out? Oh, I would imagine they'd run out of characters actually at some point. But yeah, numbers. Never mind. Pretend like that was a joke imagine losing like re-election and then having to be like god i gotta go to dmv too i had you're like i lost my license plate of all the things just adds up yeah i guess like del Delaware has a big trying to get a low license plate number culture.

Apparently, because you can just like keep getting new tags on the same plate. You can also sell and transfer plates to other people. And there have been auctions where a three digit plate will sell for thousands of dollars. Also, in 2008, there was an auction for license plate six. So it's just the number six and it's sold for $675,000 US. Whoa. Some people have too much money. Yeah. There are a lot of things like if I had an unlimited amount of money that I would, I would spend on, I think it would take me a while to get to. I need to buy this very specific license.

Yeah, that's that would be maybe the fourth thing on my list, actually. I think it would be, yeah, things for my family, vacations, and that it would actually be ahead of the car I'd put it on. Actually. Wow. Yeah. be ahead of the car i'd put it on actually wow yeah that it's fun i have a quote here from delaware auctioneer butch emmert who says quote it's more important in delaware to have a low number than to drive a rolls royce end quote it's more expensive delaware mentality yeah yeah it is it is interesting like i guess the psychology behind a vanity plate or something like that is kind of a similar thing where if you were to wear like flashy jewelry or something or, you know, where more people do see it thing that i want to brag about but i guess you don't see the reactions to it which would kind of mitigate that thought unless you're just kind

of looking around like huh you see you see the thing on the back of my car um that's wild see one one thing with vanity plates though that i i think a lot about which is probably a waste of my time is is the the fact that like, I don't know, especially the ones that tell like little jokes, like imagine getting pulled over and then a cop being like, have you, have you been drinking?

And you're like, no. And they're, you know, and go back and they're like, okay, your, your plate says boozer,

you know, like there's something like that. Like, be like, uh, DUI number four or something, you know like there's something like that like be like uh dui number four or something you know just just something that makes you really embarrassed to uh to have made those decisions leading up to that moment meanwhile it was just uh the power forward driving erratically because he was texting very specific reference yeah well no just just last week i i saw someone

posted a thing on uh on twitter that carlos boozer is uh getting in the uh vasectomy game he's he teamed up with someone because they said he is a he is a ball handler professional ball handler and yeah so he he did that and it just reminded me of the time when he was playing for the bulls um that he accidentally was celebrating making a shot and accidentally punched the ref in the uh in the in the downstairs yeah yeah that was i remember that fun time oh yeah perfect partnership oh yeah exactly it was great uh you know it's like good for him good for him he's getting money it's not an nft you know it's cool yeah like that was very thoughtful making a chicago bulls reference for me and park i really appreciate it of course that was deft of course

that was yeah thank you thank you i was gonna make a marcus pfizer reference but we can talk about maybe when we talk about vaccines at some point, I can throw that in there. Bull's great at vaccination inventor. Start going going deep on Iowa State University. And, you know, oddly, so the next thing in my doc is about the vaccine because the other delaware thing is that you know a lot of states offered incentives to people to get vaccinated and 2021 delaware offered a pair of three-digit license plates as like one of the random things you can get if you get vaccinated and their're in Senate push. Huh?

So even, even like this thing of loving license plates crosses over to COVID vaccination in Delaware. It's very powerful. Right. And if you're in Delaware, it's a fun state. I want to know more about it. Getting an email from a J Biden.

Like I keep mistaking that for fundraising, but he has a lot of things to personally tell me about Delaware. Well, the next number here, this is another U.S. thing, but it's a darker thing. The next number is 65 cents U.S., and that was the average hourly wage for new york state prisoners making license plates in new york as of 2016 it's it's not an urban legend or just a joke u.s prisoners are often the people making license plates in the united states yeah crazy that was a uh not so fun fact that was

that was in the article that i read about the dc license place to make sure i had my facts right before i came on here and it was uh yeah it was like and the first 13 000 were made by inmates at lorton prison it's like oh well that kind of takes this feel good story and yeah it's a punch in the stomach yeah it's not yeah taxation without representation it's like imagine how they feel now right they definitely don't have representation when that and that new york number kind of came out of a similar thing because in 2019 gothamist covered new york doing like hey here's a contest to pick the new license plate designs for the state and many people said hey that reminds us fix this

thing where it's it's prisoners making it. And New York State Senator Zelnor Myrie like indexed the wages and is trying to push legislation to raise them because about 2,100 prisoners make the plates. And they're given an annual wage of $1,092, which breaks down to about 65 cents an hour. And other states do this, too. That's horrible. Yeah. So it's just not good news. But it's a thing that, you know, this state senator is working on it

and hopefully people just become more aware of it. Because, like, I couldn't find national figures, but every state I did Google about it said, yes, we use prisoners for this. Insane. So odd that that would be the thing like that that's the prisoner job you know what i mean but yeah license plates yeah well i mean it's one of them i mean i remember at the beginning of the pandemic there was when when cuomo was like hey you know we've got all this we made our own uh hand sanitizer and it was just like where was it made who's we prison you know

it's like oh great cool i guess oh it's it's hard to exist in a society can i just read about license nope no no we did we did something bad and it is like it's a thing i was like i gotta include it in the episode because like i remember when i was a kid people would like as a punch line of the concept of someone going to jail be like and now he's going to be making license plates ha ha ha and i always was confused by that or didn't believe it but it's just a thing still yeah it's how it works in the u.s yeah that was always common in cartoons i was always just like stamping away at license plates and stuff anyway yeah very weird comedy choice that the whole society i i feel like prison labor could be its own episode yeah that too yeah yeah when. And the last number for the numbers section is a year.

It is 1989. 1989 is the year when Mexico City adopted a law called Hoy No Circula. And this was a law to fight air pollution and fight smog. And the deal was based on the license plate number of your car, you were not allowed to drive it on certain days to try to take some cars off the road. And many cities in the world have tried laws like this. Beijing, New Delhi, Bogota. There's many places where if there's high air pollution from cars, people are trying this kind of thing.

So you just got to buy two cars. It's true. At least. That's actually what some people do yeah that's how they get around it the rich will always find a way yeah it's my monday car is my tuesday car i don't drive on sundays yeah because mexico city they did it based on the last number of the plate so for example if your plate ended in five or six, you couldn't drive on a Monday and then the rest of the 10 digits for the other weekdays. And then Bogota did a thing where because people were buying whole additional cars to get around this, Bogota's law

changes which plate numbers go with which days every year to try to make that a harder practice to do. I hope people aren't just buying like even more cars but but that's the idea that is yeah they don't get it that that's not the right thing to do it's like i guess i gotta buy more cars like i'm doing my part i keep buying these cars you keep changing the rules yeah but and also like ever like we were saying every u.s state has this weird different letter and number system like some places would have to adjust the system to do something like this like delaware can't they're not set up nobody drives on thursday in delaware but then like everybody drives on friday it's just a complete we didn't think this through oh no copied off

someone else's work. Plagiarizing Bogota, Delaware. Cut it out. Two places with so much in common already. Well, yeah, then we got a couple of big takeaways for the episode, the main episode here. Let's get into takeaway number one. the main episode here. Let's get into takeaway number one. Ontario and Ohio made each of the two biggest license plate design errors within the past couple of years. These are two fun stories, and I think they illustrate basically the two ways a place can screw up their license plate design, Ontario and then Ohio. NPR is the key source for

each story. We're also Lincoln, Canada's national post and the Toronto Star. But starting with Ohio, they made the mistake of doing like a new design for their state plates where it's not accurate. Like historically, they made an error. Alex, I'm sorry to jump in. Is it because the river on the license plate is not on fire? Is that why it's is that why it's inaccurate? Cleveland rose up in fury. Our heritage is being. I'm sorry to interrupt.

That's great. That was another one. Man, so many like jokes that I heard adults tell when i was a kid were like things that i that ended up being facts to learn like prisoners make license plates cleveland's river caught on fire one time like just these tropes really stick with us it is i learned a bunch like just from listening to like david cross when i was a kid like i i learned who all the awful politicians were you know where it's like oh that's that's stromther i wouldn't probably wouldn't come across stromtherman for a very long time it's like oh that's who that is and that's who this person is so it is funny you

know hearing the reference in a joke and then you know almost reverse engineering the understanding of what they're talking about you know depending on how old you are yeah absolutely uh i so i back in like 2006 2007 i was waiting tables and uh there was one day where i they let me put my ipod on over the the speakers and it was on shuffle and one of david cross's albums was on my ipod and it went into some like long extremely vulgar rant that i had people all over the place just staring at me like turn this off now i was like sorry went and hit went and hit next and it put on the There Will Be Blood soundtrack, which is just creepy and not conducive to eating. So. But Johnny Greenwood, though, it's good.

But. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. These are my interests. Not what I want while I'm eating a burger. I hope like the crossfit came on and then one of the restaurant patrons was George W. Bush. Like he looks up like, what? Hey, it's a single.

Stop being mean to me. This happens all the time. So it took me forever to figure out what changed on the Ohio license plate. You sent this and I was just like staring and i'm just like going back and forth and they they changed the direction of the plane is that is that what it is oh it is yeah yeah it's they it's just one issue with it but this this plate came out in october 2021 so a lot of listeners probably haven't seen these new ones on the road yet. But Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles unveiled this new plate. They kept the slogan, Birthplace of Aviation.

And then they had that on a banner attached to the original Wright Brothers flyer from 1903. But then as soon as they announced it, people wrote in on Twitter and stuff to say, hey, the plane is backwards. It's drawn as if it's like pushing the banner instead of pulling it because it is it turns out yeah see i thought the second one was like spraying like insecticide the pesticides over the corn so i don't know if that's what they want to promote but they could have you know they were quick on their feet they could have said something like that. See, I, you know, I could have just Googled what the thing with the Ohio license plate was because you just said it's like Ohio one, Ohio two.

And I'm just sitting there swiping back and forth trying to do it like one of those like find the five differences types of things. And I'm like looking at the child on the tree swing in the back and the dog. And I'm like, is this like one of those Wizard of Oz things? Tree in the back. And you're like, oh. It is. I think this is the first time I've basically sent guests a puzzle. That's fun.

That's a fun thing I did. Yeah. Not enough podcasts send me puzzles ahead of appearances. That is true. That's my main complaint as well. Yeah. Like, where's the jumble, Marc Maron? Right.

If I'm going to come on, you know. But yeah, and this this right flyer, it was backwards. We'll link Smithsonian air and space stuff about why that is. But they printed thirty five thousand copies of it before noticing. They had to recycle, reprint, reissue all of those. And then maybe most embarrassingly, Ohio got roasted for this by North Carolina. Because I don't know if people know, but those two states have a rivalry about the Wright brothers and it's on their license plates. The the North Carolina ones say first in flight because the famous flight happened to Kitty Hawk,

but Ohio is birthplace of aviation because the Wright brothers are from Dayton, Ohio. And so after Ohio's Bureau of motor vehicles, like tweeted that we made this error, we're going to try to fix it. The North Carolina department of transportation tweeted the following quote, y'all leave Ohio alone. They wouldn't know they weren't there.

End quote. Wow. So North Carolina came in hard on them. Love it. I wish that there were more fights over things like license plates instead of everything. Yes. You know, it's like I just want feuds. I don't want our modern world as it is.

I don't want politics. I want feuds between states over things that don't matter. Like a mild pettiness is the perfect temperature. Yeah, exactly. Sort of sort of like Illinois's embrace of Abraham Lincoln. It's like he's not from here. Sort of kind of, you know, it's like, but we just here sort of kind of you know it's like but we just went all in with land of lincoln and now no one can tell tell us otherwise just got to keep doing

that with people who uh who could be from somewhere else it's like barack obama yeah no chicago not hawaii right yeah chicago no yeah yeah let's just pretend he was here the whole time not chicago not hawaii or new york it's just just chicago we will claim him yeah his mom's not from kansas anymore also from illinois it's just all illinois all the way all illinois well it's just like the during the uh that documentary the last dance when he they they interviewed him about the bulls and it just said barack obama chicago resident which yeah that's what he's famous for paying rent in in that city exactly cta monthly pass holder barack obama

yeah yeah i love the the grief between these states it's really good yeah and then the the other story here is the canadian province of ontario Yeah. Yeah. I love the grief between these states. It's really good. Yeah. And then the other story here is the Canadian province of Ontario. Because to me, the one major mistake is for your license plate to be like factually inaccurate. But the other one is that Ontario in 2020 put out unreadable license plates. It is not possible under most conditions at nighttime to see what is on the plate it just looks like a blur i love that it's unreal before i read the uh i looked at it before i read anything that you sent which is um why i know so few things about so many topics general

strategy of doing things but that's the way that's the way's it's just how we do it um but i think it looks like a like a temporary dealership license plate on the back of a car like there is no discernible numbers on it whatsoever yeah no yeah it's like it's like that should be straight up illegal to drive yes you would think yeah you would but if it you know if it if. But if it gets a few people through some red light camera stop ticket things, then great. We have no idea who this is. I have no clue. I don't know. It could be your plate.

It could be anyone. Who knows? Who's to say? It was just a blur. Luckily, Ontario is a very small province in Canada, so it's probably not that big of a deal up there. Pretty easy to track down. Right. Very few people. Yeah. You just go, OK, who has who has the Ford Mustang?

Yeah, this and this was apparently a very proud thing for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Premier as the leader of the province. On February 3rd of 2020, he announced what he called officers, also the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada. And then like local news channels started like bringing a plate into their office and testing different light patterns on it, you know, just to see how it works. And basically they found that if it's too dark, it has the problem of most plates where it's hard to read. But especially this was like a blue on blue with like whitish blue letters. So you really can't read it. And then also if there's too much light, that kind of blows it out. So in basically all night situations, you couldn't read the license plate.

Yeah, the design is just bad. Like it's not even, you know even in the proper light it's like this isn't a good plate i don't know i don't i don't even know what makes a good plate yeah yeah and they uh and it is i remember like blake you were talking about states having a super simple like blue on gold old-fashioned plate. Like Ontario previously and now again had just a white plate with bright blue letters that was simple and very easy to read. So people felt like this was sort of a weird move by the province,

even if it was readable, even if you could tell what it said. Losing that classic plate, you know? So I pulled up a list of all of the old plate designs for various states, and I'm just fascinated. This is a truly fascinating topic that would have been better if I looked this up before we recorded this. No, that's what guests are supposed to do. Just roll in, you know? Just kind of multitask while we record. It's fine.

Just rolled in, you know? Yeah. Just kind of multitask while we record. It's fine. And I'm confident, like, many listeners who are not driving currently are, like, checking their state or whatever place they care about right now. Yeah. Like, I miss the old Illinois plate with just Lincoln. Now it's got a whole weird skyline thing, and I'm not so into it. Yeah, it's too busy.

I like the ones from, like, the 90s where it was a silver band across the top and blue, Illinois. Wisconsin still has that kind of setup. I forgot exactly how it's, but they're just sticking with this old design. It's cool. It's fine. West Virginia has a similar one to that.

Pennsylvania has a similar one to that. Oh. west virginia has a similar one to that pennsylvania has a similar one to that oh and with the yeah with this ontario thing so totally unreadable license plate they released it february 3rd and the government of ontario responded to the complaints by claiming there was no problem and that it was fine uh and it took them until February 20th, two and a half weeks later, to begin to cycle these back out, which meant 49,000 plates had to be removed and replaced. And an additional 134,000 had to be taken out of stock at the Ontario Service Center. It's like a DMV kind of thing. So they had to scrap and get rid of a lot of plates. And then finally on March 4th, they brought back the old plates. Interesting.

So for like a month, there was no laws, basically, in Ontario. Yeah. I love this idea that you get flooded with complaints and they're like, no, I don't buy it. I'm not going to believe it. As if just a giant group of people all at once decided to be like i'm gonna complain about license plates i'm gonna go call this in i'm gonna say i can't read it and uh we're just making this up for no reason just for fun just a massively

coordinated prank yeah you know if there's one thing love, it's it's being told they have to go get a new license plate. Go turn in your old license plate that we just gave you. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty.

This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls.

And we can get into the next takeaway here takeaway number two the u.s government has a mind-boggling amount of license plate reader data and this is a system it's like some of its federal some of its local but all kinds of u.s agencies collect data on which license plates have gone through like reader cameras in all kinds of situations so it kind of makes you want to have one of those ontario license plates doesn't it yes you can just claim to have like moved to the u.s in that two and a half weeks like oh i got the plane i couldn't change it back i you know sorry stealing crimes stealing just anything you want at that point yeah all vehicular related crimes it doesn't really help you and in other ways but yeah oh true

i wasn't correcting you i was ripping uh let's just be real here for a minute you'd still get caught you can still yeah jaywalk and get caught you know like this is all unless you wear it around your neck which could be the next thing yeah well and uh and then the the main source here is a bunch of articles from The Guardian, but also The Atlantic and Popular Science and NPR. License plate readers are little cameras. If you ever see a police car with like two or three little cameras on it that are pointed slightly downwards, that's a license plate reading system. They're also attached to light poles, freeway overpasses, border facilities, any fixed location where a lot of cars come through. And they scan a license plate, keep a record of the plate and when it came through. And that's kind of a mountain of data that U.S. agencies have built up, especially since the 2010s. What do they do with this data, though? Do we know? Or is it just kind of there? It's that and occasionally if there's a crime, it's helpful.

Like other countries do this too. And apparently in Germany in 2008, the police wanted to catch one suspect in one crime. So they set up a bunch of license plate readers. in one crime so they set up a bunch of license plate readers and they did track the person down that way but they they gathered 60 million license plate photos in the process because there's just always cars going by and if you put up enough places like you end up with way more information than anyone needs in kind of a weird surveillance way who among us hasn't taken 60 million photos and then chosen the best one and posted it online? I think that's just standard operating procedure. Ultimate selfie.

It's relatable. Just at a trial, my plate usually looks better than that. That's a bad. There's not another angle of the plate this one my plate has acne in this one caught me the day before i was going to the car wash yeah yeah i i swear i got it washed the next day and uh and yeah and there's kind of too many examples of these databases to name them all. But in 2011, a group of Northern California law enforcement agencies hired the Silicon Valley firm Palantir to build a database that could store 100 million records. Customs and Border Patrol, CBP, they admitted that their license plate reading system got hacked. So these databases are also hackable.

Like someone can steal all that random but maybe usable information about where people have been. You know, if there are two groups that are known for being just excellent and not abusive with data at all, it's Palantir and Border Patrol. It's true. that feeling you're feeling right now is safety that's that's what you're feeling right now that's the feeling of liberty maybe you've heard of it yeah no further questions i'll just add a bunch of eagle noises at this part of the show yeah uh thank Thank you. You mean those aren't normally going?

Oh, yeah. And yeah, the other thing with this situation is enforcement purpose or no time when they let it go. And then the first real legislative attempt was 2021 California State Senate considered a bill to limit it that got through committee but did not pass. So hopefully other places take up that kind of thing and get through. We thought about doing the right thing but seemed like a lot you know i mean it's relatable though to to the whole like you know they're just endlessly storing with no real purpose that's me with like all of the things I own. So just storing old bills. No real reason. So, you know, at least the government hasn't come after me for that.

I do that with grudges. I store them. Store them. For no purpose. You write down your enemy's license plate numbers and you hold on to that exactly yeah well that's why i hacked palantir um i mean i'm gonna put a license plate reader on the front of my wife's car i'm just gonna go collecting yeah so this is just like a system in the world and i hope there's a lot of civil liberties objections to it and also they have to build these endlessly humongous databases because they get so much

noise in that data like there's so many just people who are driving and that's all they're up to it's a very odd thing going on do you know if they store the actual photos or is it like it scans it it reads the letters and numbers and just stores the text um because i imagine like that has a big difference as far as like the size of these databases like in terms of storage yeah that's a that's a great question because a great question like some of them just log the information and then others are very photo based and in 2015 the aclu doing great work on this they looked into what the u.s drug enforcement agency does and they found out their license plate readers also photograph the people in the car oh even better which is a way bigger

deal too like that's so that so so their hard drive is enormous and also probably evil but yeah you know that's that's what's going on cool yeah always good always good to to go into a podcast not knowing something terrible about the world and exiting it being hyper aware of it well and like this is one i feel like the more people know about it they'll make it one of those things they worry about like all these people worried about 5g or whatever should notice that they're being like photographed every time they drive you know that that seems like a bigger thing to fix it on yeah probably that facial recognition not to think of things from a criminal's point of view but it must to be a criminal yeah yeah how about that yeah you get tracked down for your license plate you get arrested you end up making license plates it's it's a circle of life thing

it's a terrible circle of life things all around. Were we talking about Andrew Cuomo before and him thinking about prisoners? Maybe he'll be one of those at some point, you know, abolish all prisons, but also, you know, abolish all prisons,

except for the people that I want. Just one prison that has all of our personal grudges. That's right. That's why we collect them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's true. Well, there's one more takeaway for the main episode here.

Let's get into it. Takeaway number three. French license plates are often from Corsica for weird reasons. There's a specific change with French license plate laws in 2009, and it led to a bunch of people signing up for plates from Corsica, even if they are not from Corsica. Napoleon fans. Yeah.

Is that it? Is that the answer? Like a little bit, yeah. And if people don't know, Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean. It's part of France and it's most famous for being where Napoleon's from. Yeah. I know where all of Napoleon's houses are. That's why I get booked on these things. If you know so much about his houses, car did he drive huh answer that a mini question a mini the hat just sticking out of it though you know like yeah the mood roof but uh the the corsica plates so france it turns out is divided into regions like it's in super general terms it's like u.s states it's a it's an upper level division of parts of france and back in 2009 they had 22 regions the least populous region was corsica but before 2009 french plates work the

way i assume plates work where you have to have a plate from where your car is registered and then starting in 2009 they let people order their plates from any region in the whole country and they got an immediate surge of corsorsica license plate orders. Interesting. Yeah. The main source here is The Atlantic, also The Economist, and they're both drawn on French newspapers. It just seems to be that there are stereotypes about people from Corsica being rebellious, hot-blooded. There's some mafia stereotypes about it. There's some like mafia stereotypes about it. And so people got Corsica plates so they could have like a hardcore license plate versus the other French plates.

Well, I mean, message received. If I saw a Corsican plate, you know, like that's someone who cares about something like that is clearly very scary. Just not for the reason they think. just not for the reason they think it's like oh man stay away from this guy he obsesses over what people think of his license plate yeah he'll commit a drive-by boring yeah and it and there's like a bunch of layers to it. It's it's partly that Corsica used to be part of the Republic of Genoa in Italy and is heavily Italian influence. So like that stereotype of mafia stuff is offensive to many people from Corsica that they're being considered that way. But also other people are leaning into it. There's also a thing where the flag and seal of Corsica is very racial. It's a moor's head. And so it's like a North African person's head. And each plate from a region has the symbol of its region.

So people are also getting a plate with an African person's head on it. Oh, that's rough. And then also that was the symbol of a Corsican independence movement. So to some people, it oh that's rough and then also that was the symbol of a corsican independence movement so some to some people it means that they're they like want to break away from the rest of france it's and and then some people are like napoleon is cool that's actually a few people's reason for it there's a very weird like the apparently the other big reason people are picking corsica plates is a class thing because by far the biggest region of France in terms of population is called Ile de France, and it's got Paris and a bunch of other

area around it too. And so there are like stereotypes about Ile de France people being wimpy drivers and being elitist. And so like, as soon as this change went through, apparently Ile de France fell out of the top 10 regions for new plates, even though it's by far the most populous region. Like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, everybody there was like, I want to be from anywhere else. And Corsica is cool. Okay, I'm going to do that. It's like, you could just move there. No, no, no, no.

Don't want to move there. Oh, no, no. Just want my plate. It's really bad there. I just want the plate. Yeah. It's like, oh, I don't want to move there oh no no just want my plate it's really bad there i just want the plate that's yeah yeah it's like oh i don't want to be with those people i just want people to think that i'm okay yeah yeah i had no idea how uh into weird local stereotypes uh french culture is apparently when it comes to license plates they got way into this yeah whole thing that's very interesting france and

in delaware because yeah this story did make me wonder like if americans had the prerogative to just pick any state's plate for some reason that's that's basically this story they were from yeah yeah i i feel like it would get pretty aggressive pretty fast like people would decide one state means you're hardcore or something and like i i gotta text this one because i'm just badass like that's the thing i do you know don't mess with him he's from wyoming you just put get a t-shirt you know like you don't have to change the identity of your car just get right just get clothes yeah it's a lot less of a pain geez that flag's brutal i just saw that corsica fly it's just i i do wonder too where this happens in the united states

with like um i'm not gonna use the right word here, but like I mean, Native Americans, the right word. But with like the like images, like bad images, you like the Washington football team's old logo and stuff. And, you know, the Cleveland Indians old logo is people do like that merchandise gets scooped up immediately by people when that like goes away, I guess. Just I don't know what that is it's clearly terrible you know but like i wonder if that's part of the that corsican flag thing too but then you put it on your car and you wear it it's like what do you want people to know about you or why do you want people to know that about you you know like uh anyway yeah it's like i need i need this logo everywhere people need to know yeah yeah that's right on like it's it's on that level as far as i can tell and it's it's a really i worry that if the u.s ever

put that policy in like whichever state has still has confederate stuff on their plates that would be national all of a sudden oh god you're right i actually don't know if any states currently have everyone has like all these like weird now all states have like 20 different options you can choose from or whatever but right what was the last one mississippi i guess might have been the last yeah there's a there's a few with like like was like parker was saying like special sons of confederate veterans kind of things that you can opt for. But yeah, I think we're past that. The best thing to do is to take a one of those special plates and then make it something that would be totally inappropriate with a vanity plate. But because the actual text of the vanity plate is not bad on its own. You know like i i found this thing that was a uh yeah it was an ohio uh plate

that said eat the and it was one of those ones that was for like to fund schools and stuff so it was like it had like a child's handprint and then underneath the very bottom says kids first and so it says eat the kids first and then it looks like a bloody handprint it's terrifying and i love this because it is just so dark this is my joke that i need to get out to as many people as possible this is the one joke i can make and i'm gonna make it that's the thought process well there was another one that is uh that i that i saw on this it was from a buzzFeed listicle. It was 3-7-0-H-S-S-V, which if you look at that upside down, it's a hole. Love it. Sick.

Yeah. Yeah, you know. Sick. Okay. Just having some fun. Sneaky. Yeah. That actually, that leads us really nicely into the bonus episode

so i think that's the main show there we go hit the music yeah folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks thanks to Parker Malloy and Blake Wexler for crisscrossing the country and a couple oceans with me. What a world. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, we are really on a run of big bonus shows. This one is about multiple fun rebellions against the U.S. license plate system. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show,

for a library of more than seven dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring license plates with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Ontario and Ohio made each of the two biggest license plate design errors within the past couple years. Takeaway number two, the U.S. government has a mind-boggling amount of license plate reader data. And takeaway number three, French license plates are often from Corsica in a weird way. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Parker Malloy is an amazing writer, and she's the author of The Present Age, which is a fantastic newsletter. It also has its own website. Go to readthepresentage.com,

and that is subscriber-driven, subscriber-supported, so please back that. And of course, you know, check it out first if you like, but it's excellent, it's worth your support, and please go there. And then Blake Wexler is a wonderful stand-up comedian, and you can hear that and experience that immediately through the internet. He has had four different albums debut at number one on the iTunes and Amazon comedy charts. The latest one is A Lifetime of Laughter, recorded in 2021. Also, a clean album. If you particularly prefer the clean rating of this podcast and how that works, you can get a clean album from Blake, which I think is a nice thing. Also, I highly recommend Blake's podcast.

It's called Blake's Takes for God's Sakes. Easy to remember. Blake's Takes for God's Sakes. And it's got its own Patreon. It's got a weekly release. And it's Blake Wexler soloing and coming up with just wonderful takes and jokes and everything else on whatever crosses his mind. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. This episode is full of journalism, in particular from NPR. A few bylines there include Rachel Treisman, Laurel Wamsley, and Scott Newman. Also from The Guardian, bylines include Rory Carroll, Sam Levin, Carrie Paul, and Ed Pilkington. I'll write in separate articles. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. There's also going to be an extra link because I talk about 99% Invisible from time to time on this show.

99% Invisible is an incredible podcast. You should definitely check it out. And they made one of my favorite podcasts ever about license plates. It's called Artistic License. It's about how state slogans got on U.S. plates. It's also about free speech issues with the contents of plates. And, you know, they just do it right. I didn't feel like there was anything I could pull from it that wouldn't be better on their show. So check out that episode. It's called Artistic License. It's by 99% Invisible. And beyond all that,

our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners.

I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.