Stuff You Should Know - 1-800-PODCAST

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Chuck and Josh dive into the wacky world of 800 and 900 phone numbers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the Backyard Guest House over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to you about get this, our book. We have a stuff you should know book coming out this November and you're going to love it and you can pre-order it now. That's right, it's called stuff you should know, Colin, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And it's been a lot of fun to work on and we're really, I mean, genuinely excited about how this thing has come together. Yep, it's 26 chunky hairy chapters that are just going to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck,

we are indeed proud of this book. It is truly indubitably the first stuff you should know book and it's coming out this November and you can order it now pre-order everywhere you get books. So do that and we thank you in advance. Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there and this is stuff you should know. Thank you for calling 1-800-PODCAST. Go ahead, Colin. Oh, that would be great, Chuck. We need to get that. We need to get that before we release this episode because somebody, somebody, maybe a respore person is going to snag that and we'll have to pay through the nose for it.

I thought there were so many very interesting things about this very seemingly mundane topic. Oh, yeah. And I just think it's interesting that 800 numbers seem like something that would have gone the way of 900 numbers, but they're still around in the days where the internet is thriving and the yellow pages are, I don't even, do they still have yellow pages? I think, yeah, I don't know. I think, I think I remember this one comedian years ago was talking about the phone books when people are still getting phone books. Right. And he was, the joke was something about dropping out. Let me drop off a 4-pound, very small portion of the internet on your front board, but then they just stopped doing that all together. Yeah, I know that they were doing it

as recently as a few years back because they, so they would get dropped off once in a while at the mailboxes at our condo. And so, I mean, within the last 10 years for sure, five years maybe, I think is the last time I saw one. So maybe they stopped because I haven't seen it in a little while. But yes, so toll-free numbers, 800 numbers. They persist. They do, and they really do. So this, this House of Forks article, I think the last number they had was from 2008, and it said that there were 24 million working toll-free phone numbers in North America. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about free phone numbers. Apparently in the United States, we call it toll-free numbers. Everywhere else in the world is called, or the English-speaking

world, at least it's free phone numbers. One word. So there were 24 million in 2008, but get this. Since the advent of 800 numbers, they've released 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 different prefixes of toll-free numbers. Everything from 800, 888, 877, all the way down to 833 is where we're at now. And I did, it did a little math. I'm kind of proud of myself for this one, Chuck. So if you bear with me for a second, for a seven-digit number, you have nine million total possible combinations because it starts technically with one million and goes up to 9,999,999. So you have nine million total combinations in there. So each of those prefixes allows for nine million combinations. So there's at least, there's seven prefixes. That means that there's

at least 54 million plus toll-free numbers in use in America today to justify that many prefixes. You know what I can't wait for? What? That math person to write in and correct you. Do it. No, no, no, Josh. You forgot about blank. I will argue with you all day long. I got this right. I got it right for once. Lots of toll-free numbers. And like you said, they go down to 833 now. I think eventually they're going to get 822, 880, 887, and 889 involved. Never 811 or 899 apparently. Yeah. Supposedly someone found an ancient text in Aramaic that predicted that if 811 were ever instituted, that's when the universe ends.

Can't do it. Nope. So when you dial a number, what this is all about, and actually two things, what it used to be about was largely for when calls cost money to make long distance. It was a way to route that charge back to the person you're calling. Yeah. It was automatic collect calls. That's right. So if you were, you know, they advertise it as toll-free. You don't have to pay a toll on it. We're going to eat that cost, and you'll know it because it's an 800 number. Then over the years, it became more and more of a sort of just, if you want to be a legitimate business and especially a regional business or national or international business, then you kind of had to have an 800 number even once tolls,

phone charges and things in long distance kind of became a thing of the past. Right. It just became sort of a, I mean, sort of a calling card for lack of a better word, as, hey, we're a legit big company. We've got an 800 number. Exactly. We're the third largest maker of bunk and trundle beds. Here's our 800 number. And in the old days, I mentioned the yellow pages where you would advertise, it's so quaint to think about now. Oh man, it is. Where you would advertise in this big yellow book about your business and let your fingers do the walk-in. But back then, it was also 800 numbers were a way that you could save money by not having

to advertise in the yellow pages because you've got, you know, 1-800, you know, house painter. Right. Or this article, this House of Works article cites a construction company called Asphalt Sources Inc., which got, I guess, a catchy 800 number and downsized their yellow pages ad and saved more than $27,000 by doing so. Yeah. And to be honest, it probably didn't hurt that they were also cited in a House of Works article about toll-free numbers. Yeah. That was, that was clunky, but definitely an example of how things used to be. Yeah. But that's the point of 800 numbers. And that's also from what I can tell the reason that they still persist today is that if you have a catchy 800 number, like you said,

it makes you seem like a player as far as business goes. But also, it's a way to advertise. Like, I haven't seen the empire today ad in three to five years, but I can tell you that the numbers still, 800-588-2300, empire today. Yeah. You remember that one? Yeah. What about cars for kids? I don't remember that one. One, eight, seven, seven cars for kids. I've never heard that one. Really? But I would probably remember that one. Yeah. I mean, and we'll get to that a little, in a little more depth. Those are called vanity numbers. Sure. But yeah. And there are statistics and they are pretty stark in how much people remember that compared to just some regular old number. Right. So there's reasons for 800 numbers and the fact that they're still around,

there's reasons for that too. But they started all the way back in 1967. And it's like you said, it was a way to make it easy for people to place collect calls, which was there were two ways to make a long distance call. Either you paid for it yourself, it showed up on your phone bill, or you could call the person you were calling, collect, which meant that you dialed the operator. You said you wanted to place a collect call. The operator called that number for you and said, hey, I've got Josh and Chuck on the line. Will you accept the charges is what they asked. And the other person would inevitably say no and hang up. If it had been somebody else, they might have said yes. And then that person who was receiving the call, they would be billed for that. That takes

a lot of time and effort for a phone call or for a phone company's operators to do that. So the whole point of 800 numbers was to automate the process, to take the operator out of it. And so the person would say, I'm receiving these calls at this number, go ahead and bill me for them just without even asking. Yeah. And I think that story illustrates why I believe my theory is correct that Gen X is the greatest generation. So great, man. Because we saw those early days that now feel like we were in the 1920s with stuff like this and three TV channels growing up, or three major networks rather. Sure. Yeah. But we're also, we're young enough to where the technological boom didn't confuse us.

Right. Or pass us by. Or pass us by. And we've got, we could dip our toe into both, you know, we could grow up on 70s music and also go to a EDM concert. Right. Without like being weird. Yeah. I think you're right, Chuck. We might be the greatest generation ever. We're the perfect generation. Perfect. That's right. I guess greatest generation is taken. So yeah, well, of course. In 67 it started, like you said, in the very first business to have an 800 number apparently was a company that just hosted numbers for other companies, mainly like car rentals and hotels and stuff like that. Yeah. I think they were like a call center.

Yeah. And so they went out of business and then all those businesses that were using them said, oh, well we got to get 800 numbers now ourselves. Right. But the thing is, is AT&T was the only one with 800 numbers. Because back in the day, AT&T, also known as Ma Bell, was like the, basically had a monopoly as far as telephones were concerned in the United States. Legally had monopoly. Yeah. And so if you wanted an 800 number, you went to AT&T, you got your 800 number and then you paid through the nose for it. They would charge many, many times more than they would have charged the caller, had the caller just had been billed themselves for placing this long-distance call,

just for this toll-free service. And that's just the way it was until I believe 1984. Yeah. It was 1984 when trust buster Ronald Reagan saw to it that Ma Bell was broken up into all the regional bells. Yeah. So then of course, when that happened, that opened up the world of competition and the telephone industry in the United States kind of for the first time. And then of course, what happens is the cost to get an 800 number goes way, way down. You can get a lot more businesses getting them. And then it just sort of became the standard for any business that wanted to be even, like I said, a regional business. There is also a really big innovation that gets overlooked too that was actually created by a

guy named Roy Weber who was an AT&T engineer. And Roy Weber basically figured out how to use 800 numbers, not as phone numbers that were connected to a certain point in the telephone system, but as basically a code that could be translated at a database into instructions or like, hey, here's this number they put in, what are the instructions for this? And in doing so, he figured out how to make toll-free numbers go from regional to truly national because up until 1980, you had to have a regional toll-free number for each region. And if you were a national company, like say, Hertz or something like that, you had a dozen or more toll-free numbers that you had to manage thanks to Roy Weber who patented this, but AT&T owns the patent. So he saw Jack from it besides

a salary, this changed everything and made it a truly national thing to where one single 800 number could serve the entire country for a business. And it made the whole thing a lot technically smoother too from what I understand. Yeah, that was sort of one of two big things that happened. The other one was in 1994 when a law was passed that said you can port your phone number between carriers. So if you're with one carrier and you're not too happy back in the old days, pre-94, that meant you had to change your telephone number and that was no good for a business that was trying to grow or a business that was already big especially. And so that 94 law guaranteed that portability. You could take

your phone number with you and that was a really big, big kind of sea change in the industry. Yeah, you could pick up your phone number and carry it across land to the next body of water. That's right. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's do that. But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. And so my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking,

This is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So we're at what, 1994 when we could port our phone numbers? Yeah, and that was kind of the last big change. That's when things started growing so much that they had to, I think in 96, they introduced 888, 98. It seems like every couple of years they started introducing new, what are they called? Prefixes? Yeah. Yeah, prefix exchanges. Yep. So we're down to 833, right? I think that's where we are currently. And then I've never seen that

though. Have you? I have not, not that I've ever noticed, but now I don't even pay attention. I don't call anything. I just go online. If I have to call, I'll call, but I don't like it at all. And most of the time when I do, I'm just looking it up on my phone and clicking like the call thing. I very rarely type in a number anymore. And yet, bizarrely, 800 numbers haven't gone anywhere. And again, apparently it's because of the whole marketing thing, which is why they're still around today. And then one other kind of connection to the information age, the age of the internet and computers and all that stuff that 800 numbers have is that there was a period from about 2007, eight, nine maybe up until about 2014, where the concept of say like a provider

paying for your data when you went onto a certain website. Say they had a website where they wanted to teach you all about their new phones or something like that. You wouldn't be using any data while you were on that site. And they originally called it 1-800-DATA at first. And then they dropped that around 2015 and that was that. So here's something that I found that is so boring that I found so weirdly fascinating. And that is the notion of the responsible organization. Maybe it's because it's the name. It just sounds really weird. It sounds like a Scientology like subsection or something. The RESP org. So when you call a, well, first of all, all these numbers, all these 800 numbers

are housed in a database called the 800 service management system, the SMS 800. And they know every single exchange of the 800 variation. And if it's available, if it's being used, and how to route them. And if you want one of these, you have to contact something called a responsible organization. And that's just not a descriptor. Like, all right, I'll contact UNICEF because they're pretty responsible. Pretty responsible. It's called a responsible organization. It's basically like a domain name registrar for telephone for 800 numbers. And it could be a company that does this, or you could be a human being at home in your basement that has set yourself up to be a RESP org. Yeah, you just have to be certified by the FCC. I'm not sure how. I didn't

get to see how. But once you are certified, then you have access to this database. And you can legally say, nope, this number is now taken by this person. So leave it alone. All right, that's nicely. Sure, why not? Who cares? They're watching you. And if you help an old lady or man across the street in front of the FCC building in DC, they take notice. Sure, you're responsible. All just one big test. But the RESP org, I think what bothers me is that stupid abbreviation for it. RESP org? Yeah, RESP org. And the O is capitalized even though it's one word as an abbreviation. But the point is, it can be anybody. At first, it was just phone companies that were able to do that. And then it kind of became more democratized in the 90s. And from

that point, the moment it became democratized, it became corrupt almost immediately. Yeah. I mean, corrupt in the sense that it's, I think some neared you well, some non-responsible people said, hey, this would be a pretty easy way to take advantage of people by acting as a middleman and charging someone 50 bucks to say, I can find them a toll three number. Here you go. Here's your number. Right. Which that in and of itself, there's no problem with that. And apparently the FCC doesn't have any problems with that. If you set yourself up as a service. Well, if you're really doing it, yeah. Yes. So if you say, okay, you can come to my website and you can look up a number and I will try to find it for you. And if it's available,

I will get it for you. And I'm going to charge you a fee for that. There's nothing wrong with that, morally, legally, or otherwise. The problem comes in where some of these RESP orgs say, yes, it's 50 bucks to search. And then, oh yeah, this number that ends in pain, P-A-I-N, that's going to cost you an extra grand. That totally flies in the face of the FCC rules surrounding phone numbers of any kind, including toll free numbers, which is that they're meant to be totally neutral. You're not supposed to be able to profit off of a phone number whatsoever. You can profit off of like the search and all that stuff, but a particular phone number is supposed to be doled out on a first come, first serve service basis with zero dollars attached to

it whatsoever. And that's just not how it works. Yeah. So you can't goose somebody if Dr. Payne wants 1-800. Or T-Pain. T-Pain, tooth pain. No, just T-Pain. Your dentist can't get that one. No, because T-Pain's got it. Well, they might get it, but they can't pay extra for it. It's first come, first served always. You are only allowed to subscribe to the amount of toll free numbers that you actually intend to use. So you can't just go get a bunch, like lock up a bunch. Kind of like you can do with domain names, actually, now that I think about it. Yeah, you can't do that with 800 numbers. Can't do it. You also, to prevent this kind of hoarding, they mandate that you allocate that reserve number within eight months. So it's got, I guess,

it's got to be in use within eight months. They have terms for this, actually. Brokering is selling and profiting from numbers. Yeah. There's hoarding and then there's warehousing. Warehousing is where you take numbers even though there's no one that you're directly getting it for. And then hoarding is getting a bunch of numbers, sitting on them and selling them. And this is a big no-no. But for a very long time, it seemed to the FCC and the people running the FCC that it was not worth enforcing until, I guess, it got kind of wild westy. And there was a company called IT Connections that was fined $3.7 million. They sound so sketchy already. Oh yeah. These are all like spam kings who came up with a sideline of like selling telephone

numbers. And their whole thing is, no, they're just performing a service. And then when the FCC says, well, then why isn't your service the same regardless of any number? They say, well, this is all just supply and demand. Well, there's not supposed to be any supply and demand. It's supposed to be first come, first serve. And apparently they just look the other way until, I believe, 2017 when the IT Connect or Connection company got hit with that fine. Those types of places disgust me more than just about anything. Yeah. Yeah. It's the ones that like, you know what I'm talking about? Like, the people that are like looking, just looking for the loopholes to exploit so they can rip someone

off. Yeah. The kind of people who carry like a neck brace in their backseat at all times in case they never get rear end. Yeah. Or like IP trolls and, yeah. I mean, we can't go down that road too much. But the podcast industry, you know, kind of went through a pretty famous situation like that a few years ago. And I don't know, man, people that just go out and do some hard work. Yeah. You know? Stop stock speculating. Don't look for the angle. Right. You know, to get rich. Yeah. Because you're not creating anything. You're just sucking the life out of stuff. Oh, God. It's just so upsetting. Like you said, the FCC wasn't paying a lot of attention. So these things have been sold on eBay at big, fat price tags.

And beyond just the FCC not paying attention is apparently there's resporgs. It's just hard to keep track and they can be disorganized. Yeah. There's no real system to get it all cleaned up. And so inadvertently, this can happen too. Yeah. There was one famous case though, too, that went to circuit court, I think, maybe. I don't remember. But there was a Mercedes dealer in Minneapolis in St. Paul who had since the 80s, 800 Mercedes and it went to his pure gold. He said that he cites that as reviving just kind of a ho-hum Mercedes dealership, that phone number. So he wasn't about to give it up when Mercedes came around and said, hey, we want that for our national customer service. He said, no. And they sued him for it. They basically tried to get him

on copyright infringement. And I guess the judge or the jury found like, no, you can't, like a toll-free number is not copyright infringement. And so Mercedes to this day, you have to call 804FOR Mercedes, which does the other thing, Chuck. You know my famous dislike of acronyms that don't include a word? Yeah. A toll-free phone number that includes letters that go beyond the number of possible numbers you can use. That really bugs me too. I think because it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I figured out what was going on. Yeah. Like I would type the whole thing out and be like, you know, it connect. And I'd be like, I'm not done dialing yet. I bet it was satisfying for that judge to be able to

shoot down a big corporation like that under the prior settled law of you snooze, you lose. Sorry, Mercedes. Yeah. Just because you're huge. Sorry. Finders keepers and you snooze you lose. Man, wouldn't court be like kids court? Yeah. Why isn't that a show? Captain Kangaroo Court. Yeah. Come on. So I think it's high time, Chuck, since we were talking about the 800 Mercedes case, the very famous legal case in the United States. We talk about vanity numbers because that is, as vanity a number as there ever has been, the singer vanity could have a phone number and it still wouldn't be more of a vanity number than 800 Mercedes. Yeah. And you know, we mentioned it

earlier. These are pretty tremendous advertising perks for a company. If you land on 800 flowers or 1-800-GO-FET-X, you've struck gold because that will stick in someone's head. They have done studies over the years. There was one where they showed an 84% improvement in recall over numeric phone numbers and from like a TV ad or a billboard. Yeah. And if you're listening to the radio, it goes from 72% recall to 5% recall. If it's got a catchy little jingly, especially when there's a song attached to it, a toll-free vanity number. Yeah. That's a huge, huge difference. Absolutely true. I can't imagine how much money FTD has gotten from that 1-800-Flowers phone number. Is that theirs? Yeah. I think

they even have, I think their website is 1-800-Flowers.com. They got in there early, I guess, huh? All these, yeah, all these generic ones. Yeah, they know how to work the system and push people around better than Mercedes lawyers do. Yeah, they send in the guy with the little winged hat and loincloth. What? Start shoving people around. Wasn't that FTD's? Oh, yeah, yeah. I was like, you're describing Hermes. You're like, why? Do I have a video camera on me? Right. Yeah, no, it totally was. He was fast. Hermes or Mercury, I think. So I mentioned, you know, those good generic ones. It is great if you have 1-800-Flowers, of course, but they interviewed someone for this House of Works article who knows a lot about this stuff. Quimby.

And they say, and Quimby says, yeah, you know, these generic ones are fine, but they're all taken. What you really want these days is to get in there and actually try and say something about your company as well. Right. So instead of 1-800-Car loans, it's 1-800-Quick loan or 1-800-Fast Closer. That to me would be a red flag to stay away from that mortgage company. You think? Fast Closer. Yeah, 1-800-Fast Closer. Yeah, which is, and you'll note that it doesn't have to be seven digits. It can be over seven digits, obviously. Which drives me baddie. Why? Just because the extra number? Yeah, it's just not, it's not, it's not, it's missing the mark. Anybody can do that. So that would be 1-2-3, 1-2-3. So that would be

1-800-Fast Closer. Yeah, just go with that. And then, and then make it part of your ad that the is silent. Or 1-800-Quick loan would be 1-800-Quickloa. Yes, I would remember that. I would remember that. I feel like we should get an 800 number. I had the same thought, actually. Did you really? Yeah. What do we do with it? 800 podcast is actually perfect. Or. What do we do with it? I don't know. We could leave messages on it once in a while. Or. Secret instructions. We could do a 900 number. Yeah, make some cash. And we'll talk about that right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days

of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge

from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. And so my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boybander each week to guide you through life step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. If so, tell everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So, Chuck, you're right. A 900 number makes way more sense because we could be rolling in it if it were 1990. Yeah, I think younger listeners might not fully appreciate the fact that there was a point in time. How many years did this? It was less than 10 even. Yeah, it was. The heyday was basically 87 to, I think about 93, 94. So people really figured out what a ripoff it was. Yeah, so about six years. There was a time, a six-year period in this country, where you could set up a 900 number that was, it could be anything, but it was basically an audio message of some kind. And people would pay a ton of money to call in to speak, to hear about the Kiss Army, or to hear about Tiffany, the singer, or Grandpa Munster, or the psychic hotline,

or the board sexy roommates, like you name it. Yeah, a lot of them especially were, what would they call them? Phone sex. Phone sex, that's right. But a lot of them weren't. No, so there was this idea that, so early on a lot of them were, and then it spread out into more and more ideas, but it was stuck, it was kind of saddled with that idea that it was all just phone sex lines, unfairly, but that was the reputation it had. But yeah, you could do anything. And the whole thing started very simply and primitively, I believe with, it wasn't the first one, NASA wasn't the first one, but NASA had one of the first successful ones, which I just love. Yeah, 82. It was called Dial a Shuttle, and at 1900, 909 NASA, you could listen to conversations between

ground control and the astronauts on the space shuttle, which was a huge hit. Pretty cool. There was like a million people called in in 1982 alone, and every single one of those people were paying from what I saw a minimum of $2 a minute. When you call the 900 number, $2 was the base that I think your phone company was going to charge for the service. And then whatever extra beyond $2 it was, was what the entrepreneur, the 900 number information provider, was charging. So if you paid $2.95 a minute for every minute of content that you sat there and listened to on your phone, you were paying that person who was just some schmo who had somebody record some stuff for a 900 number. They were getting a dollar a minute for every single person that

called in. And very quickly from when this started in 1987, when AT&T started a program that said you can provide your own content and get your own 900 number, it made a lot of people very rich, like very quickly. Yeah, it was a way to make a lot of dough fast. I think there was this one meeting, I don't know, I was about to call it a famous meeting, it wasn't famous at all. It was an Appalachian. Yeah, it was this meeting that they referenced in this article at least. Where'd you get this? Priceonomics. Priceonomics, man. God bless them. This was by Sean Raviv. Yeah, it's a good article. It's very cool. The rise and fall of the 900 number. But this was a telecom strategist named Bruce Kushnick, who helped Sprint start their own

900 service in the late 80s. And he said that he remembers a meeting where they had 25 or so of the first developers that did this in a room and said, raise your hand if you're a millionaire. And like almost everyone raised their hand. And they had to know that it was a short window, I think, which is probably why they weren't just like, yeah, I'll just do this one number. They were like, it's a gold mine out there for probably five years. Yeah. And if you were like a celebrity, like Hulk Hogan or really any WWF wrestler, Glow wrestler or New Kids on the Block or DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, like some guy would come up to you and say, hey, I've got this business idea for you and we're going to charge 395 and we're going to split $1.95.

All you have to do is read this five minute script once a week or once every two weeks or something like that. And then that's it. We're going to split this money. And it made a bunch of money. It was really popular for a very brief time. And the reason why it was popular was because it was, as Sean Raviv puts it, it was like a proto internet, except rather than everything being free and then advertising driven where you get the content free, but you're subjected to ads. Sounds vaguely familiar for some reason. You paid for this free content. Yeah. And it, but it had such a range. Like you were talking about everything from like DJ Jazzy Jeff doing something to vote for Miss America or some legitimate things like,

and I don't know how good or legit it was, but you can get tax help or insurance advice or whatever or tech support to play Wheel of Fortune, like Interactive Wheel of Fortune or Farm Commodity Prices. It was just all over the map. People realized we can get information to people and charge a lot of money for it. And especially if there are children involved, you can basically trick them into running up a huge bill that their parents are going to have to pay. Yeah, man. That's Santa one. Do you remember that? I remember, man. Totally. So there was this Santa line. Chuck, you got to tell them about the Santa line. Well, the Santa, why? Cause I called it. Yeah. Yeah. This was a Santa Claus hotline that asked kids to hold up their

phone to the screen. And when they did that, there was a tone, a program tone that automatically dialed the number that I guess your phone would hear. And then all of a sudden this kid was hooked up to a Santa Claus hotline where it was probably, I mean, what do you think? It was probably just some Santa Claus saying that he was working very hard on everyone's gifts to be a good boy. Yeah. For minutes and minutes and minutes for 295 or more a minute. So the kid didn't even dial the number, like the ad dialed it for them with the tones. Yeah. And it was one of the, one of the big fraudulent things about a lot of these and some of them are legit. They might have been dumb, but they weren't like literally ripping you off by causing these long delays.

Right. But a lot of them would do these long delays. And I don't know about the Santa one, but I could totally see like, what's your name, son? Well, let me see what I've got for you. And then for the next 10 minutes, like, well, it's not this one. Let me look in this other room over here. Could you spell your name again? Yeah. And like a kid would sit there for 30 minutes waiting to see what Santa had for him. Yeah. There was, there was, it was pretty perennial. The headlines or articles about some family that got hit with like a $10,000 phone bill or something like that. There was one girl who famously called the two Cori's hotline. Yeah. 216 times. Yeah, that commercials on YouTube. Yeah. There's actually, there's a BuzzFeed article called

30 of the weirdest 900 numbers from the 90s. And they mentioned one that I hadn't heard of before that I'm not convinced isn't a internet meme, like a fake internet meme, but is the crying number where this ad mentions it's like, why are all these people crying to find out, call this number? And these people are having like this kind of cathartic sobbing cry on the phone and it looks real, but it's so tantalizingly wrong that it isn't quite 90s. It's way more of the 21st century and like the idea of it than, than that. So I'm not sure it's real. I couldn't find anything about it either other than there's this ad that exists. There was nobody on the internet who's like, I called this and yes, this is totally real. Yeah. The Priceonomics article mentions another

one where there was, and I think these were pretty common too. And this is just the worst when you're like preying on someone that needs work. Yeah. When you would call a 900 number for driver jobs at $20 a call, but what they didn't tell you was is there was only like two or three positions. So they get all these people calling in at 20 bucks a pop for the same three positions. Right. It's just so mean. There was also a hotline that you could call a 900 number that charged you $25 to learn how to set up your own 900 hotline. Yeah. That one makes sense. That one might have paid off. And then, you know, the phone sex, it was, that was a big, big thing. And I never called any of those, but those in the, in the Robert Altman movie Shortcuts,

you know, Jennifer Jason Lee was a phone sex operator. Oh yeah, that's right. There's some very funny scenes of her like with a baby in one arm and a cigarette and like doing her ironing and house cleaning while she was like, you know, talking dirty. I was trying to remember what, what movie it was. It was Shortcuts. I was thinking it was, it's in Punch Drunk Love. Yeah. There's a sex line subplot in that one too. Who is it? Who's the love interest in that? In Punch Drunk Love, the love interest is, was it Emily Watson? Okay. And she was, she, yeah, she was, she was the one who was doing the phone text line and then Philip Seymour Hoffman was like the owner of it. No, I don't think she worked for him.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was... Oh, he was blackmailing Adam Sandler, that's right. I finally saw Uncut Gems, man. Jesus. Oh yeah? Do you like it or hate it? I hated it. Did you really? I hated it more than I've hated any movie in a while. I feel bad because it's possible those brothers listen to this and I know it must have, it was, clearly they worked very hard on it and like they must be very proud of it, but I hate that movie. Oh man. It was my favorite movie the year. You're crazy. I'm not crazy. It was a lot of people's favorite movie. Wow. I'm, no, I'm just saying Chuck, I'm surprised that you think it was the... I loved it. Okay. Wow. Well, we disagree on that one. No, I mean, it's a divisive movie. I haven't met many people. We've been a lot,

we've done a lot of stuff on that on movie crush and I haven't talked to many people that are like, I don't know, I could take your leave, but it was all right. Most people are like, I loved it and I loved it. Those guys bring that kind of intensity and stress to a film and some people are just like, uh-uh. Oh, it was almost exclusively the ending for me. The very, very end? Yeah. Oh, I loved the ending. No, you don't get to do that. That's against all the rules, man. Oh gosh. I thought it was so great. No, and I liked Good Time. I thought that was a cool movie. Yeah. Yeah, this, but no, this Good Time followed the rules. This one didn't follow the rules and I hate that movie for it. I loved it. Well, since we started talking about movies,

I guess that's it for toll free and 900 numbers. Yeah. I don't have anything else. It's pretty to think about that they're both sort of relics, but 800 numbers survived and 900 numbers, are there any anymore? I don't know. We're going to find out. If there are, we might set one up. Let's look into it. All right. Okay. 976 Evil. But ours could go to charity or something. Sure. Sure. Half of it. So, uh, I guess then, what, Chuck, is time for Listener Mail? It is. This is, uh, Wasp related. The band? Oh, if only. Hey, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry, or whoever is producing. That's what it's come to. I've been a listener for seven or eight years ever since I got an internship that put me in a car four hours a day, five days a week. Your

recent story about Wasps reminds me of my own childhood experience with a Wasp. I was around six or seven and I was swinging at my neighbor's house when all of a sudden my butt started to hurt like really bad. So I did what was natural, ran home screaming for my mom. Not sure where she was, but my dad was upstairs and asked what was wrong. And I just said, my butt really hurts. And he sort of laughed, but he could tell I was in serious pain. So he told me to drop my shorts and he gasped. He said it was really red and there was a Wasp still in his underwear, still stinging me. Oh no. I guess he killed it. I don't really remember that part, just being in the tub afterwards. And you mentioned a Wasp can sting up to 10 times.

We counted 13 stings on my left butt cheek. Oh my gosh. And that is from Michael Brown in Portland, Oregon. Man, Michael, glad you made it through that one. I wonder how you feel about Wasps even after our episode on it. Do you imagine being a little kid and running home with a Wasp in your underwear? No. I can't imagine being a Wasp in some little kids underwear while they're running home either. Yeah, because you know, that's not going to come to a good end. You might as well get all the stings in. You can. I feel a bath coming. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Michael. If you want to get in touch with us like Michael did to let us know some horrible traumatic thing that happened to you when you were a kid, we'd love that stuff. You can send it in an email

to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart

podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.