Stuff You Should Know - How Marriage Works

Episode Date: April 16, 2013

You can tell a lot about a culture through marriage statistics: what age people get married, how many divorce, who is excluded from legal marriage. It forms a picture of how a society interacts with itself. Learn more about marriage in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know. The podcast. Right. How you doing, man? I'm good and well. How are you?

The same. A little tired. Yeah. Yeah. But other than that, I'm doing pretty good. Man, there's a lot of stuff going on today with this topic. Yes. Marriage, Chuck.

You know? I am married. You are married. Yeah. We're married, but not to one another. That's true. And in the state that we live in, we couldn't. Sure.

Even if we wanted to. Yeah, and this is probably going to touch on same-sex marriage a decent amount because it's in the news. Sure. And hey, it's marriage, too. Right. So we're not going to ignore it, but it's not necessarily just about that. It's about just marriage as a whole.

Right. We would have called this one How Same-Sex Marriage Works. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But now maybe we can not do that one if we cover it in this one, you know what I'm saying? How Same-Sex Marriage Works? Yeah. I feel like we're going to cover it enough in this.

It's pretty straightforward stuff. Yeah. Well, let's talk about marriage. All right. Okay. Really, if you boil the whole thing down, it is, as far as the government views it, very, very, very, very, very unromantically, it's basically a legal contract between two people. And therefore, there are legalities that you have to go through.

And as a result of going through this legal process, you are endowed with certain legal rights. Yeah. That's marriage. That really is, though. And it's like, I draw a distinction. I don't think it's like, ooh, it's unromantic to call it that because that's what it is. It's a difference between a marriage and a lifelong relationship with somebody.

That no, that's romantic Chuck. Yeah. I mean, that's where the romance is. Marriage is just some official way of recognizing that. Right. Okay. And I would imagine it's not just the desire to be, you know, to have your relationship recognized in that same way that it's a lifelong commitment legally, but also to get the benefits

as well as one of the, those are two probably very big reasons that same-sex couples want to be legally married or allowed to legally marry, right? Sure. So, since it's a legal process, Chuckers, all things start with an application. All legal processes start by filling out an application and marriage is no different. Yeah. You got to get that license. You got to apply to get that license.

And here, and Emily and I went to Decatur, it was the sign on the wall was marriage and gun licenses. Yeah. We thought it was kind of funny. Yeah. And get both in the same one-stop shopping. But each state has its own laws regarding everything concerning marriage, especially the, well, not especially, but the first of which is the license and application process.

How old you got to be, all that stuff varies from state to state. It does. And until very recently, Alabama allowed kids as young as 14, I believe they were the youngest state. It says in this article that there was kids as young as age 12. Yeah. They were allowed to be American. New Hampshire, I think.

Is that right? I think so. But I think that was like only with like a court order or a court permission, like pregnancy or something. I don't know. Well, that's one of the surprising things is in Georgia, if you're under 18, you have to present a birth certificate. And I think your parents have to be present, both of them, unless the bride-to-be is pregnant

and then all rules go out the window. Yeah. Most states that allow it under 18, the parents have to sign off. Right. And there has to be like some reason. But like we said, it varies from state to state and it would take two hours to go over all that. So if you're interested in getting hitched and you're 17, look it up on your state's

website. You don't want to go over it state by state. Yeah, let's do that. Do you remember the dude from Lost and then he was in one episode of X-Files? I can't remember his name. Which guy from Lost? I don't remember. I didn't watch Lost.

Okay. I just know he was on Lost. He was married, he's like pushing 50, 40 something, and he married a 16-year-old girl. Really? Yeah, and they were sending themselves up, I believe, to have a reality show or whatever. But her parents signed off on it. I remember like there was a big news story. Yes, I remember that too.

Who was that on Lost? They moved to Nevada or they went to Nevada to get married, which is not uncommon, I understand. To move to a different state? No, to go to Las Vegas to get married. Oh, sure. Yeah, people do that. So no matter where you are, you fill out this application, you pay a nominal fee, and then after your ceremony, you get a certificate that says, you're married, here's proof, show

it to whoever you like. Yeah, sometimes you need a blood test. We did not need one here in Georgia, but that's what you always kind of hear, the old-fashioned thing, like go down and get your blood test and get married. Yes. So whether you are disease-free and not cousins. That's right. Is that what it's for too, to check the DNA?

No. No. Okay. I don't think they have the equipment to do that. I didn't think so either. And you can get married by varying like a bunch of different ways. You can get married by your best friend if you want to as long as they get certified online as able to do that, which is what we did with our father-in-law, just to make him part of

the experience. That's neat. You're Emily Stepfather. The one in Ohio? Yeah. Yeah. They're all in Ohio. Right.

Yeah. So, Chuckers, now that you're married, according to federal law, you are eligible and open for, I think, 1138 federal benefits. Is that still correct? Yeah. I saw over 1100. Is that part of DOMA? I'm not sure if that's a specific part of DOMA, but it's probably a part of many different

laws, you know, if there's 1100 plus. But this is all specifically federal level. Yeah. Yeah. So, for example... And we'll talk about DOMA in a minute. Yeah. I believe we should.

So, for example, if Emily is in the hospital, you have a legal right to go visit her. That's right. I can even make medical decisions on her behalf. That's right, unless she has a living will. Right. Which we would do together anyway. You can get benefits if you're a federal employee. You can get inheritance rights, property rights sometimes, even if there's no will.

Yes. UMI can take out a life insurance policy on me. Sure. And it's legal. Yeah. Tax benefits, of course, of being married. You can file that way. You can receive Medicare, Social Security, Disability, Veterans benefits if you're a spouse, legal

spouse. Yes, you can immigrate your spouse to the United States more easily, at least. Yeah. If I killed somebody, Emily could visit me in jail. That's right. And then prison as my spouse. And I would imagine, depending on the state, there would be conjugal rights as well. Yeah, definitely.

So, those are just a handful of the 1,100 entitlements that you gain. Because you don't want to go over all of them. If you have a list, I'll do it. So yeah, there are a lot of good reasons to be married. You can also file jointly, so you get a tax break there. And in addition to the legal benefits, there's been tons and tons and tons of studies on marriage that show that there's actually psychological, physiological benefits to marriage. Sure.

People happily married, I should say, not just married. There's a key to it. You have to be happily married. You tend to live longer lives. True. A two-parent, a married-parent household tends to produce more stable, well-adjusted kids that do better in school. Yeah, that's supposedly true.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's tons and tons of studies. But it doesn't necessarily relate to same sex or opposite sex. It's just married parents happen to do that statistically. That's right. So what else? Well, people are getting married later and later, I think everyone recognizes that. But to the tune of people born from 1935 to 1939, 21% of men and 51% of women were married by 20 and compared that to last year where the average age of marriage was 28.6 for men

and 26.6 for women. And basically, there hasn't been a year since the 1950s where the median age has not gone up. It's just gone up and up and up and up. Yeah, and you would assume that it would have continued to go up and up and up prior to the 1950s, but what's really interesting is in 1890, the average age that a man got married was 26, and it declined down to the 1950s and 60s when it reached its lowest level, lowest age, which is like 22 or something like that.

And then it started to go back up, which is very odd. And it did it for men and women because you would think in olden times, you get married at age 12, so people were getting married at maybe 16 for a median age, but it was older than people were in the 50s when they were getting married. Huh, so the 50s might have just signified some marital boom? Maybe, I guess. People decided that they were not interested in premarital sex. They just decided that.

Have we covered polygamy? We did a full podcast on polygamy, didn't we? Full podcast. Barely even need to mention it. That's what I thought. When I was reading this, I was like, wait a minute, this reeks of something familiar. But that is a type of marriage. And I guess, go listen to that podcast on, did we call it plural marriage or polygamy?

I'm sure we talked about it as plural marriage, but we called it how polygamy works. Right. And I guess the very condensed form of this is that it is officially condemned by the Mormon church these days, although an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 polygamous still, well, I guess, still practice polygamy. So there are other types of unions these days. There are civil unions, domestic partnerships, and regular old fashioned marriage. And a civil union entitles same sex couples the same legal rights as marriage and benefits.

So that's, you know, like you said, after two things, the benefits and just the common recognition among their peers, like I'm just like you and I'm married just like you. Or in this case, a civil union would only give you the rights and not the badge of marriage. Right. And there's nine states where you, where civil unions are permitted for same sex couples. That's right. California, New York City, Maine, and the District of Columbia, I believe, allowed domestic partnerships for same sex couples.

That's right. And actually, one of the, one of the big same sex marriage cases that's before the Supreme Court right now is a little old lady who lived with her partner for decades. And because she has a domestic partnership under New York law, she didn't have to pay any tax. She didn't have to pay any inheritance tax, but she got slapped with like a $390,000 federal inheritance tax because the feds don't recognize their domestic partnership. And that was, that's one of the cases of Supreme Court's hearing right now.

Well you can get full on same sex married as of December of 2012 in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland, Washington State, and the District of Columbia. And that is full same sex marriage, like outright. And at the same time, 38 states have laws banning outright same sex marriage. So people are really drawn the line on this issue in this country. Yeah. Well, it's a pretty polarizing issue to say the least.

Like 1996, I have one stat. Things are changing. Like 48% of people in 1996 opposed same sex marriage and then 48% last year. So that's a 20% drop in 14 years. You know, in researching this article, I've really, I've really found out that in 1996, we were a radically different country than we are today. Like socially speaking, we are really, really different. There is a lot of stuff, a lot of laws that passed and a lot of mentalities that were

like supported legislatively that just don't make any sense today to a lot more people. You know? Like DOMA. Sure. The idea that that passed and like just kind of the meanness behind it is, it's just, well I guess it's being picked apart right now, right? Yeah. The Defense of Marriage Act defined marriage as only a legal union between one man and

one woman as husband and wife. And Bill Clinton famously signed that and has been sort of changing his story like every four or five years since then on why he signed it. Because people kind of pick on me like, Billy, dude, of all presidents, why did you sign it? Yeah. In 1996, he said, quote, I have a long, I have long opposed governmental recognition of same gender marriages.

And this legislation is consistent with that position. And then in 2008, he said, all it said was that Idaho did not have to recognize a marriage sanctified in Massachusetts. That's a pretty good claim. So he basically was like, hey, listen, man, all I'm saying was it was left up to the states, which was a bit of a reversal. And then in 2009, he said, well, you know, the reason I signed it was I thought the question of whether gay should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations.

And that if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to. So this is a bit of a, he's saying it's being spun as him coming out as like anti-gay on certain levels. And he's saying, no, no, no, you're rewriting history in a different way. What it really meant was let's just federally say this and let the states decide. But that's a pretty glib interpretation of DOMA. From what I understand, it basically removes states' rights.

And that's one of the things that the Supreme Court's looking at now, too, is DOMA is DOMA unconstitutional. And one of the ways that the pro same sex marriage lobby could actually harm itself is if the Supreme Court decides to look at DOMA as a state's rights issues and kicks it back to the states, then all of these bans will be upheld rather than just saying, no, it's unconstitutional because it bans marriage effectively between same sex people. So that's, I mean, it's not as, it is a state's rights issue in a way, but not in the way that Clinton's saying it.

It doesn't allow states to kind of make up their own mind. Yeah. I think Clinton's trying to, I don't think he's super proud of it now. And I think he's sort of been backtracking ever since and on reasons why he supported it at the time. And, you know, a lot of Congress people have come out since then and reversed their statements on it saying, you know, I've evolved in my thinking to this point, and I now think we should look into it more at least and not necessarily like fully in support of it.

But there are 11 countries, if you're wondering what it's like around the world, like all across the country, you can get married if you're same sex, like Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, and Spain. It is a federal, it's legally allowed federally. Yeah. So let's, you know, say what you will about that. If you want to get married, go to Spain. Sure.

Move to Spain. You'd have to like go live there because if you came to the United States, it wouldn't be recognized. Yeah. Or Netherlands. That's a nice place. South Africa. We've talked about that.

Sure. I mean, I think most people who want to get married, who are of the same sex, want to stay at home. Sure. They just want to get married at home, you know. Right. This is a, and you're talking about a, I guess, being allowed to be married in an entire country. There's been a couple of attempts to ban same sex marriage as an entire country in the

US, but have been unsuccessful. Oh, like make it a constitutional amendment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that has not happened. No. So in addition to domestic partnerships and civil unions, that's what I find interesting.

The reciprocal beneficiary relationship, which was a Hawaiian state law. Okay. And I guess it was kind of done away with in favor of civil unions in 2011 or 2012. But basically it's, it's, it grants you the rights of a married couple, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're a couple in the eyes of the law unless you say, we're a couple. It, it, so like brother and sister can, can be reciprocal beneficiaries. Right. And aunt and her nephew or whatever, it doesn't mean you're a couple.

It means that like you can make legal decisions for one another and it's for people who are like dependent on, on one another. Yeah. Living situations. Yeah. So don't be super creeped out by that when you say like brother and sister and stuff like that. Right.

Do you got anything else on same sex marriage? Oh, um, no, I guess that's it. I'm very interested to see what happens. It's the civil rights issue of our age. And that's what a lot of people are arguing like, dude, let's just learn from history. Do we have to go through the same steps every time we do this? Right. With allowing people rights?

Yeah. Or finally giving them the rights that, you know, everyone will in the future eventually agree they should have and should have had all along. Right. Um, but apparently we have to go through the same struggle every time for each group before they get the, their rights, their civil rights that are afforded to everybody. Sure. Whether it's African-Americans sitting where they want on a bus or women voting.

Um, yeah, it seems like this pops up every now and then in this country where people say, Hey, wait a minute, I don't have the same rights as that dude over there. Right. And why not? It's very interesting. It is. I feel like that we're going to get a lot of listener mail about this. Yeah.

Well, you know, we're just putting it out there. This is what some people think and that's what other people think. Yeah. I guess. And luckily we live in a country where you can voice those opinions for sure. So before we move on to other parts of marriage, okay, let's take a quick little message break. Let's do it. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy.

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Wow. So Chuck, one of the ones that I've always heard of is common law marriage. And I was doing a little research on it and it doesn't make much sense to me. I don't understand like apparently it's origins where that's what marriage was like two people just kind of shacked up. And they were viewed by society and the law as married. And then the church insinuated itself by saying, no, there's no more clandestine marriages anymore.

You have to do this publicly and declare that you want to be married and there's got to be a priest and maybe somebody's got to be there. So let's have a witness or whatever. And that's kind of like the rival of common law marriage. And as it's become more and more prevalent, common law marriage has kind of fallen to the wayside. Well, don't you just have to shack up for seven years? No.

That is a myth. Yeah. Everyone always says, I always heard that. Yeah. And I think that's just a common misconception. If you want to be common law married, you actually have to present as a married couple. You have to change your last name, file joint tax returns, basically kind of really live as if you're married, not just live together and fight over where to go to dinner.

Right. You know, it probably wouldn't hurt to contact your local probate court and file something like saying, Hey, we're married. Okay. Right. As far as you're concerned, we're married. We're common law married. Now, this only works if your state recognizes common law marriages and again, fewer and

fewer states do these days. In some states, if your common law marriage was around before the 90s, certain dates in the 90s, it would be grandfathered in Georgia. Being one of them, right? Yeah. If you were common law married in Georgia before January 1st, 1997, you're still common law married. If you still are nice and states also don't.

We joked about the seven year thing, but there is no set time in any state that you have to live together to present yourself as common law man and wife. Yeah. Although I don't, you know, I don't know that you would do that after you just moved in together, but hey, you can if you want. Well, you know, talking about moving in together, there was a study that recently found that more and more people are living together before marriage. Yeah, or instead of marriage.

Right. Yeah. And also apparently one of the reasons we were talking about the marriage age increasing, one of the reasons they think that people are putting it off more and more lately, especially millennials is due to college debt. How sad is that? Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. So I'm broke. So I'm not going to get married. Yeah. Like I can't afford to get married right now. That's that's terrible. I don't. So what does it cost you though?

I don't get that. Well, I mean, you got to get a ring and there's got to, I mean, there's just certain things to it, I guess that certain costs. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it depends on what you're looking for out of your wedding and your rings and things. Sure.

It doesn't have to be expensive. No. You know, doesn't have to. It depends these days. Well, I don't have the money to get married. Yeah. There you go. Give him some advice.

Just get married. Go get a cheap ring and get hitched at the courthouse. So okay. So as far as shacking up goes, more and more people are doing it. Apparently between 2006 and 2010, almost half of straight women ages 15 to 44 said that they have lived together with somebody who they weren't married to. And a hundred percent of gay women. Yeah.

I have another stat here that said from 1982, it is quadrupled the number of people. And this is people, percentage of women choosing to not get married and just cohabitate has gone from 3% to 11%. And what does this all mean to staying married or staying together? Not a lot. The divorce rate is hovered pretty close to 50% for quite a while. It goes up a little, goes down a little. Yeah.

As you can see, hasn't it gone down some? It's gone down a little bit, but it's never like some enough of a stat to rewrite the record books. It's always close to 50, it seems like. And then they found all sorts of interesting things. Among women, there was a 52% chance that a first marriage would survive for 20 years. And 56% of men, their first marriage would survive for 20 years. Oh, and another interesting thing, they found that your marriage is more likely to last

if you went and graduated college. So 78% of women with at least a bachelor's degree made it to their 20th anniversary as opposed to, well, is that 52%? So that's pretty big. Yeah, I wonder what the explanation is for that. I don't know. Maybe it takes a certain amount of tenacity to go through college and maybe it takes a certain amount of tenacity to stay married.

If you have kids going into the marriage with someone else, you have less of a chance to stay married. 37% of women marrying a man who already had kids made it 20 years. But if you have kids after you get married, you have a higher likelihood of staying together. So having your own kids good, marrying into kids bad. Yeah, having your own kids is one of the leading reasons that people stay together. Apparently, there's also couples who drink together tend to stay together more. I believe that.

Especially if they drink about the same amount. Yeah, that would make sense. Couples who have, I ran across this 2008 study from the University of Denver, couples who have fun, which fun is defined as basically spending time together free of financial family or other stresses. They tend to stay together longer, which makes a lot of sense. Basically if you go on dates with your spouse, you will stay together longer. And religion also plays a part.

Percentage of married women who say religion is important, 60% and percentage of married women who say religion is not important is 36%. And interestingly, it's about 10% less for men on both saying religion's important, religion's not. Oh yeah, that's not. I think women just care more. The number one, I guess, indicator that people will stay together. Not necessarily in marriage, but that as a couple is shared curiosity.

Remember we did how curiosity works years back? One of the indicators that, or predictors, sorry, that a couple would stay together was that if both of them were curious people. About the same things or just period? Just in general. And it beat out religion. All these other shared things that you would think that would keep two people together, like them attracted to one another.

But it was shared curiosity, a love of just being curious. As long as it's not curious about, like, I wonder what it would be like to have sex with that woman over there. Precisely, yeah. It's bad curiosity. Right, yeah. So since you brought that up, you sent another article on how stuff works that was pretty interesting that Molly Edmonds wrote about the seven year itch.

Oh yeah. Did you check that out? I did. Basically, the seven year itch is this idea that after seven years people get bored with their marriage and they divorce or they stray or whatever. And there have been studies that have found that seven years is actually like a significant moment in the average marriage and that a lot of them do end up dissolving at this point. Right?

Yeah, I think the median age in the U.S. is just over seven years. So that would suggest that this old yarn is correct. Right. But it's actually possible that it's even less than seven years, that there's an indicator that at four years marriages start to go, I guess, south. And there's an anthropologist, an evolutionary anthropologist named Helen Fisher, who had a pretty good idea of a pretty cool explanation. Yeah.

I thought it made sense. Yeah. Go ahead. Level it. Okay. Well, she said that basically back in our earlier evolutionary age, Tuk Tuk era, four years was about the time that a couple would spend together conceiving and raising a child and then it was time to do it again.

Right. And they typically did it with other people. Right? Spread the seed. So Fisher's basically pressing the point that we are evolutionarily hardwired to not last in a monogamous relationship longer than four years. Right. Which is a pretty depressing idea, especially if it makes sense.

Yeah. But she also points out that being aware of this or understanding this possibility can let you guard against it. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Like, keep your marriage exciting. Have fun with your spouse. Go on dates with your spouse, you know, and you can, you know, beat that for your seven

year itch or whatever. Yeah. Just don't like research that stuff. Come up with your own stuff is what I say. What research? Like there's gazillions of articles like how to keep your marriage spicy. And it's just, I encourage you not to read those. If you want to spice up your marriage, just try some things on your own.

Don't read Redbook. I don't know, man. Even if Redbook helps, then Redbook helps to be on its own. It's Armada. All right. So, you know, go ahead and read those articles and they'll tell you to, you know. What did they say? Oh, they all say things like it's all like sex based, usually, or actually that's not

true. They're talking about cosmopolitan, not Redbook. Be more active with your husband and get him out hiking and then dress up as a French maid every once in a while. It's just like, I don't know. If those articles help you, then it's all well and good. Okay. I take it back.

Well, you were saying like what to do, like go out on a hike or something like that. Sure. This study from 2008 from the University of Denver pointed out that when you go out on a date, you should be aware that your spouse may not have the same idea of what a date is that you do depending on your sex. That's true. Like for women, going on a date is like a chance to have an intimate conversation, just basically friend time, close time, get to know someone, whereas like the dude is more

prone to think a date is like going to a movie or going to a baseball game or something like that. Right. That you go do together. Yeah. And you're on a date and you're sitting next to another and like you lean over and kiss and everything, but you're both watching the game. Right.

You just watch the game. Right. You know? Yeah. So I guess, again, an awareness of that will probably get around any weird situations where you're just like, we went on a date. How are you not happy? Yeah.

This is a good point. I found that sporting events, I get kind of chatty though. Well, you would be a perfect date, you know, yeah, and we'll go to baseball games, but like literally the only time I took her to a Falcons game, she brought magazines. That's funny. People around me were like, so pissed. That's funny. What a waste of a ticket.

You mean like a perfect woman in that like we'll go into shows or something like that. She doesn't like, she's not chatty during shows, especially like a concert. Yeah. Like, you know, when you're at a concert and it's like, they're playing the music and there's the loud person and then somebody just wants to talk to you the whole time. Yeah. You mean it's not like that. It's pretty awesome.

Yeah. I'm always right next to that person. Whoever the most obnoxious person in any crowd is, I will be no more than five feet away from them. You're a magnet. I feel like I am. Yeah. But I've tried to, I've installed a new policy in my life.

I used to just get upset and because I'm non-confrontational with strangers, I would just sit there and my blood would boil. Yeah. And there's three ways you can go about it. You can do that. You can confront the person and say, hey, would you mind keeping it down? I would never do that. But the third option I've discovered here in my forties, just move.

Yeah, that's a good one. Unless you're like in a reserve seat, I just go stand somewhere else. It's just not worth it for me. Yeah. That's a good chuck. Yeah. And I find that all of a sudden I'm not obsessing over this loud person next to me while Steve Mountmuss is telling a nice story on stage and I just avoid the drunkest people in the

room. That's good. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. What else you got? I got nothing else. Cool.

We did it. We did how marriage works. Marriage. Good. Agreed. Yeah. If you want to learn more about marriage, there's like a whole channel almost or a sub-channel or something on the site, I believe.

If you want to learn more about marriage, get married. Yeah. Because if you're going to learn everything you need. Yeah. It's like immersion. Yeah. Learning through immersion. Also type the word marriage into the search bar at howstuffworks.com if you and your partner

are curious types and that would be probably a predictor of your long-term success. And I think I said predictor in there, so it's time for a listener mail. Not quite. It's time for a message break. Okay. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that, and I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Paydude, 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. Okay, and now it's time for Listener Mail, huh? No, no, Josh, not Listener Mail. Oh, we're going to continue, I believe, Part Two of what will be three of... ...BIG MINISTRATIVE P.K.O.'s.

Uh, okay, well, I'm going to kick it off. You ready? Please. I want to give a big shout-out to our buddy Ryan Flanders over at Mad Magazine for sending us a ton of great stuff. Magazines, hats, pins, pens, masks, buttons, masks, uh, and beyond, like, the coolness of that, it's just the fact that because of our careers, we've been able to talk to people at Mad Magazine and Uncle John's Reader and Archie Comics, and like, they listen to the

show, it's just like, that just totally knocks us out. We grew up on Mad and continue to read it today. Yeah. All right, so. What you got on? No, just to read a few. Uh, we got a very delightful letter from a boy named Ethan L from Windmere, Florida, with a request for an episode on Minecraft in the hopes that it will change his mom's

opinion about him playing it. I don't know if we're going to do that, but thank you for the letter, Ethan. Uh, physique body of tea in Boulder, Colorado sent us, uh, tea. Yeah. It's delicious. Right? It's weight loss tea. That's nice.

Yeah. I thought you'd been looking more spelt than usual. Oh, well, you know. Uh, we got a CD and vinyl of the album, we build a fortress on short notice by the band Self Evidence. Awesome. Thank you very much, guys. Uh, yeah.

And on the music tip, um, the La La Band sent us their CD, Moonshine Still, and the Death Billies. Yeah. They sent us a packet. They do metal mashups of jukebox country classics. It's pretty cool. I hadn't listened yet. Yeah, they're intrigued.

They're pretty cool. And they gave us cool buttons too. Okay. So thank you, Death Billies. Um, we got a nice letter written in cursive. Uh, from Larry, uh, Nina's, Ninus, that's what it, he, he even spelled out how to say it, Ninus. Really?

He lives in Lagrange, Georgia, and, uh, he was prompted by our episode on memory and possibly synesthesia. He had some good theories. Nice. Uh, Katie Sinner sent us a nice handwritten letter and she's doing something really cool called the letter project, wherein she sends a letter to someone who inspires her and asks, what are you pursuing in your life and how do you know when you've gotten there? And she sent us that letter and Katie, the answer is.

We're pursuing podcasting excellence and we, uh, we're, we're never going to rest. Like we've not gotten there because there's still many more things to explore. Yeah. And the beat goes on here. So if you should know. It's the curse and the gift of perfectionism. That's right. Uh, let's see.

We got a wedding invitation from Savannah and Jonathan, Mazel Tov. Uh, Sarah Yakowanas sent us some cool graphic posters. I found those. We did get those. Oh, okay. So she has an Etsy shop at Takawanasquilling.etsy.com and that is T-A-K-A-W-O-N-I-S quilling.etsy.com and they're really neat. I like graphic posters.

I like how you say her last name too. Yes. Um, we got a postcard from the Trinity nuclear testing site in New Mexico from our friend Billy Ray Cyrus and another associative one from, uh, Van Noster. Oh, really? Yeah. Send us a couple of postcards. So thank you buddy.

Um, and we got a book. It's a book from Thomas Trask. He sent his book, Prism, Colen, Shadow of the Fates. Nice. We get a lot of colons in our book titles here. Well, that's the thing, I guess. If you have a lot to say, I guess so. You threw the colon in there.

So thank you. Uh, thanks to Thomas Trask for that. Uh, we got an anonymous note suggesting we do something on lactose intolerance. Thank you, anonymous. Right. Uh, postcard from Antarctica from Liz and Dan from San Francisco who went there on their honeymoon. Congratulations.

Nice. What else you got? Um, we got some postcards from Christina Bennett, uh, Australia road signs, uh, Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan postcards. Some odd postcards. Thank you. Cool. You want any more?

Uh, yeah, do a few more. I'm out. Okay. Um, we've got some picture links and a nice letter from Adam Pervez. He's the chief happiness officer of happinessplunge.com and go check it out. Do you remember when we talked about, uh, gross national happiness? Yeah. And we asked about people who dropped out to like just go pursue their own happiness.

Is that the happiness plunge? Yeah. Happinessplunge.com. We got downloads of jazz animals and independence Louisiana by Burke and Graffia. You can check those out. Nice. Those, uh, tracks. Um, we got a Georgia Tech Club t-shirt from J.T.

Genter. Yay. You remember him? Yeah. That was very nice. And we're just kidding about going Georgia Tech. Kind of kidding. And I'm going to do one more and then we'll save the rest for next time.

Uh, we got a letter suggesting meditation as a topic from Rob Hollerbach. All right. Hollerbach. I used to meditate. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to get back into it. It was nice.

Okay. It was nice. Uh, well, that's it. That's for, that's administrative details. Yeah. We'll finish up and then, um, yeah, I'll split these up between us next time. Great. Okay.

So, uh, if you want to send us something, you can get our address out of us by tweeting to syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Uh, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at thescurry.com and seriously, come check out our website. It's really neat. Uh, it's called stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, GLA double dollar sign each side. That's right. Glasses Malone. Hey, check no sellers on the black effect podcast network. No Sillings is a weekly conversation where we share light and perspectives on some of the most uncomfortable topics.

Your ability is the most underrated strengths of all strengths, and there's nothing more durable than a woman. Listen to No Sillings podcast on the black effect podcast network, iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or anywhere you checking out your podcast.