Stuff You Should Know - How much money is in the world?

Episode Date: September 6, 2013

There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money exists and the problems with flooding the world markets with bread. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark and I'm with Charles W. Chuck Bryan. He's right here with me, so it's stuff you should know. It's also really stuff you should know because Jerry's here too. Oh, the chair's not here, it's fake stuff you should know. It's less than vintage stuff you should know. Gotcha. I mean it's not bad, yeah, it's just not great.

Yeah. I'm sure Matt and everyone appreciate that. They don't listen to this crap. Yeah, true. Uh, Chuck. Yes. How much money do you have on you? Right now.

Cash. Zero dollars and zero cents. Well, that's stupid because you should have $3,800 in cash on you. I never have cash. Well you should. Almost never have cash. You should have $3,800 in cash on you right now. So should I.

So should Jerry. I agree. But we don't. We don't. It's sad. I'd love $3,800 in my pocket. Okay, well let's explain why I just said that, huh? Was I supposed to?

Sorry, don't do it. No, I can do it. That's how much, uh, if you divide up all the money between all the Americans, that's how much we should all have. Bam. So we're trying to answer a question here. How much money is there in the world? Yeah.

Um, and we'll get to that. There's a, there's actually a rough estimate out there that may be right. But instead first, let's talk about how much American money there is in the world. And not just because we're American, but because it is the standard currency worldwide. It's the closest thing to the universal currency that we have. True. Um, the dollar. The greenback.

Yeah. But, um, that's not as, I guess, um, widespread as it once was. A lot of people have abandoned the dollar, um, and now use a basket of currencies to value their currency against. Yeah. Very rebellious. Sure. Well, the dollar is generally what's used to say for oil speculation.

And imagine the dollars in that basket too though, right? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how much they hate America. Gotcha. So, um, what you were talking about though is all the money divided up by all the Americans coming up to $3,800. That's called the M zero money supply. Of course you know how I read that.

How? M-O? The mo money supply? I was like, what? And then I read it again, said it can't be called the mo money supply. And then I realized that was a zero and not an O. It, uh, it looks very much like the mo money supply. I wrote this article.

I realize it. And I never saw it like that until you just said that. Really? Yeah. Well, I like the mo money supply better than the M-O. Yeah, it's good. But it is M-O for a reason. There's also the M-1, M-2, and there was an M-3, which we'll get to.

Right. And the people who came up with this was the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Central Bank. The Fed. And, uh, they like to track money. That's one of the things they do to amuse themselves. Count? Yeah, count money.

Um, and go to sleep on piles of gold ingots. Uh, but the Fed came up with this M, I'm sorry, this mo money supply, also known as the M-0 supply. And that is all of the bills and coins, all of the actual hard currency that exists in the world. Anywhere. In U.S. dollars. And, as of July, 2013, that came to, oh, we should say Catherine Whitbourne from Coolest

Stuff on the Planet. Did she update this? She updated this. So the fact that this is as up to date as it is, is thanks to her. Okay. Um, but the M, sorry, the mo money supply, as of July, 2013, is $1.2 trillion. That's all the cash and all the coins all over the world of American dollars. The real dollars that you can collect and put together.

Yep. That you can light your cigars with. Yeah. Or you can, uh, throw into a fountain. Yeah. Like $1.2 trillion U.S. dollars. So that's how much money was in the world, but, and, and we said also, that's $3,800 for every American man, woman and child, all $316,668,567 Americans that were alive in

July of 2013. Yeah. Each one should have had 3,800 bucks in their pocket because we're not talking checking accounts. We're talking the actual currency that people are walking around with. Since I don't have $3,800 in my pocket and I didn't in July. Yeah. You don't.

Jerry. Nope. Jerry's got more. Where is this stuff? It's a good question. I wonder how that clock ticks, by the way, the population clock. I'd like to see a real time like three people died, four people born, two people died. Eight people born.

Yeah. Set of twins. I wonder if it ever does go backwards for a second. Well, it's got to because people are dying, but more people are being born than people are dying. Yeah. It depends on the country you're talking about. Yeah.

That's true. I always drive by the one in Atlanta, you know, on the, the population clock that's been there forever. Mm-hmm. When I was a kid, I remember when it topped a million, it was like, whoa. Wow. And now it's whatever, a three point something. Is it?

Yeah. I mean, that's Metro Atlanta. Right. Yeah. All right. So back to it. Where were we? Hard to track?

The mow money? No. We were talking about where the 3,800 bucks that should be in our pockets is. Oh, well, about a half to two thirds of that is overseas. It's in overseas pockets. That's right. Or overseas bank accounts. No, no.

We're not talking bank accounts. Oh, wait. That's just the mow money. That's right. Yeah. But there are people walking around overseas with cash on them, American dollars. American dollars. Which makes a lot of sense.

And so when you start to divide the amount of money that 1.2 trillion by a lot more than 316 million people, that explains why I have a single dollar bill on my person right now. And why I have nothing. All right. And Jerry? Nothing. Nothing.

Man, we're sad sacks. Okay. So that's just the mow money supply. Yeah. That's the m1 is all of the mow money plus checking account money and other kinds of just accounts that you can, you know, track and travelers checks. Yeah. Very, very liquid types of accounts.

Yes. That's the m1. Yeah. Supply. And it's funny that you were having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that we were talking about cash outside of banks for the m0 supply. I had the same problem too. Like it's hard to think of money outside of banks in this day and age.

Yeah. Rarely have cash. Right. On hand. Use like debit cards and credit cards and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I use my American Express for everything. That's funny that on this audio podcast, you just held it up to your face when you said

that. So that's the m1. In June of this year of 2013, the m1 supply was about 2.5 trillion. So the m0 money supply was 1.2. The m1 was 2.5. That's all the accounts and checking accounts, travelers checks. Then there's the m2, which is the m1 supply plus money market fund money savings accounts and CDs under 100 grand, which they call small CDs.

Right. Where I come from, that's a pretty good CD. Well, a CD over 100 grand is called a jumbo. Yeah. I was looking up jumbo rates. They used to be something like four and a quarter. Some of them would be like 22% for like a 10 year. Really?

Yeah. So you get like 22 grand back over. No, I'm sorry. Five years. So you go give a bank 100 grand. Yeah. Say, keep this for five years, pay me back and they would give you 22% interest. So you get 122 grand.

When was this? Not very long ago. Years ago before the crash. Wow. You want to know what it's at right now for $100,000. Three year, I believe, CD, a jumbo CD, you get like 1.4%. That's not even worth your time. To give a bank $100,000 to keep for three years, they'll give you $1,400.

That's asinine. Go to the dog track with $100,000 and you leave a heroin addict. Crying. All right. So the M2 supply, which like I said, it was the M1 supply plus money market fund saving counts and those smaller CDs, $10.5 trillion. That's virtually all of the American money in the world. Pretty much because they got rid of M3 basically in 2006 because they said it really doesn't

tell us much to know what the larger jumbo CDs are adding to this pile. It doesn't change things that much, I guess. There's just not that many. Yeah, exactly. So about $10.5 trillion in accounts and in cash in holdings in the world in about July, June, July of 2013. That's a lot of dough. It is a lot of dough.

That's a lot of mula. Right. And if you want to, yeah, it even says in here, that's a lot of mula. It did. And that's when I looked up. I was like, who wrote this? I was like, oops. I thought this was well done.

And I learned how to spell mula. I didn't know. Don't patronize me. No, I'm serious. I literally thought, oh, that's how you spell mula. How'd you think you spelled it? I don't know. M-U-L-A?

No. I just never thought it. I'd never seen it spelled out. M-O-O-L-A-H. Is that right? That's AP standard. Exactly. 2020 is already well underway, everybody.

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They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus, stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code STUFF for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage

and that free digital scale. No long term commitment for contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. So this, I think we've kind of pointed out it's tough to track money like this. Well, yeah, it's not the easiest thing. They do a pretty good job of it.

The Fed does specifically because it's just what they do and they love doing that. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's an estimate still. Like no one knows how much cash I have in my house. No one asked me. No, but they know how much was printed. They keep track of that kind of stuff, how much is destroyed, how much is in circulation. And, you know, there's bank reportings. They know how much a bank has at the Fed.

So they have a, it's pretty close estimate from what I understand. The thing is not every country has a Fed like the Fed in the U.S. True. And that makes it way harder to say how much money is in the entire world, not just U.S. dollars, but all the money in the entire world. And more difficult to control your economy. It is. If you don't know how much money you have, it's very difficult to sway your economy one way or the other.

Right, exactly. So Zimbabwe is a really good example of why it's so hard to track a lot of money and also what happens when you don't track your money. Yeah, or what happens when you decide in order to fix economic woes, let's just start printing more money. Right. Because that's, if you know nothing about finance and economics, a common thing you might think is, well, they could probably just infuse some cash flow

by printing money occasionally. And they do occasionally. But in Zimbabwe, they did it to such an extent with the Zim dollar, which I didn't even believe that was right. It's actually called a Zim dollar. It sounds like something from a movie. Not a good one either. Yeah, exactly.

They printed so much money that they encountered hyperinflation like the world has never seen before. Yeah, so basically. Ridiculous numbers. Yes. This hyperinflation, in 2006, it was really bad. In 2000, Zimbabwe started to enter an inflationary spiral. Yeah. In 2006, it was so bad that a sheet, not a roll, a sheet of toilet paper,

cost $417 Zim dollars. Okay. One square? Yeah. A roll of toilet paper cost $145,750. Oh, it broke so quick in Zimbabwe. Well, that's the thing. Yeah.

Everybody would have gone broke, but it wasn't that the toilet paper was very expensive. It was that the Zim dollars had very little purchasing power. Yeah. And that was because dollars, just like any other commodity, are subject to the influences of supply and demand. Sure. And when there's a lot of them on the market, their value decreases. Yeah.

That's how the US government has managed to stay afloat so many times. They release a bunch of money. They cause inflation so that the debts that they owe are worth less. So when they pay them off, it hurts the government less. Again. It's a really horrible thing to do to your investors, but it's done. But that's the point. When you have a lot of dollars out there, you have less purchasing power per dollar.

Yeah. And that's what was going on in Zimbabwe. And things got really out of hand because they decided to fight this by printing more dollars. Yeah. They really got out of hand. Some of these stats in here are just staggering. You said that every, or you didn't say, you report that it was estimated that it was equivalent to prices doubling in stores every 1.3 days.

Yeah. The most I saw was every 24.7 hours. Prices essentially were being doubled by the way of the dollar losing value. Right. Like the kind of inflation that we're looking at right here in America right now is like in the single digit percentiles. And it's being kept low by the Fed on purpose. But we're talking like doubling.

Yeah. 100% increase. Like the toilet paper is this much? The next day is twice as much. Exactly. The next day it's three times. Right. And that's just not going to affect the economy.

That's going to like, I mean, think about it. If toilet paper costs that much money, people are going to stop using toilet paper. That leads to poor sanitation. That leads to, you know, it's just a domino effect. Well, there was a joke that the toilet paper was so expensive or the dollar, the Zim dollar bought such a little toilet paper that it was actually more useful as toilet paper than to buy toilet paper with. Yeah.

That's not funny. Well, yeah. Yeah. If you're in Zimbabwe, it's not. But the annual inflation was estimated, like this was watching Zimbabwe. If you were a currency or monetary policy economist, it was like a dream come true. Last time something happened this bad, it was hungry in 1946. Yeah.

I think we talked about that once. Yeah. I think it was in the Super Stuff Guide to Economics, our spoken word album. Yeah. But the inflation in Zimbabwe was estimated at 516 quintillion percent. That's by the end of 2008. Okay. That's not even the highest that I've seen now.

The highest I saw is 89.7 sextillion percent, which is 89.7 billion trillion percent or 89.7 10 to the 21st power percent. That was their annual rate of inflation. And that was probably early 2009. Yeah. Yeah. Because in January 2009, they basically said you can start using foreign currency again, which helps stabilize things the tiniest bit, but it didn't obviously work.

Well, it ended inflation abruptly because they abandoned these dollars. The currency lost value so much that everybody stopped using it. And they went to the South African Rand and the US dollar. Yeah. It took four months from January to April for basically to completely abandon their money. Right. So four months in a country's money is literally useless. Right.

And when they did abandon it, it was actually a pretty good move. You couldn't carry the economy with this money any longer because it was so value-less. They're in bad shape no matter what, but at least that was a good move. Right. And the reason it was a good move is because it stopped inflation because there weren't that many dollars and there weren't that many rands around, which means that they were scarce, which means, again, according to supply and demand, they were valuable. And hence, they had purchasing power.

Yeah, and it's really unbelievable, but it got so bad they were printing money in larger and larger denominations because they had to because people couldn't carry around. You'd have to have a suitcase full of money to buy your toilet paper. Right. So they ended up producing a $100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note that you can now buy on eBay for about five bucks. Yeah. That's sad.

Well, when it was released, it was worth about 30. Yeah, and that's actual conversion rate. Like now, it's only worth something on eBay. Yeah, whatever it's like, you'll pay for it. Yeah, there is no conversion rate. Right. I think I'm going to get one, though, just to have it. Do it.

Yeah. Okay, so... I'll get you one, too. Thanks, man. I'll get us all... What is it? 300 note? 30?

$100 trillion notes. Okay. Yeah. But that's the fact that the Zimbabwean government wasn't tracking their money in the first place and they didn't track it after they kept releasing it again and again, and there was no buyback program. They just said, you guys keep that. They have no idea how many Zimbabwean dollars were released just in the 21st century, let

alone how many are out there on the market, so that's why it's virtually impossible to track how much money is out there in the world, but that hasn't stopped at least one guy. Well, actually, that's not true. I talked to Catherine Whitborn today, and she was saying that the guy gave up the most recent figure she could find was 2010 because he's like, forget this. Yeah, Mike Hewitt of DollarDaysWithAZ.com, yeah, I guess he gave up on it, huh? That was his blog, his econ blog, and he was tracking 135 currencies in 167 countries, and I guess December 2010 is probably one of the last stats he has, then, if that's when he

quit. So, in his mo money equaled $5 trillion in U.S. dollars in circulation, M2 was $55 trillion, so $55 trillion. Yeah, that's the value of all the money in the world occurring to Mike Hewitt in U.S. dollars. The U.S. dollar value. Yeah, U.S. dollar value. But not just U.S. dollars.

Yeah, that's everything. Right. $55 trillion. Yeah. So, there you have it. So, this would be a lot easier to track, and things like what happened in Zimbabwe wouldn't happen. You would never have hyperinflation if we all used a universal worldwide currency.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. No less than John Maynard Keynes has suggested that, and it's been bandied about for a long time since World War II. Well, even before then. Yeah. But I think it was maybe closest to happening maybe after World War II, which wasn't very close.

No. There were instances of what were to the people who were using the currency was effectively a universal currency like the early imperial powers of China, and Rome used a single currency in all the lands they conquered, which is why hordes of Roman silver coins are found in fields in the UK still today, but it's still not technically a worldwide currency. Yeah. But World War II, we came very close, right? Yeah.

Let's talk about some of the pros, I guess, because if you look it up on the Internet, there's a lot of debate still going on. Some of the pros, speculators can't short a currency. That's the scenario you were talking about, like devaluing currency to pay back debts. Right. That'd be gone. And it wouldn't be a commodity. There wouldn't be any other currency to exchange it against.

So therefore, it's just a dollar. Just can be used to buy something. You can't buy and sell it itself. It would be valueless like that. Exporters wouldn't have to worry about price gaps. There would be no conversion fees, which would free up money for like healthcare or whatever. I mean, something good to spend it on. Of course, this is a utopian outlook like, oh yeah, then they could spend it on healthcare.

Right, ideally. But it would free up money. It would end disputes about a currency manipulation like China. So there are some pros for sure. You wouldn't have to stand in line at the combo centers and exchange your money when you travel. No. It's a convenience.

You and I went to Europe this summer and it was nice to not, we just exchanged once. Yeah, that hadn't been since the euro. It's like everywhere. And even in places in Croatia, they still use their currency, but everybody accepts euros. Yeah, I bet they accept American dollars there too. Probably. I kind of enjoyed the different currencies.

Oh yeah, it's pretty. And it's just neat. I kind of enjoyed the, I mean, I guess it was, I didn't see it as a hassle. Maybe I was young, but I always thought it was kind of neat like, let me go turn in my Franks for my German dollars. That just sucks to lose money buying another currency. Yeah. Or to come out ahead though.

That's when you're rocking. No. Right. Sometimes. But it's been a while since that happened. Yeah. Well, this was in the mid 1990s. So the American dollar was, we were doing pretty well in Eastern Europe.

The dollar was sound as the pound. But we got killed in England, of course, as always. Yeah. Because your pound is so awesome. Well, that was the big discrepancy after World War II, like when we came close to adopting universal currency, the Americans and the Brits couldn't decide on what to value it against the pound or the dollar. And so it just fell apart.

Well, the Pew Research Center did a poll and apparently 41% of Americans believe that we will have a universal currency by 2050. But the article I got that from, the guy speculates that could be because we're sort of programmed to think that the future will be like that. Globalized. Entirely. Yeah. It could be ever, it's like universal credits, it's not even cash.

So people would just kind of have that in the back of their minds. So there's a lot of drawbacks to a universal currency as well. There's some clever things you can do if you are in charge of your own currency and it's valued against other currencies. One of them is if your economy is sluggish, you can release a lot of your currency, create inflation, drive prices down in your country compared to the buying power of a foreign currency and attract that foreign currency and get your economy kickstarted again. If you're using the same currency as all these other countries that you're trading with,

sure there's not that gap, the currency gap, but you also can't do that nice little trick that's probably would have bailed out Spain and Greece on their own had they not been trading the euro or using the euro in the last couple of years. Yeah, that's a good point. Some pundits think that the gold standard, if they were to go to a universal currency, it should be based on something like the gold standard again or the gold standard period, but a lot of other people say no, that's antiquated and just a bad idea, potentially dangerous. I wonder how.

How it'd be dangerous? I don't know. We should do one on the gold standard. I mean, they got rid of it for a reason. So I don't know, something about going back to something that... But it was Nixon who got rid of it, so it makes you think it's inherently evil getting rid of the gold standard. Yeah.

The other thing too is who's going to run the show is really the big... I think that's probably the biggest stumbling block. It's a huge one. It's... There's got to be a universal body. An international reserve bank, central bank, that has the authority on issuing these things or buying them back, and yeah, I mean, ever since the Clinton era, everybody's been nervous about that kind of thing.

But even if you're not a paranoid type, you may just think that this body by definition would be incompetent just from looking at the UN. The UN has successes. These keeping missions are frequently very helpful and can add stability to a region. And then you have things like the international panel on climate change, which releases its opinions on climate change based on politics and diplomacy rather than science. Yeah. And you can't...

If it's a world bank, there's too much at stake to make mistakes. And we already have a world bank. It's just not in charge of every currency. And if it were, I mean, it could be problematic. It could be helpful. It could be problematic. I don't really fall down on either side of this. Yeah.

I don't mean... I don't know. You know how I feel about economics. It's just... As long as I can go buy my stuff and pay my mortgage, I don't care if it's at the yen or the dollar or the euro. Or the Comunitae financier de fric, Frank. Do you care if it's that?

No. I had never heard of that. I didn't know. I thought the euro was sort of the only consolidator, but apparently in Africa, eight West African nations do share that West African CFA, Frank, African financial community. Another six central African nations share a central African CFA, Frank, which is weird because they're interchangeable. Yeah.

Two currencies that they can... Either one's fine. Yeah. I guess it's like when you go to Costa Rica. Right. You can use your dollars. You can use your pesos. Yeah.

I guess so. But apparently from interchangeable, I read that to mean like they're valued the exact same. Oh, right. Which is like, well, I have two different currencies that are so similar that are the same value. Yeah. Just make one CFA, Frank.

Yeah. That's a good point. And then there was a lot of talk about hemispheric and regional unified currencies in Central America and South America, and they came very close, but the recent troubles from the Eurozone have made a lot of people back off about it. And in North America, there was going to be the North American Union, which is Canada, Mexico and the United States. Supposedly, we're going to be fused together into one political...

And Mexico was like, yes. And Canada was like, ah. Right. And America was like, oh. Well, we were going to come up with the Amaro, AMERO was the name of the unified currency that would have been... Really? Yeah.

Interesting. Well, it's a conspiracy theory at least. Oh, okay. There you go. That's how much money's in the world. I think it's kind of weird, not weird, but that America's sandwiched between such two different countries. It is.

But Canada and Mexico, it's like, you can't get any more opposite. Yeah, I guess... Climate, people, food, economy, and then America's right in the middle. It's kind of fitting. We're the melting pot of Canada and Mexico. I guess we are. We're where it all comes together. Of America's hat and America's pants?

I can't remember what you've called Mexico before. Shoes? I don't think so. All right. Let's just call it Mexico. Okay. So that's how much money there is in the world. If you want to read this article, you can type that into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com.

And since it's a search bar, it's time for a message break. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right, because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later.

Yep, stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus, stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success when you get started with stamps.com today. Just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week

trial plus free postage and that free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. In order to book your tour, that's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip.

And Chuck, what time is it now? It's time for Administrative Details. Again, folks, this is when we thank people for sweet gifts that they send us in the mail. And I have a list of books starting with how, why, how we do anything means everything. How, Colin? There you go. Why, how we do anything means everything by Dove Seidman. That is...

Or Dov, Dov. Yeah. Dov. Dov? Yeah, I appreciate that, Dov. They're very nice. They're Dovster. Do you want to say it one more time?

No. Okay. Let's see, we got a postcard from Madagascar from Cara Levitt. Thank you very much for that. Nice. Another book by Alan Gerstel, Swing, Colin, The Search for My Father, Louis Prima. I don't know if I've already read this one, but it deserves a double. Okay.

We got a letter with further insight into the hip hop episode from B-Boy Antivirus. Nice. Yeah. How's he doing these days? He's doing great. Okay. Science Nearly Explained by Dick Maxwell, and that is available on Amazon or Kindle. Nice.

We have a postcard with a picture of the pair, which you'll remember from the torture episode, from the Museo de Torture, from Anna. Oh, nice. Thank you very much. Our buddy Roger Ma sent us the Vampire Combat Manual. Yeah. And he's previously sent us the Zombie Combat Manual. Yeah.

And Roger's a good dude. We actually finally met him, didn't we? I don't know. Did we meet him? I think we met Roger at one of the Comic-Cons. Oh, good. I'm not speaking. Yeah, okay.

I think you're right. Hey, Roger. We got a postcard from China from Carrie. Nice. We got another book called Trunk List. It's a children's book. And I don't have the author here, but it's called Trunk List. I think we did that one before.

Did we? Mm-hmm. All right. Double plug. We got another postcard from Baugrum Airfield from Amy Lynn. Thanks for that. We got a book called Verba Force Feast, Verba Force Feast, by Christie the Wordsmith, and that was sent in by Hillary.

Nice. We got a postcard of a bear pooping in the woods from Van Nostrand. Thanks, Van Nostrand. Yeah, and we should mention to Van Nostrand also sent us his CD from his awesome band, The Bangalores, Sasquatch with a Mullet. Yes. Thank you, buddy. We got a comic zine called Happy Trails, Cowboy Poetry, by Horace T. Brushy Beardstache.

We got a really cool cityscape watercolor card that was designed and sent by Alex. Thanks, Alex. John Linnemeier wrote a book called How an Average Man Lived an Adventurous Life. And I haven't read that yet, but I'm going to. Good going, Chuck. Yeah. We got some CDs from Rich Bozik that may or may not have been all of them, but thank you very much for those.

Yeah, and I believe he also sent us a DVD called Forgotten Detroit and a nice handwritten, or I'm sorry, an ink rendering of ourselves. A character. A character. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Is it the same guy?

I think it's the same guy. Well, thank you very much. Big time, Rich. A book called Roman Disasters by Jerry Toner. And a book called The Life and Times of Swirly Van Coco, Stuff You Should Know Edition. It's a comic, actually, from Aaron Dunbar. Yes, I remember. What else do we have, Chuck?

And then we have a bunch of music. You want to go through these with me? Yeah. Column Blow, Devil in the Sky. That's right. Ben from Self-Evidence, Sinus CDs, and vinyl, the record We Built a Fortress on Short Notice. We definitely plugged that one before. Yeah.

The Lala Band sent us their CD, Moonshine Still. Yep. A group called Forging Reverie, Sinus a CD called Motion Canvas. And that was from Derek. Yeah. Eric Davis and Sam Gray, Sinus a CD, Table People, and some authentic Korean junk food. That's right. Burke in Graphia, Sinus download codes for his CD, Jazz Animals.

Right. Katie Sinner sent us a nice handwritten letter. She's doing something called The Letter Project where she sends a letter to somebody who inspires her to ask, what are you pursuing in your life and how do you know when you've gotten there? Yeah. And we answered. Did we? Yeah, I did.

Oh, nice. For both of us. Oh, nice. Thanks, man. You're welcome. And then we have one more vinyl and CD, The Shape of Beats to Come from Bindick Boxus Band. Yes. That is V-E-N-D-I-K-B-A-K-S-A-A-S.

Yep. And you should take these vinyls. There's a couple over there on my desk. Thanks, man. You got a record player. I do. And mine is busted. What happened to your record player?

Oh, it's up in the Attica and we're career. So until I get it going, you should just take the vinyl. Yeah. And we appreciate the vinyl, by the way. It's very cool. I believe Benedict Baxus, do we read his name for volunteering? No, donating to Co-Ed? Oh, maybe.

Bindick? I believe so. Bindick, yeah. Well, if that's the same person, then thanks for that. Doubly. So that is administrative details for now. Thanks for the stuff. Yeah, we're all caught up.

Very nice. I know. It feels good. It didn't take like eight episodes to cover it all. That's right. If you want to send us something, you can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com, stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com.

And you can join us at our home on the web, the awesome website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate 1 Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate 1 handle the planning for you with affordable Escort tours and European Riffer Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th.

Visit gate1travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel dot com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 2. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed.

The way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota, and I wish to go back, because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.