Stuff You Should Know - How Sweepstakes Work

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Sweepstakes were invented as marketing tools to drum up interest for a product or sales. But winning them can be fun and as they’ve proliferated an entire subculture of people who enter hundreds of them a day. Enter the fascinating world of sweepstakes today! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gonna 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, 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, ya 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there.

And you may already be a winner because you're listening to Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. I was gonna say a version of the same thing, so. Hey, that's the spoils of doing the intro. That's right, you may be a winner. Yep, chump. Sweepstakes.

Yeah, man, so I was aware of Sweepers before that there's this group of people out there. Yeah, hobbyists, people who enjoy sweepstakes, and we'll talk about them later. But as I got more and more into researching sweepstakes, I'm like, wow, this is pretty interesting stuff. There's a lot more to it than even that. Yeah, I have never, I don't think, entered any contest.

Well, you know what, I fully take that back because almost every year I enter the HDTV Dream Home. Do you really? Yeah. Well, that's like one of the big sweepstakes in the United States. Yeah, well, I mean, every year that I sort of remember, I haven't had cable TV for a few years,

so I'm not reminded as much. But that's one of those like, I mean, have you ever entered, have you ever seen those houses? Yeah, I've ran across them during this research, and yeah, they're very beautiful. Not only that, they don't stop with the house. They'll give you like a GMC Yukon and like, here's half a million dollars in cash, too.

Yeah, it's gotten crazy now. You know, here's a couple of snakes that are really exotic and expensive. I think they do a green home as well now. Yeah. I think there are a couple of them. And one of them, I think the green home one year was, you know, Sarenby here outside of Atlanta.

Yeah. I think one of them was at Sarenby. Yeah, there's one that they gave away in the last year, so down on Merritt Island in Florida, where I've been. And then there was one in, I wanna say Miami or something, and I read about the person who won.

Actually, it was written in the Miami Herald. I don't remember where the house was, but they couldn't afford it. They won and they were like, I can't afford the taxes on this house. Yeah, that's what the, you know, growing up, everyone's dad basically, well, you know you gotta pay taxes on that stuff.

Right. I would find a way to work that out. Yeah. If I won an HGV, GTV green home or whatever. But I mean, if you all of a sudden were like, I don't have $15,000 for taxes. No, that's true. I mean, I think that's the same

with game shows and stuff, right? Oh yes, as a matter of fact, Chuck, you can read all about that in our chapter on the perfect price is right game, which is in our stuff you should know, colon and incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things book. That's right.

And I gotta tell you of, I'm trying to think, I think of all the chapters in that book, that might be the one that I was most jealous of from the podcast standpoint. What do you mean? Like putting it on as a podcast. Oh, I see.

Rather than being a book chapter, I was like, oh man, I so want to do that as a podcast. But maybe one day we can. Yeah, I don't think there's anything stopping us from doing that. I think people might want to wait a little while. Nope, we're doing it next week. I don't want to undercut the book sales.

Well, no, we definitely won't. But well, I mean, I think we're totally fine to do any and all. That one out of all of them will be the most difficult because it's such a straightforward story. But I'm sure we'll find a way to plump it up. I wonder if that would incentivize people to buy the book if we did an episode from one book chapter

and said, do you want? You want more? Yeah, like how many more? How many chapters are there again? 27. Yeah, you want 26 more stories for your reading? Get the book. Pleasures.

Especially if you put it all awkward and vaguely hostile like this. Yeah, I think that's the old publishing trick. Right. Hostility. Right. Or assertiveness. Po moved a lot of books that way.

He did. So, oh yeah, you can order a book now. Pre-order anywhere you order books, including Indie Bound. And didn't you come up with the Bitly? Yeah, sure. If you want to support Black-Owned Bookstores, you can go to bit.ly slash syskblm

and order it from there. Yeah. So that's our spiel, which actually was organic. It's not at all scripted. Don't think that if you did, then you obviously missed the clumsiness in all of it. But we're not talking about our book today. We're talking about Sweepstakes.

Sweepstakes. And in fact, Sweepstakes, Chuck, the word itself, Sweepstakes, is hundreds of years old. I think they found its origin at least in the 13th century. Yeah, because back then they were, you had steak in it. Like you would buy, it was kind of like a lottery. You would get a bunch of people to throw in money for a ticket, and you probably wouldn't even a ticket.

And some person would win. And so they would sweep the stakes, but it's not like that. A competition in the UK, a contest in Canada, sweepstakes in America, those are different because they are always no purchase necessary. That's the differentiator. Right, the one thing that they have in common with those

is that the winner takes all. That's the point. There's like a grand prize where this one person wins the prize, you sweep the stakes, right? But that is totally different from a lottery. And a lottery is self-sustaining so much so that you fund educational systems with lottery proceeds. That's how self-sustaining it is.

With the Sweepstakes, it's like, well, there's one person putting up the prize, but then somebody else comes along and wins it. What does that person who puts the prize have to stand to gain from it? And the answer to that question is the heart of Sweepstakes, which is basically publicity. That's where they came from.

Sweepstakes are like you said, competitions in the UK or contests in Canada. They were born in maybe the 40s, 50s for sure, as a marketing and advertising tool that some companies and salesmen came up with to basically move more stuff or at the very least get people interested in some item or product that would have otherwise just been overlooked in a regular ad.

Yeah, and sometimes it was and still can be very blatant in that there's a code on a product and you like, well, this has no purchase necessary, but sometimes you can actually buy a product that has a code that you can then enter like a UPC symbol or something. Sure, sure. So sometimes you do have to buy things,

but sometimes it is literally just we have, and it doesn't even have to be a new thing, but oftentimes is a new product maybe from an old stable, like a new kind of toothpaste from Pepsident or something or Colgate, and they're just trying to drum up PR and a good way to do it is to give away 50 grand and get people just in that aisle of the store. Right, and so have them say like,

well, I need some toothpaste, I normally get Colgate, but oh, Pepsident has a $50,000 sweepstakes right now. I'm just gonna buy the Pepsident this time. That'd be a fool not to. Yeah, how can I lose? And hopefully from that point on, they'll keep buying Pepsident, right? So that's a way to drum up sales,

but you said something that was really important. One of the things that differentiates the sweepstakes on purpose from say like a lottery is that there's no purchase necessary to win. And in the United States, no purchase necessary is like just common vernacular. Everybody knows that phrase. That came from what's known as sweepstakes law,

which is to get around rules and regulations against lotteries in the United States. Yeah, gambling. One of the ways that they did that was to create this other way to enter. You didn't like, yes, if you bought this tube of toothpaste, you automatically had your entry form right there because it came with the package.

But if you didn't wanna buy the toothpaste, but you still wanted to enter the sweepstakes, they had to afford a way for you to get an entry form and enter without any kind of purchase whatsoever. And then that entry had to be as valid or eligible to win, have the same chances of winning as somebody who did make the purchase. No purchase necessary to win.

Yeah, the other thing a sweepstakes will do is give you, and this has changed over the years, obviously, but give a salesperson a lead. You gotta get those Glengarry leads or you're on the way out the door with no job, basically. Yeah. So, in the old days, it was, let's say it was like a sweepstakes

if you bought a blender. If you didn't buy the blender, but you entered the sweepstakes, at least that would be your information to blender salespeople that would be like, well, they were looking at blenders. I know that much or else they wouldn't have even known about this.

These days, obviously like with social media, that's a big way that it's done. It's all done virtually. So they know that if you just click on something to enter a sweepstakes, then all of your information can be sent to whatever company that is. And that's why you're gonna start seeing,

if you enter some like REI sweepstakes or something, don't be surprised when in your social media feed, you start seeing nothing but ads for outdoor gear. Right, exactly. But it's so it's kind of updated for the 21st century, but it's the same principle. You're saying, I'm interested in blenders. Please send me all the advertising

you can find on blenders. And that was how it was before, when you send in your info by hand or put it in a box in the store. It's the same thing now when you enter to win an online sweepstakes and you share your contact info like that. It's just now we call it data mining.

And rather than the blender salesman getting in touch with you to see if you still want a blender that you didn't win, it's some third party marketing company that is getting in touch with you because your information was sold to them because you entered into that blender sweepstakes. So it's different, it's updated,

but the point's the same. Sweepstakes are there to increase brand awareness, to generate buzz or hype around a new product. It's a form of advertising and it's a way to generate leads for sure. And the thing is they were huge in the 50s and the 60s. And one of the reasons that they took off was because of Reader's Digest actually.

Yeah, Reader's Digest, the little tiny magazine that everyone's grandmother had and that you would read laughter is the best medicine. And what was the other one? There was a couple of very kid-friendly regular things. The joke one. Meth, meth, meth. Yeah, I think it was meth, meth, meth.

All exclamation points. Now that was another thing. It may have been like true stories that were also funny, but I remember reading Reader's Digest a lot as a kid, which is hysterical because it's so not kid-friendly. So the point is is they go through and read magazine articles and then condense them down to like abbreviated versions.

It's just the broad strokes, right? I think so. Like I never got that back then, but I think it's sort of like a dummies version of the Utney Reader from what I can tell. Man, that's so bizarre. Yeah, so they would, yeah, what a weird concept. Is it still around?

Oh yeah, Reader's Digest is definitely still around. I guess it's like the antithesis of long form where they're just like, we don't need all that stuff. Here's the main points. Maybe. I'd like to get my hands on a Reader's Digest and see what it's like these days. And a shawl.

Nice, doily. Cause it gets a little chilly. So that was always the joke with growing up in my church was whenever the teenagers, which is what they call the old folks, it's adorable, would have an outing. The lady, this one woman would get up and say it, and you know, it'd be like July.

And she'd say, and remember to bring a sweater at the end. Didn't matter what time of year. That's adorable. You gotta bring a sweater. So, and of course that's Aegist to make fun of. Dude, it's so funny. You said that because I was about to say like 10, 15 years from now, we're really gonna,

we're gonna have our backs against the wall. Yeah. When Aegism's a thing, yeah. No, no, that's not what I was saying. Oh, okay. I was saying we're gonna get called out for our Aegist offhand remarks. I know, and we're gonna be cold.

Both. Cause we're gonna be old. That's right. Bring a sweater. So, Readers Digest had a form and they were very upfront about their sweepstakes. It was pre-printed, it had a number there and you could just fill it out and mail it back.

And Readers Digest was trying to sell subscriptions and, you know, Publisher's Clearinghouse is obviously the elephant in the room. The big daddy of all sweepstakes, which is another weird, weird company when you think about it. Very, especially today. Yeah, I mean, magazine subscription sales.

But that's where the company started out. It was a magazine subscription salesman who went door to door and said, you know what, nuts to go in door to door. I'm just gonna drum up a brochure and mail it out to people. And he started getting responses like that so much so that he put this company,

Publisher's Clearinghouse together. And then when they became like a household word was when they attached sweepstakes to it. Like Readers Digest had demonstrated was so effective. Because like with Readers Digest or Publisher's Clearinghouse or whatever, ultimately at the end of the day they're trying to sell you something. Like you said, Readers Digest is trying

to sell you a subscription. They're attaching the sweepstakes to it because they're using that age old lever of, hey, everybody check it out, it's a big deal. We're giving away a million dollars. And also here's everything you need to order as many subscriptions as you like from us. Do you have any magazine subscriptions?

Yeah, we've got Dwell, which is no longer to my taste. Like I don't like current modern design and architecture and decor today right now. But we also have one from El Decor. That one is very much up my alley. There's a lot of color and stuff like that. We have Men's Health and GQ, I think. Oh, really?

Yeah, which is not paying off right now. Cause I dress terribly and I'm overweight at the moment, big time. We, Emily gets, she gets a few home magazines. I think like you guys, we both share our love of like architecture and stuff like that. So we like looking and fantasizing about like these amazing places.

That's why I enter the dream home thing every year. I know, it's the kind of like a little mini vacation to go through one of those magazines. It is, it really is. It's also fun to judge and be like, oh, you paid a million dollars for that, you chump. Why don't you get some taste? That's what I say to the magazine.

What I'll never be though is the person on HGTV house owners that walks through and goes, geez, I don't know about this place. Look at that ceiling fan. Do they do that on house owners? Oh, people, I mean, it's all set up anyway. House owners, they already have the house when they go on the show.

It's a big scam, but yeah, there are people that say like, you know, this ceiling fan or this wallpaper and they're like, that's really easy to change, my friend. And the producers off camera, they're like, can you actually like stick your finger down your throat and make yourself vomit? It'll really, really pay off.

All right, I think we should take a break and come back and talk a little bit more about sweepstakes, how about that? Let's do it. ["Sweet Steaks"] 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 gonna 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. 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. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. 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, yeah, 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. Wanna learn about a terrorist or an uncollegiate act? How to take a perfect boob with all about fractals. Genghis Khan, a till of the hunt. The Lizzie Board of Murders and the Cannibal Runs. Don't explain everything to your brain.

Explode. Just chuck. Enjoy. This stuff you should know. Just hope you chuck now. Word up, Jerry. OK, Chuck. So we've been talking about the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway.

And there's good reason, because it is one of the big ones. But it's also one of the easiest to understand. If you go and read up on HGTV's Dream Home Sweepstakes, you're going to find there's a very clear reason that they give away this huge prize with all of this money and cars and all this stuff. Because I guess they build the home over the course of like a season, and then they give it away.

So part of this. Yeah, there's a TV show wrapped around it. Right. So they're generating viewers for the TV show, which is supported by advertising. And the more viewers you have, the more you can charge for ads. So the Sweepstakes is just basically

being used to generate buzz for the TV show now. Or vice versa, maybe both. But the point is, it's paying off for them, which is why they keep giving this stuff away. But I have a soft spot in my heart for this one. Because they are one of these few giant Sweepstakes that just say, here's how it's done. Ask us whatever questions you want.

This is all very much on the up and up. Yeah, and it's also just a big advertising benanza period. So not only are you getting that GMC SUV, it's like frigid air. And I guarantee you, every single thing in that house has some sort of sponsorship attached to it. Like from the siding down to the dude who poured the concrete. I'm sure they all donate that stuff for in-kind advertising.

That's a Tommy Thompson brand concrete job. It's double-stamped. But yeah, HDTV is very cute. I think they actually have a regular drawing, not even a computerized drawing. Like they do it the old fashioned way, right? Dude, yes they should, but I just had a stroke of genius. We should get HDTV's Dream Home Sweepstakes

to sponsor this episode. That would be great. That would be full circle. Yeah, and maybe put your thumb on the scale for one of us. Yeah, right. Yeah, so with the Dream Home giveaway, the way that they hold the sweepstakes is through what's called a random drawing method

where if you enter, you can enter by mail, I believe, which is the old fashioned standard way. You can also do it online, which is far and away the much more common way to do it now. Yeah, that's the way I do it. But either way, you're going to have your entry placed into a bin. They have actual physical bins.

Like I get the impression it's a 55 gallon drum and your entry, your physical paper entry goes into that drum or if it's online, it goes into a virtual bin. And then at the end of the contest, these bins have maybe like 50,000 entries in them each and then they're sealed off and a new bin started and each bin's numbered, right?

And then at the end of the contest, they put the number of ping pong balls is there are bins. Bins, put those in a lot of machine, pick one and all of a sudden you have your bin number and now things are getting for real, are they not? They are, and I think that's what I like about it too is the old school nature of it, wherein like you're getting selected

out of a hat essentially and you have just won a house. Well, not yet, your bin has just been picked. You haven't necessarily been picked yet. You got to tell them how old school and low five this is. Oh, well, yeah, once you get to the bin, I mean, don't they just like dump it on the floor and literally pick it out? Yeah, when they seal a bin, they give it a good shake

and a roll and all that. So the first entry isn't necessarily any better off than the last entry, they're all mixed together pretty well. But then yeah, they dump it onto the floor and they take an HGTV employee, blindfold him or her, them, and push them toward the pile of envelopes, hopefully without them falling down. Although if they do, it's on a pile of envelopes,

so it's not too bad. And then they just grope and grab one and that's your winner if it's a physical one. If it's a virtual one, a computer program runs through all the names in that bin and then the employee presses the space bar and stops it. Either way, it's a random person picked. And I love it.

You might as well be conducting like a Catholic church fair drawing at that point. When you have somebody blindfolded, grabbing at a pile of envelopes, that's the level that you're at. Yeah, you know what would make it even better? Pause. Is if they did that, but instead of choosing the winner,

they chose like five different names. And then they had those people come in and they had David Bromstad holding up five matchsticks with his hand in front of the camera. And each person had to draw a matchstick and the longest stick wins the house. Who's David Bromstad? Is he from Stranger Things?

No, he's HGTV. No, that makes more sense than me. He's the guy that's like now covered in tats that didn't used to be covered in tats. No idea. Wait, was he the trainer who recently had a heart attack but now he's on this blood thinner? I don't think so.

He's, I mean, now I know the show he does is the lottery dream home. Like he gets lottery winners and tries to sell them, or shows them houses. Huh, I've never heard of that. Which is kind of a depressing show actually. Yeah, I don't, we've done one on lotteries before but did we touch upon like how tragic

most lottery winnings are? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so I can imagine that shows a bit of a downer if you really think about it. It can be, that's all I'm gonna say. I might have to start watching that. I'm in the market for a downer TV show, so thanks for that.

Well, you would think a lottery dream house show would be like nothing but awesome and excitement. Oh, no, I know. I think sometimes just the way people like to spend their money can be depressing. Yeah, I'm with you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do.

I don't want to judge. If that's their, I don't want to yuck their yam, their dream house yam. Sure, oh, I see what you're saying. I thought you meant like, I just bought one 17th of a share of the Dallas Cowboys. It's probably pretty valuable. So that random drawing method is pretty standard.

That's kind of from what I can tell the gold standard of sweepstakes. There's also one that's, one of the original ones called the pre-selected method. And this is the one that was used to great effect for many decades. And it's the one that publishers clearing house frequently uses too, where the winning number

is selected first secretly and held in confidence. And then a bunch of numbers that have the same number of digits as that winner, including that actual winning string of numbers are put onto mailers for publishers clearing house and mailed out everywhere, which is why they can say you may already be a winner because you could conceivably be holding the winning envelope

because the winning number is already pre-selected. Yeah, as a kid in the 70s and 80s, we didn't really fully get that. We saw an envelope with Ed McMail's, Ed McMail, Ed McMail, he should have been Ed McMail, with his name and face on it, you may already be a winner, some fake check written out to you.

Sadly, a lot of people thought those were real checks. There have been stories about that. We'll talk about them. So I didn't really fully get that, but I guarantee you that the people that participated in these things knew that it was a pre-selected winner. And if you are lucky enough,

and you got to pay attention because what they kind of counted on was that most of these omelos get thrown away. Most of these prizes go unclaimed. I think that 10% of the prizes were ever even awarded for those early publishers clearing house sweepstakes. Yeah, that was not just, no, not even publishers clearing house.

I think this might have been before then. This was like Colgate, Paul, Molliv and oil companies and soap companies and toothpaste makers were all using this pre-selected method. And they would get all of the attention and all of the advertising, but they would have to give out none of the money because the chances are that the winner

or the person with the winning package didn't go to the trouble of actually taking it back to the store. And so they would get all the advertising without having to give up any of the money. And so this actually got a lot of bad press. It led to FTC hearings. It later led to congressional hearings

that created some legislation we'll talk about later. But the upshot of it is that it caused companies that have sweepstakes to create what's called a second chance drawing, which is, let's say, you know, you pre-print all of these entries and send them out and one of them has this pre-selected winning combination that delutes the chances so tremendously

that the chances are the grand prize is not going to go anywhere. But with a second chance drawing, you have a smaller prize. Say like the grand prize is a $10 million. Second chance drawing grand prize might be $1 million. And then you select the winner from the entries that were returned.

So it's guaranteed that somebody is going to win that second chance drawing. That seems to have appeased the town folk with their pitchforks and torches. Yeah, because a publisher's clearing house grand prize winner is the odds are astronomical. Literally. Like the $1,000 a day for life is one in $6.2 billion.

Like Powerball is a great deal when you compare it against something like that. And PCH is pretty tight-lipped. It's hard to get a ton of information about exactly how it works and why it would be $6.2 billion because it's not like there's that many people entering. There's no way that's happening.

No, and I genuinely, I looked so high and low and the weirdest little crevasses of the internet trying to get an answer to this. And I could not find it. The only thing that I can imagine is that it has to do with the number of entries put out there. But they're certainly not printing out and sending 6.2 billion mailers.

They're just not. The sweepers like doing this thousands and thousands of time each? It's possible. That's possible because I did see people say like the chances are so high because they get so many entries. But what you're talking about is

that would be almost every single person on earth entering which isn't the change, which isn't happening or every single person in the United States entering 17 times. I guess if you have some sweepers, hardcore sweepers and enough of them, it could drive the chances up that high. But it just seems like there must be some other

something to do with like the randomly generated number, something that has to do with driving up the stakes. Because like you said, Powerball seems like easy street. Powerball's chances are one in 292 million. This publisher's clearing house is one in 6.2 billion. And the reason for this huge discrepancy is because they're structured differently.

When you play Powerball, you have to pick five numbers from a pool of 69 numbers and then one Powerball from a pool of 26 numbers. And when you calculate the factorials together, which are words that I put together, I think I combined them accurately, but I have no idea what I'm talking about at this point. You have a one, any combination you choose

has a one in 292 million chance of being right because there's 292 million possible combinations. Yeah, it's very black and white. Yeah, totally understandable. Even if you don't know what factorials are, how they work, you can get that. But again, with publishers clearing house, it's like, wait a minute, how is this possible at all?

One in 6.2 billion, I cannot find out how. Yeah, well, one thing is for sure, if you do win, and this was kind of made me feel a little bit better, if you do win, they're gonna find you. And I thought this was sort of the opposite of how it would be. I thought they would be like, no, you gotta come to us, and we're really not gonna make much of an effort.

But they do, they find you, they will use a private detective to find you and track you down. Tommy Thompson, concrete pouring in private detective agency. There's a P&G executive who testified during those FTC trials in the late 60s that says they exhaust every resource

to find anything, any winner over $500. And usually the winner comes forward. But I guess it's good to know that they do make an exceptional effort. And you can't have grown up in the 70s and 80s without knowing about Ed McMahon and Dick Clark and the publisher's Clearinghouse Prize Patrol coming to people's houses with balloons

and confetti and champagne and a giant check and knocking on your door with a camera crew. Like, that was as much of America as like baseball and apple pie, basically. For sure. And like, you know, people talk about the Mandela effect and the Berenstain Bears effect and all that. A lot of people associate Dick Clark, especially,

but also, or I mean, Ed McMahon, especially, but also Dick Clark too with Publishers Clearinghouse. They never once pitched or worked for Publishers Clearinghouse. Good night, buddy. To this day, people, even back then, I saw a contemporary article that was like, you know, confused them with Publishers Clearinghouse.

They worked for American Family Publishers, which was a knockoff also ran for Publishers Clearinghouse. They never once pitched for Publishers Clearinghouse. Publishers Clearinghouse has always had that prize patrol that shows up at your house. And that's always been Publishers Clearinghouse employees. And they apparently are legit.

Like, if you win, they don't get in touch with you ahead of time. They just show up at your house. Or if you're not home and you're on vacation, they'll show up where you're vacationing. They'll show up at work wherever you are. They're going to show up with these camera crews and give you this grand prize.

So that apparently is legitimate. Yeah, and if you wanna be a party buzzkill pedant along the order of, it's actually the low on the totem pole is the prize place to be, then just start floating that American Family Publishers fact to people that you meet. Is that right? Because I'd love that one.

I think so. Oh man, I need to, I'm not gonna be able to help myself. I think if I was at a random party, if this had never happened and I was at a random party and said something about, I told a great story about Ed McMahon and Dick Clark in Publishers Clearinghouse and someone said, well, actually they worked for American Family Publishers.

I don't think there's any way to frame that in a way that makes that person look good or fun. It's all in the delivery. You laugh along and be like, that's crazy, but even get this, it's even crazier. They never even worked for Publishers Clearinghouse and everybody triple laughs on top of the laughing they're already doing.

There's a way. Or it just goes dead and you're left going, but I framed it correctly and I said it in an engaging way. I said, well, actually with my finger up. And then I would say, yeah, but what about that bloopers and practical joke show then everyone would be laughing again and you'd just slink off in the corner.

I would and that's my typical party behavior anyway. You remember that show though? Oh yeah, totally. I can't remember what it was called, but it was called bloopers and practical jokes. I believe that's all it was. It was like the title was the description. That was great.

Remember they had the Sergio Aragonas cartoon guy who'd come in and sweep the stage. Oh, totally. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Fantasy Island. Do you know they rebooted Fantasy Island? Yeah, I didn't watch. It was supposed to be super dark.

Well, the first one was. No, it wasn't. The original Fantasy Island was super dark. Well, I need to go back and watch that because I don't recall that at all. Yeah, like almost all the fantasies were ended up being scary and taught the person a lesson

on what they should really like fantasize about. Well, I was like four at the time. I didn't pick up on that. It is, by the way, it is TV's bloopers and practical jokes. TV's bloopers and practical jokes. Yeah. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about the very, very few sweepstakes

that are in existence today, right after this. G G G G G G 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. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya 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. By the way, Chuck, TV's bloopers and practical jokes has a 5.3 on IMDB, which is wrong. Really?

Yeah, that was a great show. Oh man. And I bet you, uh, that dumb, uh, saggett show has got like a nine out of 10. Well, these days it's Alfonso Ribiero. Is it? Yeah. I've never been a fan of this.

They're okay. You ever watch Ridiculousness? No, I never saw that. Ed, that's all it is, but it's much more, like, painful to watch. Like, skateboarders getting wrecked and stuff. Yeah, just really dumb stuff, but it's, it's mesmerizing. And somehow they have an infinite limitless supply

of episodes of it, because it is on 24 hours a day on MTV. Is it really? Yeah. I think I've told this story before, but I like to put it out every five or six years in case the person listening is this person. Is when I was at UGA one day and a guy, I saw a guy completely bust it on a bicycle on the sidewalk

and his books went splayed out everywhere. And the very first thing he did was put his, and he was laying down on the sidewalk, was put his hand under his chin and act like he was reading a book. Oh, my God. That's amazing. And like, if you're out there, dude,

please, please send us an email, stuffpodcastatihartmedia.com, because that was one of the best reactions I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, that's a sharp, sharp dude. It was pretty great. For sure. So before we broke, I was being coy

about the very, very few sweepstakes that we still have today, because surely these went out of style in the 70s and 80s. Not true. There are about 400 million annual sweepstakes in this day and age. Isn't that nuts?

That is, and I'm sure that counts every dumb iPhone app sweepstakes to win 10 cents, but that's still 400 million. Yeah, that's still a sweepstakes that you can go play. Whereas before, I think at its first heyday in the 60s, the mid 60s, the FTC calculated, there was something like 600 national sweepstakes. And yeah, four millions, a lot more than 600.

What's crazy is those FTC hearings actually tried to put a clamp down on everything and it didn't work and they ended up expanding and exploding even beyond that. But one of the things that has kind of driven that, I don't know if it's got to be a chicken or the egg kind of thing. Like has it been these people who are called sweepers

or in the UK they're called compers who their hobby is engaging in sweepstakes? Did they lead to this proliferation of it? Or are they encouraged by the easy access to sweepstakes like never before? What do you think? I don't know because I didn't know sweepers existed. I didn't know that there were people

that would spend sometimes a couple of hours a day randomly, oh not randomly, very pinpointedly looking for and registering for all kinds of sweepstakes using spreadsheets, using their autofill on their computers just to enter to win over and over and over again. But they're out there and it's a subculture that I, I'm surprised there may be a documentary about them. I don't know.

I haven't run across any mention of one. There's a really good Zachary Crockett article, Zachary Crockett, amazing writer who, I don't know if he still writes for priceonomics or not, but it's just amazing. He of course did one on this subculture, but he said that like a good, you know, normal sweeper, somebody who's like a genuine hobbyist

is doing this for hours and hours a day and entering up to hundreds of sweepstakes every day. Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds of sweepstakes. To win a major award like Christmas story. And that's what they call them in the, I should say, so there was a slate article from 2003 and it had a lot of just blatantly factual errors,

or blatant factual errors and was really arrogant and like dismissive toward this group. So it's possible they don't call them major awards, but that's where I got that from. But the lingo was MA, that they're after the MA, big cash payouts, cars, boats, major awards that are not necessarily Fred Gile. Yeah, and it's still the same sort of,

like we said, with social media, it's a little bit different how it goes, but it's still the same kind of aim, which is to build brand recognition. You see major brands doing these sort of fun games, like Jeep hit those Tiki torches. And this was sort of like a scavenger hunt. You had to go around and find these torches.

There were clues on Facebook. You went to Wrangler if you found all the torches and that's good for Facebook. It's good for Jeep. It's probably good for Tiki torches. Right. But every department store on the planet has some sort of even very minor,

like here's a $50 gift card kind of thing if you retweet this or whatever. Like those are just all over the place now. All over. There's a site called Sweepstakes, what is it called? Sweepstakes Hub? I think so. I mean, if that's not what it's called,

it might as well be called that. I can't find it right now. We'll see if we can call it out later, but I went to it today and I mean, dude, there's a Sweepstakes for everything. There's a new podcast out and they're giving away like a Amazon Alexa just to generate interest and awareness of their podcast.

It's like everything has some sort of Sweepstakes. Like if you got a new book, give away five books. We should do this. You give away five books and then hopefully everybody's like, well, I didn't win, but that book sounds pretty great. I'm going to go ahead and buy that book or at the very least now I'm on a mailing list

for this publisher because I've just shown them that I like books enough to enter into the Sweepstakes. Is that podcast? Let me ask you this. Can you listen to it on iTunes, iHeart Media app or wherever you find your podcasts? Probably. Interesting.

They're doing something right. Yeah, they are. I'm gonna find the name of that podcast because we can't mention a podcast like that and just never give the name. So I'm gonna do a little researching while you tap dance for us, okay? Okay, a one and a two.

So yeah, at least 400 million Sweepstakes today. Now, like you said, the FTC got involved. They held hearings and everything is on the up and up now. You have to, and I'm sure this is all very much spelled out as far as like you have to clearly explain the rules and clearly explain your chances of winning. And I'm sure that's very much mandated on what clearly means.

They're not just like, yeah, whatever you think is clear is fine with us. Yeah, Congress actually got involved in past an act. Yeah, and what night, when was that? 1998, 98. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what Congress does sometimes. Right, but that's, I mean, the reason why

is because there were... There are a few cases that sort of troubled people to say the least. Yeah, they passed the Deceptive Male Prevention and Enforcement Act, also known as the Sweepstakes Act. And there was one case in particular that really pushed everything over the edge. Was he the old guy?

Yeah, this elderly man in his 80s, he lived in California and with his own money, he flew not once, but twice to Tampa to the American Family Publishers Headquarters to claim his prize money because he'd gotten a mailer that said that he was already a winner. Apparently the actual label said final results are in and they're official.

You're our newest $11 million winner. And then if you read the fine print, it was like if you have the winning number. This man flew twice to Tampa to collect on two different prizes because of mailers twice. And they finally said, enough's enough. I can just picture him on the plane and telling his seatmate what's going on

and then not knowing what to do, quite frankly. Well, yeah, imagine being the seatmate. He's like, see, check this letter out. Yeah, and you're just like, oh no, this is not gonna go well for this guy. Yeah, like what do you do there? Honestly, I wouldn't know what to do because that hits me right where it hurts,

which is to be kind and empathetic, but also to not let someone go through something terrible. So that presents a real ethical quandary for me. Well, I think at that point you kind of say, I'm gonna be late. I have to go to American Family Publishers headquarters before I come to the meeting because I gotta get off this guy.

Well, that's why I don't fly now. Yeah, that and coronavirus, right? No, really, I just don't wanna take the chance of being next to someone going to pick up their grand prize that doesn't exist. So part of that 1998 Congressional Act is that you really need to be a lot more clear about the odds of winning.

You have to say things like no purchase necessary or another phrase is buying won't help you win. But the whole thing from what I understand, the whole thing, and by the way, American Family Publishers is now defunct. They went under. Fortunately for Publishers Clearinghouse, they got all sorts of free press

because people used to just think American Family Publishers was Publishers Clearinghouse, but they also got all the bad press too because people would think that anything American Family Publishers did, it was actually Publishers Clearinghouse. So it was really weird. I think it is where like two alternate universes

kind of came together right there. Now, which one was it that there was one case where they had the entree envelopes, the entree envelopes packaged in such a way that you could tell the envelopes where people actually did buy a subscription and where they didn't. Even though they were both supposed to be entered,

which very easily allowed them to just throw away the ones where they didn't actually buy something. Was that PCH or the other? That was Publishers Clearinghouse. And they were found- They had blood on their hands too then. Throwing away hundreds of entries that had no check. Because again, remember what they're trying to do

is get you to subscribe to a bunch of magazines or now they sell vitamins or housewares or something like that. And if you hadn't sent a check in, apparently some big chunk of entries got just thrown away. Well, and you talked about Sweepstake's law. They did have to settle a lot of lawsuits over the years.

Civil lawsuits from contestants. So there were people that were wise to it and there were attorneys out there very willing to take those cases, I'm sure. Yeah, and I think over time part of it was because of that pre-selected thing where people were like, what do you mean nobody won the grand prize?

People really paying attention to that kind of stuff. And they would get sued. And I saw that they paid tens of millions of dollars to settle some of these and fight some of them too. So, but they're still in business which means that they're still making so much money that it's worth holding these Sweepstake's not just to give the prizes away

but also to fight off litigation as well. Yeah. And one way that you can really kind of fight off litigation is by hiring what's called Sweepstake's administrator. Yeah, like there are companies that will fully execute the contest from beginning to end. You hire that, it's like hiring a caterer. You don't have to worry about the little stuff mushrooms.

Like they're gonna do it all. They're gonna come in, administer it in a way that's above board and legal. You don't have to worry about the hassle. You just gotta pay them, they're big and you're all set. It's hard to believe that there are companies out there that do this, but there are. So as much as like the PCH seems a little hustly,

it is a legitimate Sweepstake's company. It's not a scam, but there are plenty of scams out there. And in fact, PCH has to warn the public how to look out for scams. One of the biggest ways is that if you are contacted via email, phone, Facebook, something like that, saying that you won a big prize, they're going, like that's automatically wrong

because they send their prize patrol out for their biggest prizes. And that's really legitimately how you would find out as they show up at your house. Yeah, and these are all, they seem like no-brainers to people like us, but to a lot of people, they fall for this stuff and it's really sad. If you get anything that says you've won something,

all you gotta do is prepay this tax. Anything asking for credit card information, any kind of payment whatsoever is 1,000% a scam every time. Anytime, a lot of times it's a front for like malware. They might ask you, like I said, for your social security number, your credit cards, just don't fall for that stuff. Don't give anyone information like that.

No, and you will need to give them your social security number eventually if you win any prize over $600 for tax reporting, because remember taxes are a thing, but they're not going to hit you up over Facebook Messenger and tell you you won a prize, so give me your social security number right now. The thing is, is a lot of people who play this

are elderly and they are preyed upon and there are a lot of scams out there. I saw some figure in the tens of billions of dollars that is lost to scam sweepstakes every year in the United States. That's insane. It's an insane amount of money that's being lost and that's just sad.

It is, super sad. So the name of the podcast is called The Authority with Brian S. Arnold. And what's sad is they're in week eight of their eight week giveaway, sweepstakes giveaway, and so this will come out long after the eight weeks is up. So sorry about that, but there was a sweepstakes that the authority project with Brian S. Arnold held

to win a speaker. And you know what's interesting, this is not off off topic, but over the years, a couple of times we've had a couple of dumb ideas like, hey, why don't we give away a thing to listeners for just doing something. And every single time, the legal department

of whatever parent company we had was like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna get involved in this kind of thing. Cause then it's a contest where like, well, it's not really a contest, it's just very lo-fi and they're like, you can't do that. You have no idea the kind of worms you're opening up. Yeah, cause there's a whole branch of law

called sweepstakes law and it involves following the letter of the law and also helping people sue people who are suspected of not following the letter of the law. Yeah, so as attorneys, they just kind of always squashed it. Sure. So I just want to give a big shout out. We never said, I don't think why people do this

real quick Chuck. And there's a woman named Sandra Groushoff and she is probably the world's leading expert on sweepstakes, at the very least, America's leading experts on sweepstakes. She runs the balances sweepstakes pages and just legitimately knows what she's talking about. And she just said it's excitement.

It's as simple as that. That like the idea of getting a checker, getting a prize affidavit in the mail is very exciting. Other people have called it a high and Groushoff says, yeah, it turns out though, if you're thinking about sweepstakes every day and how to play them better and all that stuff, you may want to get evaluated for a gambling addiction

cause it can kind of easily traipse into that. I'm sure. Yeah. Who knew gambling addiction would make an appearance? So if you want to know more about sweepstakes, well go forward and check them out. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this how we help somebody out recently.

Hey guys, want to say thanks before even telling you why. I honestly cannot thank you enough. My name is James, 21 and I'm from Glasgow, Scotland. Yesterday while at work, I received a call from my dad telling me that my grandma had passed away suddenly during the night. Obviously distraught, I left work, headed home to be with my family.

I know that nobody enjoys crying, but I really hate it. And as I end up with these very intense headaches, well through the tears on my drive home with your podcast playing through my car, I was able to laugh and to smile despite the circumstances. It couldn't for the life of me tell you which episode I even listened to. Just that it made me laugh and saved me from

the literal headache and the heartache that I was feeling. And for that, I'm so thankful. I must have listened to around two or 300 of your podcasts in the past month or so. So please keep doing what you're doing. And that is from James M. in Scotland. That was great.

Sorry to hear about your grandma, James, and glad we could help. Our condolences, James. But yeah, it is very nice to hear that we can help people in times like that in some small way, you know? For sure. Makes us feel like real big shots.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

How Stuff Works At The Winner 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 slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna 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 nineties called on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I heart 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 band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, 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 I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.