Stuff You Should Know - How the ACLU Works

Episode Date: April 29, 2014

Being a card-carrying member of the ACLU is tantamount to being a super liberal to some, but the ACLU ultimately displays no allegiance to any political philosophy, only to whomever's Constitutional rights are being infringed upon, from Nazis to the NAACP. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Jerry's there. She does yawn. Yeah. This is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. If you like this, you can hang out with us on social media too, Chuck. They can. Yeah, we're on Instagram now,

which is exciting. Yes. And we're on Pinterest now, which is exciting. We have our Twitter account. Of course, our venerable Facebook page. Yeah. And our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com, where we have all sorts of cool content. Yeah. And you can find all that stuff by typing in S-Y-S-K or Josh and Chuck or Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. And it'll bring up all that stuff. Fun, fun stuff. It is fun. You know what else is fun? What? Freedom of expression. That's right, buddy. Yeah. You know why? Why? Because freedom can't protect itself. Is that right? I think that was the slogan at one point. It may still be of the American Civil Liberties Union. I thought it was get bent. That's funny. It is a controversial organization,

so. Yeah. My heart goes out to them. I love them in the same way that I love the inflammation from a laceration. Like, I'm healing. I know it's good for me, but it burns and hurts, and it's bright red and raised. Right. I know what you mean. Sure, defend the Ku Klux Klan because they're Americans too. Yeah. What age did you realize it wasn't Ku Klux Klan? I think I was 37. Really? No, no, no. But I did used to think it was Ku Klux Klan. Everybody did. It just rolls off the tongue more. Yeah. But then you turn like 10 or 11 or whatever. And finally, your dad is like, it's Ku Klux Klan. And then shortly after that, you realize they're just a bunch of rednecks with too much time on their hands. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't remember what episode we talked about, but we're like, everybody hates the Klan here in America just to let you guys who are listening internationally know. You remember that? Yeah. I mean, that's one of the ones I feel safe about, like no one's going to write it and say, well, I don't want to hear your opinions about the Klan. You know who may? Who? The ACLU. That's a good point. Yeah. No, they will defend my right to say that, actually. Right. But they'll also defend the Klan's right to rally against you saying that. They've actually done it before. What's the famous onion headline? ACLU defends the Klan's right to burn down ACLU building. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty funny. That's great stuff. All right. The onion. I looked to see if

that was a Joe Randazo joint and unfortunately it came about three years before Joe got there. Still good. Yeah. So Chuck, you sent me a pretty interesting little article that I think kind of illustrates the bipolarity maybe of the ACLU. But as we'll find, they're really unipolar, although they seem too faced. Yes. We're going to get to the bottom of all this. Yes. And again, like I like the ACLU. All right. I don't care what anybody says. All right. So there's a little boy in Cannon County, Tennessee. And he was part of the Reach After School Program, R-E-A-C-H. It's an acronym that I didn't bother to look up. Yeah. Some kind of slack. It starts with reading, I bet. I'll bet it does too. Yeah. And it's an after school program. Yeah. And this little boy was

reading at this probably reading-based after school program. He was reading his Bible. And one of the staff workers said, you can't read that here. You can read anything else in the world that you want. You can't read your Bible. Right. She said, or I was assuming is she, but he maybe said, our program can be shut down because this is a state-run program. Right. State-funded. And like we can't have this intermingling between church and state. First of all, this is Tennessee that somebody's saying that. Yeah. Secondly, they tried to take the boy's Bible away because he refused to put it up. He said, no, I'm reading this. This is what I want to read. And there was a big kerfuffle and the ACLU stepped in and is defending this boy's right to read his Bible

in church because it's in school because it's freedom of expression. Yeah. The same ACLU who has long fought to not have state and school sponsored religious readings. Even saying like, God bless this class of 2014. Yeah. ACLU would say, I'd be like, yeah, give us some money. So like you said, it seems like a contradiction is actually not a contradiction because they were doing the same thing. They're fighting for someone's right to express something or read something on their own. Right. Because there's it because it's guaranteed by the Constitution. It doesn't matter if it's unpopular. No. They're going to defend you as a minority of sorts. Or in a single individual or a large group, it doesn't matter. As long as somebody's saying,

like, no, you're not allowed to assemble. You're not allowed to say that. You're not allowed to think that. You're not allowed to do anything guaranteed by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. The ACLU, by their charter, will step in and defend you in your rights, whether they think you're the vilest person on the planet or not. Yeah. Hold on. I want to defend myself. I wasn't saying bipolar in the sense of the mental disorder. Right. Right. Bipolarity can refer to all sorts of stuff. Sure. I didn't mean it in that sense at all. Okay. Okay. That's good to point out. They're all over the map, but generally they handle cases of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, privacy rights. But again, they will take up and we'll see what kind of cases, like,

how you can get your case taken up by the ACLU later on. Right. But they handle about 6,000 court cases a year. They are a non-profit. They provide legal aid. And there are about 500,000 members, card-carrying members, and about 200 full-time staff attorneys. Not bad. At this point. And there's a national chapter and then there's state chapters. It's not state and local. It's just state, right? Yeah. Each state has its own organization and they don't often always agree with the national chapters and they have to work it out. And the states are given rights to work it out. Yeah. So Chuck, let's talk about this. Why if the ACLU is defending people's rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution, everybody loves the founding

fathers. Democrats, Republicans, Commies, everybody loves the founding fathers, right? And the founding fathers created this great Constitution and then further created this wonderful Bill of Rights and everybody's happy about it. Yeah. Why would everybody hate the ACLU if they're just defending people's rights as guaranteed by the Constitution? Well, because their view is we have to defend everyone, not just pick and choose. So they end up having to defend Neo-Nazis and Klansmen and religious zealots and pornographers and child molesters. Yeah. Like people on the extreme fringes, they still have rights in this country. Yeah. As unpopular as it may be and the ACLU fights for those rights and a lot of people hate them because of it. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. But as we'll see,

some people who hate them also love them when the ACLU comes around to their side to defend them. Yeah. When they get screwed over. Yeah. They're very polarizing. Yeah. It's pretty, again, my hand is off to this organization. It's hard to do something unpopular. And to see you feel like it's right. To walk a line, too, which it's walked this line and it's this line that it adheres. It's like, oh, man, what is the guy, the safety crusader? Ralph Nader. Yeah, Nader. Yeah. He's like the ACLU. He was like, this is right. This is the right course. Yeah. And if we veer off of it, then we're wrong. If you're not on this line, you're wrong. Yeah. And he used that kind of thinking to get seatbelts instituted and all this stuff. But he was very unpopular

many times. People who used to be colleagues and cohorts with him, like when they stopped seeing eye to eye with him, he would speak out publicly against them. Yeah. And the ACLU is very much like that. It's like, this is right. It's black and white. You are allowed to say this. And if somebody tells you you can't, then we intervene on your behalf. Yeah. With the idea that if the government is allowed to restrict the rights of some group that they don't like, that could lead down the rabbit hole to restricting other groups. And you just can't allow that in a free country. That's precisely right. So I think we've gotten the point across about the ACLU this third time out. Yeah. Let's talk about the history of this organization. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It started

during World War I. There was a group in New York called the Henry Street Peace Committee in 1915. And they were little sissy pacifists who didn't want to go to war. And they spoke out against it and formed the American Union against militarism. And we're talking newsletters, magazine ads, leaflets, leaflets and newsletters. Yeah. But that wasn't a popular thing back then, nor is it today. If you don't support wars generally, in certain circles, you are thought of to be unpatriotic. Yeah. It's a lot different today, though, than it was before. Like, you know, those people that, that protest at Peach Tree in 14th outside colony square every Friday. Yeah. Like that one of the indigo girls shows up once in a while. Like, the people will honk in their

support. They're not going to jail. Yeah, it is different. And this, in this era, these people who were sending out leaflets, it sounds so innocuous, they went to jail. Yeah, the Palmer raids. In the United States, less than 100 years ago, if you said anything that was considered anti-government or anti-war, you went to jail for up to maybe 20 years sometimes. Yeah. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer in the 19, in 1919 and 1920 conducted the Palmer raids, which basically rounded up and deported whoever they thought was a radical. Thousands of people, no warrants, no due process. It was just sort of like, you're coming with me. Yeah. You anti-war pacifist commie and waiting. Yeah. And I mean, like, that's a good point,

too. Like, there was a lot of socialists. There were a lot of communists. There were a lot of anarchists, a lot of Marxists, a lot of people who were advocating and agitating, too, for other economic and government models. The pacifists weren't necessarily, I mean, they may have had something in common with those people. And some of the pacifists might have been Marxists and vice versa. But the pacifists were just anti-war. Some of them were like, the U.S. has no business intervening in what amounts to a European war. Other people say war's a terrible thing. And like, I object to it outright on its basis. They're pacifists. And the pacifists, too, would get rounded up and taken to jail. And like you said, without due process, without any kind of,

well, their rights were taken away. In 1917 and then 1918, with the Espionage Act first, and then the Sedition Act in 1918, where the U.S. passed a law that said if you speak out against the government, against the war, against the war effort, if you say we shouldn't be producing as much rubber, well, we need rubber for the war effort, so we can throw you in jail for up to 20 years, man. And in 20 years, 20 years is different back then than 20 years in 2012 years. Because that's like, in 1998, 20 years for the average lifespan was.27 of your life. It was 27% of your life. In 1918, that was 55% of your life, thanks to the flu epidemic. So that was a lot of years to go to prison, you know? Sure. I mean, that's still a lot of years to go to prison,

but I see what you mean. But it's in the context of this that these people were organizing and saying, no, we're not just going to shut up. We're going to keep doing what we're doing, and we're going to come after you, government, that's using repression. So if you admire the ACLU today for any sort of bravery, if you take it back to the original organization, these were genuinely brave people who were willing to face not just being unpopular, but going to prison for 20 years. Yeah, for fighting for freedoms that are guaranteed in the Constitution. Yeah, and fighting against war in general. Yeah. A couple of those people are the founders, Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin. They were social workers and big supporters of the labor

movement, and they founded the AUAM, like I said, the American Union Against Militarism, and they started assisting legally with some of these cases, which was kind of the first steps of what would later become the ACLU was legal support, which is the key. The Civil Liberties Bureau, which is like a subset of the AUAM, where basically it was like, if you got sent to jail for handing out leaflets or something, they would come and assist you with your court case. Yeah. Well, that wasn't alongside that followed, the AUAM split, and then the NCLB rose in its place. I got you. Which was good. Baldwin went to jail for a year for not complying with his draft notice, got released, set up a different NCLB, now called the American

Civil Liberties Union. So in earnest, it was born on January 19th, 1920. Is it like the day he got out or something? I don't know if it's the day he got out, but it was basically just the restructured version of the National Civil Liberties Bureau. Yeah. So initially, they were thinking, well, we'll just keep up with the leaflets that seem to be working. Right. How about a newsletter too? Leaflets never work, by the way. Right. But also staging protest strikes, just getting publicity to try to have an impact on the prevailing American sympathies towards the idea of pacifism or whatever. Yeah, they weren't just suing people out of the gate. No. And the reason why they stayed out of the courts in general is because at the time the courts were overtly hostile to the

idea of freedom of speech especially, but other constitutionally guaranteed protections. The Supreme Court would just say, no, we don't like what you have to say. And the rest of America doesn't. So no. Yeah. We're upholding your conviction for saying that the war is bad. Yeah. It was weird. Like literally up until the 1920s, most of the civil liberties granted us to us were not tested even because the Supreme Court would shoot it down. Right. Like whenever they tried, they would just say, no, no, no, you don't have those rights after all. You know something that I'm curious about. I wonder if there's a correlation because this is also like the end of the gilded age, but there was also, I mean, there were a lot of very like wealthy, powerful

interests and the income gap was pretty substantial back then. Yeah. And I wonder if like it is now with the income gap growing, if there's a correlation between income and inequality and a repression of freedom of speech and privacy and things like that. I wonder if like the two are related. Sounds like a book in the making, my friend. No. No question. Too much work. All right. Well, I guess we should talk about some of their most famous early cases. Let's do that. But let's take a little break first. Okay. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're

going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now, he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out.

I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So early on, like we said, the Supreme Court hadn't been challenged that much in cases like these. And when they did, they weren't too kind to free speech. That is so crazy. It is weird to think of now for sure. But in the 1930s is when the ACLU began to kind of make a little headway

kind of against the Supreme Court. Yeah. Well, they started to win smaller cases that didn't have to go to the Supreme Court. And it was kind of like death of repression by a thousand paper cuts. You know what I mean? Yeah. So like all those little cases started to add up where it was like something in some change to the law in Louisville, Kentucky, didn't really have much effect in Missouri, but then they won a case in Missouri. And then if you started to step back and look at it on a map, you're like, oh, all of a sudden this the balance is swinging the other direction. Yeah. But when they did win big Supreme Court cases, they were huge Supreme Court cases. I mean, like some of the most important cases of the 20th century,

the ACLU has either been directly or indirectly involved in like the Scopes Monkey Trial. That was a big one. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about evolution lately. And we didn't cover Scopes at all. But in Tennessee, there was a law banning teaching evolution in 1925. And so the ACLU went out and found a biology teacher named John Scopes said, hey, we would like you to teach evolution. And let's see what happens. And he was prosecuted. And the ACLU got together with the famous attorney, Clarence Darrow, to defend him. And he was still found guilty, even though that verdict was overturned later because of a sentencing error. So the ACLU lost? They lost, but it made big headlines and was really sort of one of the

turning points in establishing like freedom, academic freedom in this country. Yeah. And I think not just as far as the ACLU goes, but anyone who's kind of trying to make a change in the nation. I think one way to do that is to just get people talking about it, because I think a lot of people, especially if they're in the majority or they hold the majority view, make the oftentimes incorrect assumption that everybody else holds the same view too. And I think just if you're just confronted by an opposing point of view, just knowing that it's out there, whether you agree with it or not, can kind of make you reflect and think about the views you hold too and why you hold them and whether they're good views or not.

Right. So I think that the impression I have of the case is that it got people talking. Right. And it made people who agreed with not teaching evolution realize like, whoa, not everybody thinks the same way I do. Yeah, ideally. So your proponents are going to say that the ACLU is defending their watchdog, protecting everyone's civil liberties, whereas people who poo poo it say, they're really a left-wing organization and they subvert the Constitution and they protect criminals and they attack religion and they have an extremist agenda. So those are sort of the two sides of the argument. The thing is, though, is like they, if you go back over their history, okay, this article points out the perfect example.

Which one? The one where in the 30s and the 1940s, the ACLU defended both the NAACP and Black's rights to enfranchisement and just equal treatment and basically civil rights. And while at the same time, during these same years, the ACLU is also defending the Ku Klux Klan and its right to assemble and speak out against Black rights. Yeah, that was the Skokie. No, this is long before Skokie. This is like the 30s and 40s. Oh, okay. The Skokie was the Nazis. That was another big one. Yeah, well, I guess we can go ahead and talk about that. The Skokie free speech controversy in the late 70s, a group of neo-Nazis in Chicago wanted to have permission to go to Skokie, Illinois

and not form a barbershop quartet, but hold a demonstration. And that was a, Skokie was famous for being the center of Chicago's Jewish community, post holocaust, a bunch of Jewish people settled there. And so of course, the neo-Nazis wanted to go to the heart of it all and protest. They asked the ACLU for help and they got it and were granted permission even though they didn't use it. Yeah, because when the neo-Nazis applied for a permit to assemble or have a parade, a Nazi parade basically, the Skokie city council said, well, you know, that you have to post a $350,000 bond, which is going to cost you about a grand. Just want to let you know about that first. And the neo-Nazis said, you are trampling our rights.

And that's when they got in touch with the ACLU and the ACLU said, yeah, they're trampling your rights, it sounds like. And they fought for the Nazis right to assemble based on the idea that that $1,000 basically fee to assemble was prohibitive and that, you know, anybody who wanted to hold a parade or a protest or anything like that in Skokie wouldn't necessarily be able to afford that. So protest shouldn't just be open to the people who can afford that $1,000 bond. And therefore, Skokie, I guess, relented, but the Nazis never even came. They never even held their protest. Yeah. And that's going to make you unpopular as an organization if you are campaigning for the rights of neo-Nazis. But the ACLU bites their tongue and say, no, we have to.

Well, you know, you remember the part in the Blues Brothers? This was all very famously dramatized. Remember the Illinois Nazis? I hate Illinois Nazis. And they drive past them and make them jump into the river. Yeah. I guarantee that was because of the Skokie, the Skokie-Nazi thing. It was all around the same time. Yeah. And they were Chicago as well. Yeah. And Chuck, have you ever seen, you know, the mall part where they drive through the mall? I made the slideshow, nine abandoned malls around America. And that mall is in there. It's like abandoned in this total state of decay, the Dixie Mall, I believe is what it's called, Dixie Square. It's pretty cool. Well, the other one you have in there was

Avondale Mall, close to where I grew up. Yeah. And that famously had the chase scene from Invasion, USA. Oh, yeah. Chuck Norris drove a truck through that mall. I did not know that. And the mall, it was kind of crappy. And I was a kid. I remember when it shot there and then they got like a full makeover because of the movie. Yeah. And now it's a Walmart. They tore it down. Sad. Yeah. It was kind of a crappy mall. Well, it looked pretty cool abandoned. Yeah, it looked very cool. Another case back to the ACLU West Virginia State Board of Education, V Barnett in 1943, a school board expelled 2000 students, Jehovah's Witness students, because they refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because it their religion forbade

worshiping images, including the US flag. And they won the case. The Supreme Court said that that you can't force someone to declare your belief in any religion or nation, which goes back to, you know, maybe unpopular in certain circles, but you can't say you're a free country and then you can practice any religion you want, but then force people to contradict that religion. Right. You know, if this is the land of the free, you have to allow it. You may not like it. Not saying everyone has to like this stuff, but it's a slippery slope. If you start restricting these freedoms. Yeah. Can you imagine telling some little Jehovah's Witness kid like, well, then you can't go to school here if you're not going to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Yeah, you have no right to educate. Man, this country's got a not so history. What else? Joseph Burston, Inc. versus Wilson's one of my favorites. All right. Let's hear it. Well, basically there's this movie released here in the US as The Miracle, but it was titled in Europe Amor with an E on the end. So maybe Amore. Yeah. You know what the deal with the movie was? Yeah. It was a lady who she had a mental illness and thought she was the Virgin Mary. Well, she she had too much to drink. Oh, I read mental illness. Well, she was plied with with drink and then had sex with a vagabond. She thought was St. Joseph, right, who was played by Federico Fellini, who co-wrote it, I believe. Yeah, but did not direct it and got pregnant

and believed that was an immaculate conception. Right. So the Catholics in the 50s. So I don't like this movie. They did not like the movie and they had a lot of clout in New York at the time and in New York, if you were a movie theater and you're planning on showing The Miracle, the city said, well, we're just going to take your license to show movies in general if you do that. Yeah. Do not show this movie. Some places in New York were like this movie's banned. You can't even carry it into our city borders if you want to. And they took it, the ACLU stepped in and they took it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the state has, this is a quote, the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to

them. So they said, you're right, ACLU. That was a big deal. Yeah. Because at the time, religion was basically this kind of infallible institution that took precedent over everything else. It was the moral attitude of the country where it was like, no, religion's offended by it. It's bad. Sorry. Whatever laws you've got that protect this stupid little movie, who cares? We're banning it because it offends a religion. And because of that and many other things that Catholic League and its leader, Bill Donahoe, are huge critics of the ACLU. Although he's also praised the ACLU when they've defended Catholic rights too. Yeah. Well, Larry Flint, remember he fought some of these same battles and his attorney famously was like,

I think he's kind of a scumbag too. And I think he's a smut peddler and this stuff is disgusting. Edward Norton? Yeah. But you can't say he can't do it. Yeah. That was a great movie. Except for Courtney Love. Everything but Courtney Love was great in that movie. Although I did like her a man on the moon for some reason. I don't like her much period. Not a fan. Really? No. You like Courtney Love? No. No, but if I did, the ACLU would defend my right to like Courtney Love, despite it being really unpopular. That is true. 1944, Josh, Smith v. All right, the ACLU. Basically, what was going on there was they had what were called white primaries, the Democratic Party for their elections. And it was illegal because it denied blacks a chance to

vote and to participate. That's exactly what it sounded like. And previous to this, courts had long said political parties are private organizations. They're not subject to these anti-discrimination laws. But the Supreme Court did the right thing and said, you know what? Being able to participate in the voting primaries is important in this country. And if we want to remain a democracy, we need to not have things like white primaries. So we're going to reach into your protected enclave and say you can't do that anymore? Yeah. Because voting is that important? Yeah. Which is kind of a radical view in and of itself, because it overturned a precedent and custom. Yeah. I think we should do some more.

When I was in New York, I saw that play, that Cranston plays LBJ in All the Way. And it covers the year, the 11 months post-Kennedy assassination to his reelection bid, where he got the Civil Rights Act passed. And it was fascinating and did all kinds of research about it. Was Cranston good? He's great. Like completely became the character. Like I forgot it was Cranston. And then after the play, you know, he becomes Brian Cranston again to thank everyone. It's just like it's weird just seeing an actor in front of your eyes like morph back into the real person. It's pretty cool. But I want to definitely tackle some more civil rights issues, because probably the darkest spot in our nation's history. There have been plenty of them.

Wasn't that long ago either? I can't remember who the person's name, but remember we were talking about Kent State and how that was like the darkest spot on our nation's history. And somebody wrote in was like, eh, that was pretty bad. But don't forget all of the strikes where, you know, National Guard troops fired on and killed like 100 striking workers just for striking in the 20s or whatever. Yeah. So whoever that was, thanks for taking me to task because it's absolutely correct. There are a lot of dark spots. A lot of dark spots. A lot of bright spots too. Sure, man. And with that cheery idea, let's take one more break. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on the sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me.

What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Sunshine, what do you got next? Well, I guess you talked about the Scopes trial or we did for a second. Some of the other most famous cases in this country's history. I know people that listen to our podcast on the Japanese

internment camps. Yeah. Oh, and if you can't find it, just go to our archive page. We have an archive page now that has every single one of the 600 plus Stuff You Should Know episodes ever made all in one place. Yeah, it took, you know, six years to make that happen. But we're very proud of that page. It's stuffyoushouldknow.com slash podcast slash archive. So you'll find that one in there. Was it Japanese stragglers or did we do one on internment camps? We did one on internment, too. Okay, that was when we FDR rounded up or ordered the government to round up people of Japanese descent. Even some of whom were Americans, like most of them were, yeah, like natural born Americans, genuine citizens, yeah, to the relocation camps and the ACLU jumped on this and they were,

they were one of the only groups kind of standing up and saying this isn't right at the time. Yeah, they also had this whole campaign against calling french fries freedom fries. Like you can't call it that and everybody's like boo sit down. Did they say that? No. And then other famous cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the ACLU was instrumental in all of these. Again, even though it's unpopular to some people fighting for the freedoms of the minorities. Yeah. Also, recently the, the Communications Decency Act, which basically made it a crime to knowingly send pornography to minors or something like that. 1996. Yeah. I said, nope. That's, you can't tell people they can't do that. That's

a freedom of speech. Yeah. It was like a Janet Reno idea. Yeah. And it got smacked down. It's like overturned basically by the Supreme Court. Again, unpopular moves. They're not out to make friends though. No. And the one that I've got, this is to me the most despicable case that ACLU has ever taken, but take it however you want. Have you heard of Nambla, the national man boy, or the North American man boy love association? I have. So Nambla is exactly what you think. It's basically a club for pedarasts and their website is apparently a tutorial training ground forum chat room place to get tips. Gross. On how to be a more effective pedarast or pedophile. It's so disturbing. And these two guys, they are named Charles James and Salvatore Sikari.

They were convicted of murdering a couple's son, Jeffrey, in 1997. And they basically said everything we needed to know, we learned from Nambla, from the Nambla website. And so the Curleys, the people, the couple whose son was murdered by these child murderers, went after Nambla. And the ACLU intervened and said, Nambla is actually an unincorporated association, not a corporation. So it's allowed to extol illegal acts as long as it's not inciting people, telling people to go do these illegal acts. It can still appreciate these illegal acts. And if you look at their website, that's all they're doing. And the suit against Nambla was dismissed. Again, not popular. You know, the ACLU has to, you know, that they feel forced into some of

these situations probably. Well, there's oftentimes been a lot of shake-ups internally where people at the ACLU are saying, no, this is beyond the line. Like, this is just too wrong. What these people are saying is too despicable. And maybe they shouldn't be allowed to say it. And the ACLU as an organization has walked that line, lost a lot of members and a lot of supporters and a lot of employees, but it stayed true to its vision and is still around today. Yeah. All right. Let's say you want the ACLU to take up your cause. Okay. You have to write them a letter. You have to outline your problem, maybe provide a little evidence, build your case with them. And if it's not in Modern Language Association accepted outline form, then they just won't even look at it.

Probably so. And they basically determine, is it a civil liberties case that we should get involved with? And how should we get involved? They don't just go out and sue everyone. Most times, they try to resolve the cases just by getting in touch with whoever, the government agency, and saying, hey, you might want to check out the Constitution because it seems like what you're doing now isn't so great. And it might not even be Constitution. We understand what you're saying, but recently there was some legislation passed. There's now law and here's the code if you want to go look it up, but you can stop trampling this person's rights now. Like the staff member at the REACH program in Tennessee probably got a letter from the ACLU or the director did saying, actually

it's within this child's First Amendment rights to read this Bible. So just let them read the Bible. And they were probably like, we're more than happy to let them read the Bible. It's Tennessee. Right. And there you go. And it was settled. Another way of looking at it though is the ACLU can just strong arm people into doing what it wants by simply writing a letter. Yeah. Or if they don't get anywhere with the letter, that is when they either have a staff attorney or one of their pro bono volunteers take up the case. They're headquartered in New York City, but like we said, every state has their own chapter and they do operate autonomously. And like we said earlier, they don't always agree with the federal chapter and the federal chapter

generally leads it up to the state to decide their own, like how they're going to raise their money, what cases they're going to take. But if it becomes a national, like clearly a national issue, that's when the national organization steps in and gets your like celebrity attorney to work pro bono. Right. Scott Beyo. Yeah. Dershowitz. Scott Beyo. Bob Loblaw. I guess we should talk about how they're funded. Yeah. Because they are a nonprofit. Yeah. They are generally funded by donations. The ACLU foundation is tax deductible. And that is the group that actually they're sort of split down the middle between the foundation and just the ACLU. The foundation is who litigates the ACLU is focuses on political lobbying. And that is not tax deductible. No. And when you become

an ACLU member, you're actually contributing dues to the ACLU and your dues are not tax deductible because you're contributing to their lobbying arm. If you contribute to the ACLU foundation, then you can that is tax deductible. Yeah. And like supporting actual, you know, court cases. Right. They also maintain an endowment. So they have investments. And most controversially, they're also supported through attorneys fees. Yeah. That's one of the big controversies for sure. Yeah. So the ACLU has a tactic where if they win a case, they sue to recover fees. Yeah. Like many do. Sure. ACLU. And but when the ACLU does that, it's often these fees can run into six figures fairly easily, depending on the case. And so if you're like a little town,

you know, in Cannon County, Tennessee, if you want to stand up to the ACLU, it could very easily mean the difference between being in the red and being in the black. Yeah. And if you are, very well made, just say like, forget it. It's not worth it. We can't afford to fight this. So yes, we'll turn our back on our convictions because we want to still have a town after the ACLU comes through here. Yeah. And that's what critics will point to is that they use that card as a form of intimidation. Right. Like they can just say that in that letter, like, first of all, here's the legislation that proves our client is right. Secondly, if you want to take this to court, our estimate is that it's going to cost you $600,000 if we win. Do you really want to spend

$600,000 fighting this? Yeah. Think about it. Yeah. Huh? Get back to me. I've left three boxes. Yes, no, or maybe please check one by EOD tomorrow. Well, and then the other criticism there, of course, is that is government money. It's your taxpaying dollars indirectly funding the ACLU through these cases. So if you hate the ACLU, you're going to probably bang that drum. I mean, imagine if your town says, yeah, we're going to fight you and then they lose and they have to pay the ACLU's fees. Yeah. That's not coming out of the mayor's savings. That's like your tax money. So you just paid this organization that you now probably despise. Yeah. Yeah, that's the ACLU. Man, that's classic ACLU right there. So where did this whole card-carrying member

insult come from? Michael Dukakis, of course. Yeah. That's what the article says. That he was the first person to proudly proclaim to be a card-carrying member. Yeah. And it happened just perfectly. It was Dukakis in an interview in the New Yorker talking about the ACLU. Yeah. Oh, come on. Yeah. So he says he's a card-carrying member. He said proudly that he was a card-carrying member of the ACLU to just basically to get across his liberal bona fides. Yeah. And conservatives said, hey, that's a great insult that we can use in the future. Yeah. George H.W. Bush in particular. Yeah. He basically said he's a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Everybody hates the ACLU. They defend Nazis. And that was that. He's right. Yeah.

They do defend Nazis. Yeah. Or they have. And they will in the future if some Nazis need help. Yeah. To the rescue. But they're also defending the little boy in Tennessee who wants to read his Bible. That's right. It's all over the map. Yeah. And that is called divisive. Yeah. If you, you got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to, I love this one. If you want to learn more about the ACLU, you can type that word in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said search bar. So it's time for the listener mail. I'm going to call this converted fiance. And this is a gentleman from England who, his wife, I'm sorry, fiance Cathy, did not want to listen. They're getting married in May.

So he talks a little bit about how much he likes this show. And I will skip that part and get right to the meat. Okay. I tried to get my fiance converted. It started with the JFK podcast with no luck. She moaned and said it was weird. Which I thought that was a very straight ahead podcast actually. Not being one to quit. I tried it a few weeks later on living without a fridge. As soon as the intro began, she groaned. Wow. She's moaning and groaning. Has she ever heard us before? No. This is brand new to her. What's your deal, Cathy? She hates it. Well, let me get to it. Okay. This time, halfway through, though, she began commenting on some of the content such as placing your onions in the fridge.

Against all odds, the next podcast saved on the playlist was Manhunts. As soon as she heard the topic, she shut me up from talking and listened intently. Wow. Not bad, I thought. I didn't even think that was one of our better ones. Well, she liked it. This morning, though, was the breakthrough. We were in the supermarket and wanted to purchase some avocados. None were ripe. And Cathy said, we could do that thing that bloke suggested and put the avocados in a paper bag and a banana to help it ripen. I'm that bloke. She took your advice. And it worked. So wow, I thought later in the morning she was reading about how time was running out to find the signal for the missing black box from Flight 370. She turned to me and asked why they couldn't find the signal. And I

said, you know what? Stuff you should know has a podcast on that. The next day on the car ride to the cinema, which is what they call movies in England, which apparently are 40 minutes drive away. She said she requested to actually play the black box episode. Success. Well, this guy really knows how to manipulate his fiance. He does. So he says if any of your listeners have had trouble getting their partners into it, I would suggest you keep trying. Eventually, you'll find an episode or two that will capture their interest and they'll be hooked. And that is from Guy Benvenista in Horsham, UK. Nice name and city name, Guy. So thanks, Cathy, for joining up to the club.

Cathy soon to be Benvenista. Welcome to the party. Yes. I think Cathy's going to keep her on, man. Well, okay, Cathy, either way, as long as you're listening to stuff, you should know. We don't care. If you want to let us know how you turned somebody, converted them, or if they you just can't convert them, we'd be very interested to find out why. Agreed. Why don't they like us? It's not like we care or anything, but you know, we just want to know. You again, as I said, you can hang out with us on social media, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Just search your favorite web browser for stuff you should know, S-Y-S-K, Josh and Chuck, something like that. And it should all come up. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com.

And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. 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. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever, with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have

a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.