Stuff You Should Know - How the U.S. Military Draft Works

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

The U.S. military draft is far more interesting than you'd think. The process of conscription can get quite complicated, but we're here to clear it up for you. We'll also talk a bit about whether or not this could ever happen again.  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 from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

So this is Stuff You Should Know, military edition. Actually, more bureaucracy edition than anything else. Yeah, and I found this, for a bureaucratic episode, I found it way more interesting than I thought I would. Those usually turn out to be more interesting than you'd think, you know? Yeah. I can't think of one that we've done,

bureaucracy, than the bureaucracy suite that wasn't like, this is surprisingly interesting. Yeah, this is pretty good. Yep, agreed. Because I registered for the Selective Service as did you, I assume. Oh yeah. You've been dodging all these years.

Right, I finally made it. But I never really gave it much thought, because dudes like you and I in today's modern era don't really, you know, when I registered, I was like, yeah, whatever, this will probably mean nothing. But it's really interesting when you dig into it, and what it could have meant, or could mean. When I registered, I was like, wait,

what's going on here again? My dad was like, just do it, it's fine. You'll get in trouble if you don't. I was like, oh, I don't wanna get in trouble. Was your dad in the military? Yeah, he was Air Force. During Vietnam? Right before Vietnam.

Because my dad did not go to Vietnam, and I think I always felt weird about it. He would never talk to me about that, but that's the sense that I got. Did you grow up in Canada for like the first part of your life or anything? No, but he was, and as you'll find out throughout the course of this episode,

about the various deferments and exceptions and things, he was a lone breadwinner for a family of one, then two, then eventually three, in college, studying to be a teacher. So he had a lot of, he checked a lot of boxes that will get you out of the war. Right, well, they probably talked him out of there, like, buddy, your life's hard enough as it is.

Yeah, maybe. That would be a hardship deferment, right? Well, I guess it depends, because teachers were something, as we'll learn later in the show, were very much valued. Oh, yeah. And if you were in college,

and if you were the breadwinner of a family, so he had a few things going in his favor, I guess, if you're looking to not go to war. Yeah, all he had to be was a non-U.S. citizen living in the United States from a country with a treaty with the U.S., who was also morally opposed to the war, and with a criminal record, that'd be about it.

He might've been a little too old, actually, too, now that I think about it. I mean, he could've been, if he was in grad, was it grad school? I think he was in grad school. Yeah, he might've been. Yeah. Because I think it was back then, we're talking nom,

I think it was 18 to 25 is what it was. Yeah. So yeah, he could've been beyond that. Yeah, then all those boxes were checked. I think he probably was. So, in case you guys didn't pick up on this yet, we're talking about the draft, that's what it's called in America,

but America is far from the only country that's ever had a draft. It's actually a pretty old concept. Dating back as far, I think I've seen as far back as like the second century B.C. China. Yeah. I think the Qing dynasty, or Jing, how do you pronounce it with the Q?

I think I would've looked that up. I think it's, how do you spell it? Jing, Q, Q-I-N-G? Q-I-N-G. Well, the Jing, I think it's Jing. Okay. I think so. Anyway, one of the dynasties

toward the second century B.C. China had conscription. And it's, I think just about every civilization with a military said, oh, that's a pretty good idea. Let's try that. So basically everybody's tried it from time to time. And the U.S. has had drafts multiple times. The Civil War, both the North and the South had drafts. In the, I think the War of 1812, there's even one.

The First World War, there's a draft. Second World War, there's a draft. And then most recently the draft was in Vietnam from 1961 to 1973, I think, right? Yeah, and we'll get to the, did you read that New York Times article? No. That I sent?

Oh boy, that was a good one. Well, we'll get to the ins and outs a little bit at the end with that article. But prior to Vietnam, the draft had generally been a sort of roundly accepted kind of good thing to most people. So it really wasn't until Vietnam, where we found ourselves with a lot of different

social forces meeting up with the war that a lot of people didn't believe in, is where we had a sort of our first big backlash against the idea of a draft. That was where I, I mean, that's, the war just being utterly unpopular, almost across the board is where I saw was the big reason why the resistance

to the draft first began because of Vietnam. Up to that point, wars were generally popular among the majority of Americans. Yeah, and we also need to shout out one Genghis Khan. Or Chinggis. Or Chinggis Khan, Kane. Because I think we mentioned in that episode that he used a draft, right?

Kind of, I think that was more like a join me or die kind of thing, which I guess that qualifies as conscription. Well, in America it's join me or go to jail, so. Yeah, it's close, yeah, it's close. So yeah, you're right, he definitely had that. And he's actually the tie that binds this episode and the next one too, the one on the Pony Express,

because he had a fast mail service on horseback, remember? Yeah, and it's probably not fair to say that he had a draft, because you're right, it was more just like come aboard or I'll have your head. Right. But I did wanna mention that there was another movie that we missed, there was a movie not too long ago called Mungle.

Oh yeah, supposedly it was like a good one with a legitimately good actor in there. Yeah, it was a weird, they covered it on the Friendly Fire movie podcast that I listened to and it's supposedly pretty good, I wanna check it out. It was like a weird, like a Russian slash Kazakhstan production that did feature Asian actors only. Produced by Barat.

I don't know, but it was supposed to be pretty good. I'll check it out. Yeah, I wanna see it too. Is it on Netflix or Prime? I don't know about that. Oh, by the way, Chuck, I feel so remiss. Happy Prime Day. Is it Prime Day?

Oh, of course it's Prime Day, how could you not know? I already bought all my stuff. That was some buzz marketing of all time. So let's talk about this draft, okay? Sure. And I think we'll hold like the pros and cons debate for later off. Let's just talk about what the draft is in America.

How about that? Because I think it bears a pretty strong resemblance to drafts in other countries. Yeah, so in the United States, in our military now, this article's a little outdated, but I believe for this year, our budget is about 1.31 million active duty personnel and about 815,000 reservists. And this is what our volunteer military force looks like.

But in certain times, we have a draft. They also call it conscription. And that's when we feel like, and there's debate on whether or not this will ever happen again, but that's when the president in Congress feels like we need to call up people involuntarily because we need more bodies. Yeah, the standing volunteer force that we have right now

is considered more than enough for, or at least enough for the current peace time. Quote, quote, peace time. Yeah, if you take the endless wars that aren't technically wars because Congress never declared war out of the equation that we're in peace time, right? And so these guys, especially with our advancing,

and I use guys in the gender neutral sense, especially with the advancing technology that's being used in the military now, that's actually pretty healthy amount of active duty people. But yes, if there were something that happened, say another world war or something, there's a pretty good chance that a draft is gonna get started pretty quickly.

And for that to happen, the government would say, okay, selective service system, do your thing. And the selective service system would kick into action. And this is what I did not know, Chuck. Jimmy Carter is the one who activated the selective service system. Did you know that?

Oh, no way. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, because the last draft was in 1973, and it was just done. And then in 1980, when the Soviet's invaded Afghanistan, Carter was really on edge about that. And in 1981, he just basically activated the selective service system.

And that's what you were talking about earlier, where you're 18, or the first time you're eligible between the ages of 18 and 25, you go to your post office, you go to your government website, you go, there's several places you can go. And you basically fell out a card saying, I am an 18-year-old American citizen, or a resident alien,

or any number of things, and it's specifically a man. And here's my info, give me a call if you guys ever run into any trouble. Yeah, and so the SSS, the selective service system is who is in charge of basically operating and plugging in the draft and overseeing it if it ever gets reinstated. Right, right.

So they have really, ultimately this article just does a good job of pointing this out. The selective service system is basically just a system of names and addresses kept on file of all American men eligible to be drafted. So basically between the age of 18 and 25. Yeah, so you mentioned women about five or six years ago that was the repeal of the ground combat exclusion.

And they've since then have been working on basically opening up, I don't know about all jobs, but I think most, or maybe all jobs, to women as well as men in the military. But you still, despite that, they have not made the change where women have to register with SSS. Yeah, it came pretty close in committee I think last year. And it didn't make it out of committee,

but it showed a lot of resolve to, that's probably going to change in the next couple of years, I would guess. Especially now that women are in combat roles in the military, that was traditionally the excuse for why they were not eligible for selective service. But now that they're doing combat roles in the volunteer army, or the volunteer military,

then it just makes sense that they would be eligible for the draft too. Yeah, and right now I'm looking at the chart. This printout here is got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight categories where you do not need to, I was about to say turn yourself in. It's already in slip. Where you don't have to register.

So if you're a member of the armed forces on active duty, obviously you don't need to. If you're a cadet and midshipman at service academies or the Coast Guard Academy, you do not need to. If you're a student in the officer procurement program at the Citadel, North Georgia College, and State University, Norwich, Virginia, VMI, Texas A&M, Virginia Polytech,

and State University, you don't have to. Let me see here, it's under immigrants, lawful non-immigrants on current non-immigrant visas. If you're a seasonal agricultural worker on an H2A visa, you don't have to. If you're incarcerated or hospitalized or institutionalized, you do not need to. Under handicapped physically or mentally,

you don't need to if you're continually confined to a residence, hospital, or institution. But you do have to if you're able to function in public with or without assistance. And then the newest, the latest and greatest, transgender people category. If you're an individual who are born female and have changed to male, you do not have to.

But if you're born male and change your gender to female, you do have to. So that pretty much flies in the face of trans. Yeah, wow, okay. I'm not surprised by that, but that seems a little putzy. It dims the rules right now. Yeah. So one of the things that stuck out to me, Chuck,

was that if you are a citizen of another country living in the United States, you have to register, if you're a male, you have to register for this, for selective service. But if your country has a treaty with the US that says, if you guys ever do the draft or whatever, we don't want our people sucked into that, the US will honor that.

You still have to go register, but then when they draft you, you get an exemption. But if you do get that exemption, you can never be a citizen of the United States. And if you ever leave the country, you might have trouble getting back in is how the selective service puts it. Yeah.

Which I would say that means you will definitely have trouble getting back in. Probably so. You know? And you said 18 to 25 is the age where you have to register within 30 days of reaching eligibility. So in the case of your 18th birthday, within 30 days of that,

or let's say you're in like one of the exclusions, like you're in military school, but you drop out, but you're still 18 to 25, then it's within 30 days of that dropout date. Right. And then yeah, whether it's 18, 30 days of your 18th birthday or 30 days of the first time you become eligible

up to your 26th birthday. Correct. And then if you just say, I don't feel like going today and you keep putting it off for seven years, when you get to be 26, along the way you can do it late and they'll say, hey, thanks for coming in, we're gonna forgive this.

If you wait until after your 26 and you never get around to doing it, like as it stands on the books, you can be prosecuted for up to five years in prison and a quarter of a million dollar fine. Yeah. You can also get that same penalty if you encourage someone not to sign up

for selective service. Oh, really? But apparently they are not very big on prosecuting that kind of stuff. And instead what they tend to do is they withhold federal job opportunities, some state job opportunities, federal student aid for college,

federal work training program. If you're a defense contractor or any kind of contractor and you need a security clearance, you can kiss that goodbye. So there's stuff they can do short of finding you $250,000 and putting you in jail for five years. But there are penalties for just not ever

filling out this little card. Yeah, and I read, and especially in that Times article that even during like the Vietnam War, like famous cases aside, like let's say, you know, Muhammad Ali, which makes a lot of news, like they didn't really want people that didn't,

like you didn't have to be all gung-ho, but they didn't want people that were just miserable about the whole thing. Well, yeah, I saw that that was one of the, well, we'll talk about it later. Like that, you know, there's like, that wouldn't make a good soldier. It wouldn't serve anyone.

No. So generally they wanted people who were at least like, all right, well, I'll do this all the way up to like, sign me up, I want to kill. All right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. I think that's our cue when I say I want to kill.

All right, we'll be right back after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop 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 my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, so let's say that, um, that there, I saw that the head of selective service said basically it would take a Martian invasion to activate the draft again. I think is how she put it. That's good.

So, um, if that happened, if we were invaded by Martians and the draft did start, one of the things that Carter set up in 1981 by activating the selective service was to, um, it's basically this government bureaucracy that's just waiting to spring into action. And it's kind of like kept on ice, there's 100 people working at this agency, they've got about $23 million a year in funding and, um, they just keep it at a ready state, but it's not actually doing what it's designed to do. It's just taking in information, names, addresses, all that stuff. Yeah. And then, um, but if it were ever activated, it would kind of like, it'd be like one of those little dinosaur sponges. When you put water on it and it grows into a big dinosaur sponge, that's basically what would happen with the SSS. Yeah. So they would, uh, like our article points out, they would kick into what you would call draft mode and they would conducted national draft lottery.

And, you know, back in the Vietnam era, this was a, this is a dicey proposition to watch on television, uh, what looks like a, uh, a money lottery, you know, picking numbers. And this is how it, how it goes. It's, uh, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And I assume this is how it would still go today, right? Yeah. This is the current incarnation of the SSS. All right. So a computer is going to print out all the dates in the current year in random order, put those dates in little, little capsules.

So interesting how they do this. I, they really look like more like ping pong balls to me. I know what I'm saying. It looks like you could be a winner. Right. Except you're not. But who calls it a capsule? I don't know.

Whoever wrote this. Tom Harris. Oh, Tom's a, he's old school. Yeah, I guess he's a weirdo too. He might, maybe he's never played ping pong. Then the computer prints out one through three 65 for each day of the year in random order, puts those in ping pong balls. The capsules containing dates are loaded into one drum. The others are loaded into another drum.

They spend that thing. They spend the big wheel. I think it's puffed by air. Oh, is it? I think so. Yeah. I was just trying to make it a little more fun. Like I said, 23 million in funding a year.

Right. They can afford the air puff. They're being inspected and observed this whole time to make sure everything's going as planned. And then what happens on TV? Okay. So the official who's running the thing. And again, yeah, they have like they have TV there to make sure that this is documented and above the boards and all that stuff. And when the official pulls out the ball or the capsule, I'm sorry, from one machine and then a capsule from another machine and they read them out loud.

So for example, if the number from the one machine with all the dates of the year in it says April 22nd and the other the other machine has 365 or 66 if it's a leap year. And that says number 42, and that means that every male who is eligible for the draft that turns 20 on April 22nd of that year will be in the 42nd group to receive their draft notices. Yeah, they start, I guess the ideal age that they feel is fair is 20 years old. Right. So that's where they start with the draft. Because again, remember, it's between 18 and 25, you're eligible, but they, yeah, they start with the 20 year olds. And then they do this so over and over again for all 365 or 66 days of the year, they pair a date of that year with a number and that's the people whose 20th birthday falls on that year are the ones who get that number or they're in that number group. So if January 15th was number one, then anybody born on January 15th would be the first to get the draft notices.

And when they're doing this, they're probably calling up enough people that multiple groups, say groups one through 150, are all going to get draft notices right out of the gate. But then as they, like Congress and the president ask for a specific number of troops, and then once they reach that number, the draft notices stop getting sent out. And then if they say, well, we need more people, they'll start going back to the sequence of call is what it's called. And then they go to the next group and the next group and the next group until they keep fulfilling these numbers. And then when they run out of 20 year olds, then they go to other age groups. Yeah, they move up from that point to 21 and, you know, let's just say they keep needing people. It would go 21 through 25. Then if they run out of 25 year olds, A, that means we're in big trouble as a country.

The Martians are winning. Then they hop back to age 19. And then if the most dire circumstance comes around, then they hop back finally to 18 year olds. Yes. So that's all of our 18 to 25 year olds have just been gone through in the military, basically is what just happened if they go get down to the 18 year olds. Yeah. So then if your name is called, they are, you were sent to a, or your report, I guess, to a regional military entrance processing station. And I'm sure they call it something different, like they have some cute short name for it.

A remapse. I don't think this one is a. Remapse. I'll bet it's remapse. You think? Maybe. You know, my brother-in-law's in the Marines, and it's astounding how many, what are those called? Not contractions, but.

Acronyms? Acronyms for everything. It's unbelievable. They hate saying whole words in the military. Well, it's like another language. And then when he's talking to me, he'll say the acronym and then the real thing. But he just, you know, he can't help but say the acronym. Well, sure.

Do you ever point out like how much time he just wasted saying both? Yeah, I do that all the time. He loves it. Sir. So then they report to this remapse, or remap, no, it'd be remapse. Yeah. And this is where, you know, you undergo your physical, your psych evaluation, your mental and moral evaluation, and the doctor says, you know, you can either keep going forward

or hey, you know, you're wealthy and you have bone spurs, so maybe we'll hold you out. Do you really want a bigger response from that one? I don't know. I don't know what I want anymore. But if you are fit for service, then you have 10 days from that point, if you want, to file an exemption, a claim for exemption, or postponement or deferment. And then from that point forward, if you want a special classification, then you go through that whole process.

Yeah. So one of the other things that the Selective Service System does is, so it's bringing in, it's bringing in all the people who are eligible for the draft and making sure they get evaluated to see if they're fit for service. And then it's also handling and administering the exemption and postponement and deferment process too. It's like two separate streams. It's one stream, and then it breaks into two streams.

One stream goes into the military, the other one gets sorted out, right? Yes. So if you're, say, like a high school student or something like that, and you file that 10-day claim for exemption or whatever, you'll just send in a piece of paper, maybe something from your high school that says, no, Josh is still in high school. So he shouldn't be going into the draft, and they will say, here's your exemption, kid. Josh is 20. He's in high school.

Don't ask. That would be right. Don't ask. Don't tell. And that would be a postponement, I think, is what that would be. Because they're saying, great, finish high school. We'll see you right after. Yeah.

I mean, if you're already right then, and you're fit for service, you're classified as 1A. Right. Something you heard a lot about in the Vietnam era. Mm-hmm. Like, if you get picked and you were 1A, you were getting shipped out pretty quickly. Right, exactly. Like, you would go home.

They would send you your letter, and probably in the letter, they would tell you where to report. Yeah. So high school's covered. If you're a college student, you can postpone for the remainder of that year, or if you're a freshman. That's if you're a senior. If you're a freshman, sophomore, or junior, you can postpone until the end of the semester.

Yep. There's an exemption for religious ministers and people studying to become ministers. Yeah. Who knew? And recognized religions. I thought they needed the Father Mulcahy's. Yeah. I think that's... I think you ask for a deferment.

If they find that you're 1A, even if you're any of these, I think they will just take you regardless. Sure. But if you say, actually, I'm a religious minister, I don't feel comfortable about this. You can get a deferment like that. But if you're Father Mulcahy, and you're like, I'm a religious minister, kill, kill, kill, they'll say, come on in. Or counsel the men who kill, kill, kill.

Sure. Father Mulcahy, he was a good character, wasn't he? He's a good dude. One of my favorites on Mash, actually, weirdly. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because he was just such a side character, but I liked him now that I think about it out loud. Yeah, me too.

I watched Barney Miller last night for the first time in forever. If you want to see a TV show, like a Bonafide TV show where there's a script and actors and they've all rehearsed, and there's a plot and there's jokes and all that stuff, and a laugh track. A laugh track, too. Watch Barney Miller and you will be... It's wonderful. Yeah, which is to say, it was like every other show on TV at the time.

At the time. Yeah. Try to find one of those now. You can't do it. Well, I mean, they're on, but you probably just don't watch sitcoms anymore. I guess they are on, aren't they? I'm told. Yeah.

Well, anyway, Barney Miller holds up and maybe is even better than ever. Yeah, that was a great show. Who were the side guys? Well, there's Fish, Abe Vagoda was Fish. Yeah, Fish, Hojohn? Wojo. Wojo. Hojohn.

I don't know where I came up with that. You're thinking a little, John. Yeah, and then who was the other guy? There was Chano. Yeah. There was... Oh, I can't remember the Asian guy's name. That was Wojohn, right?

No, no, no. Wojo was the... Wojo. He was like the young kind of bachelor dude with the terrible haircut. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, he was probably like Wojokowski or something. Yeah, that's exactly what his name was, I think. Okay, yeah.

And then there was the Asian man, I can't remember what his name was, but he was such a great character. They would reference him when he wasn't even in the episode. They'd talk about him. Oh, wow. That's a great... That's a good character. And then Ron Glass.

Ron Glass. I can't remember what the name of the detective Ron Glass played was, but great television show still. That would be the best television theme song of all time, too. Oh, yeah, I love that one. If I'm not mistaken, didn't it have a slap bass in it? Oh, yeah. So you want to do it?

Ron Harris. Ron Glass played Ron Harris. Okay. And Yamana, Nick Yamana was the character's name. Oh, okay. And who played Nick Yamana? Jack Sue. Okay.

Cool. Man, great. Hal Linden, man. What a classic. Yeah. I love watching that. Where? Yeah.

Oh, you mean what station? There's something called Antenna TV. It's like all awesome reruns. There's something else called Cozy C-O-Z-I-T-V. They basically do the same thing, and you'll find them in the non-HD channels a little further down the dial, but they're good. And now they each owe me a $20 Target gift card. That's a hot tip.

So back to the draft. Oh, yeah. We covered, we got off track with Father Mulcahy. So if you have dependents, like I was saying, like my father with a family of two or three, if you are a government official, like if you're a judge, which would be unusual that young, but any kind of elected official. Governor. You'd be a young mayor.

Congressperson. State legislator. Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of, I'll bet that rankles a lot of people because those are the very people who are sending the military into war, you know? Yeah. I guess the idea of a 24-year-old mayor who gets a deferment wouldn't go over super well in times of war.

Yeah, I guess not. And then finally, and this is, we'll get into this pretty in-depth, but conscientious objectors, which is a whole ball of wax right there, but that is when you hold religious or moral beliefs, then you can, well, I guess we should go ahead and get into it, huh? Well, do you want to take a break and then get into it, or do you want to get into it and then take a break? It's your choice, buddy. Let's get into it, then take a break.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So do you remember our pacifism episode? I do. That was a great one. And I know for a fact that we talked about conscientious objectors and that as well. But if you are drafted, and here's the thing, again, you still have to register for selective

service. If they ever initiate the draft, you will still get a draft notice, and then you'll report to the regional center, the REMAPS, or REMAPS, and you will say to them, I am morally opposed to war, and they'll say this war, which is a trick question, and you say no, all war, and they'll go, oh, okay, well, that's a bird of a different feather. Let's get this thing started. So you have 10 days to file this claim for exemption. And then that's going to kick off this, basically an interview process by the local board.

These local boards are another thing that gets activated by the SSS being activated itself. There's five civilians who sit on a local board, and each local board serves X number of kids in an area. Yeah. And they're there to hear special cases to decide whether or not you get that exemption for things like a hardship, like if you're a father, a sole breadwinner kind of thing, or if you're a conscientious objector.

And with a conscientious objector specifically, they're going to ask you, well, which kind are you? Are you opposed to carrying a gun and shooting at people on the front lines? Are you opposed to combat or are you opposed to being in the military at all? And there's actually two classifications for that. Yeah. And at this point, they have called you down, like certain things like high school or maybe if you have a family of six, like they can just go ahead and rubber stamp you, but you're

going to get called down there in person and you'll want to as an objector. And the two classifications that you mentioned is one AO, if you're morally opposed to serving in combat, or one O, one dash O, and this is if you are saying, I don't want to be in the military. I don't want to be a chef. I don't want to be a cook. I don't want to be a priest or deliver mail or write for the newspaper. I don't want to write for the stars and stripes.

You know what it was called? Mm-hmm. Is that still around? Probably. I know Voice of America is. Is that the current main rag? It may be different. They're like, they're everywhere, they're like big time media outlet for the military.

Each branch has their own rag, too. Well, the stars and stripes, that's what Matthew Maudine was a writer for and a mail jacket. Full metal jacket. That was great. Yeah. A photographer, though, right? No.

He walked around with a photographer. He was the reporter. Gotcha. All right. So in the draft, if you were classified as one AO, which is morally opposed to combat only, then they will probably try to still assign you to some sort of service like we were talking about, like in the mail room or whatever. There's plenty of stuff you can do besides being on the front line in the military.

Plenty, plenty, plenty. It's a huge, huge machine that has a lot of different parts to it. So yeah, they will definitely find a spot for you. If you're morally opposed to serving the military, if you're saying, like, I'm totally opposed to war, I don't agree with what you're doing, I don't agree with any war whatsoever, so I don't want to help out in any way, shape, or form, they'll say, okay, you still have to serve. You're still going to have a tour of duty, just like anybody who is 1A and goes into

the military to serve in the draft. You're going to have a tour of duty, too, but instead they will assign you to basically what's called the Alternative Service Program, where you contribute to the country for like X number of years, like in healthcare, or in conservation is another big one, too, where they basically just put you to work to keep the country, make it better. Yeah, and like you said before, it has to be opposed to all war, and it can't be because of political beliefs. So it has to be based on moral or ethical or religious beliefs.

You can't just say, hey man, if that was a 9-11, I'd be down, but I don't like this jerk who's in office, and I don't agree with their politics, so I'm not into this war. They'll say, sorry, that doesn't really count. Which I mean, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Yeah, well, I mean, at any rate, you have to appear, explain all this stuff. You might want to bring in some friends. You might want them to ask or to maybe write something for you ahead of time. You will probably want to demonstrate through historical evidence that you have always felt

this way. Look, here's me at a peace rally nine years ago. And eight years ago, and seven years ago, and six. You want to really build up your case that this is something I've lived with my whole life. Right, or if you're like, I'm a Quaker, and see, here's my Quaker friends telling you that I'm a Quaker. And here's my funny hat, my belt buckle shoes.

Did you start eating handfuls of dry oats during the interview to prove you're a Quaker? You might get a different reclassification. So you're doing all this stuff to build your case. If they deny you, you can't appeal the decision. So it's not like the final word, but I don't know how many appeals you get. My guess would be one. Yeah, and I'm not even sure if you necessarily get one, but ideally this board of citizens are going to say this guy actually is morally opposed to war and then not say, but I'm not,

and I don't think he should be, so he's going to go anyway. Right. He's going to just say, is this person morally opposed to war? Do you buy that? Yes. Okay. Then they should get this deferment, but this is set up so that if you, there's a place for you to serve your country, even if you don't believe in war, even helping a war

effort. Gotcha. You want to take that break now? Let's do it. Okay. 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?

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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.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck. So I think there's a, this is a really, really controversial topic, the idea of a draft. And I think it would be far more controversial if it looked like it might be coming down the pike at any given point. But there's a lot of reasons that, that people point to that they say, this is what we have now is totally awesome.

For one, what we have now again, and we have had since 1973 is an all volunteer force, which means that every single person who is in the military and any branch of the military in the United States is there on their own volition. No one's forcing them to. Even if a judge said, either join the army or go to jail, they still had a choice. So that makes it a, what's called a professional volunteer army where they get paid, they submit themselves to serious training and they are about as good a soldier as you will expect to find in the world.

That's the current state of our military. And they say, this is planning, we're doing fine with this. We don't need any kind of draft. So why would you even bring that up? And there's a lot of people who say, well, there's some real pros to having a conscription. Yeah. I mean, that article you sent, some of the pros were as follows, promoting national unity. And all of these are subject to opinion, I think.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's a debate. It's a controversial topic. Yeah. Maintains an active military force, obviously that's kind of inarguable. It ensures high levels of participation in government. This, you know, makes a little bit of sense. You'll probably pay a lot more attention to what's going on if faced with the threat,

or I don't know, threat's the right word, but if faced with the prospects of a draft. That to me is probably the best argument for a draft. It's saying like, if you are possibly going to get drafted and go to war just by being born as a citizen of this country, you're expected to be part of the military at some point in your life, you're going to pay a lot more attention to what the U.S. is doing around the world with its military. And you're probably going to stand up and make your voice heard if you disagree with what the U.S. is doing with the military.

Yeah. I mean, that definitely makes sense in some ways. But at the same time, so that argument, what you just said, it's for proponents of a conscription, of a draft. But you can also make the opposite case too, that people have said, well, when we had a draft before, we prosecuted at least one, like by definition, unjust war, the Vietnam War. And it was prosecuted by Johnson and Nixon, and they just kept sending wave after wave

of American soldiers into harm's way. And some historians and some political scientists say they might not have done that had they not known that there was a virtually unlimited pool of soldiers that they could just send into Southeast Asia over and over again. And that we wouldn't be prosecuting wars that way. I mean, okay, I'm sorry, so the 27 years before 1973, we were engaged in 19 overseas military operations. Between 1973 and 2012, we had 144.

And so a lot of people say, no, man, if you have a professional army, they're divorced from society. They're basically like, here, military, go handle this. We don't like these people anymore. We want that oil. Go do this. What do we pay you for? Go do it.

And the people who are doing this have never been in the military, haven't been exposed to military life, and are hence maybe a little more insustion about sending the military in to other countries using a military option. So that is like two of the best reasons for or against conscription, but they totally contradict each other. And it's just fascinating to me that you can have something that's just that ambivalent or ambiguous, I mean. Yeah.

Two different words. Right. Right. Yeah, I know what you mean. Some of the cons, I mean, the cons are all pretty obvious. It violates someone's free will. It may keep you from going to college, put lives at risk for young people. This one compromises the quality of military service.

That's one that, that's a big con to me, is you're getting sometimes people in there that aren't cut out for that and couldn't find a way and didn't have the wealthy father or the shady doctor to get you out of it. I mean, that is a big one, especially if you're one of those people who points to the American military and says, we've never had a better, this is the best version of the U.S. military in the history of the country. So let's dilute it with millions of conscripts who don't want to be there, who we have to spend an inordinate amount of time training and sending out to the front lines basically

as bodies. That's a terrible idea. It dilutes the professionalism of the military. Yeah, for sure. That's another one that's got, all of these have two pretty clear sides to every point, you know? Yeah, I agree. And then I think the other thing I've seen too is, so this is, I mean, this is not like

a huge hot debate right now in military and political science quarters, but it is currently debated. It's just the people who are against conscription are not worried about this at all. It's just not going to happen anytime soon, right? There's just no reason for it to happen. But the people who are in favor of it are being accused of this being a backdoor way of changing America's interventionist military usage. That they're basically saying, you know, let's get a draft going and then people will wake

up and say, oh, we shouldn't be using the military like this. And that that's their real aim, which, you know, I guess trying to change strategy by introducing conscripts, it's a way to go, I suppose. Interesting. Yeah, but it is interesting to just be like, to learn about something that you have no idea is being discussed or talked about. And then when you start looking in, it's like, oh, there's even stuff below the surface. Like they're talking about grand military strategy, really, you know, not just whether

people should serve their country or not, which is another pro that it creates a unified sentiment among Americans or any country. There's plenty of countries out there who do this. North Korea, you're conscripted for 10 years as a man and I think six years as a woman. Yeah. That there's this sense of like, I was in the military too, where'd you serve? Oh, I served here. Oh, really?

Did you know this guy? And, you know, like there's that common ground and there's also that mixing of all different Americans to where you're meeting with them and living with them one on one. You're forming a bond, a kinship just through being in the military that if everyone has to go through that, it will create like this kind of sense of national unity that America's lacking right now. That's another pro that I saw. Yeah.

Very interesting. I'm all out of pros and cons, Chuck. Well, I read this New York Times article that was really interesting talking about Vietnam and then the Cold War and how that complicated things. And since World War II, I think the Selective Service was operated by General Louis B. Hershey. And like I said earlier, it didn't face a lot of criticism until Vietnam. And that's when things got really hinky because, A, a lot of people were against the war and B, it became pretty clear, even though the Department of Defense didn't keep records

on socioeconomic status beyond like, are you white or are you African American? It was pretty clear that if you were white and middle class and up, you had a much higher chances of getting a deferment. So the Cold War complicated things further because it wasn't a war war and it became really clear that we needed to like, it was all about the space race or the military race with the Soviets. So all of a sudden, Hershey said, he didn't say this out loud, but he said, you know what, I'm going to use this as, they called it, we could be the storekeeper of America's manpower

supply and basically it's up to us how to tell these young men what lives they're going to live. So not only like, let's forget the military for a second, they needed a big supply of men and STEM fields to develop weapons and science and everything to keep up with the Soviets. So all of a sudden, the deferments, they started channeling these middle class college-aged or college-educated white men into what they called manpower channeling into all of these other areas of study and research and, you know, design and manufacturing. So it was just a really interesting time.

So all of a sudden, like during World War II, if you were a factory worker or an agricultural worker, you might get a deferment and chances were pretty good that you might because you were really needed. After that, if you had a farm or you worked in a factory, you were out of luck because you weren't like into physics or, you know, other STEM fields or in the medical field. So by 1965, all these middle class white men kind of expected deferments, which is really interesting. And then you had Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense.

He started using what they called, he wanted to get basically black men out of what he called squalid ghettos of their own external environment and into the internal and more destructive ghetto of personal disillusionment and despair. So basically his idea was, we have all these black men in this country that would do much better in life if we put them in the military. So they... Wait, wait, hold on. So this is just this one guy deciding this?

Well, I mean, I'm sure it went through channels, but Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, was very powerful. Oh, I thought this was Hershey, this is McNamara who took over at this point? Yeah, this is McNamara who created what was called the new standards model. So these men, they were called new standards men who were otherwise ineligible for military service, all of a sudden were eligible. So he started basically 354,000 of these men between 66 and 77 who were not previously eligible under the new standards program were and 40% of these men were black.

And this is when the military was about 9% African-American. So he basically was saying, you know, a stint in the military as a new standard soldier is much better. It'll make you a better husband, better father, a better breadwinner, ultimately in a better citizen and you're basically an infantryman in Vietnam all of a sudden when you previously would not have even been in the war. So this ran for five years and like I said, 354,000 men ended up on the front lines of Vietnam and had a decent chance of dying.

Yeah, I saw that I think like 25% of the troops in Vietnam were draftees, but draftees made up like 30.4% of the casualties in Vietnam, which goes to kind of point out like, if you have somebody there who's not like, yes, I want to be a soldier and teach me how to be a soldier, but they're there against their will. There's a really good likelihood that after just six months of training, they're going to go out there and get killed, you know, which is a big mark against conscription in just about anybody's mind. Yeah.

That's crazy, man. McNamara, he was, yeah, did you ever see Fog of War? Oh yeah. Like, did you buy the, it dawned on him what he had done or what he was really responsible for like there on camera or was he just putting on a show? I don't know. You know what I'm talking about where he kind of like breaks down toward the end and it seems like it was an arrow Morris flick, right?

Yeah. Very compelling. Like it sort of lulls you in to some great insider information. It's definitely worth watching and it's just basically like an interview with Robert McNamara and in it, arrow Morris like basically leads him to the conclusion that he really was responsible for a lot of unnecessary death because of the Vietnam War and how he prosecuted it as defense secretary. Yeah.

And I kind of mangled that op-ed in the times, but it's called, and you should read this out there in podcast land, it's called How the Draft Reshaped America by Amy J. Ruttenberg from October of last year and she does a much better job than I just did. I'll check it out too. I'm so ashamed that I didn't read something in prep. Don't be. You got anything else? I got nothing else.

All right. Well, everybody, that was the draft and if you want to know more about it, go type in draft in the search bar at HouseToForks.com and since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Yeah. And we, you know, we didn't get into stuff like the fact that Elvis was drafted and weird things like that happened back then. Well, yeah.

And I mean, that was a demonstration for how, you know, everybody is supposedly eligible for the draft even though that's not really how it's always worked out. Yeah. And I think we talked about that in pacifism too. Yeah. All right. I'm going to call this cute kid email from Scotland. Nice.

Yeah. And this is from Noah in Scotland. And Noah. Noah's writing in again, remember? Did he write in before? Oh yeah. Noah's written in plenty. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Hey, Noah. Well, Noah and his mom added a little post script. Dear Josh and Chuck, I'm using my mama's email address again as she's helping me type and she's helping me type, but in getting better and my next email will be typed just by me. Wow. I really liked your skyscrapers episode and wanted to tell you a cool fact.

The Shanghai Tower in China is 128 levels high. It's my favorite tower because I think it's engineering is the best. And it's the thing, second highest one. And she said, she just typed exactly as he said. It's damper is my favorite part. It's a new type called a tuned mass damper. This stops it from going too far to one side by using 125 super strong magnets. The thing my mama likes is that the big empty space they need for the damper means the sounds

is good and there's a music hall in there. I got mama to put on a diagram of how it works from a magazine called popular mechanics. I'm six now. Wow. And on my summer holidays, when my cousins come around and are being too noisy, I go to my room and listen to your next episode or my new raw doll audio books. They're still funny, but sometimes I don't know what you're talking about. Love from Noah in Scotland.

And then from mom, Rachel, she said, Noah's mom here, I hope this makes sense. Tried to type it verbatim when your six year old's knowledge of physics vastly outreaches your own. You know, it's time to call in the big guns. Have we read one from Noah before? Yes, I can't remember what he wrote in about, but yeah, he wrote in back when he was five, maybe four, but definitely five. Yeah, he's written in and mom typed it verbatim then too, and then kind of added a little

page saying like virtually the same thing, like hope this made sense. All right. Well, Noah, we will read one of your emails a year until we stop or until you stop listening. Noah's the new Sarah, the amazing 11 year old fan. That's right. Who is, geez, 21 now? Yes, she should be coming back into the fold again soon. Yeah.

We'll put them in high school and then get them back as it's grown up. That's the idea. Yeah. Well, anyway, Noah and your mom, thank you very much for writing in. And if you want to get in touch with me or Chuck or Jerry, you can go to stuffyshadow.com and check out all of our social media links. And also, you can send us an email directly to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

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