Stuff You Should Know - Prohibition: Turns Out That America Loves to Drink

Episode Date: November 9, 2010

Prohibition was a 13-year period in American history when selling or producing alcohol was illegal. What led to this astonishing development? Why did it end? Josh and Chuck take a look at Prohibition's fascinating history in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know, the podcast, the sequel. Or it makes it a greasy Wednesday night on top of a rooftop brewery. Yeah, you want to do a little recap for everybody?

Yeah, let's do a very brief recap of our trivia night. Take it away, Chuck. I don't remember it. It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. It was jam-packed, overflowing with people, just like New York was. We had John and Joe and Dave, and everyone had a blast. We lost again. We were in the lead until the last question, and I ruined it for everybody if I remember correctly. Yeah, but you know what? You did not ruin it, because no one had the right answer on our team, thankfully, because that would have been crushing. You want to do this? The question? It was the last question. The last question was, what is the second leading album of all time, sales-wise, second-behind-thrower? The greatest selling album of all time.

And I believe you said Dark Side of the Moon, which I thought was a really great guess. Someone else, Joe Randazza, said The Eagles' Greatest Hits, another great guess. Sure. And both of us were wrong, or both of you were wrong. But we went with Dark Side of the Moon, didn't we, with another team answer? I think so. It was ACDC's Back in Black. Yeah. And you know what? Somewhere in my brain, I knew that that was really high up the list. It didn't come to me. But yeah, we were in second place, and we ended up losing on the last question. I thought we were first.

And going into last question. Oh, were we? Yeah. But no one wants to see us win. It's no fun if we're like, yeah, that's what I told Hodgman. He went, no, no, I want to win. And I want to rub it in their faces. That's like, well, get a better team than Hodgman. What are you doing hanging out with us? It was a lot of fun, though, and thanks to everyone who came out. And hopefully, we'll be coming to a city near you. We're still trying to get that together. Okay. So while we're doing this, I think we need to let more people know about our Facebook page.

I suspect that there is a small but substantial, and by that, I mean really large segment of stuff you should know listeners who don't necessarily go all the way to listener mail. Don't listen to the whole podcast. That's where the goal is. We call them SYS listeners. Yeah, that's right. So we always talk about our Facebook page there. It's possible if people out there who don't know that this thing exists, right, Chuck?

That's right. And it's good for us if you go there and click like. And it's not only good for us, but it's a good Facebook page. It is. It's like fun and people contribute and chat back and forth. And we talk back and forth with the fans. We come down from our ivory tire every once in a while and walk around, glan-hand people, and then have some people beat up for amusement, and then go back up to our ivory tower. No, we put great music videos on there. And by music videos, I mean music on YouTube. Cool, interesting links to great articles and studies and stuff like that, as do most of the people who are on this page. So go check it out.

Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Yeah, and if you click like, you can hide us still if you don't want it in your news feed. Well, our buddy in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Rhodes, sent us an email. You saw this, right? Oh, yeah. He was saying you can like us. So we still get the like, which again, makes us look good. But you can also select to not receive updates from whenever we update. If you want. So you won't be bothered by us. And you can come and check at your leisure, but you could still like it too. And then Twitter real quick, Chuck.

Okay. We are on Twitter and we're at SYSK podcast. Okay. Yes. All right. So Chuck, this wonderful time that we had on Wednesday night. Yes. At a brewery. Yeah. There was one of the darkest periods of American history. There was a time not too long ago. Yeah.

Where that could have never happened. Or if it had, we would have been outlaws. Yeah. It would have been on the, we couldn't have publicized it on a podcast. It would have been on the down low at a private place. We would have had to just whisper it on the street. Or we could have drawn in chalk like speakeasy this way. Sure. The SYSK speakeasy trivia night this way. This dark period in American history is also referred to as prohibition.

Also referred to as the noble experiment by some. It was a noble experiment and the reason why is because the whole reason prohibition was ever enacted or largely one of the reasons why was because we realized, remember the addiction podcast? Did that come out yet? I don't think so. Okay. So we'll look for the addiction podcast, but consider this. It wasn't until about the 19th century that people started talking about being addicted to alcohol. Right.

An awareness of that there was such a thing as alcoholism came about when there was, there were some really nice people in the world who said, you know what? Since you can't give it up, we're going to, all of us are going to give it up together. Yeah. So you won't be tempted any longer because I mean, consider nowadays being an alcoholic and trying to give up alcohol and seeing it everywhere. Right. It's got to make it that much harder.

So the, the goal of prohibition of this, the temperance movement that eventually led to prohibition was to not tempt alcoholics any longer. Yeah. You know, it's funny too, when I was reading this, a lot of the reasons which we'll get into, they mentioned are, you know, that's the alcohol can lead to domestic violence and child abuse and Henry Ford said it leads to a lack of productivity at work. And I was reading all this thinking, yeah, you know, they had a lot of great points, but that still didn't mean that you should try and prohibit people from drinking. It was just a bad idea.

Even though a lot of the points they had were solid, of course, it leads. And they, they remain solid. If you look at the old how stuff works employee handbook, one of the things that says specifically is don't drink at work. And now I almost didn't take the job for that reason, but I did. But no, there were a lot of very solid points that everybody's kind of realized about alcohol that, yeah, it's, it's directly connected to physical violence in the home and outside arrests, um, also, you know, moonings that all goes up when alcohols around, right?

Yeah. Um, but as you were saying, it was a failed noble experiment. It was a bad idea, but it was one that we had to learn the hard way and we've learned much from it, right? Sure. Even people that thought it was a great idea at the end of the noble experiment said that wasn't such a good idea. No, it was still hate alcohol, but that you just can't do this. So let's talk about this from 1920 to 1933.

Yeah. The United States had on the books an amendment, an amendment to the Constitution. That's huge. Yeah. And plus it makes this Congress look ridiculous. Yeah. That they did this. Yeah.

The 18th Amendment went on the books. It was enacted in 1920 and it forbade the sale, manufacture and transport of alcohol. And importation. Okay. Which transport? Well, no, you can still transport within like you couldn't carry it from Kentucky to Georgia. Right. Nor import it from Canada to the U.S.

Right. You see what I'm saying? But you could keep it in your home and you could drink your face off. Well, the cool thing is too is they, I believe it was passed and then a year later is when it went into effect. Right. So they basically were like, you got a year. Right.

You can fill your basement full of booze. Yeah. And we will not be breaking the law. That's a, I didn't actually realize this. I didn't either. It wasn't that you were allowed to drink it yourself. I didn't know that either. And did you, you didn't get the pictures, did you?

No. There is a haunting photograph on page zero of this article. Really? The first page. It was taken in 1931 and it's speak easy. And like the people are all wearing, it looks like the photo at the end of the shining. Totally does. And there's this one gentleman who's not even necessarily the focus of the photo.

And he is just staring out from 1931 into your soul. That's a very creepy picture. That alone is reason enough to go check out this, this photo. That's cause he's on, he's on the stun gravy. The jazz juice. The giggle juice. Yeah. The giggle water.

So Josh, it started in 1920, but we have to go back in time just a little bit when it really started. A century pretty much. Yeah. And in the 1830s, the idea of getting rid of alcohol is, is when it first started to pick up some steam and the temperance movement got going. Society started springing up. And by the time they actually had the federal, the amendment to the constitution, I believe there were, how many states had already 16, 16 states had already banned alcohol in some way. Yep.

So it was already going on on the local state level. Chuck, that's 19 states, 65% of the towns in America had some sort of ban already. So it had been going on for a while. It was a very popular movement. And there are a lot of reasons, but one, one reason is that these people have been doing this for a century before it finally took place. As early as 1838, Massachusetts created, I think the country's first law against alcohol, where basically they said, you can buy all the alcohol you want, but it has to be in no less

than this quantity. Right. And that quantity just so happens to be more than any of you drunks can afford. So we're de facto banning alcohol because we're putting it out of your price range. Yeah, I'm surprised Massachusetts was one of the early states. Because we really come around lately. Yeah. Because most of the temperance movement had a lot of support, obviously in the Bible Belt,

in places like New York and Boston and these larger cities, they were kind of like, I'm not so behind this. Right. Well, don't forget, Massachusetts not too far before this was burning witches at the stake. Yeah, that's a good point. Right. So that was 1838. 1846, Maine became the first state to pass a statewide prohibition law.

That makes more sense. Sure. Being Maine. Total Maine. Sure. Yeah. And so this temperance movement's going on. And remember, the women were at the forefront of this movement in large part.

They certainly weren't the only ones. But they were at the forefront, not just because they were nagging people. They actually, this is before they had the right to vote. Sure. And prior to having the right to vote, women figured out, you're not going to give us the right to vote. Well, we're going to be one of the first groups to learn to organize effectively. Yeah.

And it wasn't just with the temperance movement, the women basically created this movement alongside the labor movement in the early 20th century, late 19th century. Anti-slavery. That was the consumer movement. Right. And they were extremely effective in promoting consumer rights. Right. And they were also really big into rabble rousing.

Like the committee against the high cost of living in Detroit. That was the name of the committee. Really? It was a women's organization and they would do everything from consumer education on the street like you deserve government protection of milk standards to boycotts of local grocers to actually storming meat packing plants and pouring kerosene on thousands of pounds of meat so nobody could buy it. And they had these really effective campaigns.

And the temperance movement came about at the same time at this where women had to organize to have their voice heard because they didn't have the right to vote yet. They didn't have suffrage. That's right, Josh. And specifically, the women's Christian temperance union was formed in 1873 in Ohio. Years before that, 1869, the official prohibition party was formed because people are like, Democrats and Republicans are kind of dragging their feet on this. So let's actually form a party.

Right, and Holland, the women's Christian temperance movement, right? Union, yes. Union, that woman who led that carry nation is an excellent example of the kind of boisterous nature of this kind of organization and protest. She was known for hanging out around saloons, praying on the front steps to save these people's souls. And the people who tried to come in, she would ward them off with a hatchet. And she was arrested 30 times between 1900 and 1910 for busting up bars.

Yeah, she basically said, I can't vote, so I'm going to become a huge thorn in your side. Right. And you can't stop me. And she had direct experience from it. They credit her feracity, ferociousness. I think I just made up a word. Her ferociousness against alcohol due to a short-lived marriage to an alcoholic. Oh, is that why it started?

That left an imprint on her. Well, that doesn't mean being a motivated individual. Sure. Yeah. What's that bumper sticker about? Guns don't kill people. I do. No, something about well-behaved women rarely make history, something like that.

Yeah, yeah. I like that. It's good. Civil War comes along, Josh. Jerry laughed at that for something. Because she has that bumper sticker. Oh, okay. The Civil War came along, and that kind of slowed things down a little bit, but it was

just temporarily because the war ended and people like the liquor industry started booming again, which you would think would slow it more. But what really happened was it started booming such that the temperance movement got even more active to try and take care of business, basically. Right. And one of the things that really, as usual, I'm loathed to say, but one of the things that really drew popular support together was finding the proper scapegoats. Germans and Irish?

Yeah. Yeah. Immigrants. Uh-huh. This country has a long-standing tradition of forgetting that we're all immigrants. Right. And targeting the most recent immigrants to the country as the source of all of our worries. And then our political parties go, yeah, it's their fault.

And that it just kind of goes downhill from there. Because the Irish like to drink. The Irish like to drink, and the Germans love to brew beer. Exactly. And that they became the sources. We should go ahead and correct that. There was a popular perception that the Irish like to drink. Exactly.

And the Germans really did run most of the breweries. Yeah, they knew how to brew beer. Not distilleries necessarily, but there was a lot of German-owned breweries in the U.S. So the popular perception was the Germans are brewing, the Irish are drinking. We need to target these two groups. Sure. So everybody hate them. And then that's how prohibition ended up being passed in large part, right?

Yeah, I mean, there were some, a lot of groups against it as well as many as there were for it. Well, I don't know about as many, but there are also groups like the Association Against Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. Exactly. So it wasn't everybody, but it gathered enough support where eventually Congress, that awful, awful Congress of 1919 basically said, you know, we kind of have to do this. And you've got a year to get all your booze. And what we're going to do to enforce this is pass the Volstead Act as well.

Well, what was, what really put it over the top, because this was 1919 and the, in World War I, it just ended. Right. But what really whipped prohibition, prohibition, prohibition sentiment up was World War I. Anti-German. Where we're fighting the Kaiser. Yeah. And these Germans are sitting here using all the grain that we could feed our soldiers with

the brew beer and you're not an American if you're drinking beer. Right. And Mr. Anheuser and Mr. Bush were like, no. They were like, yeah, it was very nice. Gulp. Yeah. So that led to, like you said, Chuck, the 18th Amendment and the 18th Amendment in and of itself didn't do anything.

It had no teeth. It was a paper tiger. Well, yeah, that's why the Volstead Act. Right. And what did that do? Well, I mean, you can't enforce anything unless you have a way to do it. And that's what the Volstead Act did. It defined like the penalties, if you were caught doing this, exceptions, which they had

exceptions for medicinal use and religious ceremony use. Yes. And apparently a lot of doctors prescribed alcohol during the prohibition era. How many? They estimate that more than one million gallons of liquor were consumed a year from prescription whiskey. Wait till Prop, what is it? Prop 19 passes?

Yeah. They got nothing on Monathodil. Right. Monadaphanel. Monadaphanel. Monadaphanel. You're thinking of Monoxadil. And I bet there were a lot of religious ceremonies going on, too, if you know what I mean.

Well, yeah, you got to think about it. The Catholics, I'm sure, were like, whoa, hey, a lot of Christ and everything over here. Right. Yeah. We need to do this like twice a week now. Yeah. And then they went and chanted. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the Therapy for Black Girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better.

Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy Award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And that also defined what qualified as an intoxicating limit, which was anything more than 0.5% alcohol. And you know what? That's actually still the case. Oh, for near beer? Yes, for back when I was a strapping fat 10-year-old boy, I used to cross the railroad tracks and go to open pantry,

and I would enjoy six packs of Kingsbury non-alcoholic beer. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You drank non-alcoholic beer at what age? Like 10, 11, I started. Secretly? No. You still had to keep that secret right from your parents? No.

No? No. Sometimes I go back and I look at some of the stuff that I did and I'm like, I had a lot of freedom as a child. See, alcohol was like a big no-no in my house. Well, hold on. The reason why is because I knew I was in the right legally. I know the reason.

0.5%, right, is non-alcoholic. I can buy any non-alcoholic beverage. Why this root beer is non-alcoholic and I can buy that. And I actually had an argument once with a clerk at open pantry. And I think just the fact that this 10-year-old was stating his case, finally the guy was like, I don't care, just get out of here. And yeah, no, I don't think my family liked it. But they just didn't want to get into it with me.

See, I would have gotten in big trouble for even that because alcohol was stun gravy to my household. It was bad. It was the devil's juice. And it was not allowed in the house. It was a really big deal. It's amazing that I ever touched the stuff. Like I didn't drink at all in high school.

I was a straight edge. What's more amazing to me is that you weren't more likely to touch the stuff because it was prohibited. Well, that can happen too. That was one of the major effects of prohibition was that alcohol use, when it did increase, overall alcohol decreased as an effect of prohibition. But when it did increase, brother, it increased big time, right? Yeah, let's talk about some of the effects because it had effects on what you could call

the good side and the bad side, both medically and economically. Actually, most of the economic effects were pretty bad. They were bad. Unless you were Al Capone. But alcohol trafficking obviously increased. Things like speakeasies. And this, well, alcohol rings, bootlegger rings are pretty much comparable to today's drug dealers. Rum runners.

Yeah, there were European rum fleets is what they call them, right? Yeah. Because no prohibition in Europe, most of Europe, so they just sail out into international waters. And meet me out there at midnight. And then they would offload their cargo to bootleggers and, you know, that was that. They, the one reason they knew that things were really getting pretty bad on the bootlegging scene, I didn't realize this is pretty funny to me.

Demand for $10,000 bills reached a high in the United States in 1926. And basically that was a pretty clear sign that people wanted very large bills, so they didn't have to have trunks full of money to make their switches. Right. In international waters. Um, political corruption was huge. In fact, there's a very famous quote from Mayor LaGuardia, who was running New York at the time, who said something.

Yeah, this is a great one. He said something along the lines of. It is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country. Ba-da-boom-ba-da-bing. And they're going to name an airport after the guy. Another awesome, awesome fact, Josh, as far as when you said it started booming in a big way. Yeah.

Prior to this, prior to prohibition, there were less than 15,000 bars, legal bars in the U.S. After prohibition in 1927, or I'm sorry, in the midst of it, there were more than 30,000, more than double the amount of illegal speakeasies serving booze. And there were an estimated 100,000 people brewing alcohol of all sorts in their homes. Yeah. Illegally. I can tell you there were probably like 10 prior to prohibition. Yeah.

People who like went to the trouble of making their own. Right. But I mean, it's the same thing. Like, don't you think that if California legalizes pot, don't you think that all those people who have a couple plants growing illegally in their house are going to stop doing that and just go buy it at the store like everybody else? I don't know. The artisans would probably still grow their own, but...

Maybe so, but in much the same way that people homebrew beer now. Exactly. Like they're... That's a great, great... That's a lot of trouble to go to that not everybody wants to do. Oh, yeah. You know?

Well, you mentioned the non-enforcement, and there's another stat here that is pretty startling. At one point, they said New York City. New York City. Yes, New York City. 7,000 arrests were made for alcohol violations, and 17 of those ended up in convictions. Yes. So even when they tried to enforce it, it wouldn't make it all the way through the legal system.

That was the guardiest town, by the way. Well, exactly. And they said in 1925, by 1925, six states had laws that basically said, quit investigating prohibition cases. Or were... I don't know. Bust you down to private, or whatever the police entry level is. We're going to bust you down to Keystone Cop level.

That's right. Chuck. Josh. You were speaking economically. That was illegally. All that crime came up, and corruption developed directly as a result of prohibition. Right. Al Capone, it was big for him, as you said.

He turned a, I don't want to say two-bit, but a fledgling empire from Johnny Torrio into a $100 million a year enterprise, which that's a lot of cheese by today's standards. Well, yeah, and he was doing a pretty good job of it there in Chicago until the mayor, who was in his hip pocket, said, I want to get out of your hip pocket, and you're done here. I can't believe he lived. But that led to Capone's downfall, right? Yeah. On a much larger scale, economically, prohibition was a very terrible idea,

especially in the midst of the Great Depression. Some companies, some brewers specifically, like Anheuser-Busch, as you mentioned, said, we Germans also like to supply you with things like root beer and ice cream and corn syrup. Yeah. So don't round us up, okay? Well, that allowed them to keep their doors open, basically. That did. Not everybody could do that. Not everybody could make that switch. Anheuser-Busch was already, I think, pretty big at the time.

So in St. Louis alone, before prohibition, there were 22 breweries operating. After prohibition was repealed, I just gave away the spoiler, nine reopened. So it had a huge hit just on the brewing industry. It also took away all the tax revenue that America was making before prohibition, taxing legal sales of liquor. All of this was untaxed. Bootleggers weren't paying any taxes. So they were getting rich. And then so when the Depression came along, that really kind of turned the tide, as far as America was concerned, like, okay, we're sick of this. A lot of crime has come about.

A lot of corruption. The U.S. is in the Depression and we're losing out on viable taxable income. This is just stupid. Everybody's drunk, anyway. And the ones who were just kind of moderate drinkers before are big-time drinkers. For example, apparently by the end of the 20s, there were more alcoholics than there were before prohibition, like clinical alcoholics. Adulterated or contaminated liquor brought on more than 50,000 deaths, not to mention cases of blindness and paralysis. Remember, it was either the Hangover Podcast or the Moonshine Podcast. We talked about conningers, the impurities in alcohol that can kill you.

Those did kill a lot of people through prohibition. On the flip side, those cirrhosis declined from 10.7 men per 100,000 to 29, all right, I'm sorry, it dropped to 10.7 from 29.5 per 100,000 from 1911 to 29. So aren't you just, Mr. Silver Lining? Well, no, this is my point, though, is they'll point to some stats that'll say, well, cirrhosis dropped, but then 50,000 people died because of making liquor in your tub. Right, and again, overall alcohol consumption across the board dropped from between 30 and 50%, which is substantial, but the ones who it didn't drop in, it kicked their drinking into hyperdrive.

Yeah, I think some people just like to be bad, like this forbidden, so I'm going to do it all the time. Actually, the parallel there with the marijuana movement in this country now is pretty striking, pretty similar because the recent economic downturns that we've had, I don't know if you noticed, but a lot of states started saying like California, you know what, we could make revenue wise if we legalize pot. It's a very interesting, I think it's Cato Institute, they're a libertarian think tank, and they issued basically like, you want to know exactly how much you can make and save by decriminalizing marijuana? Here it is. Right, and it was all the money you spend in the legal system, plus all the revenue that can be raised tax wise. Exactly, it comes to like

14 billion a year or something like that. It's the same thing. 14 or 44 or something, there was a four in there. Same thing with the stun gravy. We should give credit to that. That's John Hodgman's words from his book, The Area of My Expertise. But you can get on Amazon. I don't want people to think, Chuck is so funny, he thought of stun gravy because it did not. Chuck, Josh. 1932 comes around, everybody's sick and tired of prohibition. And Congress, a new Congress, says, you know what, we're going to repeal this. How much hip or drunk are Congress? They created the 21st Amendment because it takes an amendment to repeal another amendment, right? Yeah. And in the history of the United States, this is the first time an amendment

was passed to restore the rights taken away by a previous amendment. She won that one. Yeah. You know, what's funny is just about two weeks ago, I was having a conversation with my friend Kirk about prohibition. And I said, why don't they just remove the 18th and 21st Amendment now and just, I mean, why even have that in there anymore? And he got, he got kind of upset and he was like, this is the US Constitution you're talking about. And I said, well, I know, but it's just, it seems silly now to still have that on the books. Unless I guess it's just, you know, the constant reminder of this is what our country went through and see we repealed it. But to me, I'm just like, just take them out. It's kind of like,

don't be stupid. Yeah. Leaving it in there. It's a clear message to the people of today. But I wasn't trying to like desecrate the Constitution by doing that. I just thought it made it a more efficient document. You just remove those two useless amendments. Trim the fat. Trim the fat. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes

and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done.

Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So Chuck, that Congress passed the 21st Amendment, they had to wait for two-thirds of the states to ratify it, which happened on December 5th, 1933. John D. Rockefeller comes out with the famous quote, drinking is generally increased. The speakeasy has replaced the saloon. A vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale. A clerk stamped the document and everybody went back to drinking legally again. And that night probably resembled our trivia night recently, would be my best guess. So after that, Josh went to the states

to decide how to govern this. And a lot of states said 21 is probably a pretty good day to start drinking. A lot of states or some said like I think Louisiana and held out for a long time. Georgia even was 18 for a long time. I don't remember Georgia. I remember when Ohio did theirs. It was like in the mid-80s and because my sister was in between there. She was like 19 at the time. She was like, no. And I remember Louisiana also finally caved because the feds were holding out on their highway funds. They may have been the last one. They were. Were they? Yeah. They finally were just like, we can't take these potholes any longer. So they caved. So Josh, since prohibition so long ago was repealed and done away with,

you would think that now in the United States you can go anywhere you want, any day you want, buy your booze. You would be wrong. And I know that you know that that's wrong because you live in Georgia, pal. Georgia has a blue law. Yep. No Sunday sales. Nope. You can buy it in a restaurant after 1230. Yeah. So if you like to go to brunch early, you're out of luck. I found that out the hard way. It's very funny how the brunch crowd really turns up around 1215. Yeah. Before then you can get a seat anywhere on a Sunday. But because of the fear of enticing people away from church with booze or partying too hard on a Saturday night leading to a desire to keep drinking Sunday morning and then miss church, there's that blue law. Yeah. And they said that I didn't know this.

They said that, and this is not just in Georgia, but period in the United States. That was, that came about during the colonial times. They said, you know what, let's keep the Sabbath dry. Yeah. And what you've just made reference to is the last sentence of this article. It is, in my opinion, the strangest sentence ever used to end a House of Works article. Would you do me the favor of reading that sentence verbatim, please? This law was developed in colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath day in colonial times. The end. It's a little redundant, isn't it? Don't you think? Let's talk about some of these other states though. About half of Mississippi's counties are dry and you can't even drive through a dry county with booze, even if you're just taking it

home. Unless you feel like paying a bribe to the sheriff. Yeah. Or if you sneak it, but you can't go to a wet county and say, oh, I'm going to get my Sunday or my beer for the week. You can't drive, you have to take a circuitous route, circuitous, curcutous. You had it right. If you want to even take your beer to your house. Right. It's pretty serious. Kentucky. It's a dry, dry law. Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Virginia, a lot of these states, Alaska. Alaska, actually. You found like this pretty cool supplemental article about Alaska having 129 of the dry towns that's mentioned in this article. You found an article that explains why. Because apparently there's a strong tradition of binge drinking brought over by Russians and Finns, right? Yeah. Finland. And Finland actually

had its own bout with prohibitions as well, right? Yeah, they did. And I should also point out that this is introducing me to my favorite new expression that I've never heard before. Frontier drinking style. Yeah. They had frontier drinking style. It usually ends with bare wrestling. Bare wrestling. And it's interesting though that they've done a lot of studies and they shown that the volume and pattern of how you drink correlate with your culture. Yeah. So there's the European, the Southern European wet culture, which is frequent but moderate drinking. Like basically like French kids of age seven drinking wine at dinner. Exactly. Right. And then you've got the Northern European culture, the dry culture, which is like, you don't drink

very often, but when you do, you drink like nonstop for three days. Frontier style. And then wrestle a bear. Exactly. Right. And commit some sort of crime or something over and over again in the midst of this. Well, and in the end, places like Canada followed America and had prohibition for a little while. Canada beat America to the punch. We enacted prohibition in 1919. Canada's prohibition lasted from 1918 to 1919. Exactly. That's just like the beer baron episode of The Simpsons. Exactly. And in Finland, Josh, they repealed 99 years ago. In Finland, it really, really backfired. They enacted prohibition in 1919. It was all going on at the same time. It's pretty interesting all over the world. Yeah. And basically people publicly and privately

thumb their nose at it and they said that they estimate that alcohol consumption tripled perhaps in Finland. In Finland. After prohibition. And not only that, people were originally drinking 40% vodka and during prohibition, people started drinking basically moonshine like 96% spirits. Yeah. They said, you know what? You're going to do prohibition. We're going to get drunker more often than we ever had before. And we're going to get in our saunas and we're going to get wasted and you can't do anything about it. That seems like a bad idea. I've been sauning like crazy lately and I found out that heat cuts off the circulation in my calves. And Josh Finland clearly had a failed experiment and they repealed it in 1932. So it did last a

while. It did. But Alaska, they say to this day, native peoples of Alaska and Native Americans, they still, a lot of alcohol problems. Disproportionately so. And the sad thing is, is it was brought by Europeans. The binge drinking, the frontier style binge drinking was introduced to the Inuits and the natives of Alaska by Finns, Russians and I guess old timey clean jumpers who came up from the western United States. Gabby Johnson. Russia actually experimented for a little while too in 1914 through what, 1925? That's, I figured Russia would have been the one that was like six months later. Do you know like the average lifespan of a Russian male these days is down to like 59

because of vodka. Really? Because of drinking. Like they just drink like fishes apparently. I remember Yeltsin. Even, even, um, yeah, the nose. Yeah. I mean, it would look like a, that wasn't a gin blossom. That was a bloomin' onion. That's the end of that podcast. If you want to know more about prohibition, type that word into the search bar at house of works.com. Again, it's going to bring up that really super cool picture on page zero. I'm glad you show me that. That's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. And click all the way through to the last page too to find the strangest sentence ever used to end a house of works article. And since I said search bar at some point in the not too distant past, that means it's time for

listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this email from a guy whose life has eerily resembled our podcast. Huh. Slate. I discovered your podcast with my two friends and I went on a road trip from our school in Providence, Rhode Island to Minnesota. Go golden gophers in Minnesota. Yeah. According to Fargo, I was looking for something to listen to in a car on the way and randomly downloaded a bunch of your podcasts. So by sheer luck, Josh, how often does that happen? You think and people continue to listen? Yeah. Never this one time. Uh, then we began our epic quest across the country. Uh, whatever we listened to came true,

guys. We were in Toledo when Josh said he was from Toledo. We were with a Katie from Wisconsin. When you read a listener mail from a Katie from Wisconsin, weird, not the same person. And we won a trivia contest because of your habeas corpus podcast. The winning answer was the body. Our breaks failed in Pennsylvania and we hung out with some Amish while we waited for them to be fixed. Wow. And we even felt the membranes connecting our brain and skull being stretched in Chicago. What is a hangover? It was a stretch. Yeah, that's what I thought. We also met some friends along the way and combined our knowledge from the Red Heads and Flirting podcast on the way back from our week long. Honestly, we reminisced about our favorite parts of the trip and all

three of us mentioned your podcast on our list. All right. So thanks for helping us have such a great time. Then he goes on to suggest we do a podcast on the school of Americas, which we have one right here in Atlanta. No, the school of the Americas is supposedly a now defunct assassin school that we have at Fort Benning that was used to train Latin Americans in the, in basically an insurgency. Is he completely wrong about this in school? The Americas is just one place, but it's pretty interesting and scary. Well, then Paul, I've got some words for you, my friend. You've just misled us intentionally. And I would like to recant every bit of the enthusiasm I showed for your previous email. Are you sure he wasn't just misinformed? I don't care. Okay. There's

something called fact checking even for emails. If you, uh, do you want to try to mislead Chuck or I, we'd like to hear that. No, me, Chuck or me, mislead me, mislead, Chuck or me. We want to hear it in an email. And if you don't feel like doing something that mean, you could also actually don't even try to mislead us. It takes us off Lou Bega. If you have a favorite, strange sentence that you've ever come across in your life that can beat this law was developed in colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath day in colonial times, we want to hear it. Wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson

and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.