Stuff You Should Know - Social Security Numbers: Less Boring Than You'd Think

Episode Date: April 19, 2012

Do you know that up until July 2011 an ambitious hacker with a good software program could deduce your social security number based on your date and place of birth? In this episode, the boys examine some of the lesser-known details of the Social Security system in the U.S. 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 for you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. AKA 286-547-523. Dude, you can't get out your social security number. I just made that up. I thought about that. I thought about what if I like ended up when we were describing like what

the different numbers were. I was like, well, mine happens to be this one. If you listen to the whole podcast, you could put together my social security number. And I was like, don't do that, Josh. Don't. We should probably beep out what I said anyway, because that might be someone else's social security number. Yeah, I don't want to be responsible for that. Okay. Well, we'll go back and beep that out. That's really some COA right there. Why? How do you know that that person would be like, yeah, stuff you should know is called me on serial number wise. I want to contest. I can pay for my own hotel in Atlanta to go see the guys. Nice. But just me. So, Jerry, like though. Yeah. So, Chuck. Josh.

Do you know much about social security? A bit. You're about to. Chuck. Yes. The Social Security Act of 1935. Yes. Created by our old timey four bears. Uh huh. Basically created a scheme and not scheme in the way of like a carbon trading scheme or something like that. I know you don't like that word, but it's a legitimate word. It doesn't necessarily mean something to far. Yes. Right. But under this scheme, social security is given to retiring workers. Yes. In the month in the form of a monthly payment where basically it says, hey, good job. You did a good job working. Go take care of yourself. We don't want you to die on the street. Sure. This should hopefully sustain you in your retirement years. Right? This is before

the advent of 401ks and the like. Right. This is 35 bucks a month. Right. Well, the whole basis of it is that the workers of today pay into the Social Security Fund and it is immediately taken and distributed, dispersed to workers who have retired today. Yeah. So the workers of today are taking care of the workers of yesterday. That's the whole point to what this has led some people to claim that the Social Security program is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme where you're taking the money of these people to pay off other people. Yeah. Or socialism even. Oh, that's totally different. It is socialism. Yeah. But people cry socialism a lot these days and they don't think about things like social security and all the different ways we do have

socialism that people are like, oh, that's fine. Right. Sure. Yeah. But you can make a case that it is a Ponzi scheme. Sure. But Stephen Goss, Chief Actuary for the Social Security Administration, would take issue with that. I'm sure he would. He would say it's not a Ponzi scheme because a Ponzi scheme is not sustainable. Some might argue that Social Security is not sustainable. And that is, as we say here in the South, that's a whole nother show. Oh, okay. Well, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Well, what? Do you have some numbers on its sustainability? Well, we can chat about it. Here's the thing. So if you just, if you had zero population growth, this thing would work forever. Right. Right. And it would work completely efficiently with no changes

whatsoever. Unfortunately, we don't have zero population growth. And we actually had a spike in population that we know of as the baby boom. Right. Right. Which means that very shortly, and starting now, I think, there will be way more retired workers than there are workers. Right. Which means that the workers of today are going to have far greater burden placed on them taking care of these retired workers than any other workers ever have or will. Right. But Stephen Goss, Chief Actuary for the Social Security Administration says this will eventually work itself out. The government's taken steps to address this. And what it's done is raise the amount of money that people throw into this. And they're taking the extra money. And the government

is buying treasury bonds, investing in itself. Now, here's the weird thing. When they come mature, these bonds, the government pays these things off with other tax money. Right. So the government is going to pay the Social Security fund back with other tax money. Yeah. Now, this will drive people crazy. Conservatives, Libertarians. Liberals. Right. Leaning liberals. Right. Fiscally, conservative liberals, especially. But Stephen Goss assures us it's just a little bump. We're probably not going to have another population spike for a while. And Social Security will go right back to normal. It just takes for us right now. Right. The other thing that I never really

thought about is it could not have been a sustainable program even to begin with because you start Social Security and when was it, 1935? Yeah. People started getting paid out, you know, a year later, two years later. And so they weren't paying in that long. So immediately, you've got a problem on your hands because people are starting to get payouts that didn't pay in for 20 years. You know what I'm saying? Yes. That is the case. But the payouts were smaller at first. Yeah. But it still creates a bit of a wrinkle, I think, that would a wrinkle in time for the future. I agree. I think so. But it was a hump that had to be gotten over and it was gotten over. Like basically the first people just got screwed.

Yeah. Well, well, but they didn't pay in that much either though. So. No. And that's true. So they were rightly screwed. Okay. So let's talk about the history of all this, Chuck. And by the way, I guess the takeaway from the intro, Social Security is considered a what? A Ponzi scheme. I think people are just in there like, all right. Well, you already, you already blew the big secret there, the act of 1935. It was coined, the name Social Security was coined by Abraham Epstein. Yeah. Yeah. Who led the American Association for Social Security. Yeah. And they began paying out in 37, like you said. Yeah. Just for workers, right?

And it was the biggest wage earner of a household, basically the dad. Right. Got the money. As the retiree. Yeah. And it was a lump sum. Right. They didn't pay it in monthly buckets back then. Tell them what the first guy who got Social Security got his lump sum. Yeah. His lump sum was, was it 17 cents? Yeah. In January, 1937, he was the first guy to get Social Security benefits. And I looked it up. That's $2.55 in 2010 money. Oh, well. So even back then he was just like, Hey, federal government, I got something in my pocket for you. Yeah. Josh just made an obscene gesture. We should just say that. In 1939, just two years later, they added survivor's benefits and benefits to spouses and children. Flash forward to 56.

They added disability benefits. 65. Medicare was signed into law. Yeah. And in 61, the, I'm sorry, in 61, 62, the civil service commission and the IRS adopted the social security number as your official federal ID number and taxpayer ID number, respectively, which is a kind of a thing because the first Social Security cards specifically said on them not to be used as identification. Yeah. But they never made a follow up law to enforce it. And everybody's like, No, it's perfect for identification. Yeah. I'll always, I'll always remember it because of this card in my wallet. We'll use the mark of the beast as identification. The first numbers, because this is not just about social security, but more about the numbers, which is more interesting

than I thought. Slightly. Yeah. It was, they were distributed through the post office because they didn't have field offices yet. So they were nascent. Yeah. 45,000 post offices took the initial task to type up these cards are called typing centers. Yeah. So basically, this is, this is what I, this is the part I entitled bureaucracy hoe, right? Yeah. The Social Security administration contacted all employers in the United States and said, Hey, this is a form SS four. And on it, you just list the number of employees you have working for you mail it back to us. And so all the employers filled out, I have 15 employees and then mail the SS four back to the Social Security administration. Social Security administration opened up the SS

fours and they said, Okay, this employer has 15 employees. So we're going to mail him 15 SS five forms, which are basically signing up for your social security number. Yeah. Right. So they mailed the 15 back, probably in one package to the employer and the employer distributed them among his employees, employees filled out the SS five forms and they sent them back to the Social Security administration. Social Security administration said, Oh, okay. Now we have these and we're going to assign social security numbers. Right. Right. The, they said, Hey, go to your post office, the post office gave them the social security numbers, the post office then sent that duplicate form to the Social Security administration, who created the master file of all of these

documents put together, which was your social security number file. And that was sent to Maryland? Yes. And then in Maryland is where it all came together. That's right. Yeah. Well, what came together there? The numbers, the numbering sequence, the whole thing, your whole file. Okay. The block, the block file. That's right. So let's talk about the first numbers since we're there. Who has it? And is it 001, 01, 0001? Is that the first number? No. Well, we should first say that no one knows for sure who got the very first card and the very first number because they, they reckon about several hundred thousand people applied in that first November of 1936. So I didn't do the math, but there's some, I'm sure you could figure out statistically and I'd be interested to hear how to

do this. But if 100,000 people all got their card that day and the post offices were open from like eight to five, how many people were handed their Social Security number card simultaneously that day? Right. How many first people were there? There's got to be some awesome math equation to figure that out. Yeah. Somebody should do that for us since then. So they don't know officially who it was, but their first official record, they do know. It was a guy named John David Sweeney Jr. and he had the Social Security number 055, 09, 0001. And by 0, I mean 0, of course. Or ought. And he got his because the head of the Social Security Administration took it off the top of a stack and said this is the first one. That's right. So there you go. But they did offer that to, oh no.

They offered the 001 number, the lowest number on record. Right. Before we get to there though, John David Sweeney ironically died before he could collect his Social Security payments. John David Sweeney is the one with the first Social Security number. So that is very ironic. That's the fact of the podcast if you ask me. Oh yeah? Yeah. Because retirement age was 65 and he died at 61. Today they handle it differently. It's a little confusing, but actually it's not that confusing. You just have to be good at math. Benefits are reduced by five-ninths of 1% for every month you retire before the age of 65. Slacker. Yeah. Or rich person. Yeah. Good for you. So back to the number one, 001 or whatever. Yeah. The all-time low number holder who always will be until we

start recycling numbers if we ever need to. We won't. We may. We may. Her name is Grace D. Owen. She is of Concord, New Hampshire. Or Concord. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, because we always get mail from people. It's like, oh, you pronounced it Nevada. It's Nevada. Or if we say Nevada, they say, hey, you pronounced Nevada incorrectly. It's Nevada. No, it is Nevada. But I tell everyone that writes in from Nevada. Only people from Nevada say Nevada. Everyone else says Nevada. Right. Especially people in Missouri. 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

a 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 acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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right after the show to recap the episode. Deep brief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck Grace DeOwen of Concord, New Hampshire got the lowest number, 001-01001, which was her social security number. It was. And she got that not because she was first in line. As we've said, a different guy got that low number, or a different guy got the first number and it wasn't low. She got it because of where she lived. Originally, the number scheming was based on, well, the first two numbers were based on the state you lived in. Right. Starting northeast, moving westward. Right. And so you had less than 50 possible

primary numbers, the first two, first three numbers. Yeah. Well, not even, they didn't even have 50 at the time, did they? No, that's what I'm saying. So this is a total waste of digits. They figured out very quickly. So they started assigning them to zip codes instead. Right. And we should talk about these numbers. Do you want to? Are we there now? Well, we are almost there, but you didn't mention that Grace Owen got that number. They actually offered it as an honor to John G. Winnett, the Social Security Board Chairman, and John Campbell, the Federal Bureau of Old Age Benefits Rep for Boston. They offered them both the number 001, 01, 001. And they both said, no. No, thanks. We are true bureaucrats and that would be against the bureaucracy's rules.

That's right. And 17 cents to Ernest Ackerman, the first guy to get a payment. Yes, but item A, Fuller made out like a bandit. This is exactly the problem. This is not the problem. Mrs. Fuller did good things with her money. She bought herself an Edzel. Yeah. She invested in WebVan. She did great things. She did. So item A, Fuller retired in November of 1939. And she was the first person to start collecting monthly benefits. That's right. So by the time she, by the time Social Security payments or by the time you had to start paying in because another fact is that you can't opt out. And the time she retired, she contributed a total of $24.75. Yes. Because of the Social Security scheme, by the time she died at age 100 in 1975,

she collected a total of $22,888.92. See, not sustainably. She made out, she wore like a bandana around her face, like the rest of her life. She did. Yeah. She was a Social Security bandit. Yeah. Okay. Back to the numbers. Is that enough history? I think so. Okay. So the first three numbers, they're called what, the area numbers? Yes. And like you said, they were originally from northeast to west. So like if you lived in New Hampshire, your first three numbers were going to be 001. Then they figured out that, well, that's stupid. Like we're going to have 50 states tops. So there's a whole number that we're not using. Yeah. Eventually we're going to need it because

Social Security numbers aren't recycled. They're retired after the person dies, right? That is true. So then they started assigning them to zip codes. So that started using up a lot more numbers, right? Yeah, zip code on the mailing address on the application form, which didn't necessarily indicate your residence. It's just wherever the mailing address was, where you applied. Right. Exactly. When you were living, right. And it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't mailing in residence is not the same address. Most times it is. Sure. But even still, like the place where I was born, it's not where I live now. Oh yeah, not even close. So, right. So I mean, you have a lot of weird numbers for the beginning. Correct.

In the early 70s, since 72 is when they started the zip code. Yeah. So I believe that I actually, in one of the last years, since I was born in 71, last people to get the one based on the state. Cool. So I'm old timing. Seriously. That is something. Yeah. The next two numbers are group numbers. So you have your area number and then the area number is broken into groups 01 through 99. Yeah. And this makes sense. So the two numbers in the middle are the, you are that group of that zip code or that state, depending on how old you are. Yeah. It's just a means to break it up and make it simpler for accounting and filing and all that stuff. Right. Because instead of just one group. Sure. From an area or what 999 possible

areas. Yeah. You now have 99 groups of 999 possible areas. 99 groups each. Yeah. Which allows for a lot more because the eight ball that the social security number is always behind is basically running out of numbers. I don't think that'll happen. It will. Well, eventually, but there's what would they say, a billion combinations? There's a billion combinations, but consider this. There's been more than 400 million numbers issued since 1935. Yeah. So what, uh, 65, 77 years. Yeah. Right. I have a feeling that it does take into account the baby boom that ate up a lot of numbers. But I mean, I have a feeling that we could, we could reach that and what another hundred, hundred years the U.S. will be around, I'm sure longer than then,

hopefully. Hey, you never know. Yeah. China is rising. Well, it'll be at the very least not in our lifetime. Oh, no. So who cares? I would have agreed with you had you qualified it like that. Yeah. Well, what they'll probably do is, um, and I'm guessing here, but they'll probably start reassigning numbers from dead people, which will be weird. I use social security number. Yeah. I imagine they'd go back. I mean, it would make sense to me that they would start from the beginning again, almost. Yeah. So like you're using someone's number from 1935 in the year it's 21 14. Yeah. You got a stinky old mothball number. It's like a wicker, um, wicker wheelchair or something like that. They're like leather leg braces,

something weird like that from the 30s. What are you talking about? You know exactly what I'm talking about. Okay. The last four digits are the serial numbers and, uh, they number consecutively from triple O one through nine, nine, nine, nine. So that's just saying, well, we're going to extend the number, the possible numbers we can come up with exactly even more to a billion. And you know what? You don't even necessarily have to recycle. Even if you add like an extra attempt digit, how much would that change everything? I mean, they'd have to rewrite all their programming and all their accountings and yeah, but then we wouldn't have to recycle numbers. Yeah. Good point.

Okay. Luckily they have people much smarter than us deciding how to handle that. I don't know. We're pretty sharp. All right, Josh, common questions. These are actually pretty good. Okay. Chuck, here's a question for you. Does everyone have to have a service security number? If you're over 18, then yes, you do. Um, and you, it, if you receive an income and you're over 18. Okay. Um, if you're interested in starting up a bank account, uh, being a deduction on your parents' income taxes, all sorts of things like that. Meta, getting medical coverage, taking advantage of government services, then you're going to need that. So there's a lot of people who dispute that, but you have to have that. Right.

Practically speaking, you do. Like any bank can be like, I'm not doing business with you. And then you say, Oh, okay. Well, I can't force you to by law, but I'll try your competitor. And you go on down the line and maybe you find a bank from what I understand, there's banks that are set up in the Midwest, um, for people who don't have social security numbers. Like we've said, I'm not going to have one. I don't trust the government want to have a serial number and I'm not going to, to have this now, but they're still paying in. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think they're still paying in, but they don't have a social security number. So that means you're not going to get benefits at the end.

I don't think they think they're going to get benefits anyway. I could get that. Um, but yeah, they don't have a social security number. I think there are, there are people who don't pay social security as well. There's like a whole, yeah, there's, that's like a whole topic along the fringe of whether or not you need to have one, whether or not you actually do have to pay in constitutionality of it, all that stuff. But for all practical purposes, your life is exponentially easier if you have a social security number. Right. And you also said you have to pay because you can't tell the government, you know what,

but I'm setting up for my own retirement and I want to take all the available money that I make to do that because my retirement plan is much better than whatever you yokels are working on. Yeah. Because I mean, if you, you have to pay in 15.3%, I, I don't know if that's current. I haven't looked, but as of the writing of this, um, this, uh, article, it was 15.3%. 7.65% paid by you out of your gross pay and 7.65 paid by your employer. It is staggering how much we pay in taxes in this country. So if you took 15.3% of your gross pay and put it into a 401k over the same course of years, you would have so much more money. Yeah.

Barring a, another stock market catastrophe before you could get your money out of your 401k. Right. Um, you would have way more than you have, uh, from the Social Security Administration as, as benefits. You know what I meant to look up is if the government uses this money for other things in the meantime, or is it strictly like here, it's in this little pool and all we're doing is paying people out with it. Well, supposedly before the baby boom problem arose, it was going in and right back out. Okay. And I'm sure any surplus was invested in treasury bonds. Now, um, all of the surplus is invested in treasury bonds, which is just such a shell game. It's so crazy that no one has any idea if this is going to work. I swear to God, I'm not paranoid.

Yeah. I don't live in the Midwest. I'm not a fringe dweller. I, this is not something I like keep up with a lot. Um, I don't read world net daily. There's nothing like that in my life. Yeah. But I'm telling you, this is like there, there's no guarantee that this Social Security, um, I guess bandage for the baby boom populations, like if it's going to work, it's, it's really at the very least, it's interesting. Yeah. And the troubling I would say at the very least. Sure. Okay. Uh, they, they let you, uh, they make it real easy for you to slap a number on your little brand new baby. Yes. Do you have to have a number for your child? Well, like I said, if you want them to get medical coverage and, um,

open up a savings account in their name for like their future college or trade school or travels around the world, or you want to claim them as a deduction on your, um, tax filing. Yeah. Then they, they're going to need one and they make it pretty easy on you to get one for your new little, uh, smelly baby. They do. Again, um, I'm not a fringe dweller, but they have the very sinister sounding enumeration at birth program. That's pretty bad. Yeah. It started in 1989. Um, and basically just made it very easy for you to get a social security number for your infant as part of their birth record forms. Right. Enumeration at birth. You know, I used to, I think I mentioned this before I used to carry my card around on my wallet when I was a teenager because I thought

it was, I don't know. I thought it made me, uh, legitimate or adult-like. It's interesting. Everyone else is bonafide. Everyone else is out drinking and I was like, no, no. I got myself a security card. It keeps, keeps the urges away. That's right. Hey, speaking of social security cards and wallets, do you want to talk about that lady? Oh yeah. I can't believe this. Richard. Yeah. This in, uh, 1937, dude named Douglas Patterson had a wallet company. I'm sorry. H. Ferry. Yeah. He was the vice president and treasurer of this wallet company and he said, you know what we should do? We should include a fake social security card in every wallet. But we'll make it look really, really realistic by copying yours, Secretary. Yeah. He basically

assigned these little fake cards that like, you know, you get a picture frame with a fake picture in it. Yeah. They gave out wallet or they sold wallets with a fake social security card with a real number. I don't know why he thought that was a good idea or why she went along with it. Yeah. What was her name? Hilda Schrader Witcher. She went along with this. Did she go along with it? Did she like her boss? Maybe she didn't know. No, she knew. No, she did. Yeah. Um, and, uh, I guess she didn't feel like she could assert herself at the time, but, um, well over 40 years, something like 40,000 people used her social security number. Yeah. They gave her a new one. Yeah. And people are still using it as, as recently as 1977, there were 12 people using that as their

own because of this wallet. Yeah. And in defense of the dude, he did have the word, uh, Spichiman on the bottom of it. Space man. Specimen. Uh, but it was, you know, in small print and it looked like the real deal. Uh, it had the little emblem that, um, who was the guy who designed that? Uh, Fred Hapel. That's right. And what else did he design? The Flying Tigers logo. Yeah. Which, what was that? Like a B2 Bomber logo? Well, you know, it was World War II. I guess, uh, some sort of gunner playing or something. Okay. That'd be my guess. The Fighting Hellcats. Yeah. Yeah. Fighting. Hellfish. Hellfish. The Hellfish was the Simpsons? Yeah. Okay. Um, Josh, can you get a new number?

Yes, but only in very extreme cases. Like, so like stalking or fraud, a bad case of fraud, I guess. Yeah. I would imagine that the FBI can probably get you one if you're part of the Witness Protection Program. Oh, sure. Which we've talked about. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you don't have to pay for that. There's no fee, uh, from the SSA, but, um, you, uh, what, what you should be wary of is companies that claim that they can get you a new number to absolve your credit. Like, hey, have you led an awful bad life? Become a new person. We'll get you a new social security number. Which is hilarious if you think that, that's, that's crazy falling for that. That's like buying an elevator pass in high school as a freshman or something like that. Except way worse. When

you have a single floor high school. Because I'm sure they're like, not only do we charge you a fee, but give us your social security number because we have to go in and like make sure that it's wiped out. Right. Uh, where are we here? Uh, you know, the title of this section was why does it matter if someone knows my social security number? I think it's pretty obvious. Yeah. Identity theft. Yeah. It's a big problem these days. Back in the old days, it wasn't as much. It's actually gone down since this article. What, 400,000 a year is what they said here, right? It's like 217 now. Oh, that's good. Well, that's the ones that the FTC gets reports of, which are probably the lion's share of them. Right. But it was supposedly increasing like

by some crazy percentage. Yeah. 40% per year. It's, it's up 11%. Okay. So it's gone down some. I think people have just gotten scared of it and more wary about it. But, um, I mean, it's still obviously a pretty big problem. Sure. Part of the problem though is that we shouldn't be using social security numbers for identification for a reason. They're just way too publicly available. Even the last four digits, um, don't use that as like your pin number. No, but I mean, even if somebody asks you your last four digits, how many people have your last four digits? How many companies? A lot. A lot. And they also have your birth date. Yeah. They also have where you're born. Your mother's maiden name. It's just kind of like it's all out there. I know. And basically,

there's no really good scheme to, I guess, use as a passcode, as a pass, basically a way of saying I am me. Right. Because if we all just relied on some other number or something like that, then people could find that out. There's really no good way to do it. But, um, social security numbers are definitely not the answer. Yeah. I always get a little creeped out when some business, you know, what are the last like Comcast or something like my cable company? Yeah. We'll say, what are your last words of your social? And I'll spit it out and they'll go, oh, okay. Right. You can say, I don't want to tell you, I want to answer everything else and they'll, they'll run you through your paces. But they know it because they're asking you for identification,

like for verification. Exactly. Because you've given it to them already. Um, you don't, there's basically most companies don't have any legal right to ask you what your social security number is. Right. But they can also say, well, we don't trust you. So if you don't give it to us when you open your account or whatever, exactly, then, um, you're out of luck. Um, with government agencies, you can ask for the privacy act of 1974 disclosure notice, which says like, Hey, we have a legal right to ask you this or we don't. Right. And then you can say, you can ask me that, Bob. But yeah, um, all the protection advice that given here is pretty basic, you know, don't carry your card in your wallet, uh, cancel credit cards. You don't use,

don't share it. I dispute that one. What? Don't just cancel credit cards you don't use. There are things you should do like keep an eye on your accounts, your credit card accounts, even though you don't use them. But that's not necessarily good advice, especially credit wise, because there's this thing called the, um, available credit to, um, debt ratio, one of the ratios that they figure your credits grow with. And if you have a clean credit card that you're not using, that has like five or 10 grand of available credit on it, that counts. And that's, that makes you very attractive to people who are selling you houses or cars or whatever. That's true. So don't necessarily go do that. Keep them in a safe deposit box. Keep an eye on all your accounts, even if you're not

using them. Yeah. Boy, my credit rating is so good right now. That's awesome, dude. It's like top five percentile somehow. Oh yeah. And that is, I say that as a testament to you out there who may have bad credit. You can repair it over time. Yeah. You, uh, you and Emily did good, huh? Uh, well, yeah, she's the one that helped me get my good credit back. That's good. As CFO. Congratulations, man. That's a big deal. Thank you. It is good. And my debts, you know, from the past were, I don't want to get into it, but they had less to do with me and more to do with like bookies, heroin, dog fighting, bad roommates and getting screwed over by, you know, like, hey, you were supposed to pay this Georgia power bill eight years ago and it's still in my name

and I didn't even know about it, that kind of thing. Gotcha. And just being lazy in college. College kills a lot of people. Yeah. I missed my credit card payment. No big deal. I'll just pay it next month. Right. I'm just going to go buy some heroin instead. I know what you're doing in college, Chuck. Not that. 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 a 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 in on the prime example. 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 acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Ready, set, slay. Squirrel friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast is taking you behind the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 on MTV with me, Alec Moppa, and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, the best and worst looks,

and we'll even be joined by some of your favorite Queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of Queens this season because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race herstory, and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race herstory. So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode. Deep brief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I guess that's about it, huh? Yeah, one more piece of advice, which is actually good.

Every few years, go to the SSA website and request a copy of your earnings and benefit estimate statement. Yeah, have you heard of this before? No, and I've never done it, and I'm going to go do it today. All right, let's go do it together. We'll both go do yours together. We'll be like, what? I've been working since I was 13, so I imagine I'm doing pretty good. Nice. Oh, we didn't talk about that. The system is weighted. The whole reason it was instituted was to help make sure that people don't fall through the cracks or whatever and to help the poor more than the wealthy. Although you get more money out, the more money you put in, right? Which is based on your income. So the more you make, the more you pay in. But it's also disproportionately

weighted so that the people who are earning the least get a disproportionate amount out to help them. Correcto Mundo. Which is great. It's socialism at its finest, as you said. So yeah, that's about it. That's social security numbers and pretty much social security. I don't think we need to do that again. Okay. Hats off to FDR. Hurrah New Deal. Hurrah. Great society. Chicken in every pot. That was a Hoover. A number on every forehead. Nice chuck. Thank you. We'll end it with that one. If you want to know more about social security numbers, you can read this exhaustive article about them by typing in social security in the search bar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail.

Josh, I'm going to call this following up on zero. That one got a lot more attention than I thought. A lot. All the math nerds came out and were like, zero. Very happy that we did that. And one such nerd emailed us. This is Steven and he says, I think I might be able to put your mind to rest on a couple of those zero properties. And a lot of people try to explain this and I think he did the best. First, dividing by zero, I find it helpful to think of division as separating objects into containers. See, this guy is like talking up my alley. Yeah, containers. Yeah, I can visualize stuff a lot better this way. So if you have five objects in five containers, you would put one object in each container. You still have the same

number of objects, but divided evenly across containers. Now, if you have five objects in no containers, in other words, dividing by zero, you still have all the same objects, but they have not been put anywhere. You can't say that you'd put zero per container, because it's not a lack of items, but rather a lack of containers. So dividing by zero means you have things, but nothing to contain them, so a ratio cannot be formed. Awesome. Makes sense, right? As for the raising to the zero, zero power, this is one, because our basis of numerology is the number one. All things larger are functions of how many ones it holds, and all things larger define how many need to be combined to form a one. This combined with the fact that exponents don't describe a

multiplication, but rather a number of times, a base measurement will be multiplied by a factor, means that if the base measurement is never multiplied by the factor, you are left with the factor, you are left with the base alone. So there you have it. It's tempting to think of these numbers as one to the power, but unfortunately this is wrong. Can you go over that again? No. That is from Steven, a junior software engineer. Thanks Steven. So I will take him at his word. Yeah, he sounds like he's got it down. Yeah, the containers, that makes total sense to me now. Yeah. So there you have it. So thanks Steven, junior software engineer. We are looking forward to you becoming a senior software engineer, likely in the near future from your email.

And if you have some sort of illumination about a previous podcast, it doesn't matter how old it is, we always like hearing new stuff about old stuff. Sure. You can send it in an email to, well, first tweet to us. Okay. That's why it's K podcast, facebook.com. So we should know. And then the email stuffpodcast at discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Yeah. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? 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. 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.