Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How much money is there in the world?​

Episode Date: December 9, 2017

There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money exists and the problems with flooding the world markets with bread. 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. Hey everyone, it's me, Josh, and for this week's SYSK Selects, I chose how much money is in the world. First aired in September, 2013. And this is one of those topics that you kind of wonder

about ever since you're a little kid. I know I did. And delightfully, I found that as an adult, the answer was even more interesting than I'd imagined as a youngster. A youngster, that's what adults call kids, right? Well, anyway, this is one of my all-time favorite episodes. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and I'm with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's right here with me. So it's Stuff You Should Know. It's also really Stuff You Should Know, because Jerry's here, too.

Oh, well, Jerry's not here. It's fake Stuff You Should Know. It's less than vintage Stuff You Should Know. Gotcha. Man, it's not bad. Yeah, just not great. Yeah. I'm sure Matt and everyone appreciate that.

I've been listening to this crap. Yeah, true. Chuck, yes? How much money do you have on you right now? Cash? Zero dollars and zero cents. Well, that's stupid, because you should have $3,800 in cash on you.

I never have cash. Well, you should. Almost never have cash. You should have $3,800 in cash on you right now. So should I, so should Jerry. I agree. But we don't. We don't.

It's sad. I'd love $3,800 in my pocket. Okay, well, let's explain why I just said that, huh? Was I supposed to? Sorry, don't do it. I can do it. That's how much, if you divide up all the money between all the Americans.

That's how much we should all have. Bam. So we're trying to answer a question here. How much money is there in the world? Yeah. And we'll get to that. There's actually a rough estimate out there that may be right.

But instead first, let's talk about how much American money there is in the world. And not just because we're American, but because it is the standard currency worldwide. It's the closest thing to the universal currency that we have. True. The dollar.

The greenback. Yeah. But that's not as, I guess, widespread as it once was. A lot of people have abandoned the dollar and now use a basket of currencies to value their currency against. Yeah. Very rebellious.

Sure. But still, the dollar is generally what's used, say, for oil speculation. And imagine the dollars in that basket, too, though, right? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how much they hate America. Gotcha. So what you were talking about, though,

was all the money divided up by all the Americans coming up to $3,800. That's called the M-zero money supply. Of course, you know how I read that. How? M-O? The mo money supply. I was like, what?

And then I read it again. I said, it can't be called the mo money supply. Yeah. And then I realized that was a zero and not an O. It looks very much like the mo money supply. I wrote this article. I realize it. And I never saw it like that until you just said that.

Really? Yeah. Well, I like the mo money supply better than the M-O. Yeah, that's good. But it is M-O for a reason. There's also the M-1, M-2. And there was an M-3, which we'll get to. Right.

And the people who came up with this was the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Central Bank. The Fed. Right. And they like to track money. That's one of the things they do to amuse themselves. Count? Yeah, count money.

And go to sleep on piles of gold ingots. But the Fed came up with this mo money supply, also known as the M-zero supply. And that is all of the bills and coins, all of the actual hard currency that exists in the world. Anywhere. In US dollars. Yeah.

And as of July 2013. Hey, that's recent. Yeah, that came to, oh, we should say, Catherine Whitborn from Coolest Stuff on the Planet. She updated this. She updated this. So the fact that this is as up to date as it is, is thanks to her.

OK. But the mo money supply, as of July 2013, is $1.2 trillion. That's all the cash and all the coins all over the world of American dollars. The real dollars that you can collect and put together. Yep. That you can light your cigars with. Yeah.

Or you can throw into a fountain. Yeah. $1.2 trillion US dollars. So that's how much money was in the world. But, and we said also, that's $3,800 for every American, man, woman, and child. All 316,668,567 Americans that were alive in July of 2013. Each one should have had $3,800 in their pocket.

Because we're not talking checking accounts. We're talking the actual currency that people are walking around with. Since I don't have $3,800 in my pocket and I didn't in July. You don't, Jerry? Nope. Jerry's got more. Where is this stuff?

It's a good question. I wonder how that clock ticks, by the way, the population clock. I'd like to see a real time like three people died, four people born, two people died, eight people born, set of twins. I wonder if it ever does go backwards for a second. Well, it's got to, because people are dying. But more people are being born than people are dying.

Yeah, it depends on the country you're talking about. Yeah, that's true. I always drive by the one in Atlanta on the population clock that's been there forever. When I was a kid, I remember when it topped a million, it was like, whoa. Wow. And now it's whatever, a three point something.

Is it? Yeah. I mean, that's Metro Atlanta. Right. It's not City of Atlanta. All right, so back to it. Where were we? Hard to track?

The Mo Money? No, we were talking about where the $3,800 that should be in our pockets is. Oh, well. About a half to two thirds of that is overseas. It's in overseas pockets. That's right. Or overseas bank accounts.

No, no. We're not talking bank accounts. Oh, wait. That's just the Mo Money. That's right. Yeah. So that means that there are people walking around overseas with cash on them, American dollars.

Which makes a lot of sense. And so when you start to divide the amount of money that 1.2 trillion by a lot more than 316 million people, that explains why I have a single dollar bill on my person right now. And why I have nothing. All right, and Jerry? Nothing.

Nothing. Man, we're sad sacks. OK, so that's just the Mo Money supply. Yeah, the M0, the M1 is all of the Mo Money plus checking account money and other kinds of just accounts that you can track and travelers checks. Yeah, very liquid types of accounts. Yes, that's the M1 supply.

It's funny that you were having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that we were talking about cash outside of banks for the M0 supply. I had the same problem, too. Like it's hard to think of money outside of banks in this day and age. Yeah, I rarely have cash on hand.

You use debit cards and credit cards and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I use my American Express for everything. That's funny that on this audio podcast, you just held it up to your face when you said that. So that's the M1. In June of this year of 2013, the M1 supply was about $2.5 trillion.

So the Mo Money supply was $1.2. The M1 was $2.5. That's all the accounts and checking accounts, travelers checks. Then there's the M2, which is the M1 supply plus money market fund money, savings accounts, and CDs under $100,000,000, which they call small CDs. Right, a CD.

That's a pretty good CD. Well, a CD over $100,000 is called a jumbo. I was looking up jumbo rates. There used to be something like four and a quarter. Some of them would be like 22% for like a 10-year. Really? Yeah, so you'd get like $22,000 back over. No, I'm sorry, five years.

So you'd go give a bank $100,000. Say, keep this for five years, pay me back, and they would give you 22% interest. So you'd get $122,000 back. When was this? Not very long ago, a couple of years ago before the crash. You want to know what it's at right now for $100,000. Three year, I believe, CD, a jumbo CD,

you get like 1.4%. That's not even worth your time. To give a bank $100,000 to keep for three years, they'll give you $1,400? That's asinine. Go to the dog track with $100,000. And you leave a heroin addict. Crying.

All right, so the M2 supply, which like I said, which was the M1 supply plus, money, market funds, saving counts, and those smaller CDs, $10.5 trillion. That's virtually all of the American money in the world. Pretty much, because they got rid of M3 basically in 2006, because they said it really doesn't tell us much to know what the larger jumbo CDs are adding to this pile.

It doesn't change things that much, I guess. I imagine there's just not that many. Yeah, exactly. So about $10.5 trillion US dollars in accounts and in cash in holdings in the world in about July, June, July of 2013. That's a lot of dough. It is a lot of dough. That's a lot of mula.

Right. And if you want to, yeah, it even says in here, that's a lot of mula. It did. And that's when I looked up, I was like, who wrote this? I was like, oops. I thought this was well done. Well, and I learned how to spell mula.

I didn't know. Don't patronize me. No, I'm serious. I literally thought, oh, that's how you spell mula. How'd you think you spelled it? I don't know. M-U-L-A? No, I just never thought it.

I'd never seen it spelled out. M-O-O-L-A-H. Is that right? That's A-P standard. Exactly. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker

necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude 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 HeyDude, 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, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help, this I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, 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. So, um, this, I think we've kind of pointed out, it's tough to track money like this. Well, yeah, it's not the easiest thing.

They do a pretty good job of it. Well, the Fed does specifically because it's just what they do and they love doing that. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's an estimate still. Like no one knows how much cash I have in my house. No one asked me. No, but they know how much was printed. They keep track of that kind of stuff, how much is destroyed,

how much is in circulation. And you know, there's bank reportings. They know how much a bank has at the Fed. Yeah. So they have a, it's pretty close estimate from what I understand. The thing is, not every country has a Fed like the Fed in the US. True. And that makes it way harder to say how much money is in the entire world,

not just US dollars, but all the money in the entire world. And more difficult to control your economy. It is. If you don't know how much money you have, it's very difficult to sway your economy one way or the other. Right, exactly. So, um, Zimbabwe is a really good example of why it's so hard to track a lot of money and also what happens when you don't track your money.

Yeah, or what happens when you decide in order to fix economic woes, let's just start printing more money. Right. Because that's, if you know nothing about finance and economics, a common thing you might think is, well, they could probably just infuse some cash flow by printing money occasionally. And they do occasionally. But in Zimbabwe, they did it to such an extent with the Zim dollar,

which I didn't even believe that was right. It's actually called a Zim dollar. Sounds like something from a movie. Not a good one either. Yeah, exactly. They printed so much money that they encountered hyperinflation like the world has never seen before. Yeah, so basically ridiculous numbers.

Yes. This hyperinflation in 2006, it was, it was really bad. In 2000, Zimbabwe started to enter an inflationary spiral. Yeah. In 2006, it was so bad that a sheet, not a roll, a sheet of toilet paper, cost $417 Zim dollars. Okay. One square.

Yeah. A roll of toilet paper cost $145,750. That would go broke so quick in Zimbabwe. Well, that's the thing. Everybody would have gone broke, but it wasn't that the toilet paper was very expensive. It was that the Zim dollars had very little purchasing power. Yeah.

And that was because dollars, just like any other commodity, are subject to the influences of supply and demand. And when there's a lot of them on the market, their value decreases. Yeah. That's how the US government has managed to stay afloat so many times. They release a bunch of money. They cause inflation so that the debts that they owe are worth less. So when they pay them off, it hurts the government less.

It's a really horrible thing to do to your investors, but it's done. But that's the point. When you have a lot of dollars out there, you have less purchasing power per dollar. Yeah. And that's what was going on in Zimbabwe. And things got really out of hand because they decided to fight this by printing more dollars. Yeah, they really got out of hand. Some of these stats in here are just staggering.

You said that every, or you didn't say, you report that it was estimated that it was equivalent to prices doubling in stores every 1.3 days. Yeah, the most I saw was every 24.7 hours. Prices essentially were being doubled by the way of the dollar losing value. Right. Like the kind of inflation that we're looking at right here in America right now is like in the single digit percentiles. And it's being kept low by the Fed on purpose.

But we're talking like doubling, 100% increase. Like the toilet paper is this much, the next day is twice as much, the next day it's three times. Right. And that's just not going to affect the economy. That's going to like, I mean, think about it, if toilet paper costs that much money, people are going to stop using toilet paper. That leads to poor sanitation. That leads to, you know, it's just a domino effect.

Well, there was a joke that the toilet paper was so expensive. The dollar, the Zimbabwe Zim dollar bought such a little toilet paper that it was actually more useful as toilet paper than to buy toilet paper with. Yeah, that's not funny, but. Well, yeah, if you're in Zimbabwe, it's not. But the annual inflation was estimated, like this was watching Zimbabwe. If you were a currency or monetary policy economist, it was like a dream come true. Last time something happened this bad, it was hungry in 1946.

Yeah, I think we talked about that once. Yeah, I think it was in the Superstuff Guide to Economics, our spoken word album. But the inflation in Zimbabwe was estimated at 516 quintillion percent. That's by the end of 2008. Okay. That's not even the highest that I've seen now. The highest I saw is 89.7 sextillion percent, which is 89.7 billion trillion percent or 89.7 10 to the 21st power percent.

That was their annual rate of inflation. And that was probably early 2009. Yeah. Yeah, because in January 2009, they basically said you can start using foreign currency again, which helps stabilize things the tiniest bit, but it didn't obviously work. Well it ended inflation abruptly because they abandoned these dollars, the currency lost value so much that everybody stopped using it and they went to the South African Rand and the U.S. dollar.

Yeah, that took four months from January to April for basically to completely abandon their money. Right. So four months in a country's money is literally useless. Right. And when they did abandon it, it was actually a pretty good move. Like you couldn't carry the economy with this money any longer because it was so valueless. They're in bad shape no matter what, but at least that was a good move.

Right. And the reason it was a good move is because it stopped inflation because there weren't that many dollars and there weren't that many rands around, which means that they were scarce, which means again, according to supply and demand, they were valuable and that hence they had purchasing power. Yeah, and it's really unbelievable, but it got so bad they were printing money in larger and larger denominations because they had to because people couldn't carry around. You'd have to have a suitcase full of money to buy your toilet paper.

So they ended up producing a 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note that you can now buy on eBay for about five bucks. Yeah. That's sad. Well, when it was released, it was worth about 30. Yeah. And that's actual conversion rate. Like now it's only worth something on eBay.

Yeah, whatever you'll pay for it. Yeah. There is no conversion rate. Right. I think I'm going to get one though, just to have it. Do it. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, that's all. What is it? 300 note? 30? 100 trillion dollar notes. Okay. Yeah. But that's the fact that the Zimbabwean government wasn't tracking their money in the first place

and they didn't track it after they kept releasing it again and again. And there was no buyback program. They just said, you guys keep that. They have no idea how many Zimbabwean dollars were released just in the 21st century, let alone how many are out there on the market. That's why it's virtually impossible to track how much money is out there in the world. But that hasn't stopped at least one guy. Well, actually, that's not true.

I talked to Catherine Whitborn today and she was saying that the guy gave up that the most recent figure she could find was 2010 because he's like, forget this. Yeah. My Q it of dollar days with the Z.com. Yeah. I guess he gave up on it, huh? That was his blog, his econ blog. And he was tracking 135 currencies in 167 countries and I guess December 2010 is probably

one of the last stats he has then, if that's when he quit. And his mo money equaled 5.0 trillion in US dollars in circulation, M2 was 55 trillion. So 55 trillion bucks. Yeah. That's the value of all the money in the world occurring in my Q. In US dollars. The US dollar value. Yeah, US dollar value.

But not just US dollars. Yeah, that's everything. Right. 55 trillion. Yeah. So there you have it. Okay. So this would be a lot easier to track and things like what happened in Zimbabwe wouldn't

happen. You wouldn't ever have hyperinflation if we all used a universal worldwide currency. Yeah. Let's talk about that. It's been less than John Maynard Keynes has suggested that and it's been bandied about for a long time since World War II. Well even before then. Yeah.

I don't think it's, I think it was maybe closest to happening maybe after World War II. Well, yeah. Which wasn't very close. No. There were instances of what were to the people who were using the currency was effectively a universal currency like the early imperial powers of China and Rome used a single currency in all the lands they conquered which is why hordes of Roman silver coins are found in fields in the UK still today.

Right. But it's still not technically a worldwide currency. Yeah. But World War II, we came very close, right? Yeah. Let's talk about some of the pros I guess. I mean, if you look it up on the internet, there's a lot of debate still going on. Some of the pros, speculators can't short a currency.

That scenario you were talking about like devaluing currency to pay back debts. Right. That'd be gone. Because it wouldn't be a commodity. There wouldn't be any other currency to exchange it against. So therefore it's just a dollar. Just can be used to buy something. You can't buy and sell it itself, it wouldn't be valueless like that.

Exporters wouldn't have to worry about price gaps. There would be no conversion fees which would free up money for like healthcare or whatever. I mean, something good to spend it on. Right. Of course, this is a utopian outlook like, oh yeah, then they could spend it on healthcare. Right, ideally. But it would free up money. It would end disputes about currency manipulation like China.

So there are some pros for sure. You wouldn't have to stand in line at the Cambio centers and exchange your money when you travel. No, and it's convenience. It's convenience. You and me and I went to Europe this summer and it was nice to not, we just exchanged once. Yeah, that hadn't been since the Euro.

It's like everywhere. And even in places in Croatia, they still use their currency but everybody accepts Euros. Yeah, I bet they accept American dollars there too. Probably. I kind of enjoyed the different currencies. Oh yeah, it's pretty. And it's just neat.

I kind of enjoyed the, I mean, I guess it was, I didn't see it as a hassle. Maybe I was young but I always thought it was kind of neat like, let me go turn in my francs for my German dollars. Well it just sucks to lose money buying another currency. Yeah or to come out ahead though. That's when you're rocking. No, right. Sometimes.

It's been a while since that happened. Well, this was in the mid 1990s. So the American dollar was, we were doing pretty well in Eastern Europe. The dollar was sound as the pound. But we got killed in England, of course, as always. Yeah. Because your pound is so awesome. Well that was the big discrepancy after World War II, like when we came close to adopting

universal currency, the Americans and the Brits couldn't decide on what to value it against the pound or the dollar and so it just fell apart. Well the Pew Research Center did a poll and apparently 41% of Americans believe that we will have a universal currency by 2050. But the article I got that from, the guy speculates that could be because we're sort of programmed to think that the future will be like that because every sci-fi movie ever, it's like universal credits, it's not even like cash. So people would just kind of have that in the back of their minds.

So there's a lot of drawbacks to a universal currency as well. There's some clever things you can do if you are in charge of your own currency and it's valued against other currencies. One of them is if your economy is sluggish, you can release a lot of your currency, create inflation, drive prices down in your country compared to the buying power of a foreign currency and attract that foreign currency and get your economy kickstarted again. If you're using the same currency as all these other countries that you're trading with, sure there's not that gap, the currency gap, but you also can't do that nice little trick

that probably would have bailed out Spain and Greece on their own had they not been trading the euro or using the euro in the last couple of years. That's a good point. Some pundits think that the gold standard, if they were to go to a universal currency, it should be based on something like the gold standard again or the gold standard period, not a lot of other people say, no, that's antiquated and just a bad idea, potentially dangerous. I wonder how.

How it would be dangerous? I don't know. We should do one on the gold standard. I mean, they got rid of it for a reason, so I don't know, something about going back to something that... But it was Nixon who got rid of it, so it makes you think it's inherently evil getting rid of the gold standard. The other thing too is who's going to run the show is really the big...

I think that's probably the biggest stumbling block. It's a huge one. It's there's got to be a universal body. An international reserve bank, central bank that has the authority on issuing these things or buying them back, and yeah, I mean, ever since the Clinton era, everybody's been nervous about that kind of thing. But even if you're not a paranoid type, you may just think that this body by definition would be incompetent just from looking at the UN.

UN has successes, peacekeeping missions are frequently very helpful, and can add stability to a region, and then you have things like the international panel on climate change, which releases its opinions on climate change based on politics and diplomacy rather than science. Yeah, and you can't, if it's a world bank, there's too much at stake to make mistakes. We already have a world bank, it's just not in charge of every currency. And if it were, I mean, it could be problematic. It could be helpful, it could be problematic.

I don't really fall down on either side of this. Yeah, I don't know. You know how I feel about economics, it's just as long as I can go buy my stuff and pay my mortgage, I don't care if it's at the yen or the dollar or the euro. Or the community financier de freak, Frank, do you care if it's that? No, I had never heard of that. I thought the euro was sort of the only consolidator, but apparently in Africa, eight West African nations do share that West African CFA, Frank, African financial community.

So six Central African nations share a Central African CFA, Frank, which is weird because they're interchangeable. Yeah, two currencies that they can, either one's fine. Yeah. I guess it's like when you go to Costa Rica or Mexico, you can use your dollars, you can use your pesos. Yeah, I guess so. But apparently from interchangeable, I read that to mean like they're valued the exact

same, which is like, well, I have two different currencies that are so similar that are the same value. Yeah. Just make one CFA, Frank. And then there was a lot of talk about hemispheric and regional unified currencies in Central America and South America. Yeah. And they came very close, but the recent troubles from the euro zone have made a lot of people

back off about it. And in North America, there was going to be the North American Union, which is Canada, Mexico and the United States, supposedly we're going to be fused together into one political... Mexico was like, yes, and Canada was like, ah, and America was like, oh. Well, we were going to come up with the Amaro, A-M-E-R-O was the name of the unified currency that would have been... Really? Yeah.

Interesting. Well, it's a conspiracy theory at least. Oh, okay. There you go. That's how much money's in the world. And it's kind of weird that, not a weird, but that America sandwiched between such two different countries. It is.

But Canada and Mexico, it's like, you can't get any more opposite. Yeah. I guess... Climate, people, food, economy, and then America's right in the middle, it's kind of fitting. We're the melting pot of Canada and Mexico. I guess we are. Or where it all comes together. Of America's hat and America's pants.

I can't remember what you've called Mexico before. Shoes? I don't think so. All right. Let's just call it Mexico. Okay, so that's how much money there is in the world. If you want to read this article, you can type that into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since it's a search bar, it's time for a message break.

On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll 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 HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. 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. And Chuck, what time is it now? It's time for administrative details. Again folks, this is when we thank people for, uh, sweet gifts that they send us in the mail.

And I have a list of books starting with how, why, how we do anything means everything. How Colin. There you go. Why, how we do anything means everything by, uh, Dove Seidman or Dov, Dov. Yeah. Dov. Dov? Yeah, I appreciate that Dov.

They're very nice. The Dovster. Do you want me to do it one more time? No. Okay. Uh, let's see. We got a postcard from Madagascar from Cara Levitt. Thank you very much for that.

Nice. Uh, another book by Alan Gerstel, Swing, Colin, The Search for My Father, Louis Prima. Oh yeah. Nobody read this one, but it deserves a double. Okay. Um, we got a letter with further insight into the hip hop episode from B-Boy Antivirus. Nice. Yeah.

How's he doing these days? He's doing great. Okay. And it's nearly explained by Dick Maxwell, and that is available on Amazon or Kindle. Nice. Um, we have a postcard with a picture of the pair, which you'll remember from the torture episode, from the Museo de Torture from Anna. Oh, nice.

Thank you very much. Uh, our buddy Roger Ma sent us the Vampire Combat Manual. Yeah. And he's previously sent us the Zombie Combat Manual. Yeah. And, uh, Roger's good too. We actually finally met him, didn't we? Uh, I don't know, did we meet him?

I think we met Roger at one of the Comic-ons. Oh, good. Not mistaken. Yeah, okay. I think you're right. Hey, Roger. Uh, we got a postcard from China from Cary. Nice.

Uh, we got another book called Trunkless. It's a children's book. And I don't have the author here, but it's called Trunkless. I think we did that one before. Did we? Mm-hmm. All right. Double plug.

Uh, we got another postcard from Bagram Airfield from Amy Lynn. Thanks for that. And we got a book called Verbovors Feast, Verbovors Feast, uh, by Christie the Wordsmith, and that was sent in by Hillary. Nice. Uh, we got a postcard of a bear pooping in the woods from Van Nostrand. Thanks, Van Nostrand. Yeah, and we should mention too, Van Nostrand also sent us his CD, uh, from his awesome

band, The Bangalores, Sasquatch with a mullet. Yes. Thank you, buddy. Um, we got a comic zine called Happy Trails, Cowboy Poetry, by Horace T. Brushy Beardstache. Um, we got a really cool cityscape watercolor card that was, uh, designed and sent by Alex. Thanks, Alex. John Linnemeyer wrote a book called How an Average Man Lived an Adventurous Life. And I haven't read that yet, but I'm going to.

Good going, Chuck. Yeah. Um, we got some CDs from Rich Bozik that may or may not have been all of them, but thank you very much for those. Yeah, and I believe he also sent us a DVD called Forgotten Detroit and a nice handwritten, or, I'm sorry, a ink rendering of ourselves. Okay. A caricature.

Right. Did you see that? Yeah. Is it the same guy? I think it's the same guy. Well, thank you very much. Big time, Rich. Uh, a book called Roman Disasters by Jerry Toner.

And a book called The Life and Times of Swirly Van Coco, Stuff You Should Know Edition. It's a comic, actually, from Aaron Dunbar. Yes, I remember. What else do we have, Chuck? Uh, and then we have a bunch of music. You want to go through these? Yeah. Uh, Column Blow, Devil in the Sky.

That's right. Uh, Ben from Self-Evidence and his CDs and vinyl of the record We Built a Fortress on Short Notice. We've definitely plugged that one before. Yeah. Uh, the Lala Band sent us their CD Moonshine Still. Yep. A group called Forging Reverie sent us a CD called Motion Canvas, and that was from Derek.

Yeah. Davis and Sam Gray sent us a CD, Table People, and some authentic Korean junk food. Awesome. That's right. Uh, Burke, uh, in Graphia, or in Graphia, uh, sent us download codes for, uh, his CD Jazz Animals. Right. Uh, Katie Sinner sent us a nice handwritten letter.

She's doing something called The Letter Project, where she sends a letter to somebody who inspires her to ask, what are you pursuing in your life, and do you know, how do you know when you've gotten there? Yeah. Yeah. Did we? Yeah, I did. Oh, nice.

For both of us. Oh, nice. Thanks, man. I know what you're, I know what you're pursuing. I don't even have to do any thinking. Uh, and then we have one more, uh, vinyl and CD, The Shape of Beats to Come, from, uh, Bendick, Boxxus Band. Yes.

That is V-E-N-D-I-K-V-A-K-S-A-A-S. Yep. And, uh, you should take these vinyls. He's pretty awesome. There's a couple over there on my desk. Thanks, man. You got a record player. I do.

You got a record player. What happened to your record player? I don't know. It's up in the attic, and we're three years or so. Until I get it going, you should just take the vinyl. I will. Yeah. And we appreciate the vinyl, by the way.

It's very cool. I believe Bendick, Boxxus, um, do you want me to read his name? For volunteering? No. Donating to co-ed? Oh, maybe. Bendick? I believe so.

Bendick, yeah. Well, if that's the same person, then thanks for that. Doubly. So that is administrative details for now. Phew. Thanks for the stuff. Yeah, we're all caught up. Very nice.

I know. We're going to take, like, eight episodes to cover it all. That's right. Uh, if you want to send us something, you can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. And you can join us at our home on the web, the awesome website, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude 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 HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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