Stuff You Should Know - Why You Probably Have a Criminal Record

Episode Date: August 21, 2012

If you're an American adult, there's a 1 in 4 chance you have a criminal record. While it's less likely you've committed any serious crime, there are still repercussions to having a rap sheet as more employers use them to decide between candidates. 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 especially 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 jackmove 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. 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. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Do you have a migraine or something? No. I don't get migraines.

Oh, that's good. I don't either. You just knocked on your head. Yeah. There's no wood nearby. I bet this is woodish. Yeah. Yeah, we're good. You put us together and you've got a little podcast called Stuff You Should Know. That's right. We've been doing this for 400 and we at 450? I always bet we're very close. Not bad. I guess you could say we're starting to get our stride. I'm waiting for someone to come take the keys away and send me to my room. I think they stopped paying attention. They're not really aware that we're doing this any longer. I know no one of any importance actually listens, so that's always good. But every single person

who listens is important. That's right. That's a good point. So Chuck, yes. You ever seen the movie Scarface? Yeah. You know the whole beginning part where he comes to Miami from Cuba? Yeah. So that was based on an actual historical event called the Mariel Boat Lift. Yeah, I think I knew that. So between, well, then sit back and listen up to something you already know. Okay. Between April 15, 1980 and Halloween, 1980, 125,000 Cubans were basically allowed to leave Cuba. Wow. That's a lot. And they were also allowed to enter the United States. For how long? Was there a window? Oh, yeah. From April to Halloween. Oh, wow. So yeah, I mean a lot of them came. And it was a huge deal. They basically put everybody in jail.

Remember the Fulton County Federal Penitentiary where Scarface was, the real Scarface Al Capone. Just down in Grant Park, they put a bunch of them there and there was actually an uprising there and Delta Force had to come in. I think we might have talked about that. And the Delta Force. So it was kind of a big deal. One of the reasons why they put everybody in jail is because they wanted to make sure that Castro wasn't just sending over the dregs of his prisons. Right. So which would have been pretty smart. Yeah. So they actually interviewed everybody and 23,000 of them confessed to having a criminal record back in Cuba. Wow. And that's really saying something because it's not like Cuba was going to send over these people's records. This was self-confessed.

And I think that right there basically kind of tells you about that person. They're trying to fit in. Well, let me come clean. Exactly. Maybe if I come clean, I can stay here. Right. Yeah. Let's say that that's what it was. That's what I'm thinking. So of these 23,000 though, they found that only 2% were actually criminals under U.S. law. Really? The other, let's see, 21,254. That's just off the top of my head. That's good. Were criminals under Cuban law that didn't have some sort of analog here in the United States. I wonder what some of those laws were. I would imagine they would have a lot to do with dissent, political dissent. Yeah, probably everything or like hoarding items. Hoarding? Yeah. Like, you know, under Communist rule, if

you're hoarding toilet paper or you've got some smuggling operation going for toilet paper. House swapping apparently is illegal in Cuba because they're like, we're going to give you a house, but we're going to tell you which one it is. Gotcha. Anyway, so most of these people were allowed to go free and even some of them were allowed to go. Even some of the actual criminals were allowed to go under what's called immigration parole. And then of those 2,746 who were found to be real criminals, 800 to 900 had to come back to jail, the real pokey this time because they'd broken a U.S. law while on immigration parole. But my point is this, without criminal records, I would not have had this intro. That's pretty good. I had a feeling that was going to circle

around like that. Because we're talking about criminal records, at least here in the United States. Yeah, and when we say records, we don't mean the good kind. We mean like files. Yeah, not like a break. You broke a record. Or like, let's listen to a record. Yeah, those are good records. Yeah, there's a, there's, I can't remember what Lisa's doing on the Simpsons, but she has to go to the Hall of Records and then underneath in parentheses says not the good kind. Oh, really? That's good. All right, criminal record here in the U.S. at least as an, I didn't realize this. It starts with your arrest. Yes. For some reason, I thought if you were arrested and not convicted, then they would just say forget about it. Yeah. Well, apparently

once you have a charge and there are ways for, they can say forget about it, but you have to go ask and they can tell you no, because they don't like your looks. There's a few ways these are used here in the States. First and foremost, obviously, to help out trying to catch bad guys. Sure. And the database, IDing suspects. That's kind of the original point. Yeah, I think so. They are also used for sentencing now, which makes sense. Yeah, because like, if you've done something before and they know it, they have a record of it. That's right. They can say, you know what, due to your past behavior, we think that we should really throw the book at you. Right. Or if there's like a three strikes law, they have to. Yeah. Background checks. That's

the third thing they're mainly used for. This is the most controversial use of criminal records. Absolutely. Because with background checks, if you enter the military, try to get a job with the FBI. If you are involved in elderly or child care, yeah, criminal background checks are pretty standard, but they're also becoming increasingly used by corporations in what is widely considered overbroad ways. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because the original idea of using a background check, a criminal background check for a job was that they're checking that you're applying for like a delivery driver job and they're checking to make sure that you don't have a history of like running down the elderly with your car and driving off because they'll get sued for that. Well,

now companies are just looking for any kind of criminal behavior whatsoever. And as we'll see, they can actually say like, no, we're not going to hire you because of your criminal record. They can discriminate based on a criminal record. But you can also not share that criminal record. You can. Correct. Yes. Okay. We'll get to that. Back in the day, obviously they used to just hand right these things, keep them at your local cop shop. And that's why back in the day it was really easy for your criminal just to move to a different state or city. Yeah. And like you're sort of getting a fresh start on life. Yeah. Because if you wanted to share this criminal record, you might have to sit down and hand write it out. And who wants to do that? Nobody. Not me.

Basically, it was just medieval monks who were cool with doing that and they didn't have anything else to do. Cops had plenty of other stuff to do. So right about now, if you're out there in podcast land and you're listening to this and you think, dude, why are you telling us your awesome audience about criminal records? Because we're all have clean noses and we're do-gooders of the world. I believe you. But here's a stat. 6.5% of the US population has a felony record. A felony record. Which is higher than I thought it would be. Yeah. And one in 15 people have actually been to prison. In the pokey. In the pokey. And I think our fan base would be on the lighter side of that. Yeah. But hey, I know we've got people out there that have been in prison because

we did prisons. People wrote us. We have people out there who are in prisons right now. Yeah, that's right. Let's do a little shout out to our prison population listeners. Everybody in there. Stay up and hang in there. Get out soon. Yeah. Behave. Okay. So even beyond that surprising stat, right? 6.5% felonies, right? That's right. 65 million, which is about a quarter of the American population. 65 million American adults have a criminal record. Which means they've at least been arrested. Yes. Right. Yes. Do we need to talk about anything in our past? You know I don't talk about that. Okay. There are some things if you do have a criminal record that are that are going to be there for the for the taking if you're in law enforcement. That is pretty much your name,

date of birth, aliases, what you look like, what you're built like, where you live, what you've done. Yeah. If you've got any outstanding warrants, if you've been convicted, and then the old standby fingerprint mugshot. Yeah. It's all right there. Basically what's keeping smokinggun.com alive. Yeah, I love that sign. The mugshot. The dude, the Huffer with the gold face. Have you ever seen that guy? No. He was arrested for Huffing and he's got like the glittery gold spray paint around the nose and mouth. That's pretty funny. No, my favorite was either Nick Nolte or James Brown and they look like brothers in their mugshots. Yeah, those are pretty close to the crazy hair. Yeah. Yeah. So basically you can see just from those details of what's in a criminal

record. The idea behind them is we want to find out who you are and what you've done before. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. It's aside from the fact that they're not handwritten and just kept like you say at the local precinct anymore, they're stored on databases. That's the idea behind them hasn't changed much over the centuries. That's true. Very true. It starts at the local and state level and if you are going to have an arrest record or a criminal record, that too is in charge of keeping up with it. Like if it was a state crime, it wasn't a federal offense, then your state court and state offices who's going to be in charge of that and then they can either report it to their repository or not. I think not all states mandate that. No, it's voluntary. And then the state repositories

can either report it to the national repository or not. I'm sorry, that's voluntary. Within a state, in some states, it's voluntary whether municipalities share their information. So it's all kind of voluntary, right? If you end up on a federal registry? To an extent. And you can have more than one record. I would imagine in a perfect law enforcement world everyone has, everyone who has a record, has one record and lives in the cloud and it's just accessed when you do another thing. They just add another thing to it. But from the sound of this, you can have a bunch of different records and they could all have different stuff in them and maybe they'll never be compiled into one. That's true. Well, it's because there's a lot of people committing

crimes. There's one reason. Is there? And I think they're trying. Or does it disappear that way because they have multiple records? I think we may have stumbled onto something. I think you're right. There's only like eight criminals in the US. They're just really prolific. 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 2200 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. 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. Yeah. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Our nation loves true crime. And it's no wonder in the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors' Heal, hosted by me, Boya El-Sharrells.

I've worked as an organizer, activist and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground floor providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new Survivors' Movement. Listen to Survivors' Heal, available on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So the good news, Josh, if you have a criminal record and you want it expunged or sealed, as they call it in some states, you can get that done if you go through, well, you can at least try to get it done by going through a very specific process in the court, in the state,

where you are convicted. So you petition the court and there's lawyers that specialize in this kind of thing, like going before the court and saying, look, this guy, this crime was a crime of passion. There's no recidivism involved. This guy's had an exemplary life since then. He wasn't even convicted. He was just arrested. This was 12 years ago. He hasn't done a single horrible thing. Even if he had had a sentence, he would have completed it. He hasn't been arrested since. So the judge thinks about it. They bring out a dog and if the dog likes you, then your record is expunged. I think the judge sits over the big expunged stamp or denied, like in Raising Arizona, just wham. I don't think they should use that word because

it gives the impression that your record is wiped clean and that there's maybe a sheet of paper that the stuff all used to be on, but there's nothing there any longer. It's not the case. Sealed is a much better term to describe what happens because what happens is your record remains, but only law enforcement has access to it. Yeah, but it sort of is expunged in a way, because, or I guess the key word there, you said the appearance because you can still, from that point on, give the appearance that you have a clean record to your employees. You can say employers and employees. You don't want them thinking ill of you, right? But you can say I have a clean record and legally you can say that and get away with it.

Yeah. If it's expunged, although it still exists. It's just a law enforcement and also government agencies have access to it, but no one else does. If you're in Arizona, you're out of luck. Yeah. If you're in New York, I think, and see, this to me should be automatic. If you are arrested and convicted of something, then they found out someone else did it. Right. You have to still go through that process in New York to get it expunged. And I guess in other places, but I figured that would be automatic. No, in New York, if you're arrested and you are not, not, you're not convicted. You go to trial, but you're not even convicted. Yeah. You still have to petition to get your arrest record cleared. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's everywhere.

They're right. I am under the impression because New York, where it's possible only if the case was decided in your favor, that that would mean that if you were, if you went to trial, your criminal record would be expunged if you weren't convicted. Gotcha. I have to admit, I'm not sure about that one. New York doesn't play. No, but Arizona seriously doesn't play. Like, they have no process for expungement whatsoever. Which is too bad. And I think even with kids, that's the case. What in Arizona? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, with juveniles, since you brought it up, everyone knows that if you're under 18, generally you will be tried as a juvenile unless you have murdered or raped somebody or some other really, really terrible crime, they will try you as an adult.

But if you're under 18, they'll try you in juvenile court. And here in this country, we have a little belief that, you know what, we're going to wipe your record clean once you become an adult. You might have messed up as a kid, but you're going to get a second chance out there in life as an adult. Don't worry about your juvenile record anymore, which is great if you stay on the straight and narrow. Right. If you don't, then it's still attached to you. If you start committing crimes again, and you actually, if you are a juvenile convicted of an adult crime, tried as an adult and you want to get that expunge, you have to go through the same process as any adult would. Yes. As well as if you have a sexual crime, you have to register for the sex offenders list just like you would

if you were an adult. Right. Which is super important. I should say also in its defense, Arizona does have a process for destroying juvenile records. Oh, they do? Yeah. Okay. I guess it's just adults. Gotcha. So the, I guess the sex registry is kind of a version of the specialized criminal record depository. Right. Yeah. So for many years, I guess until very recently, states weren't mandated to have a sex offender registry. There's a girl named Drew Shadeen. Yeah. Who was like a 22 year old North Dakota college student. I remember this very well. Do you? I didn't remember. Yeah. Who was abducted and I believe raped and murdered by a guy who was a level three sex offender and level three is like where the justice system is

basically like this guy's going to do it again. Yeah. He had raped another woman. He kidnapped and stabbed the woman and he'd just gotten out of jail for 23 years for those crimes. And he did it again. Did it again. And one of the ways that he was able to do this is because North Dakota didn't have a sex offender registry. Well, they do now. All states do now. And this is, I think, like 2002 or 2003. Yeah, when that long ago. But they named the national sex offender public registry after Drew Shadeen. So it's very appropriately called the Drew Shadeen national sex offender public registry. And basically, this is a publicly accessible database. Yeah. I mean, go to it and type in where you live and it'll be like, here are all the sex offenders

in your neighborhood. It's pretty disconcerting. There's apps out there where you can like, see who lives where. And you'll find also that they're very frequently there's a like will be one apartment complex or something where there's a bunch of them. Yeah. And the reason being is because most states have laws where like you can't live X number of yards within a bus stop. Right. You can't live X number of yards within a school. What have you. And in states like Florida, they're so restrictive that sex offenders frequently have to like live under overpasses in the middle of nowhere. Well, that happened in Georgia. Yeah. I remember that camp. They're like on the woods. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's still there. Is it? I believe so. Yeah. Well,

I think probation officers officers too will set people up in housing. Yeah. And a lot of times they'll, you know, that's like the apartment that they go to. Right. The apartment complex. Gotcha. But obviously that's a really important thing to have because sex offenders had the highest recidivism rates of I think all criminals. Yes. I read that somewhere too. It's very scary. So now they're stored on databases. Obviously we've talked about Interpol before and they're shared, you know, internationally. They're getting better about that at least. But it's not like an open book, right? It isn't an open book. And in fact, you have a legal right to access your criminal records through the Freedom of Information Act. And I went and looked, the FBI

will give you whatever they have on yourself or else they'll send you something that says you have no FBI record. Yeah. I think you're only in the National Crime Information Center database if you have been booked and fingerprinted by the FBI. Or the FBI has your record. Right. I'm sorry, the Interstate Identification Index. I think that's the one where you're only entered if the FBI obtains your fingerprint data. So like somebody has sent it to the FBI at least. But the FBI, do they maintain a national database of criminal records? I don't know if they maintain it or not. It doesn't say. I know the DOT maintains one for traffic violations, like big ones. We should have mentioned that. Yeah. If you've been convicted of

some sort of traffic offense, a speeding ticket will have you or anything. It's not on your criminal record. Yeah, unless it was like vehicular homicide or something like that. That would be in there, right? Yeah, I think so. Instead, it's things like DUI suspended licenses driving without insurance, fatal accidents. Yeah. They're maintained on the National Driver Register, which is separate from your criminal record. So perjury. You could have two records out there. Me? Maybe. Perjury about the operation of a vehicle. That's if you've ever, like you get in a wreck and you're a drunk driver and you get your best friend to switch with you who wasn't drunk, which is they should have been driving to begin with. Yeah. That's perjury.

That's felony. Yeah. It's a big deal. So Chuck, you can get your criminal record. Yes, I can. The government can look at it at any time they want. Yeah. And employers can, which we talked about at the top of this podcast. Yeah, with permission. With your permission. Yeah. You can't give anyone else besides a potential employer or an employer permission to get your record. Like you can't. I can't get yours even if you said, no, really. You can't get it. It's fine. Right. No, but an employer can. And like we said, originally, this was something that was just very targeted, where like if you were a driver, they wanted to know if you had any vehicular homicide record or that kind of thing. And it's

getting more and more broad. And apparently, because criminal records weren't protected, you weren't a member of a protected class. Yeah. So you could be subject to job discrimination based on the fact that you're a criminal record. They used to be like freewheeling. They would tell you to your face and maybe smack you in the mouth when they told you that you weren't getting the job because you were a crook. Right. Courts have started to rule in people's favors, finding that some laws or some convictions have been shown to disproportionately affect like black people, Hispanics. Oh, yeah. So that job discrimination based on these kinds of convictions amounts to racial discrimination. And some courts have found in the favor of people who

were turned down for jobs, even though there's no law that defends against job discrimination based on criminal records. Interesting. Yeah. And you can also be discriminated against for like public housing. Yeah. And I love the article. And in general, treated differently. Yeah. People can be a jerk to you if you have a criminal record with no retribution. And the one exception, which I thought was interesting was that if you have a felony for drug use, they can't use that against you to not give you a job. Right. It's part of rehab. The rehab process. Gotcha. That makes sense. You know, the very powerful rehab lobby got that loophole put in there. Well, it certainly strikes a notch on the side of people who believe that people with drug problems are

like, you know, have addiction problems and that they're not necessarily bad people. Right. So good for them. 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 2200 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 jackpot or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Our nation loves true crime. And it's no wonder. In the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors Heal, hosted by me, Boya L. Charelles. I've worked as an organizer, activist and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground floor providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of

true crime and what I call the new survivors movement. Listen to Survivors Heal available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So let's say you talk to your employer and they're like, look, we know you have a criminal background. But the dog, the test dog we brought out likes you. So we're going to take a chance on you. But we want you to pony up some money. They're going to tell you to go get what's called a fidelity bond. I had never heard of this. I had neither. Like I've heard about it in the case of like Robert Downey Jr. needing extra insurance after he went through his like bad drugs phase. It's probably the same thing. It probably is. But movie companies,

production companies would have to like purchase this massive extra insurance or not be allowed to work with him at all. Right. He was too big of a liability. Right. Not anymore, of course. No, he's really cleaned up his acts. Yeah, he's great. So yeah, there's a regular people, not just Robert Downey Jr. Regular people can get fidelity bonding too, which amounts to an insurance policy that you get or your employer gets on you saying, we think you're kind of a screw up maybe and we want to make sure all of our bets are heads. You're not fired. Right. But we think you might really screw us up one day. Right. So what else you got? Firearms. Yeah, you got to go through

background check when you purchase firearms here in this country. And don't worry, you won't have to wait very long for your firearm. Yeah, how long is it? It's like instantaneous. Is it? Yeah. But if you have a criminal record, if you've been indicted for a crime of more than a year in prison, you are ineligible to purchase a gun, which means you're just going to have to buy one off the street like other criminals, which is sad. It doesn't preclude you from traveling to other countries necessarily, but as everyone who's ever been through customs knows, they can deny you whenever they want in any country pretty much. You know, they have to allow you to come in. They have to invite you in like a vampire. Right. And it doesn't preclude you from coming to this

country if you have a criminal record either unless you're on a boat from Cuba. That's right. But the same deal. We can deny people coming in. They suggest to get a visa if you're coming to this country to work and have a criminal record. Yeah. Good luck with that. That's what I say. I say the same thing. Good luck, everybody. You got anything else? No. There's another one down in our endless string of law enforcement podcast that we definitely have a suite of like 10 at this point. At least. Yeah. If you want to learn more about criminal records and all that kind of thing, HowStuffWorks won't judge you if you search for that. You can just type it into the search bar, like I said, at howstuffworks.com. And I said search bar, so it's time for

a Facebook question. Facebook questions, Josh. We have 230 of these. And so, yeah, let's go ahead and start here. Doug Callahan, if you were to dive into a pool filled with any kind of fruit, what kind of fruit would you choose? Mango. Pineapple. Jerry thought that was funny. How does being a team mascot work? That's a crazy question. I think that's a request for a show. Oh, OK. Like team mascots. Got you. Chalene. Chuck. Chook. Chook. Chook. Best favorite theme park in the U.S. I mean, there's no question. What are you going with? Cedar Point.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. I've only been there once. It was pretty good, but Magic Mountain was pretty awesome in L.A. Dude, Cedar Point is the greatest in the world. I'm kind of sucker for the studio ones, too, like Universal Studios. Yeah. Like the rides are lame, but I just like, you know, the old wet show and the Miami Bikes boat show. They still do the Miami Bikes show. I don't think so. I think it's the night riders there. Yeah, the NCIS boat show. Oh, wow. Yazden, Nadiri, the fifth element, good or bad? I wasn't a fan. I know people love that movie. I didn't think it was that good. I've never made it all the way through. Okay. Right when I see Gary Oldman and that stupid

haircut, I'm like, I'm done. Thumbs down then. What do you got? I'm reading. We won't read that one. Let's see. Is there anything worth not knowing? That's a good one from Craig Jacquet. No. There's, well, no. I don't know. That's a really great question. On its face, no. Of course, there's nothing that we shouldn't know, but I also believe there is such a thing as knowing too much. Yeah. Like personal stuff about people. There's a lot that you shouldn't know. Right. But also even beyond that, Chuck, like, do we really need nuclear weapons? Do we need nuclear capabilities? What if we didn't know that? It's a great question, Craig Jacquet. You get first prize today.

Okay. James Hamilton, which sport has the fittest athletes? Clearly NASCAR. What's your, what do you think? The fittest athletes? Yeah. I would say high lie or soccer. Okay. Jody Jackson, I have good news for you. We've done how China's one child policy works. Another person thought this was a call for a quest. Oh, that's right. It is not. It's really called for silly questions. Cody Quimby, who's your favorite beetle and why? Josh's answer would be none of them. Right. Mine would be George Harrison because you know, yeah, he's great. Really? Yeah. His soul was like orange. Like, I love John Lennon, but he was sort of a whiny little baby and a bit of a pretentious artist. Paul McCartney's great, but Paul was a bit of a

power control freak. George Harrison was just like there, dude. What about Ringo? Well, Ringo's placed down a nice backbeat, but he's fun. I love Ringo too. Let's do one more. All right. Andrew Jordan, what current TV shows do you recommend? Stuff you should know coming to Science Channel. Nice. January 2013. That's so current. It's not even out yet. I mean, I watch, obviously Mad Men is, to me, the best show on TV right now. I disagree. I think 30 Rock is the best show on TV. 30 Rock is great. And Louie, to me, is like a tie for the best show on TV. Yeah. He's like, dude, he's making like French art house movies every week on television. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. I watched

The Killing. I watched True Blood. Do you watch The Killing? Yeah. Well, that's taxing, isn't it? I watched Eastbound and Down. The Killing isn't taxing. I mean, it's kind of depressing. Yeah. Walking Dead. I don't watch a ton of TV, but there's like, maybe like eight shows. I like Dexter, so. Man, that one went off the rail so bad the past couple of years. I need to give it a go. I haven't seen the past couple of years. It's way pretty. Come on, DVD. Good luck. Man. Spoiler alert, off the rails. All right. So that's it for now. I think we have one more edition of this and then we'll wrap it up. Okay. Thank goodness. If you want to catch up with me and Chuck digitally speaking, you can send us a tweet to syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com

slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. 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 podcast.

Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Every week on Crash Course, I'm going to bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.