Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and then most of all,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there, Jerome Jay stir. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. That's right, Jerry's all dirty
Speaker 1: from shoveling coal from the steam Technology episode. She is.
Speaker 1: And if you don't mind, I would like to point
Speaker 1: out something very exciting. No, I do mine. Let's keep
Speaker 1: going right now. This is the very first episode out
Speaker 1: of eight hundred and seventy plus episodes where Josh is
Speaker 1: wearing short pants. Why would you say that, I do mind?
Speaker 1: I do mind. I take it back, because I've seen
Speaker 1: you wear shorts like twice in my life. Well, hold on, Hunt,
Speaker 1: get a load of this. Well, aside from every morning
Speaker 1: when we tumble out of our bunk beds, of course
Speaker 1: you're wearing your off tuxedo pants. Those are boxers. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you never wear shorts as a rule, so I was
Speaker 1: astounded that you wore them into the office. Well I
Speaker 1: like astounding you. I like to just, you know, mix
Speaker 1: things up. Once every eight years. I look forward to
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in year Sixteo does some quick
Speaker 1: math Chuck, Hey, I used to play darts. Oh you
Speaker 1: know there's a dartboard here but no backboard. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's just like freewheeling. Who cares about the drywall
Speaker 1: kind of situation very much. Sixteen is a big number
Speaker 1: in darts, so you get used to adding and subtracting it,
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah, what's the bulls eye worth a million? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it depends. There's historically two games that you'll
Speaker 1: play in darts, either cricket or OH one three one
Speaker 1: or five on one. I've never heard that second one. Well,
Speaker 1: that's really the main game. Like if you watch professional
Speaker 1: darts when they show it once a you're on ESPN,
Speaker 1: which is great fun by the way. Uh, they're playing
Speaker 1: OH one, which is where you start with three D
Speaker 1: one or five one and you work your way down
Speaker 1: to zero. Oh so you're getting rid of points. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you're throwing just for as high numbers as you
Speaker 1: can the triple ring and um, like a ton of
Speaker 1: eight is the most you can hit. That's three triple
Speaker 1: twenties and they throw which is amazing. So, well, what's
Speaker 1: the what's the bulls eye worth? Then the bulls I
Speaker 1: and O one is worth uh fifty on the red
Speaker 1: and on the green. And then you have to boy,
Speaker 1: we should do a show on this. Well yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess we are right now. And then you have to
Speaker 1: go out on an like let's say you have thirty
Speaker 1: two left. You have to go out on a double.
Speaker 1: See if they'd a double sixteen to go out? Man,
Speaker 1: this sounds tough, and everybody does this drunk. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really impressive. Right, I didn't know you played darts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I played in Athens in the League and then Atlanta
Speaker 1: and Eague. And you know Justin Is he's like chairman
Speaker 1: or something of the dark League of at least he
Speaker 1: makes everybody call him that, right, call me chairman. We
Speaker 1: should do on the darts man. I used to love playing.
Speaker 1: Don't do it much anymore. Okay, let's do it. So shorts,
Speaker 1: darts and past Yeah, and on Wednesdays we wear pink.
Speaker 1: Today's Tuesday, though, so I'm wearing shorts. I'm wondering how
Speaker 1: many things I got wrong just in that little five minute.
Speaker 1: The same thing. Anytime we explain something, we get something wrong.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed and our job is to explain things,
Speaker 1: which is sad. I know, so, Chuckers. You know how
Speaker 1: when you go through the airport and you come back
Speaker 1: into the country from out of the country. When we
Speaker 1: were in the UK, did you notice it took longer
Speaker 1: than usual to get through the airport to your stuff
Speaker 1: and out. Yes, although Emily and I get pretty lucky. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty speedy experience. That's great, but it
Speaker 1: can vary wildly. Yeah. And the thing that can vary
Speaker 1: wildly is called customs passing through customs and actually it
Speaker 1: used to be um, customs and immigration, which depending on
Speaker 1: the port you're flying into, whether it be a seaport
Speaker 1: and airport, spaceport, interdimensional port, heliport, heliport yeah, um, scuba port, sure,
Speaker 1: submarine port yep, thin airport. I guess that's the same
Speaker 1: as an airport. Huh Um. Those might have been two
Speaker 1: different agencies, customs and immigration, not so in in two
Speaker 1: thousand three. As a two thousand three in the United States,
Speaker 1: they were mixed together and put under Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 1: and now they're called Customs and Border Protection and there
Speaker 1: are there one agency now, yes, But the point is
Speaker 1: when you come through there if you encountered back in
Speaker 1: the day the Customs Agency, they would have said, hey,
Speaker 1: you're a person. We don't care about you. We don't
Speaker 1: care where you've been, we don't care where you're going,
Speaker 1: we don't care where you were born. But we want
Speaker 1: to know what's on you. Would you buy while you
Speaker 1: were out of the country. Did you buy something? Tell
Speaker 1: us and they might grab your shirt and shake you
Speaker 1: a little bit. If they're tough guys. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: start crying, for sure, they'd see to it. And then uh,
Speaker 1: if you say, well, I got this thousand dollar watched,
Speaker 1: they say, you know, the United States government some money, buddy.
Speaker 1: That's right. It is a It is a way to
Speaker 1: regulate importing and exporting. Yeah, and when trade right, trade exactly.
Speaker 1: And trade is obviously a very old concept, right. Any
Speaker 1: any time one group had a surplus that another group wanted.
Speaker 1: I got lots of potatoes, Well I got lots of wheat. Right,
Speaker 1: let's trade, let's trade right. Well, at some point people said, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: this is going way too smoothly. We need to interject
Speaker 1: a federal entity to um extract some sort of tribute
Speaker 1: from this trade. That's what a duty is. That's what
Speaker 1: a tariff is. It's a government coming in and saying, uh,
Speaker 1: we want a piece of that action. And depending on
Speaker 1: how you look at it, it can go one way.
Speaker 1: Like you can say, well, the federal government is is
Speaker 1: actually promoting domestic business, which is true in a way, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good. I mean it's a good way to discourage
Speaker 1: doing business overseas is by imposing heavier and heavier tariffs. Use,
Speaker 1: if somebody's manufacturing potatoes overseas cheaper than they're manufactured here, um,
Speaker 1: the American people are going to say, well, we want
Speaker 1: these Irish potatoes, they're way cheaper, um, sure, And the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government will say, well, we want you guys buying domestic
Speaker 1: potatoes because it helps our economy. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: to Idaho? Right, everybody loves Idaho. Why don't you want
Speaker 1: to help out the Idahoans. And so they'll they'll place
Speaker 1: a tariff for a duty or just basically an extra
Speaker 1: tax on potatoes that are sourced from outside of the
Speaker 1: country coming in so that they cost about the same,
Speaker 1: so that any red blooded American will say, well, it's
Speaker 1: about the same to buy Idaho potato as it is
Speaker 1: to buy Irish potato. I'm gonna buy the Idaho potato
Speaker 1: and the federal government goes yeah, yeah, they say, look
Speaker 1: at it, it's stamped with a pesticide that has made
Speaker 1: new Let's say they stamped with the pestiscids, thinking how
Speaker 1: that would work. Uh, should we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the history of this, Yeah, because this is actually
Speaker 1: this this technique of the US federal government. Certainly not
Speaker 1: just the US that does this, but there's customs agencies.
Speaker 1: It's just about any developed country around the world, and
Speaker 1: I would say developing as well. Um, this this this
Speaker 1: custom of customs, thank you. It's about as old as
Speaker 1: the United States itself. Yeah. And like everything in the
Speaker 1: United States, it starts with Alexander Hamilton's. It's true that
Speaker 1: guy is so hot right now. Uh. I just bought
Speaker 1: some Alexander Amilton futures the other day, so I'm sitting
Speaker 1: pretty you just broke my brain. Uh So what happened was, um,
Speaker 1: Hamilton's said, here's the deal, dudes, we don't have taxation
Speaker 1: yet because we were fleeing that kind of junk. But
Speaker 1: we're in trouble because we need some sort of revenue
Speaker 1: going to support our growing government, but not only that
Speaker 1: in our growing nations infrastructure, plus we have a lot
Speaker 1: of debts from the Revolutionary War, loads of debts. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the early Congress used to DeCamp from one city to
Speaker 1: another because they were being chased by war veterans who
Speaker 1: are owned money. They had nowhere to go. They had
Speaker 1: no Washington, d c. Yet. No, but I mean they
Speaker 1: were it was Congress and they were on the run
Speaker 1: from revolutionary war vets who wanted their money. So while
Speaker 1: Hamilton's did not himself start the US custom Service, the way,
Speaker 1: where did you find this? The National US Customs Museum Foundation. Yes,
Speaker 1: from the horse's mouth. They they counted him as the
Speaker 1: intellectual father of customs, which I think is a great
Speaker 1: way to put it, because he said, look, we can't
Speaker 1: have a federal government unless the federal government can support itself.
Speaker 1: And the only way the federal government can support itself
Speaker 1: is if it imposes um levies on things that it
Speaker 1: really has nothing to do with. Yeah, So President George Washington,
Speaker 1: the number one guy, said you're onto something here, like
Speaker 1: the cut of your jib, Hamilton's, but it's a little
Speaker 1: weird with domestic taxation right now, Like, yeah, we can't
Speaker 1: do that Yeah, people aren't keen on that just yet. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: we'll screw people far worse in the future, don't you worry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just wait, but right now people aren't hip to the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we tried to text corn and the whiskey rebellion happened. So, um,
Speaker 1: why don't we do this, Why don't we impost tariffs
Speaker 1: on imports and raise money that way, and let's create
Speaker 1: the first Congress. Let's get together and create the U
Speaker 1: s Custom Service four months after we ratify the Constitution
Speaker 1: pretty quick, really quick, and it quickly grew to be
Speaker 1: for many, many, many years. In fact, for most of
Speaker 1: the history of the United States, the single largest government
Speaker 1: agency in terms of size and revenue. Yeah. For the
Speaker 1: first hundred and twenty two years of its existence, it
Speaker 1: was the number one revenue generator. And then the I
Speaker 1: r S came along and they said, they said, you
Speaker 1: can collect revenue. Just watch this. Yeah, and they did.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, Um, the Customs Agency collected I
Speaker 1: think thirty five billion dollars. Yeah, the I r S
Speaker 1: collected three point three trillion dollars. Oh my god, stomach
Speaker 1: turns of the Yeah. Wow, that really threw me. I
Speaker 1: didn't make you a libertarian in all right, So I
Speaker 1: mentioned Washington, d C. When earlier like, we don't even
Speaker 1: have a right right. Money from teriffs built Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Money from tariffs built the Transatlantic Transcontinental Railroad built all
Speaker 1: those lighthouses that we talked about, the Louisiana purchase, the
Speaker 1: purchase of Alaska Ka Seward's folly one point five million
Speaker 1: square miles of land purchased using tariffs via the Customs Office.
Speaker 1: Right if it hadn't have been for the Customs Agency, um,
Speaker 1: the United States would have only been able to expand
Speaker 1: its territory through broken treaties, the which we were find doing. Sure,
Speaker 1: but apparently they wanted to legitimize it somewhat yea. So
Speaker 1: um we said, well, we'll just pay for some of it, yea.
Speaker 1: Napoleon pennies on the dollar give us that area, okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like we said, they were the first and only federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement agency, and for a long time they handled
Speaker 1: kind of everything, um like they were they were doing
Speaker 1: way many more things than they should be doing. Uh.
Speaker 1: So out of the custom Service was born things like immigration,
Speaker 1: like you said, Coast Guard, border patrol, the v a
Speaker 1: public Health Service and the d e A all were
Speaker 1: Formerly all that stuff was under the purview of the
Speaker 1: Custom Service and the Census Bureau and the Standards and
Speaker 1: Measures Agency, all those cats. Because apparently it used to
Speaker 1: be a Congress would say, oh, we need this, we
Speaker 1: need to start doing this, just have Customs do it,
Speaker 1: and Customs would do it for decades and then finally
Speaker 1: be like, dude, you got to just we have to
Speaker 1: have this off as its own agency. Eventually they got smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now that's that's what makes UM. What happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand three so curious. Uh, Customs itself got folded
Speaker 1: in with other agencies and then put under the banner
Speaker 1: of another larger agency, the exact opposite of what has
Speaker 1: historically been the case. Yeah, I didn't think of it
Speaker 1: that way. Uh. So the Customs Agency and services a
Speaker 1: long tradition in its early years of UM what was
Speaker 1: called the spoils system. Uh. And that's basically crony is
Speaker 1: m political loyalties and and hooking your buddies up and
Speaker 1: your donors up, but like fat cat jobs, not in
Speaker 1: any kind of underhanded or shadier back back room deal way,
Speaker 1: like overtly yes, like you raised a lot of political
Speaker 1: funds for my campaign. So here's a cherry position in
Speaker 1: the federal government's bureaucracy via the Custom Service. And there
Speaker 1: have been some famous men over the years, Yes, some
Speaker 1: of our best writers actually, yeah, weirdly, Um, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: he was a disc well I'm not too distant. He
Speaker 1: was an ancestor of the Pilgrims, a descendant a descendant, right,
Speaker 1: they were his ancestors backwards. Uh. And he's the great
Speaker 1: grandson of the judge who uh sat at the Salem
Speaker 1: witch trials. So he got a fat position with the
Speaker 1: Boston Custom House as the wayer engager, Yeah, which apparently
Speaker 1: was pretty important because you'd be like, let me, let
Speaker 1: me gauge that steal to see how much money you
Speaker 1: will you know. Yeah, And it allowed him to make
Speaker 1: money enough because they were sitting on the side. Don't
Speaker 1: you think it's a more less expensive gauge than what
Speaker 1: you just got? And he would say, laid on me
Speaker 1: string being and he say I'm gonna knock off at
Speaker 1: noon today and go write some more stuff. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: the museum website makes this case like not just for Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: but later on from Melville too, that both of them
Speaker 1: were able to pursue their writing careers because of the
Speaker 1: stability that the um working at Customs gave them. They
Speaker 1: credit the Customs Agency for bringing Herman Melville out of
Speaker 1: an alcoholic depression following his failed attempt at a career
Speaker 1: in writing. Yeah, and I didn't even I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a side note, but I didn't even realize that
Speaker 1: Melville was not popular until after his death. Moby Dick
Speaker 1: didn't blow up till what like twenty four years later
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, everybody's like this book, thinks I
Speaker 1: still haven't read it, have you? No, have you ever
Speaker 1: read Bartleby the Scrivener though I made it through that. No,
Speaker 1: it's one of his good, better short stories. It's just weird. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't think I read an email bill. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. I've got. I've got Billy Budd and I've
Speaker 1: read maybe a third of it. It's just so tough
Speaker 1: to read that guy's writing. I think probably even back
Speaker 1: then it was tough. But you know, to be a
Speaker 1: century in a quarter or century and a half removed
Speaker 1: from that type of you know, thought and that type
Speaker 1: of language in writing, it's it's even harder it stense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For a while there, I was kind of of the
Speaker 1: mind of like, can I die without having read Moby Dick?
Speaker 1: And I kind of struggle with that, and then I
Speaker 1: could be like just about everybody was totally I'm fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna do it? Huh No, I'd rather see,
Speaker 1: you know, a movie I haven't seen. It's only takes
Speaker 1: a couple hours of you can see the waning years
Speaker 1: that I have in front of me. Thirty movies The
Speaker 1: Castle Blankets. Still never seen that, and I need to.
Speaker 1: I should not die without seeing Yeah, and you should
Speaker 1: see Train Spotting? Why not the two classics? Right? Uh?
Speaker 1: I guess we need to talk about Prohibition a little
Speaker 1: bit too, with customs and their history, because um, we
Speaker 1: had a great episode on Prohibition. Sure, what do they
Speaker 1: call it? The noble Experiment? Yeah? I never called it
Speaker 1: that the dumb experiment. But this article points out that
Speaker 1: never in the history of customs has been more dangerous
Speaker 1: to work for Customs than during Prohibition, like straight up
Speaker 1: gangster stuff who were much more well funded than Customs was,
Speaker 1: and we're they would whack you, oh yeah forgetting in
Speaker 1: their way. Yep. It was also like a high time
Speaker 1: for bribery too. Customs agents were bribed like mad. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. And actually there was like, uh, there was
Speaker 1: a I don't know if it was a general accounting
Speaker 1: office or somebody did an investigation of UM customs and
Speaker 1: said they were We haven't found any like systematic bribery
Speaker 1: going on or systemic bribery, but just the very presence
Speaker 1: of drugs in the United States, like in the massive
Speaker 1: quantities that's in indicates that somebody's getting bribed somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: just impossible not to. Uh. We should do a show
Speaker 1: on rum runners too, because just this little piece tickled
Speaker 1: my fancy. UM. They would they had much better boats
Speaker 1: and much faster boats than Customs did, so they would
Speaker 1: bring this mother ship they called it, parked a few
Speaker 1: miles offshore where it was legal to be there international
Speaker 1: loaded with rum, and then the speedboats would um or
Speaker 1: you know for the time speed boats, uh would just
Speaker 1: make runs out to this boat as fast as they could,
Speaker 1: and the customs people like, we need speedy boats to
Speaker 1: do right. Well, that's where speedboats came from. His prohibition. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we I think we already talked about the NASCAR
Speaker 1: thing with the fast cars came from prohibition. So a
Speaker 1: lot of speed came out of prohibition, and not the
Speaker 1: druggy kind that came out of the Nazis in World
Speaker 1: War Two. I really that's the rumor. I don't know. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: let's take a break and then we'll come back and
Speaker 1: talk a bit more about what customs means today. Chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we're back. We're talking customs, um. And when when
Speaker 1: you talk customs like you're talking again about a the
Speaker 1: line of defense between unfettered trade across borders and um,
Speaker 1: not just with not just among uh major companies like
Speaker 1: importers and exporters and um, you know, manufacturers and consumers
Speaker 1: and all that, but also in an individual level, which
Speaker 1: is why it takes so long to come into the
Speaker 1: States or another country, um, because you have to go
Speaker 1: through customs, right. Their their their aim is to regulate trade,
Speaker 1: no matter how large or how small. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: kind of was surprised that they generated the kind of
Speaker 1: revenue they did because I was only thinking about schmos
Speaker 1: like US, but big businesses, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: a dummy. I wasn't even thinking that they play Obviously
Speaker 1: the biggest part in revenue because they pay those big
Speaker 1: tiraffs on millions and billions of dollars worth of goods
Speaker 1: that they import. And um, it's stuff to regular that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You can't inspect every shipping container, although
Speaker 1: very random there is. There is something called the Safe
Speaker 1: Ports Act that was passing two thousand and six, and
Speaker 1: it's it called for one of containers that enter US
Speaker 1: ports of any type to be scanned either with X
Speaker 1: rays or like cat scans or something like that, but
Speaker 1: to be noninvasively scanned. And um, it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be add up to a percent by two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: Didn't happen. They gave it to your extension, didn't happen,
Speaker 1: given another two year extension. Yeah, still hasn't happened. And um,
Speaker 1: but they're ramping up though. Here's the thing. There's a
Speaker 1: big debate like a lot like the National Retail Federation
Speaker 1: I think is the big mouthpiece for manufacturers in this.
Speaker 1: In this um argument, they're saying, dude, this is you
Speaker 1: can't do it, Like if you do this, it will
Speaker 1: cease trade, it will wreck trade in the United States.
Speaker 1: And other people are saying like, well, you guys need
Speaker 1: to figure that out because we've got to have our
Speaker 1: ports safe. We need to know everything that's coming in.
Speaker 1: Why would it wreck trade? But because it will just hold,
Speaker 1: the delays will will Like um, I remember like when
Speaker 1: this first got proposed and they were trying to implement it.
Speaker 1: I think it was like an MPR piece about the
Speaker 1: port at Long Beach and there was just like all
Speaker 1: this fruit just sitting there rotting offshore because there was
Speaker 1: a line to get to get the stuff inspected. And
Speaker 1: so they're staying still they're pushing for this percent mandate
Speaker 1: and and other like the the people involved in the
Speaker 1: importing and exporting and manufacturing and stuff for saying like
Speaker 1: you can't do it, you just can't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be other ways. And some of the other
Speaker 1: ways they're talking about here like um uh having like
Speaker 1: e seals where like a container is verified to have
Speaker 1: you know, X amount of weight or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: it's sealed digitally and then um, when it enters support,
Speaker 1: it goes through like an r F I D scanner
Speaker 1: and the e CeAl is verified intact somehow and then
Speaker 1: you know or you have a pretty great idea that
Speaker 1: the the container has not been messed with since its
Speaker 1: point of origin is an awesome idea, it is, but
Speaker 1: at the same time you have to rely on the
Speaker 1: people at the point of origin and not to be like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: there's the same amount of cocaine that we put in
Speaker 1: there at the at the port where we send it from.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it weighs the same, but it's still cocaine
Speaker 1: that you don't want in the in the country, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, depending on who you are. Well,
Speaker 1: then maybe the country of export their regulations need to
Speaker 1: be st and and well. And there's an international proposal
Speaker 1: called the Safety of Life at See I think where
Speaker 1: it's mandating a of all containers worldwide need to be
Speaker 1: weighed and verified before setting sale. Interesting, So I guess
Speaker 1: if you put those together you could have a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty legitimate international trade network. We should do one on
Speaker 1: shipping containers sometimes because apparently that changed the world. Well,
Speaker 1: this sounds like it could be a big part of
Speaker 1: our platform for our run for the presidency in So
Speaker 1: are we in favor of the percent mandate or do
Speaker 1: we think it's insane? Well, I'll say we figured that out, okay,
Speaker 1: But either way, that's going to be a big like
Speaker 1: your r F I D thing. Okay, it's not mine,
Speaker 1: per se. I've just said what somebody else came up.
Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, it's yours things. Uh So
Speaker 1: all right, we were talking about business of course just then,
Speaker 1: but before you teased with the single individual, which is
Speaker 1: what most of us, unless you're an import or exporter,
Speaker 1: have had more uh experience with. So what happens is
Speaker 1: you come into the United States or any country but
Speaker 1: for US citizens. So we'll come back home, okay from abroad,
Speaker 1: which we just did after our wonderful trip to Ireland
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, and they count on you, um,
Speaker 1: just as the as though they can't inspect every shipping container,
Speaker 1: they can't investigate each of our individual shipping containers, which
Speaker 1: is our body in our suitcases. So they count on
Speaker 1: you too, honestly declare, say, I declare that I bought
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pay a lot for this monthly that
Speaker 1: I bought uh uh In in France, I bought my
Speaker 1: daughter a little backpack. I think it's ugly, but she
Speaker 1: likes it. And uh I bought my mother a tea
Speaker 1: towel at ke Gardens, which I just think it's gross
Speaker 1: and that's it. That's all we bought. It was all
Speaker 1: forty five American dollars. And I'm going to write this
Speaker 1: down a piece of paper and hand it to you
Speaker 1: and take my word for it. Yes, and we should
Speaker 1: talk about this, Chuck. Um. I found a great explainer
Speaker 1: from mental Flaws that really breaks down the the procedure
Speaker 1: and what the expectations of when you, the individual traveler
Speaker 1: entering the United States, are expected to say to customs, Right,
Speaker 1: so forty five dollars. Surely you can just be like,
Speaker 1: who cares about a t towel and a backpack that
Speaker 1: my daughter is using. That's just luggage now, So anyway, um,
Speaker 1: you would think, obviously you don't have to say anything
Speaker 1: about this, right, Well, if you're dummy, yes, supposedly not
Speaker 1: only are you supposed to declare this and write down
Speaker 1: the value of what you think it is, um or
Speaker 1: what you think the value is or the actual value
Speaker 1: based on the receipt um you If Chuck, you you
Speaker 1: take your daughter's backpack now that you've bought it and
Speaker 1: already brought it into the country, if you take it
Speaker 1: back out and like one of the straps comes off
Speaker 1: and you get it fixed abroad. You have to write
Speaker 1: down that you got your daughter's backpack fixed abroad and
Speaker 1: how much that costs you. Yeah, Or if like a
Speaker 1: boy have been loading up on pay streets in Paris,
Speaker 1: I need to have my pants let out an inch,
Speaker 1: Supposedly you have to cover that and claim your new
Speaker 1: larger pants. Anything you buy inherit or have repaired abroad
Speaker 1: or altered, Yep, you have to pay. You have to
Speaker 1: declare you don't necessarily have to pay a duty on
Speaker 1: it though. And that's that's um where the exemption come in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, it varies from country to country. In the
Speaker 1: United States, what is it eight hundred dollars? It depends
Speaker 1: on where you are. Eight hundred bucks is typical, but
Speaker 1: it can go up to sixteen hundred bucks. If you're
Speaker 1: in an insular possession like Guam, American Samoa or the
Speaker 1: US Virgin Islands, you can buy sixteen hundred dollars with
Speaker 1: the stuff and get bring it in duty free. Or
Speaker 1: if you're married, you can declare as a family and
Speaker 1: each individual gets that allotment. Correct, right, So if you
Speaker 1: have something that's like twelve dollars and Emily's bringing in
Speaker 1: something that's like four hundred dollars. You can combine the
Speaker 1: two and both jointly. Uh, come jointly declare him for
Speaker 1: you can combine your exemptions. But let me say that
Speaker 1: on vacation, what you've never bought anything for a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars except food and wine, And that's accumulative amount. But
Speaker 1: that's a whole other bag. Yeah, but you know there
Speaker 1: was a good rate going on those for bush meat,
Speaker 1: Like it's almost cheaper to buy it than not buy it,
Speaker 1: oh abroad by one here get ripped off? Uh? I
Speaker 1: remember I might have said this one before. My friend
Speaker 1: Andrew one time, his old grandmother was talking about how
Speaker 1: it's cheaper to go on a cruise than to just
Speaker 1: stay in New York. So she cruised all the time.
Speaker 1: Is that right? She was like, Oh, it's cheaper to
Speaker 1: go on the cruise. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 1: but for her it was, or at least she said
Speaker 1: it was. I thought it was very quaint and funny
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, you mean I went on a cruise
Speaker 1: and there was a legendary woman on there who had
Speaker 1: been on We went and like may she lived, the
Speaker 1: woman who'd been on since December. She just kept like
Speaker 1: signing up for the next Creuse state on the boat
Speaker 1: the whole time. It was just having the time of
Speaker 1: her life. Crazy. We never saw her though. I think
Speaker 1: they just used that to be like, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to sign up for the next one, and then
Speaker 1: when you say no, they don't speak to you for
Speaker 1: the rest of the cruise. That'd be great. Actually, don't
Speaker 1: bother me, Yeah, let me alone. Uh where else? Um,
Speaker 1: there are different growth programs in in certain countries like
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and uh sub Saharans Africa where you can
Speaker 1: bring back more duty free items. So I guess just
Speaker 1: trying to encourage more trade with those places, which makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you have an exemption up the eight hundred bucks
Speaker 1: and after that, after the eight hundred bucks, Um, you
Speaker 1: have to start paying duty on stuff, right and obviously
Speaker 1: if you go over by a hundred dollars, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be You're gonna get hit hard. What No, not the case. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought you were being serious. No, No, duty's still
Speaker 1: not that much. It's nothing. So if you if you
Speaker 1: I think that the first thousand dollars after your exemption,
Speaker 1: so you would have to you would have to spend
Speaker 1: on stuff that you're bringing back in right, Um, it's
Speaker 1: still just three. So if you're trying to like, so
Speaker 1: what is the thirty bucks on a thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of of stuff? Yeah, if you if you bought things
Speaker 1: for a couple hundred dollars and you're trying to sneak
Speaker 1: it in there to avoid duty, you're just being foolish.
Speaker 1: You're you're dummy. Yeah, it's like a few dollars on
Speaker 1: that level. And the mental fALS article actually makes it
Speaker 1: the point that, um, you won't even necessarily be charged
Speaker 1: that extra additional duty because that requires paperwork that the
Speaker 1: customs officer has to fill out to collect you know,
Speaker 1: five or ten bucks from you. They're probably is gonna
Speaker 1: be like, just keep it go. Yeah, you don't have
Speaker 1: any bags of cocaine in pellets in your stomach, dude,
Speaker 1: you know, come on look at me, and they all right,
Speaker 1: we'll go through. And and what's funny is you're allowed
Speaker 1: one leader of booze, two d cigarettes and a hundred
Speaker 1: cigars is a lot. Yeah, that's what I thought. Um,
Speaker 1: unless you're an infant or a baby, you can have
Speaker 1: the eight hundred dollar exemption as a baby. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to tobacco or alcohol. But so you're just
Speaker 1: allowed one leader per person through customs duty free. And
Speaker 1: what's funny is everybody stops right there. Oh well, I
Speaker 1: can't have more than one leader. You can buy more
Speaker 1: than one leader, and if it's like twenty five bucks,
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend seventy five extra cents on the duty
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Yeah, And I just, uh, I want
Speaker 1: to go on record as saying I hate duty free
Speaker 1: shops why because they are awful. It's just like it's
Speaker 1: like one giant and especially in an international airport, you're
Speaker 1: forced to walk through this giant cosmetics assault of cosmetics
Speaker 1: and and perfume me since and you know me, and
Speaker 1: my smells like I started sneezing walking through there, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's all just I mean duty I was
Speaker 1: looking up I was like, how much of a deal
Speaker 1: is this? And it really depends on what you're getting. Well,
Speaker 1: with with alcohol and tobacco especially, it's usually a much
Speaker 1: better deal. Well it's it depends on where you are
Speaker 1: and what you're buying. Like I looked up um this
Speaker 1: one site that compared a lot of airports and boozes
Speaker 1: and like this one booze I don't even know was
Speaker 1: it was. It was something some Italian booze in like Germany.
Speaker 1: It was cheaper, so very good deal. But then I
Speaker 1: looked up Jack Daniels and they listed fourteen airports around
Speaker 1: the world and it was no more than like three
Speaker 1: dollars cheaper at any of them, or three euros. I
Speaker 1: think it's more like the thrill of buying some booze
Speaker 1: and think it's a big That's what I think it is.
Speaker 1: It's just a big scam. Duty free everybody. Well, what's
Speaker 1: funny is if you if you buy a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of booze um, you will get that first leader exempted.
Speaker 1: But then after that you'll have to pay a duty
Speaker 1: on it, even if you bought it at the duty
Speaker 1: free airport, because duty free when it's a duty free store,
Speaker 1: like they're saying, we don't have to pay duty on it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pass the savings on to you. But if
Speaker 1: you past your exemption when you go into your home country,
Speaker 1: you have to pay duty because the duty free refers
Speaker 1: to the owners of the store. Yeah, they should be
Speaker 1: called duty free for me, right and maybe for you,
Speaker 1: depending on where you're at with your exemption, which is
Speaker 1: a clunky thing to call an area airport. Instead they
Speaker 1: just call it things remembered well. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: this because I haven't been on a transatlantic flight in
Speaker 1: so many years. But they sell that junk on the plane.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. They were walking up and down the aisle
Speaker 1: talking watches that I that doesn't bother me as much
Speaker 1: as the credit card pushing the credit cards. But they
Speaker 1: have like a seven minute announcement about how they have
Speaker 1: this great credit card deal and get it now and
Speaker 1: don't you want this? And then they send the people
Speaker 1: up the aisle like credit card credit card? Who wants
Speaker 1: a credit card? I just want to fly in peace,
Speaker 1: you know. Just all I want to do is just
Speaker 1: fly on Delta and listen to stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: And wants your Internet round up? Uh hey, shout out
Speaker 1: to Virgin Atlantic, though I had a good experience flying
Speaker 1: with him. They're a partner of Delta's. I wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: anything less. Yeah, it was very nice. They don't Nickel
Speaker 1: and dime you And I said that on the web
Speaker 1: on Facebook the other day and someone from the UK said,
Speaker 1: what does Nicol and Dime you mean Hill and I
Speaker 1: guess Pence and Farthings maybe, Um no, I said, it's
Speaker 1: I guess it's a strictly American term for like just
Speaker 1: charging you little bits for every little thing, like you know,
Speaker 1: the pillows, this buch of the movies as much that
Speaker 1: your phones. Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure, Like you know
Speaker 1: all the movies were free to give you headphones, which
Speaker 1: I've already had my own, and giving an eyemask and
Speaker 1: a toothbrush, and it's all just very nice and civil
Speaker 1: like it used to be to put you in a
Speaker 1: sleeper hold until you fall asleep if you ask him to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this lovely English gentleman put me in a sleeper was hilarious,
Speaker 1: said ninety night. You're sleep now, mate, all right, And
Speaker 1: we covered duty and its fullness. No, but we should
Speaker 1: probably take a break, all right, and well more duty
Speaker 1: after this. Alright, Chuck, we're back and we're talking about duty.
Speaker 1: I hate duty, do you, No? I just hate the
Speaker 1: I already w off on duty free. Yeah, I've got it.
Speaker 1: Feels like just this that gross consumers. I'm like black Friday.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like duty free. Let me buy booze and perfume.
Speaker 1: The thing is a smart traveler tip for you here.
Speaker 1: If you ever have a lay over at an airport,
Speaker 1: make your way, and especially if it's early morning or
Speaker 1: yet an overnight flight or whatever, make your way to
Speaker 1: the duty free section. Go to that cosmetics section and
Speaker 1: look for stuff like toner or under eyebomb or something
Speaker 1: like that. And brother, it is refreshingly. Yeah, they've got
Speaker 1: all the samples there and it's like just stuff that
Speaker 1: will like make you feel human again. It's a little brufe,
Speaker 1: just enough to get you where you're going, all right,
Speaker 1: back to duty. Um. Well, here's a few things I
Speaker 1: thought Mental Plots is always so great about. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to point out Chuck. Every single time
Speaker 1: one of us that says it said duty Jerry's like
Speaker 1: snickers um because she thinks it spelled d o d
Speaker 1: y um. Mental floss is always so great about adding
Speaker 1: fun little lists to their articles. Yeah, well this isn't
Speaker 1: quite a listical, but they gave a few examples of
Speaker 1: some weird regulations and they have one on absinthe. You
Speaker 1: can bring absinthe back, but it has to be that
Speaker 1: cannot have the ingredient. How do you pronounced that? T
Speaker 1: h u j O n e n yes, sure, cone
Speaker 1: to hany. I don't know what the country origin is.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that was in there. I thought
Speaker 1: wormwood was the active ingredients. Well this it may not
Speaker 1: be the active ingredient. I don't know. But uh. And
Speaker 1: then custom says the term absinthe cannot be the brand name,
Speaker 1: and it cannot stand alone on the label the actual
Speaker 1: word absinthe, and this one's hysterical. The artwork cannot project
Speaker 1: images of hallucinogenic, psychotropic, or mind altering effects like it
Speaker 1: can have on the like a guy going, whoa, it
Speaker 1: can't be wowie zowie brand absent Yeah, which, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be psychedelic. Sure, um, everybody knows how ze means.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say, wey be gravy. That's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking that one that would work too. Uh
Speaker 1: what else? Um? Oh, oh you can't as of two thousand,
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, you can't bring in anything made
Speaker 1: of dog or cat for awesome. Yeah, I can't believe that.
Speaker 1: This is a law that had to be passed well
Speaker 1: in other countries said do different things with dogs and cats,
Speaker 1: you know, so you can't you if you have a
Speaker 1: dog skin cap. You better prepare to have that thing
Speaker 1: confiscated at the border and spanked by me. You just
Speaker 1: hang out, auto, let's bring him over here. Uh, this
Speaker 1: one is interesting, um Haitian animal hide drums from animal skin.
Speaker 1: You can't take it back because of anthrax and remember
Speaker 1: our own stuff. He No TV show had a subplot
Speaker 1: in an episode about a disease from a drum brought
Speaker 1: back by fake Jerry played by Lucy Wayne. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: she brought back a drum that had was it anthrax fasciitis?
Speaker 1: Is that what that one was? Yeah, it had some
Speaker 1: disease on the drumhead. But apparently and we wrote those episodes,
Speaker 1: so I guess we got it from the fact that
Speaker 1: it's a real thing. I just don't remember. I don't either.
Speaker 1: I don't even recall our TV show. I don't either.
Speaker 1: I drank to forget, so um chuck. Yes, we haven't
Speaker 1: really talked about the big thing that that UM Customs
Speaker 1: is known for, not just regulating trade and shipping containers
Speaker 1: and all that, but thwarting smugglers. Right, yes, because there's Uh,
Speaker 1: you talked a little bit about rum runners and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing still goes on there's speed boat chases. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: they can search you in an airport, sure, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing about customs is they do not have
Speaker 1: to have a warrant to search you. They don't even
Speaker 1: have to have probable cause. Yeah I don't like what
Speaker 1: your hair looks like. I think you look like a
Speaker 1: drug smuggler. And come into this room and take your
Speaker 1: clothes off, and there's like a storied, um history I
Speaker 1: guess of of customs agents like just looking at somebody
Speaker 1: and being like, that guy's drug mule, and the person
Speaker 1: turns out to be a major drug mule, and they tried.
Speaker 1: I read this article in Los Angeles Times. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it's called, but um, it was about how
Speaker 1: the Customs Agency is trying to quantify that or turn
Speaker 1: it into like a seminar, like take these decades of
Speaker 1: experience and intuition and figure out how to, yeah, how
Speaker 1: to sniff somebody off the case? Right, Um, And apparently
Speaker 1: they've turned to behavioral science and really, like, are there
Speaker 1: there's courses that they teach Customs and Border patrol um
Speaker 1: or border protection how to suss out lying or deception,
Speaker 1: how to racially profile probably, um, but I think it's
Speaker 1: in this particular, so it's a different course. This one is. Um,
Speaker 1: they say, well, if somebody you know has a hat
Speaker 1: or a newspaper or something like that, they might put
Speaker 1: it between you and them because they're putting up a
Speaker 1: barrier because they're deceiving micro expressions body language, um uh,
Speaker 1: speech patterns. Uh. Like I guess if you if you
Speaker 1: have a very pat streamlined answer of where you were abroad,
Speaker 1: that's going to raise a flag if you are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of back. Yeah, if you're too smooth, that's way,
Speaker 1: way more unusual than somebody being like, well, also, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I went to Canada, and I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to go to Canada, but one of my friends said,
Speaker 1: let's go to Canada, so we went. But you know,
Speaker 1: we were just gonna hang out in in in in
Speaker 1: in New York. That's so that's how I'm here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a step over here. No, that's going through Oh
Speaker 1: it is. You're you're such an obvious city, you couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly be trusted with the I thought there was a
Speaker 1: middle ground. If you're like, I just went to Montreal,
Speaker 1: why do you ask? Right? Then they would say you
Speaker 1: clearly have a suitcase full of Faberge eggs. What are
Speaker 1: you having those shorts? Uh? But you were talking about drugs,
Speaker 1: which is which is the big thing? Um? And again
Speaker 1: I think you said that the d e A finds
Speaker 1: its origins and customs right, That's right, and they everyone
Speaker 1: works in concert. Today. The Custom Service will work with
Speaker 1: the d e A and the Coastguard and immigration and
Speaker 1: naturalization because they all want to keep the drugs out.
Speaker 1: So like, the Custom Service will have a plane, one
Speaker 1: of those radar planes that flies very high above looking
Speaker 1: at boats, and then they'll see a boat that looks
Speaker 1: shady and they'll call down to let's like the coastguard
Speaker 1: or maybe their own office who calls the coastguard as
Speaker 1: you go out, and let's see what's going on in
Speaker 1: that boat? And the what I think the description of
Speaker 1: this is hilarious. They basically just chase him in a
Speaker 1: boat until the guys decided to stop. What else you
Speaker 1: gonna do? And then they board the boat and say
Speaker 1: put up your your hand, yeah, and they do. If
Speaker 1: they have a plane, they will get a couple of
Speaker 1: things going on them. A jet plane to track from
Speaker 1: way behind, and then a black hawk helicopter to follow
Speaker 1: right behind the plane. Then they don't see him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: behind and beneath yeah uh and apparently yeah, you can't see.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about them, like, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: side view mirrors on a plane. It's just hysterical to
Speaker 1: think about a drug plane just flying along like this
Speaker 1: is great black Hawk helicopter right below them, just like,
Speaker 1: all right, suckers, just go ahead and land and then
Speaker 1: we'll we'll introduce ourselves. And that's what they do. And
Speaker 1: some people just say, I'll take my chances walking through
Speaker 1: an airport with cocaine taped to my body. These are
Speaker 1: the people that make for the best. Um, crazy stuff
Speaker 1: smuggled through. Uh, customs are crazy ways to smuggle drugs.
Speaker 1: But I wonder how many like you hear about it
Speaker 1: on the news when someone gets caught. People get away
Speaker 1: with it a lot of it, right, because that's what
Speaker 1: they're doing. They're playing the odds that you're just not
Speaker 1: gonna get sniffed out, right exactly. Um, And I think
Speaker 1: it's it's probably exceedingly difficult these days to make it through,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't actually have it physically deposited inside
Speaker 1: your body because of the not just the drug dogs,
Speaker 1: but they have UM, they have devices that can smell air.
Speaker 1: Essentially it's a it's a sniffing device UM and it
Speaker 1: figures out what molecules are floating around the air. And
Speaker 1: if it's like, oh, well this is cocaine, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: probably cocaine in that person's suitcase or whatever. An electro
Speaker 1: vacuum is what that's called. Difficult to get around that
Speaker 1: difficult to get around a dog. Plus also you're also
Speaker 1: being scrutinized by the customs agent himself or herself. So
Speaker 1: I would imagine it's very tough to get it through
Speaker 1: unless you've ingested it, and some people have. There's a
Speaker 1: dude who got caught in I think Miami or Fort
Speaker 1: Lauderdale in two fifteen. He'd swallowed a hundred and I
Speaker 1: think forty eight pellets of coke, three pounds he had
Speaker 1: in his stomach. That's so dangerous. And another woman got
Speaker 1: busted with three pounds in her breasts that was breast implants. Crazy.
Speaker 1: So you'll still get busted. But I think you make
Speaker 1: a good point. I really wonder what the estimate is
Speaker 1: for how many people who actually do make it through unmolested. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: here was our deal coming back in this time. It
Speaker 1: was way easier and quicker than I thought. Like we
Speaker 1: filled out the little customs card on the plane, they
Speaker 1: didn't even ask for that. Yeah. I walked up and
Speaker 1: they asked for a couple of questions, like what did
Speaker 1: you bring in? And we said, you know, a few gifts.
Speaker 1: How much was it worth, you know, eighty dollars And
Speaker 1: they said, all right, welcome back. And I said, is that.
Speaker 1: It walked through to the luggage and I thought there
Speaker 1: would be a more heavily scrutinized process after that or something,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't. There were a couple of beagles, very
Speaker 1: cute drug sniffing beagles, and uh, they were walking around
Speaker 1: and that was it. And then we got our stuff
Speaker 1: and left. Well your bags had already I'm sure been
Speaker 1: X ray and crazy like exposed to some other stuff. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And and it's not just like at the airport. At
Speaker 1: at ports like the border between Mexico and the United States,
Speaker 1: they have like truck size X rays. You they X
Speaker 1: ray um um. And that's part of that hundred percent initiative.
Speaker 1: They want to be able to do that to a
Speaker 1: percent of everything all containers coming in the United States,
Speaker 1: like I said, or they have X ray rooms like
Speaker 1: in Total Call, where you just walk everyone through this
Speaker 1: room and they look for weird bulges um or hollow
Speaker 1: empty spots that shouldn't be there. You still haven't seen
Speaker 1: spinal tap, have you? I have? Oh? You did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember a lot of it. When the
Speaker 1: bass player Derek Small is played by Harry Shearer, he's
Speaker 1: going through and he has metal on them and they
Speaker 1: have the uh the metal wand and it's going off
Speaker 1: every time they pass over his his crotch, his growing area,
Speaker 1: and he's like you, I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. And finally he takes
Speaker 1: a he had a a cucumber wrapped in tinfoil stuffed
Speaker 1: down his pants. Why would it be wrapped in tinfoil? Well,
Speaker 1: that's just part of the greatness of that joke. I
Speaker 1: think that is a good joke. You know, it was
Speaker 1: very funny. Um. Uh what else one of the things
Speaker 1: that got me which is pretty smart. So um, they
Speaker 1: might take a dog on a plane like after c
Speaker 1: D board it, Yeah, and have the dogs sniff around
Speaker 1: because they may miss it as you're walking past. But
Speaker 1: if you've been sitting on a plane for eight hours,
Speaker 1: that drug smells are going to get into the seat.
Speaker 1: And if the farting cocaine smells into that seat, and
Speaker 1: if that dog sniffs that, they'll say, well who was
Speaker 1: in And they'll say, oh, well, Josh Clark was You're
Speaker 1: in the duty free shop thinking like I just got
Speaker 1: I'm putting some moisturizing around my face, thinking about all
Speaker 1: the money I'm gonna have to buy moisturizer with, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah yeah. Next thing I know, there's a beagle
Speaker 1: sitting down next to me, looking up, and I go, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what you do though? You just spray some
Speaker 1: rose water in the beagles face and run and make
Speaker 1: a cap out of its fur. Oh why do you
Speaker 1: have to go there? Another thing that they're looking for
Speaker 1: is cash money. Um oh yeah, laundering money and getting
Speaker 1: it out of the country is is a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The custom seats something like fifty three million dollars in
Speaker 1: bulk currency. In cash. I think, what is it ten
Speaker 1: grand that you have to declare coming back into the US,
Speaker 1: and you do, They're not gonna you can take as
Speaker 1: much in and out as you want. But you have
Speaker 1: to declare it because they want to keep track of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff because I don't know if we
Speaker 1: said um. In addition to goods being imported and exported,
Speaker 1: a country, especially like a centralized UM, federal government wants
Speaker 1: to know where it's arms are going. They want to
Speaker 1: keep it tight tight control of that and where it's
Speaker 1: money is going, because you can destabilize a country with
Speaker 1: both of those things. And so they try to keep
Speaker 1: a pretty good eye on where it's going and where
Speaker 1: it's coming from, not not just in the that it
Speaker 1: could destabilize the government, but they want a piece of it.
Speaker 1: They want to attacks that stuff, you know. So um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the easiest ways to under money is to
Speaker 1: just smuggle it from one country or another, smuggle it
Speaker 1: out of the US to a country that's not really
Speaker 1: paying nearly as much attention. Bam, you get some legitimate funds. Yep.
Speaker 1: And we did an episode of money laundering, correct, Yes
Speaker 1: we did. And we did one on police dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think is all over this thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then finally, one of the things that UM is a
Speaker 1: big deal. If you've ever traveled in and out of California,
Speaker 1: let's say is one example. UM. They actually have a
Speaker 1: produce UM stop Yeah, where you're stopped in your car
Speaker 1: and they say, do you have any uh produce on you?
Speaker 1: Any vegetables, any plants? Just a cucumber with tinfoil right
Speaker 1: FRONTA uh. These are actually legal goods, but they are
Speaker 1: prohibited in certain areas because of infestations of various pests,
Speaker 1: and notably in California in the nineteen eighties, a couple
Speaker 1: of things happened. The nineteen eighties was a bad decade
Speaker 1: for the med flow in California. UM. Early on in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, it was a bad infestation, and then
Speaker 1: Governor Jerry Brown had a series of missteps on whether
Speaker 1: or not to spray um the state with this gross
Speaker 1: stuff that would kill the flies but also have bad
Speaker 1: effects in the environment. And he was an environmentalist, and
Speaker 1: it was I think I can't remember. I think he
Speaker 1: eventually did spray, but waited too long and costs state
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but he also angered the environmentalist
Speaker 1: until will be off, it was like probably, I mean
Speaker 1: there was. It may have been a No one situation, UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure some Californians will have a better memory
Speaker 1: of this than me. Um, but supposedly in the late
Speaker 1: eighties there was one piece of bad fruit that caused
Speaker 1: a big med fly outbreak. And then I looked up
Speaker 1: in nine there was a an intentional, supposedly eco terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: We're a group called the Breeders unleashed med flies in
Speaker 1: response in retaliation against all this spraying, which doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense because that would only mean they'd have to
Speaker 1: spray more. You know, No, that's not They didn't really
Speaker 1: think it through, but I think that they eventually said,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is real. I think this was
Speaker 1: a hoax letter. But we also can't explain the concentration
Speaker 1: of some of these outbreaks, and it perhaps it may
Speaker 1: have been intentional, who knows. Wow, yeah, eco terrorism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty surprising. But the idea that the first one though,
Speaker 1: was just completely accidental. It was one bad piece of
Speaker 1: fruit that one traveler, but supposedly I couldn't find like, uh,
Speaker 1: mango zero that started it. And then I looked around
Speaker 1: a bunch, but I couldn't find like verification on that.
Speaker 1: Interesting though, Um but yeah, Hawaii he's really big on
Speaker 1: that too. And then, um, I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 1: but last year I think in May of two dozen fifteen,
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp caused a huge stink he and Amber heard
Speaker 1: opening his mouth or remember heard where? Um like they
Speaker 1: were in Australia for I think a premiere of one
Speaker 1: of those pirates of the Caribbean things. And um like
Speaker 1: they just brought their dogs with them on a private
Speaker 1: show about sending them to quarantine. A huge stink and
Speaker 1: rightfully so like just the arrogance and Amber heard is
Speaker 1: Amber heard? You know? Like I think both of them
Speaker 1: are just like, we don't have to do it. We'll
Speaker 1: just bring the dogs. Who cares? Who cares about the
Speaker 1: stupid quarantine law. This continent is just an island. Do
Speaker 1: remember that? It's uh what do they call that? Privilege? Yes, entitlement? Um,
Speaker 1: we just shamed them. Well, good man, Johnny Depp doesn't
Speaker 1: listen to this. Ah, I think you're right. Uh finally
Speaker 1: already said finally. Uh, cultural artifacts are regulated, although fine
Speaker 1: art supposedly is not subject to tariffs, Is that right?
Speaker 1: Duty No, they're big into cultural artifacts because um, so
Speaker 1: much of it is looted. I said, I should say
Speaker 1: illegitimately looted. All those things are looted. Um, but ice
Speaker 1: apparently immigrations and Customs enforcement is big in cultural artifacts repatriation,
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between ICE and customs and border
Speaker 1: patrol or border protection. Apparently, Customs and Border protection UM
Speaker 1: staffs the borders. They protect the borders, and then ICE,
Speaker 1: Immigrations and Customs enforcement carries out law enforcement that has
Speaker 1: to do with customs and immigration within the United States.
Speaker 1: So once you make it through, once you make it
Speaker 1: past customs and Border protection, you still have to deal
Speaker 1: with ICE coming and finding, like kicking down your door
Speaker 1: and being like, give us back that Mesopotamian tablet and
Speaker 1: they say who are you and they say, we're Ice. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's played by the rock I imagine the guy from
Speaker 1: The Shield, the bald dude. Yeah, I never saw that.
Speaker 1: I heard it was good though, great show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was definitely UM overshadowed by The Wire because they
Speaker 1: both came out at about the same time. It's not
Speaker 1: a fair comparison. They're just two different shows. But it
Speaker 1: was nuts man like. There were several episodes that were
Speaker 1: like episode for the first season of True Detective, just
Speaker 1: insane from beginning to end. You know, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I realized after our talk when I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: watch um was it NYPD Blue? I think Law and Order.
Speaker 1: I have a diversion to coop shows. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Like I watched The Wire and I watched
Speaker 1: Hill Street Blues in the eighties. I never watched that.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that show. Uh, which is funny because
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a kit chow for twelve year old kids. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I've watched a whole lot of
Speaker 1: Like I watched Dexter some but that wasn't exactly It's
Speaker 1: more of a serial killer show than a cop show,
Speaker 1: and it got really forensic show man off the rails
Speaker 1: is yeah, but yeah, I don't watch a lot of
Speaker 1: cops shows. Huh. I did watch True Detective season one.
Speaker 1: That kind of counts off the rails too. What for
Speaker 1: season two? For season one, like the last couple of episode, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a let down. Yeah, whatever, it
Speaker 1: went on the rails. How about that? It's TV. It's
Speaker 1: not important and we can say that because we had
Speaker 1: a TV show. Yeah, it really didn't change our lives
Speaker 1: in any way. You got anything else? Nope. So that's customs.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about it, there's plenty
Speaker 1: more to know. You can tape that word into the
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said search part, it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say this is something to open all of our eyes. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: as a Canadian, I was happy to spend one long
Speaker 1: walk recently listening to the mysterious feet washing up on
Speaker 1: the shores of BC. British Columbia. You said that they
Speaker 1: have a shockingly large number of missing persons cases. And
Speaker 1: while that's true, you guys express surprise and throughout a
Speaker 1: few humorous suggestions on why. But there's one concrete factor
Speaker 1: that really contributes to the high rate of missing individuals.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get a lot of airtime internationally, but only
Speaker 1: recently became newsworthy within Canada even uh disappearance and murder
Speaker 1: of Native and Indigenous women who live in the province.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this? Yeah, A couple of people
Speaker 1: emailed them right after that came out. Yeah, very sad,
Speaker 1: she said. No one likes to talk about it. It
Speaker 1: seems one our last Prime minister even straight up said
Speaker 1: an interview that missing and murdered Native women were not
Speaker 1: a priority for the government. Uh. I don't know. As
Speaker 1: far as I can see, the why is pretty clear.
Speaker 1: It's happening, and it's allowed to happen because of sexism
Speaker 1: and more importantly racism. You two are really great at
Speaker 1: making sure you challenge sexism whenever you can, and I
Speaker 1: commend you for that. I thought it was a missed
Speaker 1: opportunity though, to discuss racism uh and open it up
Speaker 1: to a similar discourse UM. And I emailed her back
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I didn't know about this
Speaker 1: to we totally would have. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: continuing to do the show. When people ask why I
Speaker 1: love it so much, I simply tell them that your
Speaker 1: camaraderie and ease makes me feel like I know you both.
Speaker 1: It's always fun to listen to things explained by your friends,
Speaker 1: and that is Emily Owens in Kuala Lampur, but of Montreal,
Speaker 1: of Montreal, Canadia, and she h. By the way, there's
Speaker 1: follow up on this, an article from Media smarts UM
Speaker 1: called media portrayals. Well this is the r oh at
Speaker 1: least just google um, Media smarts and missing and Murdered
Speaker 1: Aboriginal Women. And then she said there's also a great
Speaker 1: documentary called Highway of tears, but heads up will make
Speaker 1: you feel crappy for days. Let's just do one on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. She didn't say crappy either, she said cretty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she'sai cretty yeah. Yeah, that's it. Okay, Well, thanks a lot, Emily.
Speaker 1: We appreciate that, and keep an ear out for an
Speaker 1: episode on that sometime down the road. Touch Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with me too on Twitter at
Speaker 1: josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I got my own little personal public figure page now
Speaker 1: Charles V. Chuck Bryant's a lot of fun, nice like
Speaker 1: the the original Stuff you Should Know. Fans are hanging
Speaker 1: out there. Oh yeah, that's the place to be. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot com and it's always joined us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know. Com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. M