Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Opposite me is one Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Chuck Tran Bryant. Nice call back, Yeah, Chuck Tran
Speaker 1: call back? Yeah, the thing? Uh auditioned and won the rowl.
Speaker 1: You've never acted like audition for anything? I mean sure, No.
Speaker 1: I used to be in children's theater. Really yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: I've never done that except my audition with you, of
Speaker 1: course for this spot. That one really well, so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you're so kind, You're too kind. You're generous actress
Speaker 1: I would say about each other Jenners so Chuck, Yes,
Speaker 1: you just move on. Sure, okay, Um, if you've ever
Speaker 1: had a hand anchoring for um African monkey meat, I
Speaker 1: can tell you where in Europe to go get it.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, you can go to Paris, to Charles de
Speaker 1: gal Airport and they have monkey meat. They have bush
Speaker 1: meat of all kinds. Apparently bush meat is what it's called.
Speaker 1: Bush meat is another term for any kind of wild
Speaker 1: game or unregulated game. You can make the case that
Speaker 1: livestock that doesn't pass in through any kind of um
Speaker 1: regulatory body sure is considered bush meat. But typically bush
Speaker 1: meat is um. A bush man goes out into the wild,
Speaker 1: shoots a monkey through the head with an arrow, and
Speaker 1: um chops it up and there's your meat. You can
Speaker 1: also do that with um, crocodile. You can do that
Speaker 1: with river hog, porcupine whatever. It is a little gross,
Speaker 1: but they there was a study. I guess somebody noticed
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of bush meat coming through
Speaker 1: UH Paris, and so these UH wildlife officials got together
Speaker 1: with the customs agency there and over seventeen days they
Speaker 1: searched one and thirty four passengers randomly, I guess, but
Speaker 1: they were probably like, oh, you're coming out of Africa, right,
Speaker 1: And they found that half of them were carrying bush
Speaker 1: meat and their luggage unrefrigerated luggage, like you opened up
Speaker 1: their duffel bag and there was a lot of monkey
Speaker 1: right there, as opposed to the refrigerated luggage that you
Speaker 1: you like, well, I mean you would like to think
Speaker 1: that they would at least, you know, rig some dry
Speaker 1: ice something. It is a little nasty um, but that,
Speaker 1: my friend, is part and parcel for a day's work
Speaker 1: for customs official, is it not? It can be. Let's
Speaker 1: talk specifically about US customs for a second. Where did
Speaker 1: it come from, Chuck? Where did this idea originate? Where? Chuck? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, dude, I know everyone likes to think that
Speaker 1: our founding fathers were just all about like everybody having
Speaker 1: freedom and the government, no one owing government money for anything.
Speaker 1: But that's not true at all. George Washington and the
Speaker 1: Founding fathers in the first Congress actually said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we are a struggling nation and we need to raise
Speaker 1: some dough by way of tariffs on mm hmm, how
Speaker 1: about imported goods? Right? And so they said sure. So
Speaker 1: that was the birth of customs, right. Actually, we can
Speaker 1: point to the very day that it was born. The
Speaker 1: Terrifact of July four nine was passed on July thirty one,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine. Uh and it did exactly what you
Speaker 1: just said, right, Like you said, if you're carrying stuff
Speaker 1: into the country, we get the taxi on it just
Speaker 1: because it's originating outside of the country, right and then
Speaker 1: right yeah, like Savannah, yeah, um, and uh so people
Speaker 1: come in there funneled in through these ports, and they're
Speaker 1: charged dough right big time. They Actually, I was staggered
Speaker 1: by this. The U S Customs for like a hundred
Speaker 1: years supported the entire government infrastructure. UM. By eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: we had zero debt thanks to Customs revenue. And even today,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, the Customs Agency is second
Speaker 1: only to the I R. S in generating revenue for
Speaker 1: the United States. Right, Yeah, I think I didn't get
Speaker 1: a hard number, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 1: about thirty billion dollars a year that they bring in
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year from almost what we bring in
Speaker 1: for discovery. Yeah. Originally, Chuck, the Customs Service did a
Speaker 1: whole lot of stuff, including UM Census Veterans Affairs UM
Speaker 1: and the National Institute of Standards in Technology was actually
Speaker 1: born out of the custom Service. They're the ones who
Speaker 1: came up with our system of um way and standards
Speaker 1: because they had to come up with the way to
Speaker 1: describe stuff that they were seizing or taxing or that
Speaker 1: kind of thing UM. And actually I wrote a really
Speaker 1: cool post on the metric system. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you ever read it, but that's where I learned that
Speaker 1: it was really cool. It's a cool post. And the
Speaker 1: Coast Guard two was birthed from the Customs Office. That's right,
Speaker 1: Jerry thinks you are hilarious anytime I mispronouncing some perfect titters. Um,
Speaker 1: so chuck. The custom Service did all this stuff, spawned
Speaker 1: all these extra agencies, and then um pretty much stayed
Speaker 1: the same for a while until two thousand three, Um,
Speaker 1: when George W. Was in office. Uh, the Customs Service
Speaker 1: became the US Customs and Border Protection. Yeah, part of
Speaker 1: the Homeland Security Office department, which makes sense, I guess
Speaker 1: in a way unless you have like a comprehensive immigration agency, right,
Speaker 1: good point, um, And so pretty much their their main
Speaker 1: job is to control or oversee the flow of goods
Speaker 1: from outside the borders and and inside the borders out
Speaker 1: right right. They are this thin blue line between you know,
Speaker 1: free trade and total anarchy. That's a good point, thanks man. Um.
Speaker 1: So they seize contraband, they process people, they process cargo. Um,
Speaker 1: they enforce uh stuff is as laws as desperate as
Speaker 1: bush meat importation to intellectual property law, Like if you
Speaker 1: get caught with some you know, burn DVDs that are
Speaker 1: clearly pirated, you're gonna get in trouble and you would
Speaker 1: have gotten caught by the Customs Department, right all in all,
Speaker 1: their enforcing about four hundred different provisions of law, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they like to refer to themselves as the oldest
Speaker 1: law enforcement agency in the United States. And I think
Speaker 1: the duty that scares me. And we're gonna say duty
Speaker 1: a lot in this podcast. We should probably just get
Speaker 1: it over with. Yeah, not d O O D y duty,
Speaker 1: d U T y duty, right right right, I just
Speaker 1: want to clear that up, um and chuck. They they
Speaker 1: oversee what's called exodus um cases. Yeah, what's that? Exodus
Speaker 1: cases are? I guess that's kind of like broken arrow
Speaker 1: or something like that. It's, uh, if you have weapons
Speaker 1: or weapons technology, UM. Weapons intelligence is anything you can
Speaker 1: destroy the US with or attack the US with. Customs
Speaker 1: is on that and they deemed those exodus cases and
Speaker 1: those are big time. Yeah. I just saw a guy.
Speaker 1: I didn't look into it too heavily, but like in
Speaker 1: the news this week, there's some custom sting operation where
Speaker 1: this big businessman was selling like some sort of batteries
Speaker 1: that help uh a missile launch to Iran or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I need to look it up. But
Speaker 1: big stinging down type that is exodus. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: if the urban legend about Saddam Hussein importing PlayStations to
Speaker 1: use the very sophisticated chips in his guided missile. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I think the first PlayStation came out, that that
Speaker 1: was an urban legend around it. Yeah, that's a silly one.
Speaker 1: So chuckers, Like we said, at the basis of all this,
Speaker 1: it's the customs service in any country is charged with
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on the flow of goods across the borders, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because, as we saw,
Speaker 1: George Washington and the founding fathers were hipped to the
Speaker 1: idea that being government and all, you can push around
Speaker 1: guys who are importers exporters, right and um say, hey,
Speaker 1: give us a cut. Well, yeah, the idea is kind
Speaker 1: of twofold. It's um. One is because America wants you
Speaker 1: to buy American goods, but a lot of times, most
Speaker 1: times goods from other countries you can buy cheaper. So
Speaker 1: they say, all right, well, if you're gonna buy something
Speaker 1: from over there, we want to want you to support America.
Speaker 1: But if you're gonna do that, then we want to
Speaker 1: get our our piece of the pie, right or they
Speaker 1: will they charge duty on um. Say, uh, some breros
Speaker 1: in Mexico. That's a good one. So there. So you
Speaker 1: can get a sombrero here, but you're gonna pay like
Speaker 1: seventeen dollars for it, the same sombrero, virtually the same,
Speaker 1: except it was manufactured in Mexico. Mexico is a bad
Speaker 1: example after NAFTA has passed. But let's stick with it,
Speaker 1: shall we. Um, you can get that one for two bucks. Well,
Speaker 1: the government's gonna impose a duty on it. So maybe
Speaker 1: ultimately once you pay the duty and how much you
Speaker 1: were being charged for the sombrero. You're actually paying nineteen
Speaker 1: dollars for the Mexican one, where you can get the
Speaker 1: seventeen dollar one here in the US, so you might
Speaker 1: as well just get that. Well yeah, but that that's
Speaker 1: if you're shipping like large. Like there's duty free exemptions.
Speaker 1: We should go over that real quick. Yeah, duty free?
Speaker 1: Explain it? Duty free is uh? In the United States?
Speaker 1: You get a four hundred exemption if you come back
Speaker 1: into the country from anywhere except a Caribbean basin country
Speaker 1: or the Virgin Islands, Guam or American Samoa. So if
Speaker 1: you come in from Europe, let's say you're allowed to
Speaker 1: bring four dollars worth of stuff in uh, and you
Speaker 1: declare it and um, four dollars worth of bush meat
Speaker 1: of bush meat, and then after that you have to
Speaker 1: start paying your tariff on that. And they they have
Speaker 1: specific outlines for um like tobacco you can bring two
Speaker 1: hundred cigarettes or a hundred cigars as part of that
Speaker 1: under four hundred dollars. And alcohol, of course, you can
Speaker 1: bring in one leader a booze duty free. And you
Speaker 1: can bring in a curtain of cigarettes and a leader
Speaker 1: of booze. Yeah, that's a party right there. You got it.
Speaker 1: And you know, a few cigars as long as they're
Speaker 1: not Cubans, which we'll get to. But I did find
Speaker 1: this interesting. Fine art and antiques that are at least
Speaker 1: a hundred years old or not subject to tax really
Speaker 1: no matter. I mean it could be like a ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollar painting and no duty. What about a twelve
Speaker 1: thousand dollar painting no duty? Huh? Ask me about folk art?
Speaker 1: What about folk art? Chuck duty? Really? Yeah? Just fine
Speaker 1: art folk The custom service has an opinion on art,
Speaker 1: and the folk art is crappy. Yeah, or maybe not,
Speaker 1: or maybe they think it's so great it should be taxed. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's no. No, have you seen folk
Speaker 1: art before? Yeah? I had. I should say say this
Speaker 1: real quick. When I was living in l A. I
Speaker 1: went to a show with Emily, one of those shows
Speaker 1: where they have folk art, and I thought that, wow,
Speaker 1: what a scam. He was like, I could I should
Speaker 1: do this? And I came up with an idea to
Speaker 1: drum up um buzz by calling, over the course of
Speaker 1: like a year or different places and saying, hey, do
Speaker 1: you have any art by Chuck Bryant, this artist, and
Speaker 1: to the point where they had heard this name. And
Speaker 1: then at one point I would enter these places and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm Chuck Bryan. I didn't know if you want to
Speaker 1: cover some of my carry some of my art nice.
Speaker 1: They'd be like, well, we've heard of you. Let me
Speaker 1: see that piece of tin the east Lung paints on.
Speaker 1: That's actually a brilliant idea, Chuck, somebody should go do that.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you ever do it? Because it's fraud and
Speaker 1: it's not nicer ethical. I don't know that that's fraud
Speaker 1: in the art world. No, Okay, I think that's just
Speaker 1: normal business. You know, I didn't do it. I was lazy. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's duty free. That is very odd. Did you
Speaker 1: find out why folk art is just that it is? No,
Speaker 1: we could probably call and get an answer to that.
Speaker 1: You want to call right now? Okay? Um, so we
Speaker 1: covered duty free, right, yeah, And I guess we should
Speaker 1: talk about big business. It's because there's two different kinds.
Speaker 1: There's people, there's businesses that ship in and import tons
Speaker 1: of stuff and ports of call, and then there's you
Speaker 1: and I getting off an airplane. Well we should say
Speaker 1: also that with duty free, the exemption applies to the importer,
Speaker 1: not the customer. Right, So if we come back into
Speaker 1: the States or yeah, if we come back into the
Speaker 1: States and we say I could use a leader of
Speaker 1: Scotch and the cartoner Dunhills, so we pick them up
Speaker 1: and then we continue on into the United States, we
Speaker 1: don't pay any duty. But if we do the same
Speaker 1: thing at Charles de Gaul Airport, uh, and then coming
Speaker 1: to the United States, we pay a duty because we're
Speaker 1: still importing, right yeah, yeah, okay, so you're actually an
Speaker 1: importer that that you're classified as an importer. Yea, So
Speaker 1: big business Josh, millions of dollars worth of goods each
Speaker 1: year UH is imported and are imported, and they kind
Speaker 1: of keep track of it the same way as they
Speaker 1: do with individuals. They like, they can't inspect every single
Speaker 1: thing or every single person, so they'll just kind of
Speaker 1: pick and choose. I'll open up a cargo container and say,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look at these seven boxes in container eight,
Speaker 1: and then the guy crosses his fingers that the cocaine
Speaker 1: is not in those, you know gargo holds exactly. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a deterrent in and of itself, the randomness
Speaker 1: of it, all right. But at the same time, that
Speaker 1: method means that tons and tons and tons of illicit
Speaker 1: substances seep through our rather poorout border. And it's not
Speaker 1: it's not just with big business too, it's individual travelers
Speaker 1: as well. Like UM. Some countries use actual you know chance.
Speaker 1: They leave it to chance who gets searched. So they
Speaker 1: have people passing through their borders at their airports press
Speaker 1: a random number generator and a certain number will trigger
Speaker 1: a green light which means you keep going, and other
Speaker 1: will trigger a red light that means you're going to
Speaker 1: be your rectum is about to be probed, or instinct,
Speaker 1: which is my favorite, when the they count on the
Speaker 1: border agent to be the customs agent to be so
Speaker 1: skilled that they can like eyeball you and say that
Speaker 1: guy has something stuffed in a place that we should check.
Speaker 1: Either that or the GDP of that country is so
Speaker 1: low that they don't have enough money for a random
Speaker 1: number generator. They rely on instinct, which comes with the salary.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, Chuck. We we talked about illicit
Speaker 1: substances cocaine, uh, marijuana, Um sure, So, like we were
Speaker 1: just saying, the stuff is coming through all the time,
Speaker 1: and Customs is aware of this. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you knew this or not, but they know that they're
Speaker 1: drugs coming across the border, and um, they have equipment
Speaker 1: at their disposal right at the ports. We talked about
Speaker 1: the random number generator. The US is fairly flushed with
Speaker 1: with cash as far as UM customs go. So we
Speaker 1: actually have truck size X rays that you can literally
Speaker 1: they're big enough to drive a truck through at the
Speaker 1: US Mexican border. Have you really you've driven through the
Speaker 1: X ray before? What's it like? Were you inside? Uh?
Speaker 1: What do you mean? Dangerous. Well, I means the same
Speaker 1: as walking through an X ray, which is pretty dangerous.
Speaker 1: But this is like a truck size X ray. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good point. And din't really think about that. Yeah, been
Speaker 1: over and across the border quite a few times. I
Speaker 1: got you never carried anything unlicit. That's very smart, don't
Speaker 1: you worry? Yeah? Um, we also have black Hawk helicopter
Speaker 1: citation jets at our disposals. Cigarette boats, yes, for catching
Speaker 1: cigarette smugglers. No, those are the super fast boats like
Speaker 1: Miami Bice is it? Apparently the drug smugglers that come
Speaker 1: in like undercover of the night, really fast. And so
Speaker 1: the Coast Guard works in concert with the d e A.
Speaker 1: It's a joint effort and customs agents. It's not a
Speaker 1: joint effort, no it is. I just thought that was
Speaker 1: a funny pun. Yeah, so they're looking for, you know,
Speaker 1: bad things. And I looked up you know they mentioned
Speaker 1: in here that people actually smuggle things in on their
Speaker 1: person they'll go through customs instead trying to smuggle it
Speaker 1: around customs, And uh, I thought they should have a
Speaker 1: TV show called Smugglers Do the Darnest Things, because have
Speaker 1: you ever seen I mean, I know you hear about
Speaker 1: these stories from time to time. But the way that
Speaker 1: these people trying to get drugs in the country, it's
Speaker 1: crazy in their bodies. Remember the guy that made a
Speaker 1: cast a foot cast out of cocaine. No, I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard of that. I think we talked about them the webcast.
Speaker 1: It was either that or we talked about they made
Speaker 1: a dinet set. Like the plates and the bowls, we're
Speaker 1: all made of cocaine. It's crazy. Uh. There was the
Speaker 1: that was twenty kilow's of coke by the way, for
Speaker 1: the dinner were. One thing they'll do is they'll put
Speaker 1: it in a condom and feed it to their snake,
Speaker 1: their pet snake, and then smuggle the snake in, which
Speaker 1: I guess is easier than smuggling drugs. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: That seemed like I wonder if people. I wonder if
Speaker 1: the average customs agent is afraid of snakes like any
Speaker 1: other person. Yeah, maybe so they figured that out. Frozen
Speaker 1: sharks I saw her some I think it was Cambodia.
Speaker 1: They had like forty frozen sharks and they were stuffed
Speaker 1: full of drugs. Uh. And then the sad ones like
Speaker 1: the when they smuggle them inside the dogs liquid heroin
Speaker 1: inside the puppies. Remember that was a few years ago.
Speaker 1: And then uh, this yellow lab had likety dollars worth
Speaker 1: of cocaine and it's belly one time when they were
Speaker 1: smuggling this dog in. It's a bad dog. He's a
Speaker 1: good dog, bad people. Jerry slaughing again, So U how
Speaker 1: how would you stop that? Though in an airport let's say, Well, again,
Speaker 1: there's some the randomness of the whole thing serves as
Speaker 1: a deterrent um two into intuition, as you said. And
Speaker 1: dogs good dogs, not ones that are drug smuggling bad dogs,
Speaker 1: but they kind of tattle on drug smuggling dogs. Good dogs.
Speaker 1: Beagles specifically are good apparently not just for illicit drugs,
Speaker 1: but especially for agricultural products. Apparently they're fine tuned to
Speaker 1: sniff those out and bombs of course, which has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the customs. But I was actually in
Speaker 1: I guess Atlanta. I don't know where I was coming
Speaker 1: back from, but um, there was this cute little beagle
Speaker 1: who walked up to this woman and just sat down
Speaker 1: and looked up at her. And this customs guy was like, man,
Speaker 1: we please come with me, and uh, turn out she
Speaker 1: had fruit on her. Oh yeah, yeah, well you should
Speaker 1: go ahead and mention that. Then well it's it's more
Speaker 1: of a threat than you would think, right, absolutely. Um,
Speaker 1: there's there's apparently a guy in the late eighties who
Speaker 1: brought a piece of fruit, one piece of fruit back
Speaker 1: from the Mediterranean and it was infested with Mediterranean fruit
Speaker 1: flies and it contaminated and destroyed millions of dollars worth
Speaker 1: of crops in California that year. That's crazy. One piece
Speaker 1: of fruit. Have you ever driven into California? Uh? You got,
Speaker 1: I've always flown in. Yeah, you gotta stop and they check,
Speaker 1: they check your car. It's a real bummer too, because
Speaker 1: when you make the Vegas to CA California trip, you're
Speaker 1: coming back from Vegas and all you want to do
Speaker 1: is get back to your house and sleep, and you
Speaker 1: gotta stop at this It's always backed up for miles
Speaker 1: and they you know, it's the fruit, it's the agriculture.
Speaker 1: Stop really yeah, And they asked they either ask you
Speaker 1: to you know, do you have any fruits, vegetables or seeds,
Speaker 1: or they just eyeball you in your car and like
Speaker 1: we'll wave you through or or say stop. They rely
Speaker 1: on intuition. See if you like a pair smuggler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always getting nervous. I don't know why. It's just fruit,
Speaker 1: the drug, dogs, everything. They always make me nervous and
Speaker 1: I never you know. Of course I don't have like
Speaker 1: cocaine strapped on my belly, but it just makes me nervous. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty typical. And I think they make
Speaker 1: everybody nervous. You know, you're being scrutinized, you know, and
Speaker 1: nobody feels comfortable being scrutinized. Right, Or maybe it's a
Speaker 1: the T shirt that don't scrutinize me T shirt. I
Speaker 1: have one, right, I don't have drugs on me. Um.
Speaker 1: Dogs also get taken onto planes, Chuck, I thought this
Speaker 1: was kind of cool. Um, it's very roundabout, but it
Speaker 1: makes sense. They'll take a dog onto a plane to
Speaker 1: sniff around after everyone's disembarked, and if somebody had drugs
Speaker 1: on him or her, uh, he or she would have
Speaker 1: left some sort of trace on that seat, so the
Speaker 1: dog will like, say the seat right here. They'll look
Speaker 1: up on the flight manifest who is sitting there, find them,
Speaker 1: and then take them to be thrown in prison. It
Speaker 1: was Josh Clark, right, Black ghost to the sky. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other cool thing too that we didn't mention was
Speaker 1: the electro vacuum device. It's like a handheld dust buster
Speaker 1: super dustbuster sort of, but it analyzes particles in the air.
Speaker 1: So if you have cocaine packed in your suitcase, in theory,
Speaker 1: there's probably some like residue floating in the air and
Speaker 1: these things will sniff that out. Well, it's it's like
Speaker 1: um poop, when you smell poop, it's an odorant. It's
Speaker 1: an actual poop molecule that you're interacting with the same thing.
Speaker 1: That's very good. What he just winked at me? What
Speaker 1: else we got here? Oh, money's cash. You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to take more than ten thousand dollars in cash out
Speaker 1: of the country. But I would suspect that if you
Speaker 1: had nine, then you're probably a little suspicious. I don't
Speaker 1: know that for sure, or maybe that happens a lot
Speaker 1: and and you're not suspicious. What do you think. I
Speaker 1: think if if you're a penny over ten thousand bucks,
Speaker 1: they know it. I think if you get anywhere near it,
Speaker 1: or if you declared ten thousand dollars, they check you. Okay,
Speaker 1: I never lived I mean I never have more than
Speaker 1: like eight bucks on me anywhere US. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: had ten thousand dollars in cash on me ever probably
Speaker 1: never will of course not Chuck, you mentioned art. Customs
Speaker 1: agents are also on high alert for antiquities, including once
Speaker 1: you remember when we invaded Iraq there was a huge
Speaker 1: cultural ransacking. Their museums were getting looted. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: ancient stuff is just being moved out of a rock, right, Um,
Speaker 1: once it's in UM, I guess us borders there's that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean you're out of the woods. There was,
Speaker 1: um the example of customs finding a thousand year old
Speaker 1: Chinese sculpture that have been stolen from a tomb in
Speaker 1: turning up um on Christie's auction catalog. I guess they
Speaker 1: monitor these, uh and then cross reference them, and they
Speaker 1: found that it was going to be auction contacted. Christie said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be taking that and give it back to China. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's a that's something. Yeah. And this news story
Speaker 1: I pulled from just a couple of days ago in Bulgaria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they at a border check between Calatina and Serbia. They
Speaker 1: discovered four artifacts from third and second century BC and
Speaker 1: first century a c. That we're wrapped in that kins
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the suitcase. And the guy was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: those are just drink it gifts for my family there
Speaker 1: thousands of years old. So busted. Yeah, is he busted? Busted?
Speaker 1: They didn't believe him. Uh No, they didn't believe him,
Speaker 1: and they did some checking and they haven't like nothing
Speaker 1: has turned up missing for museums or anything yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll get to the bottom. Mother. Um. Lastly, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we were talking about bush meat. You were you you also, um,
Speaker 1: you can't bring dog meat into the US. That's a
Speaker 1: good thing, especially after two thousand when the US passed
Speaker 1: the Dogging Cat Protection Act, which is the most adorable
Speaker 1: act we've ever passed. I think it is. But sad
Speaker 1: that we needed that. Yeah, well, none of it. Not
Speaker 1: every country's you know, they don't look at dogs necessarily
Speaker 1: the way we do. Yeah, it's a good point. You know,
Speaker 1: some countries look at dogs the way we look at monkeys.
Speaker 1: It's like meat, right, you know, Yeah, we prize them
Speaker 1: for their fur kind of stuff. And think about that.
Speaker 1: Oh another thing too, it's not always illegal stuff per se,
Speaker 1: Like Cuban cigar. Sometimes it's just there's like an embargo
Speaker 1: trade embargo. That's a really good example. But I mean,
Speaker 1: don't you sence you regard Cuban cigars and what's the
Speaker 1: same way you would drugs too, Just because it has
Speaker 1: that stamp of forbiddness on it, it's it is, it
Speaker 1: seems like highly illegal. You know, I'm on the internet.
Speaker 1: Now I've heard that you can and and like they
Speaker 1: send you the cigars and then like a week later,
Speaker 1: in different package they send you the bands. The bands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of the I wouldn't know. I know, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't show up kid like Switzerland or Sweden. You can
Speaker 1: buy him from something like that. Uh. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about customs, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of articles on the side about it. I think if
Speaker 1: you're just type in customs in the search part how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com, it's gonna bring up, um, probably
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff things for Christmas, um, illegal border crossings,
Speaker 1: that kind this stuff. There's one on US customs in particular.
Speaker 1: UM And I said search bar right, which, as everyone knows,
Speaker 1: is the automatic trigger for listener mail. Right, Okay, Josh,
Speaker 1: this one struck us both pretty pretty well. Here from
Speaker 1: Sergeant Walker in Afghanistan. Yeah, this is cool, This is awesome.
Speaker 1: We love hearing from our men and women, servicemen and
Speaker 1: women over there putting their lives at risk, and this
Speaker 1: is a good one. Hello guys, my name is Sergeant
Speaker 1: John Walker. I'm with the hundred and third Special Ops
Speaker 1: Division in Afghanistan. I cannot give you a more district
Speaker 1: descriptive location, he says. My platoon and I protect the
Speaker 1: surrounding areas near schools so that children may achieve a
Speaker 1: well rounded education. My life is not easy, but one
Speaker 1: thing makes it all the better. Your podcast is the
Speaker 1: thing that keeps me going strong out here. Every podcast
Speaker 1: keeps me wanting more, and the next one comes out,
Speaker 1: and so forth, so forth. I always have my iPod
Speaker 1: on listening to you guys. And some of my platoon
Speaker 1: asked what I was listening to all the time, so
Speaker 1: I turned them onto it, and now they are at
Speaker 1: least one hundred guys who use my computer to download
Speaker 1: your podcast. How cool is that? It's cool, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't stuff there, Like I said, with the children in
Speaker 1: the school, Although some speak poor English, most speak the
Speaker 1: local dialect of Farci. My friend and I have learned
Speaker 1: a little bit of farcy and actually translate your podcast
Speaker 1: for the older children to be able to understand it.
Speaker 1: We don't do some like the large a drunk collider,
Speaker 1: but more simple ones that they can understand and that
Speaker 1: we can translate. We're expecting care packages soon. And I
Speaker 1: asked my family for a camera so I could share
Speaker 1: all of our happiness with you. I wish I had
Speaker 1: something I could give back to you guys. And clearly,
Speaker 1: Sergeant Walker, what you give us is mind and cool
Speaker 1: emails and cool emails. Yes, so we wrote him back
Speaker 1: and he's a he's a very cool guy. And he's
Speaker 1: still over there and he's still safe. This came in,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit ago. Yeah, pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: good luck to you, sir, Good luck, Sargeant Walker. Right, yes, um,
Speaker 1: And if you have a cool email about translating our
Speaker 1: podcast into some other language to help other people, we
Speaker 1: want to know about it. Bet we don't get anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you have one, though, or if you just want
Speaker 1: to say hi or something like that, you can email
Speaker 1: checking me at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff Works? Dot com. Want more how
Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
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