Speaker 1: Make your business official with Google and square Space. When
Speaker 1: you create a custom domain and a beautiful business website
Speaker 1: with square Space, you receive a free year of business
Speaker 1: email and professional tools from Google. It's the simplest way
Speaker 1: to look professional online. The squares space dot com slash Google.
Speaker 1: To start your free trial, use the offer code work
Speaker 1: for an additional ten percent off your first purchase. Google
Speaker 1: and square Space. Make it professional, Make it beautiful. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry uh. And this is Stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know the podcast. There are one, two, three of us. No,
Speaker 1: you just take a census. H You like that? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought this is much more interesting than I thought
Speaker 1: it would be. It wouldn't take much. I would guess
Speaker 1: most people's expectations of the census is that it's awfully boring.
Speaker 1: It's not at all. I don't know about the at
Speaker 1: all part, but yes, there are plenty of interesting factors
Speaker 1: to it that keep it from being awfully boring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying it's Uh, it doesn't get
Speaker 1: you jazzed. It's not exciting, but it's interesting to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's exciting to some people people in demography. Yeah,
Speaker 1: statistical walks, stat walks, right as we call them stocks.
Speaker 1: Oh man, just keep going. Uh yeah, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of people who find the sensus amazingly interesting. And that's
Speaker 1: who this is for. That's right. We've got twenty twenty
Speaker 1: coming up, by the way, which just the name of
Speaker 1: it makes it an exciting census. Yeah. So, um, and
Speaker 1: I should say we're talking about the American census. There's
Speaker 1: sensuces everywhere. Um. Yeah, It's not like every country does
Speaker 1: the census all, you know, on a set schedule, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty common actually, especially in westernized developed countries, that
Speaker 1: a census every ten years, where you literally go out
Speaker 1: and one form or another count every single person living
Speaker 1: in your country. Yeah. I got a couple of facts
Speaker 1: about other countries, but this is largely about the U.
Speaker 1: S census, you know, and in the US we do
Speaker 1: our census every ten years on years ending in zero.
Speaker 1: That's right. I was like, I wonder if everybody does
Speaker 1: it like that, And again it's kind of hit or
Speaker 1: miss with other countries. But I saw in the UK.
Speaker 1: They do it every ten years and years ending in one. Really,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's so foreign. Maybe they want to
Speaker 1: see what mistakes we make. Actually, probably not, because, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, the census starts cranking up a full year
Speaker 1: before they even start taking names. Yeah. And actually something
Speaker 1: else that surprised me about the UK US census comparison.
Speaker 1: We started long before they did. Our modern census started
Speaker 1: before the UK's modern census by several decades. I wonder
Speaker 1: if they were just like, you know, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: bloody good idea. Well, I wonder if they just weren't concerned.
Speaker 1: They just looked around and said, there's there's lots of
Speaker 1: us and that was good enough enough to rule the world,
Speaker 1: all right, So every ten years, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: the Commerce Department, Uh, the Census Bureau here in the US.
Speaker 1: Here in the US. Oh boy, we're gonna say that
Speaker 1: every time. Um, it is in the U s Constitution
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to seventeen nine, back when
Speaker 1: they were less than four million people, um, four million.
Speaker 1: You know, back then they didn't count uh slaves, they
Speaker 1: didn't count Native Americans. Uh. I think they did count
Speaker 1: slaves in the first one no, no, no no, I'm saying
Speaker 1: the four million people. Oh I was not counting those people.
Speaker 1: Are you sure? That's what it says, but they I'm
Speaker 1: not saying they didn't count them in the census. Um.
Speaker 1: It's sadly what that probably means is that they were
Speaker 1: not considered people. So there's a whole federalist paper about this.
Speaker 1: There's something very famously called the three fifths Compromise. Remember that,
Speaker 1: where um, the Southern states were like, hey, you gotta
Speaker 1: count the slaves, and the Northern states were like, you
Speaker 1: guys treat slaves like property, So no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to count them in the census. And there was this
Speaker 1: deal struck called the three fifths Compromise where um, slaves
Speaker 1: would be counted as three fifths of a person, right, um.
Speaker 1: And the whole reason was that the Southern states didn't
Speaker 1: want to be overwhelmed by the larger, more populated Northern
Speaker 1: states that weren't big on slavery. Because ultimately, as far
Speaker 1: as it goes in the United States, when you are
Speaker 1: conducting the census, you're trying to figure out how many
Speaker 1: representative seats in the House of Representatives each state gets,
Speaker 1: and it's done by population. Yeah, and as you'll see,
Speaker 1: there are many, many, many, many many other things that
Speaker 1: the census helps with these days. But the original two things, uh,
Speaker 1: that the census was supposed to do was to see
Speaker 1: was fit for the military and available, and to count
Speaker 1: people to see how many representatives you got. Those are
Speaker 1: the two biggies, right. Well, let's talk about the the
Speaker 1: first census. First of all, there were censuses in the Bible,
Speaker 1: because census is right, I think, yes, since I know no,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a karate instructor. Uh. There were censuses
Speaker 1: in the Bible all over the Bible. Um. I remember
Speaker 1: reading about them when I was a little kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you knew all about sentences things, but um I did.
Speaker 1: The first there's a little debate on the very first
Speaker 1: census is in the North American continent. On the North
Speaker 1: American Continent fifteen seventy six. Some claim Spanish King Philip
Speaker 1: the two the two the sequel just made that up.
Speaker 1: Spanish King Philip to Electric Boogaloo, Uh, that he wanted
Speaker 1: information about the colonies, and I think sent American Native
Speaker 1: American Indians through what is Mexico now with questions, right,
Speaker 1: he hadn't thought it through very well though he sent
Speaker 1: them with these questionnaires in Spanish, I imagine, but the
Speaker 1: American Indians that he sent down there didn't speak Spanish.
Speaker 1: That they apparently were not ones to quit or give
Speaker 1: up whenever they faced a hardship because they just created
Speaker 1: their own system of hieroglyphics to depict what goods each
Speaker 1: town um produced that would be taxed by the King
Speaker 1: of Spain. It is awesome. They even drew maps, their
Speaker 1: own maps to point out where each town was. They
Speaker 1: had no training whatsoever in cartography, and they didn't speak Spanish,
Speaker 1: and yet they managed to come up with this apparently
Speaker 1: beautifully illustrated census that they delivered to King Philip the second.
Speaker 1: That's uh in uh in the Texas State Archives, I
Speaker 1: believe today. Yeah, and I have to say this um
Speaker 1: our article sites an article from the Prescott Evening Courier
Speaker 1: newspaper and it's from nineteen fifty. This article is and
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting, but if you scroll down on the
Speaker 1: same page, there's another little article. The headline is agencies
Speaker 1: asked to rid offices of sex perverts from nineteen I
Speaker 1: wonder what apparently there's a there's a sex pervert Purge
Speaker 1: in nineteen I wonder what you have to do in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty to be considered a sex pervert. I read
Speaker 1: and it just said proof of sex perversion. So who
Speaker 1: knows being gay, um, being a peeping tom or anything,
Speaker 1: but sexually assaulting a woman. I'm sure you're a sex pervert. Um.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. I mean not funny, but you know, interesting. Yes,
Speaker 1: other people say the first North American census was in Canada,
Speaker 1: back then New France, by Jean ten uh for the
Speaker 1: King of France, and Toolon actually went around to all
Speaker 1: the houses over the winner of sixty sixty six counted
Speaker 1: all fifteen people of European descent. Uh. And then others say, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna officially say the US census was the first
Speaker 1: real census. The real first one was in Mexico. The
Speaker 1: second first one was in Canada, but the real first
Speaker 1: one took place in the United States. Uh. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: years later, seventeen ninety George Washington signed it into law,
Speaker 1: and in the Constitution is actually just um quote enumeration
Speaker 1: of inhabitants end quote. But um as as you'll see
Speaker 1: as we go on, there are many many more questions
Speaker 1: and things we can glean now, yeah, well than just
Speaker 1: the number of people. And now they're starting to get
Speaker 1: a little more back to basics. In the two thousand census,
Speaker 1: there was a long form one that had like fifty
Speaker 1: two questions forget it. Yeah. Most people are like, I'm
Speaker 1: not answering this. I think that was probably why they
Speaker 1: changed it. Yeah. In two thousand and ten they came
Speaker 1: up with a short form one that was sent to
Speaker 1: everybody and it was ten questions. Yeah, and as we'll see,
Speaker 1: literally three of those questions where how many people are
Speaker 1: in your house? The first three questions different ways, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're like, this is really the one um. I
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of funny. Uh. Six d and
Speaker 1: fifty U s. Marshals went in nineteen I'm sorry seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety for that first census, got on their horses unannounced
Speaker 1: and went house to house all over the nation with
Speaker 1: their quill pens, scraps of paper literally counting heads um
Speaker 1: cost about forty five grand. The two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: Since this this surprised me that it shouldn't have thirteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars and I thought, no, that's million, but it's billion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was actually that was less than they expected
Speaker 1: it would call. They came in under budget by one
Speaker 1: point six billion, which is pretty good. I hope whoever
Speaker 1: was responsible for that made a name for themselves and
Speaker 1: a big fat bonus. Oh yeah, I'm sure in the
Speaker 1: form of like a h fifty dollar gift bond right
Speaker 1: from the U. S. Treasury along bond. By the way, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well, forty five dollars in seventeen ninety.
Speaker 1: Obviously it was probably equal to thirteen billion. Nope, not
Speaker 1: even close. So West Egg inflation calculator doesn't go far
Speaker 1: enough back to sev ninety, but it does go to
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, So in eighteen hundred dollars that forty five
Speaker 1: thousand would be sixty five hundred today. So they were efficient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the scraps of paper and yeah, and the horses in
Speaker 1: quill pen And says, that's some hard tack chewing tobacky.
Speaker 1: Maybe a pot of beans, maybe as you're starting to
Speaker 1: get a little extravagant. Uh. That first census um were
Speaker 1: the original thirteen states plus districts of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, which was the Southwest Territory at the time.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny Southwest Tennessee. Yeah. Uh. And these
Speaker 1: were imagine in order the things that you had to
Speaker 1: name on that census, the name of the head of
Speaker 1: the household, number of free white males over sixteen, number
Speaker 1: of free white males under sixteen, number of free white females,
Speaker 1: number of other free persons, and then the number of slaves,
Speaker 1: and then the number of sex perverts. Right, that was
Speaker 1: the very first one. We'll take a little break and
Speaker 1: come back and speed all the way up to eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty right after this, mank alright, it's eighteen eighty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't that We're back to the future. Three was set?
Speaker 1: M M was it? It was somewhere in there We're
Speaker 1: living in Deadwood? Did you watch that? I started too,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't have time for this man. Oh.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the great Tim Omenson. He's an actor
Speaker 1: on Deadwood and he's the stuff he should know listener.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I met him at Podfast Nice. He's
Speaker 1: on JV Club uh with me, and he's great. He's
Speaker 1: like a real listener. And shout out to Kevin Pollock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's another stuffy should know listener. We met at pod Fast.
Speaker 1: He bum rushed our stage during the middle of our podcast,
Speaker 1: which was very surprising. Yeah, that'll eventually be out right.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's weird, is it? Kevin Pollock just surreal.
Speaker 1: He was very sweet after. He was like, man, I
Speaker 1: really am a fan guys like enough to come and
Speaker 1: watch you. And he brought along Wayne Fetterman, a great
Speaker 1: writer and comic who also as a listener. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to meet him. Yeah, I talked to him afterward
Speaker 1: about the Beatles and uh, obviously he had met our
Speaker 1: shows coming out on Monty Python and he had met
Speaker 1: Eric Idle the day before our podcast. Wow is that crazy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the universe was circling him. He was the drain. That's right.
Speaker 1: So Kevin Pollock and his fiancee, Hello, Wayne Fetterman, Howdy,
Speaker 1: Tim Omenson, good day, so nice and Tim, by the way,
Speaker 1: is on that show Gallivant, which is no longer around
Speaker 1: but you can catch on Netflix. This is great. Um
Speaker 1: medieval musical show that, like the network was actually brave
Speaker 1: enough to make really cool. It was cop Rock but
Speaker 1: said in Medieval Times. Yeah, but good well cop Rock
Speaker 1: wasn't good. I didn't see it. I didn't either I
Speaker 1: was under the impression that was the same thing that
Speaker 1: it was, like, Um, this is a musical cop procedural.
Speaker 1: What is this doing on television? Get off? It had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with whether it was good or not.
Speaker 1: It was just two weird you know. Anyway, thanks to
Speaker 1: those people and all the non celebrities who came. Sure,
Speaker 1: everybody who came. Yeah, we don't want to just you
Speaker 1: have to have a big name for us to be
Speaker 1: a appreciative that you came and saw our stinky, stupid episode.
Speaker 1: Of course not all right, So I picked up in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty Deadwood is what sidetracked me. And that's when
Speaker 1: they actually started using trained workers to work in the census, right,
Speaker 1: not just phoedo marshals with their pots of beans. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then about ten years later they actually had the
Speaker 1: first machine to help them count their information, which was
Speaker 1: primitive but useful. Dude. It was a computer. Yeah, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Census Bureau has this unsung history of basically being the
Speaker 1: first to use computers. Right, Yes, So they had this
Speaker 1: machine that they built. I didn't see a name for it,
Speaker 1: but basically it was a tabulating machine. So starting in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, Census, the census takers, who again, like
Speaker 1: you said, we're now trained individuals. They were trained to
Speaker 1: punch a hole into the response, right, how many people
Speaker 1: under the age of sixteen in this house? Four? They
Speaker 1: punch a hole wherever the four was right hanging Chad's
Speaker 1: pretty much. That's why you wanted to make sure the
Speaker 1: hole punched all the way through, so you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a hanging chats. Um. And when they turned in these cards,
Speaker 1: they could feed them into this tabulator that would make
Speaker 1: note of which hole was punched and in store this information.
Speaker 1: It was a computer that the Census Bureau was using.
Speaker 1: It was a steampunk computer pretty much. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: operated by Will Smith. Um was that wild Wild West? Boy?
Speaker 1: What a stinker? Did you see the TV show that
Speaker 1: it was based on the back in the day? That
Speaker 1: was great? Yeah, what an imaginative TV show that was. Um.
Speaker 1: So they'd used the real computers. Um. Starting in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: the Census Bureau ordered one called the Univac. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things that's huge and takes up a room
Speaker 1: as mini machines working as one like the Whopper. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and ten they finally introduced
Speaker 1: GPS devices, and I was kind of didn't really understand
Speaker 1: why until I read the next three sentences. I stopped
Speaker 1: for a second. That's a weird thing to say. But
Speaker 1: there were mistakes up to five of people counted when
Speaker 1: SENSUS takers were doing this all by hand with paper
Speaker 1: maps would assign people five percent of people to the
Speaker 1: wrong congressional district accidentally. Did I say purpose way? Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure that they were cleared
Speaker 1: of any wrongdoings, right, It was all a mistake. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now with these GPS coordinating devices, they have a
Speaker 1: point zero five error rate, which is a lot better
Speaker 1: than five point zero very much. Um. Yeah, so jerrymandering
Speaker 1: will be that much more difficult. We hope we need
Speaker 1: to do an episode, and we should also say, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about our episodes, if if you love this stuff,
Speaker 1: go listen to our population episode where we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about SENSUS taking. Uh and our maps episode will
Speaker 1: really get your engine revving for real if you're a
Speaker 1: g I S geek right or a stock right or so.
Speaker 1: The Bureau works with the National Processing Center, uh, and
Speaker 1: they have you know, it's not just like let me
Speaker 1: take this form and look at it and write it down.
Speaker 1: Like it's very automated these days, and um, pretty advanced.
Speaker 1: What they do to ensure its accuracy, well at at
Speaker 1: very least thorough Yeah, Like they take a picture of
Speaker 1: every single finished questionnaire. Yeah, so there's an image file
Speaker 1: of every single one. Okay, I'd say that, Well, that's
Speaker 1: not advanced, but that's inch and toward advanced there, like
Speaker 1: hold stale please uh and then uh they have um
Speaker 1: a Scantron computer. Basically it's like that computer, but a
Speaker 1: little more advanced. But it does the same thing optical
Speaker 1: mark recognition. So like you fill in the bubble boom,
Speaker 1: this computers on top of it a little more advanced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's the same principle. Yeah, but then it gets
Speaker 1: super advanced I c R. Yeah, intelligent character recognition. And
Speaker 1: isn't that just I mean that's something that reads people's handwriting, right.
Speaker 1: And remember we did our another episode, the USPS one
Speaker 1: on the post Office. It was a great episode, especially
Speaker 1: those of you who here are stamps dot com ads
Speaker 1: and think we hate the post Office. Go listen to
Speaker 1: our USPS episode, which is basically an homage to the
Speaker 1: Post Office by stamps dot com, so um that they
Speaker 1: use the same thing for mail. Right, they have computers
Speaker 1: that can read people's hand writing, and then there's a
Speaker 1: there's a secondary process to where with the computers like
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is, there's a human that
Speaker 1: gets a little like a picture of it and they
Speaker 1: type in what it is, and then they have a
Speaker 1: q A department to finish it all out. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: I think they do like a dent of any kind
Speaker 1: of um of any kind of human data stuff they
Speaker 1: go back and double check. That's right. Until nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: the census was pretty much a door to door affair.
Speaker 1: This is so dumb and that what that? It was?
Speaker 1: Door to door. Yes, there's too many people by this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Yeah, we're talking tens hundreds of millions of people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then they decided, all right, here's what we should do.
Speaker 1: Let's mail these out to people, have them fill it out,
Speaker 1: send it back, and we will just have to count
Speaker 1: to uh the chucks of the world who do not
Speaker 1: fill it out and send it back. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't fill it out. Huh. I didn't fill it out, Um,
Speaker 1: not on purpose. It just got away from me. You know, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you just confess to a federal crime. I know, right, seriously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's technically against the law. Hundred and eighty million people
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty Oh yeah, yeah, that is crazy to
Speaker 1: count them all. Yeah, I did not feel it out.
Speaker 1: I think you should. Now, well I'm going I'm a will. No,
Speaker 1: you have to do it for two to know. They
Speaker 1: found me. They came to my home. Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: got you. Yeah, I just didn't fill it out and
Speaker 1: send it in. Um, you didn't chase him oy with
Speaker 1: a crossbow. Shall we talk about that? No? No, I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of us. Um boy, that's a good tease though.
Speaker 1: If people like Tod just just say crossbow. We did
Speaker 1: an episode on crossbows too. Yeah. That one wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah that was fine, just thin. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a long time ago, though. They were thinner than
Speaker 1: it was better than Jackhammers. Oh gosh, we should have
Speaker 1: an episode where you just talk about all our stinkers.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much every episode. So um se In the
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten census returned those census forms so
Speaker 1: not bad, and the remaining U twenty six of people
Speaker 1: had to be counted by the one point four million
Speaker 1: workers that are broken down into war categories. Right, there
Speaker 1: was like of that one point four million, like almost
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand of them. Where the people who actually
Speaker 1: went out onto the streets and said, hey, you didn't
Speaker 1: send in your form. What's your problem? Don't you love America?
Speaker 1: You're called enumerators. Yeah. They're also administrators who basically manage
Speaker 1: the divisions, uh Statticians, they check their math. And the
Speaker 1: demographers like you were talking about, who totally walk out
Speaker 1: on all those numbers. Yeah, they're the ones who take
Speaker 1: these numbers because think about it, we're talking about ten questions,
Speaker 1: the first three of which are how many people live
Speaker 1: in your house? Right? Um? And these guys can basically
Speaker 1: sus um some pretty interesting information from just information like that.
Speaker 1: They can they can predict the future, they can call
Speaker 1: the lotto numbers, they can do all sorts. If you
Speaker 1: have a neighbor that's a demographer, you want to make
Speaker 1: friends with them because they can make you very wealthy. Josh,
Speaker 1: why would you take part in a census? Why is
Speaker 1: it a big deal? Well, again, first of all, to
Speaker 1: not take part of breaking the law, Chuck. But aside
Speaker 1: from that, umure there's actually a lot that's done with
Speaker 1: the census. So, yes, it's figuring out who, uh, which
Speaker 1: states get how many seats in the House of Representatives. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also figuring out where people live, their double checking
Speaker 1: that their addresses on file. They have a national database
Speaker 1: of all the addresses in the United States, every single address,
Speaker 1: and they're going back and double checking all of them
Speaker 1: as part of the census. But ultimately they're figuring out
Speaker 1: what to do with about four hundred billion dollars in
Speaker 1: state aid, state and local aid that the federal government
Speaker 1: distributes every year. Yeah, so every every census equals a
Speaker 1: out four trillion dollars worth of aid UM and how
Speaker 1: it's going to be allocated. That's what the census figures
Speaker 1: are used for in part. Yeah. So if you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to take that stupid thing, but I
Speaker 1: like my roads to be service and I like to
Speaker 1: have that fire station nearby, and I want to make
Speaker 1: sure there's a good school that can house all the
Speaker 1: students that live here. And I want there to be
Speaker 1: a senior center for mom and dad. Yeah, and boy
Speaker 1: would be nice if there was a public library kind
Speaker 1: of closer to me, right, and it would kill you
Speaker 1: to put in the hearties. Kind of true though, because
Speaker 1: private the private sector uses census numbers to determine where
Speaker 1: to open the hearties. But just hearties, yeah, no, but
Speaker 1: maybe where to open up a factory plant or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are many, many, many things that the
Speaker 1: census will satisfy that will help you out to make
Speaker 1: sure that you have everything around you that you need
Speaker 1: to for a healthy community. Right. Plus that, Um, those
Speaker 1: maps again are really important because usually nine eleven emergency
Speaker 1: services use census maps to to basically move around the area. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you're worried about your privacy, Um, it is
Speaker 1: held private for seventy two years this information. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like whatever, sensus takers are
Speaker 1: blabb or mouths. Actually, they are sworn to protect your privacy.
Speaker 1: That's part of their job, no matter what. Like this
Speaker 1: is anonymous, right Um. And secondly, well I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's anonymous. It's sealed. This information is sealed. It's between
Speaker 1: you and the census taker. Um. And then uh, secondly,
Speaker 1: they face a really stiff penalty if they do share
Speaker 1: your information with anybody, whether it's um, they're best friend
Speaker 1: they're l O l ng about your stupid answers um
Speaker 1: or with like say, any sort of welfare services or
Speaker 1: law enforcement. I believe they're not allowed to share any information.
Speaker 1: The cops can't can't use the census to track people down.
Speaker 1: The military can't use it, uh what, the I R
Speaker 1: s can't use it, Immigration can't use it. So it's
Speaker 1: a five year of prison penalty and two d and
Speaker 1: fifty grand, So it's pretty serious business. Yeah, if they
Speaker 1: break that that um Yeah, and they figure seventy two years.
Speaker 1: It seemed like a weird number to me, but it
Speaker 1: is a weird number. I guess they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you get counted in a census and by the
Speaker 1: time seventy two years later rolled around, it might be
Speaker 1: dead or you don't care. It probably has some sort
Speaker 1: of freemasonic numerological uh substance to it. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. But what's neat about it? Though, Chuck?
Speaker 1: If you ever need to prove your age or where
Speaker 1: you lived or anything like that, you can write the
Speaker 1: census be and be like, I know this is under
Speaker 1: wraps for seventy two years, but I need proof that
Speaker 1: I I'm saying I am who I am, Please provide
Speaker 1: me with a sheet. And since this bureau provides a
Speaker 1: letter on your behalf saying this person lived at this
Speaker 1: place at this time, our guys counted him. Pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: should we take a break, let's chuck, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: come back and we'll talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: this whole thing actually works. Chuck, I want to go
Speaker 1: on record also saying when I say guys, I'm using
Speaker 1: it in a completely gender neutral sense. Yeah, we say
Speaker 1: guys a lot. Some people don't like that, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean a gender neutral e I know. But the
Speaker 1: same people who don't like that also don't like the
Speaker 1: fact that you're using it general neutraally, you know. Hm hmm,
Speaker 1: I see what you mean. But uh, let's get back
Speaker 1: to censusing UM in two thousand and ten, Like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, they started hiring people. The work begins on
Speaker 1: the census a couple of years beforehand, right, that's the
Speaker 1: easiest way to say it. Start recruiting people to work
Speaker 1: UM about January of the census year is when they
Speaker 1: start actually counting people in Alaska. Yeah, that's where the
Speaker 1: sense of starts for a while. Since Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: makes sense why oh, because the about the time that
Speaker 1: the census really gets started, the rural Alaska experiences the
Speaker 1: spring thaw or the breakup, and travel becomes very tough
Speaker 1: and everybody leaves home to go do other stuff because
Speaker 1: they've been cooped up in their their house. The whole pointer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I U it was, I mean, it was a very
Speaker 1: sensible reason. I thought it was just some like cool
Speaker 1: old tradition. It's pretty new, actually, yeah, exactly. So they
Speaker 1: start in Alaska, they actually count people there. Then in
Speaker 1: that's just sort of a let's get Alaska taken care of, right,
Speaker 1: and then we can move on to other things. So
Speaker 1: in February they send forms in advance to rural areas
Speaker 1: where these forms have to be delivered by hand. Then
Speaker 1: in March you're gonna the other folks receiver letter saying
Speaker 1: since this is coming, get excited pretty much. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they just have to sit around and wait for the
Speaker 1: census letter to come after that. Yeah. But what you
Speaker 1: do is with that up that since this has coming letter,
Speaker 1: it gives you the option of how you want what
Speaker 1: language you want to get your senses in, which is Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese,
Speaker 1: and Russian or a Spanish English edition English. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then in mid March the actual forms are mailed. There's
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty million residences in the US. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, one thing that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me when I was reading this, as we'll get into
Speaker 1: this stuff here in a second, is how many different
Speaker 1: ways there are too live in the United States. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a um there's a thing called the residents Rule
Speaker 1: that the Census Bureau had to come to terms with,
Speaker 1: and apparently every census they have like a public hearing
Speaker 1: on the residents rule and if it needs to change
Speaker 1: or include other stuff. But it basically says where you
Speaker 1: spend most of your time sleeping, where you sleep the
Speaker 1: most is considered your residence as far as the census goes.
Speaker 1: Even if you have another permanent residence. If you are
Speaker 1: sleeping under an overpass, that overpass counts as your residence
Speaker 1: during the census. Yeah, and I just thought, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go to the houses, go the apartments in the condos,
Speaker 1: and like what else is there overpasses? I mean there's dormitories.
Speaker 1: Dormitories like where college students live. Yeah, yeah, they get counted. There.
Speaker 1: There are homes for senior living. It's just a living homes. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are prisons, Yeah, they get counted there, there are.
Speaker 1: You might live in a boat at a marina, counted there.
Speaker 1: You might live on an aircraft carrier counted there. Um.
Speaker 1: What else, shelters, trailer parks yeah so um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that the Census Bureau has gotten kind of
Speaker 1: good at is making contact with local social service agencies,
Speaker 1: local nonprofit organizations and saying, where do your um, like
Speaker 1: transient populations like say, migrant workers, UM, undocumented immigrants, homeless people,
Speaker 1: where do they live? Um? Can you take us to
Speaker 1: them so we can count them? Because again, they're trying
Speaker 1: to count every single person who lives in the United States,
Speaker 1: whether they are here legally or illegally, UM, whether they
Speaker 1: live in a car or whether they live in a mansion.
Speaker 1: They're trying to count every single person. And some of
Speaker 1: it's super easy. Again, they send a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: million UM census forms out to the residences. That's the
Speaker 1: easy part. The hard part is going and finding people
Speaker 1: who have these non traditional residences, hotels, people who live
Speaker 1: in in weekly hotels. They've got to count them. And
Speaker 1: one of the confounding factors of the whole thing, Chuck is,
Speaker 1: Let's say you're your your son is away in college
Speaker 1: or prison, right, You're probably gonna be tempted to say, well,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be back eventually. This is his home, this
Speaker 1: is permanent address. The Census Bureau constantly has to fight
Speaker 1: with that and be like no, no, no, like like,
Speaker 1: don't count them. They live in prison or they live
Speaker 1: in college, which could be college or prison. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: A lot of people that fill out these forms don't
Speaker 1: speak English like enough to fill out the form, and
Speaker 1: they may not even know to ask for the bilingual form.
Speaker 1: So they actually have um online guides and fifty nine languages,
Speaker 1: telephone assistants in six languages, and thirty three thousand in
Speaker 1: person assistant centers across the US that are staffed, and
Speaker 1: I think very wisely, the Census Bureau realized that a
Speaker 1: lot of those households where the heads of household don't
Speaker 1: speak or write or read English very well may have
Speaker 1: kids who do speak English and read and write English
Speaker 1: very well and could actually help their parents with this.
Speaker 1: So they started in two thousand ten especially a big
Speaker 1: push to the schools to to get kids like jazzed
Speaker 1: about the census and basically teach them how to talk
Speaker 1: to their parents about it and how to fill out
Speaker 1: these forms with their parents. Yeah, they send them a
Speaker 1: litt kit, a little fun kit, complete with like, you know, coloring,
Speaker 1: color these kind of Uh. So back to the year.
Speaker 1: How the year shakes out? Uh. Completed forms are due
Speaker 1: by April one of the year, and May through July,
Speaker 1: they are coming the streets looking for those people who
Speaker 1: didn't fell out the forms and looking for the people,
Speaker 1: like you said, in all these non traditional homes. I
Speaker 1: guess we'll call them um or if they don't have homes,
Speaker 1: just non traditional places where people dwell. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: July through December they are analyzing all that data, and
Speaker 1: by December thirty one they are required by law to
Speaker 1: report the new um apportionment numbers to the President for
Speaker 1: the congressional seats. And then they have till April the
Speaker 1: following year for all the data collection to be sussed out.
Speaker 1: So it's a long you know, it's a year's long process. Us.
Speaker 1: What is that and two and a half or three
Speaker 1: years to complete a census. Yeah, that's just the actual census.
Speaker 1: Then there's also the work of I guess with every census,
Speaker 1: you're also putting the last census that was seventy two
Speaker 1: years old up on the internet now or it used
Speaker 1: to be on microfilm, now it's up on the internet.
Speaker 1: So the Census Bureau is always always working. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: forgot one group of people that really cracked me up. Carney's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they mentioned Carney's in here. You gotta count them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: traveling got to catch up with him first. Yeah, imagine
Speaker 1: Carney's probably aren't since its friendly. You never know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it depends on the Carney. Can't pigeonhold them? You're right,
Speaker 1: even if you're a pigeon. It's a long standing motto here,
Speaker 1: don't pigeonhold the Carney. That's a t shirt. So, um,
Speaker 1: on the actual form, like you said, it's gotten a
Speaker 1: lot shorter of these days. And we kind of joked
Speaker 1: a few times about the fact that the first three
Speaker 1: questions are who's living there? But um, here's how it
Speaker 1: breaks down is how many people live in the household?
Speaker 1: Question number two, were there any additional people staying here
Speaker 1: on April one that you did not include in question one?
Speaker 1: And finally, question number three says just name everyone in
Speaker 1: the household. They really want to make sure they get
Speaker 1: that correct. You're also gonna have to fill out things
Speaker 1: about your your gender, your age, your race, what kind
Speaker 1: of Hispanic origin, perhaps your relationship to the head of
Speaker 1: the household. The actually Alaskan Native tribes are not very
Speaker 1: happy right now because apparently in the census they will
Speaker 1: be asked, um, are you a member of an Alaskan
Speaker 1: Native tribe? If so, what tribe? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: what business of this is yours? You know, they're not
Speaker 1: very happy about this whole thing, And it's that was
Speaker 1: the newest thing I heard about the census is going
Speaker 1: on right now. Well, you gotta roll with the times.
Speaker 1: Um in two thousand they started allowing more than one
Speaker 1: race to be selected, and that got me thinking about
Speaker 1: gender identity and if the US was gonna do anything
Speaker 1: like that in like sixty years. Probably I haven't seen
Speaker 1: anything for this next one, but I did see that
Speaker 1: Australia and the United States, I'm sorry, Australia and UH
Speaker 1: and the UK have both planned to include gender identity
Speaker 1: options in the next census, so but ahead of the
Speaker 1: curve from the US, no surprise. UH. In Australia actually is.
Speaker 1: People are mad there this year because apparently previous to
Speaker 1: this UM they're they're doing their census right now. I
Speaker 1: think in and prior to this one, you didn't have
Speaker 1: all the connecting information was optional, identifying information, like you
Speaker 1: didn't have to put things like I guess it's just
Speaker 1: different than the US, like uh, your address and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. You didn't have to connect. I think they
Speaker 1: were literally discounting people. And before Christmas last year they
Speaker 1: sent out a press release saying that it's no longer optional.
Speaker 1: All this information identifying information is gonna be collected and
Speaker 1: stored in perpetuity, including things like your name, where you live,
Speaker 1: how much money you make, and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people got really ticked off, and they
Speaker 1: said that's leading to or they predicted it would lead
Speaker 1: to a lot of people just lying and giving a
Speaker 1: bunch of garbage data and that's supposed to be on
Speaker 1: the census. Yeah. I thought they were starting to move
Speaker 1: more towards the model of UM, including questions like that
Speaker 1: on that American Community survey. Well this is Australia, so gotcha. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I think the way I read it was that previous
Speaker 1: to this year, it was just kind of counting heads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's very invasive. Yeah, you could optionally fill that
Speaker 1: stuff in, but now they're they're saying you have to,
Speaker 1: you have to. So who knows. And then we kind
Speaker 1: of teased earlier about people about a crossbow. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a competing theories on what kind of job census taker is. Right.
Speaker 1: Some people say it's a great job. It's very flexible. Um,
Speaker 1: it pays in some places, like twelve dollars plus an
Speaker 1: hour you get to right off the mileage you put
Speaker 1: on your car. Great job out on the street's fresh air.
Speaker 1: Other people say it's an extremely dangerous job and one
Speaker 1: that the Census Bureau tends to downplay despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they're like hundreds of incidents of um census takers
Speaker 1: being threatened or attacked, uh, just doing their job. Senseless
Speaker 1: sensus violence. Right. Yeah, And the crossboat guy in particular
Speaker 1: is a guy in Marion, Ohio who had like a
Speaker 1: no trespassing sign posted on his property and a picture
Speaker 1: of a crossbow. Right. If you're a census taker, that's
Speaker 1: meaning that the legal that doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with you. You're basically a deputized federal agent carrying out
Speaker 1: your your business, and you are allowed to walk up
Speaker 1: on somebody's property even if they have no trespassing signs posted. Well,
Speaker 1: the guy in Marion, Ohio, UM said, Hey, I would
Speaker 1: like you guys to leave, by the way. I have
Speaker 1: a machine gun here. And uh. They started to leave,
Speaker 1: and he wanted, I guess to make sure that they
Speaker 1: did leave, so he escorted them down his driveway holding
Speaker 1: his crossbow, not necessarily in any kind of threatening manner
Speaker 1: holding it, but just holding it. And apparently no charges
Speaker 1: were pressed against the guy. I guess he did everything right,
Speaker 1: but there's apparently I was reading this article in the
Speaker 1: Seattle Times. I wonder if they were just like, we'll
Speaker 1: just put you down for one right, He's like, don't
Speaker 1: do that, because that guarantee that guy lives alone. Um,
Speaker 1: this this article from two ten in the Seattle Times.
Speaker 1: Since his workers didn't count on such an angry reception.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure this makes it sound way worse than
Speaker 1: it is. Well, they said most people were great, but um,
Speaker 1: but this is a collection of all the worst horror stories,
Speaker 1: which makes it an interesting article. Plus two thousands ten
Speaker 1: wasn't it all depends on the year right, some is
Speaker 1: in a great time. Like people weren't loving the government
Speaker 1: in Some people directly cited that they didn't want to
Speaker 1: help Obama out, so they weren't going to do the census. Um.
Speaker 1: One like people were attacked by dogs. One person was
Speaker 1: attacked with a baseball bat. Another census taker had a
Speaker 1: patio table thrown at her by an irate woman. Um,
Speaker 1: there was just a lot of incidents like that. It
Speaker 1: was mostly anti government, right, Yes, people feeling out, you know,
Speaker 1: get out of my face with the government stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: And and some some people didn't make any threats, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they were really in sense that the government was asking
Speaker 1: anything about them like that. And um, these census workers
Speaker 1: were like this is crazy, Like people are really mad
Speaker 1: out there. They came back with like news of the
Speaker 1: real temperament of a lot of Americans, and it was angry.
Speaker 1: Some of them quit. They're like, I'm not doing this
Speaker 1: anymore than I'm risking my life for what the census.
Speaker 1: Who cares. Um, it's an interesting article. It gives you
Speaker 1: like a different perspective of it than that, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna allocate money to government services. Well, I'm sure by
Speaker 1: everyone in the United States will love the government. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: regardless of who wins the two thousand and sixteen election.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, you got anything else? Nothing? Sweet? Well,
Speaker 1: if you wanted more about sense s I, you can
Speaker 1: type sens us into the search bar at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said sentience sent since
Speaker 1: I said sens us, it's time for a listener mail. Alright,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh we helped with anxiety. Good.
Speaker 1: Hey guys want to write and say how much you
Speaker 1: have impacted my life. My name is Jared. I'm a
Speaker 1: graphic designer in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in Cannes, Saw, Georgia. Wow,
Speaker 1: his family had to own a gun by law. Remember
Speaker 1: that that's still in the books there. I wonder if
Speaker 1: Jared was at our show in Birmingham that ended up being,
Speaker 1: despite the smallest show, we did one of my most
Speaker 1: pleasured noble shows. Well put pleasured. That was great. That
Speaker 1: little theater was awesome. It was the workplace theater cabaret style.
Speaker 1: They were great, intimate and cool. I felt like people
Speaker 1: are sitting on the stage with us virtually they practically were.
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, he's in Birmingham, have a horrible panic
Speaker 1: attacks guys in a panic disorder. There's just something about
Speaker 1: both of you, though, your demeanors and the tone of
Speaker 1: your voices that really calms me down in the car
Speaker 1: or at work, which is where most of my panic
Speaker 1: attacks take place. I know, I feelful. I don't know
Speaker 1: if any other anxiety suffers also experienced your show in
Speaker 1: this way. A lot of time, when I feel my
Speaker 1: anxiety rising, I pop in the headphones or plug you
Speaker 1: into my car stereo and calm myself down with some stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know. Uh, your show is greatly impacted my life, uh,
Speaker 1: in its relationship to anxiety. I love you guys, love
Speaker 1: the show. I always want to keep getting the word
Speaker 1: out about anxiety and taking away the stigma of mental illness.
Speaker 1: You guys do a great job, that is Jared A
Speaker 1: humble fan. Jared wrote back today, so he was very
Speaker 1: happy that we were reading this. I'm good and I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we can calm you down a little bit.
Speaker 1: But for Jared, yeah, I hate to hear about your troubles,
Speaker 1: and there always going to be here for you every
Speaker 1: Tuesday and Thursday. Don't worry, UM if you have a
Speaker 1: story like Jared's, if we've helped you in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. We love hearing stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: can tweet it to us at s y SK podcast
Speaker 1: or to me josh Um Clark Uh. You can post
Speaker 1: it on Facebook Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you Should Know. You can put it
Speaker 1: in an email stuff podcast that how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at home on the
Speaker 1: way up. Stuff you Should Know dot com For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com