Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We've got guest producer Matt
Speaker 1: over here that makes this Stuff you Should Know Sunshine Edition.
Speaker 1: The storms are gone. Well. Plus they say sunshine is
Speaker 1: the greatest disaffectmant that really Yeah, you shine a light
Speaker 1: in the dark corners and it reveals truth, gotcha. Plus
Speaker 1: you know people are less shady in the sunlight. So
Speaker 1: this is part episode two of our recording session of
Speaker 1: uh Freshly being without Power Irma going through Atlanta dead cats.
Speaker 1: All right, and I'm going on vacation. Oh good, tomorrow good.
Speaker 1: So if anyone wants to meet me at the Isle
Speaker 1: of Palm, South Carolina, build a time machine, right, go
Speaker 1: back a few weeks and you'll find me drinking Gin
Speaker 1: and Tonics on the beach. Nice songs, child, Oh really, Wow,
Speaker 1: you're vacationing vacation, not frustratingly running around trying to get
Speaker 1: sand out of sunscreen off a small child. That's a
Speaker 1: losing proposition. Yeah, man, can't wait. Good, We'll enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1: We were originally going to Folly Beach, but it was damaged.
Speaker 1: The house was, but this one was not, so they
Speaker 1: moved us. I've never been to island Palm is it
Speaker 1: shaped like a palm like in Dubai. No, it's just
Speaker 1: one of Charleston's. Uh. I don't know what they call him,
Speaker 1: low country border islands. Maybe that's what they call him.
Speaker 1: Now right next to Sullivan's Island and James Island and
Speaker 1: Folly Beach are all kind of right there, great area.
Speaker 1: Charleston's amazing. Yeah, we're gonna go in for dinner and
Speaker 1: stuff and trying to throw a little money at their economy.
Speaker 1: But I think they had some really bad flooding. So
Speaker 1: everyone all right there. I thinks like three or six
Speaker 1: ft storm surge that was there on the outskirts. They
Speaker 1: were not even in the past in the end. Not
Speaker 1: good stuff, not good. Well, I'm glad Charleston made it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you're going to Charleston. Man, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat so much seafood. Yeah, alright, so Chuck,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Let's hope. Um,
Speaker 1: there's actually something called Sunshine Week. Have you heard about that. No,
Speaker 1: it's a week that celebrates openness in government. It's as
Speaker 1: simple as that. It's the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of
Speaker 1: the Press. It's their thing, and they're trying to shine
Speaker 1: a light on the idea of shining a light on government, right,
Speaker 1: and that existed until this year. It's still right. No. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's funny like the last guy gets a lot of
Speaker 1: credit and praise for being open, but in retrospect, supposedly
Speaker 1: it was very much a lot of smoking mirrors. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. It was not a very open administration either. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what they say, politics is politics? Who says that?
Speaker 1: Is that? I love palm saying yeah the politics? Politics?
Speaker 1: Have another crawfish past the frog wrest? Is there a
Speaker 1: frog in that? No, that's just like a low country boil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love low country boil. I'm gonna make that. I
Speaker 1: think you should my own self. I think you should
Speaker 1: bring something back here for me. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I guess it would keep. It depends, you know.
Speaker 1: I want to be like, here's a week old frog
Speaker 1: morps to I'd probably still eat it. I know you would. So. Um,
Speaker 1: the idea of of government giving up its secrets. Right,
Speaker 1: it's actually fairly new here in the States. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a a time not too long ago where if you
Speaker 1: wanted classified information or any information for um, the federal government,
Speaker 1: they you had really no way to ask for it.
Speaker 1: And even if you could figure out who to ask
Speaker 1: for it from, they would say no. And then you
Speaker 1: would you'd say, well, what next, nothing next, man, go
Speaker 1: back to sleep. Citizen, that was your role to just
Speaker 1: shut up and stop asking questions. And thankfully for those
Speaker 1: of us who believe that government should be way more
Speaker 1: transparent than it is. Uh, there was a guy named
Speaker 1: Representative John Moss from California. He was a congressman back
Speaker 1: in the sixties, and he became concerned that, um, not Congress,
Speaker 1: but the federal government, the executive branch, was getting a
Speaker 1: little too opaque. And specifically, there was a report that
Speaker 1: he asked for that concerned, UM, the firing of some
Speaker 1: civil servants, ostensibly because their loyalty to the administration had
Speaker 1: been questioned, and so they got fired, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to look into it, and the federal agency he requested
Speaker 1: the documents from said no. And he was a congressman,
Speaker 1: yes he was, So he said, I'll be back, yeah,
Speaker 1: Arnold style. And then this was but thirteen or so
Speaker 1: years after UM, the American Society of Newspaper Editors published
Speaker 1: a study about secrecy in the government and basically said
Speaker 1: what you said, which is citizens have no access to records,
Speaker 1: no recourse if they're denied records. That was the nine three.
Speaker 1: Kind of surprising to me. It was that early that
Speaker 1: they were kind of ringing the bell for this. But
Speaker 1: I think the Cold War, like almost immediately the development
Speaker 1: of the bomb and the Cold War really drove this,
Speaker 1: this desire to keep everything secret, and the federal government,
Speaker 1: the executive branch, keeps everything secret by classifying everything. There's
Speaker 1: this kind of mentality that is classify everything when in doubt,
Speaker 1: classify it because not only does it it it obscures
Speaker 1: what you're doing from say, like your enemy, it also
Speaker 1: obscures what you're doing from your citizen right, so you
Speaker 1: can't be questioned, you can't be criticized, you can't be
Speaker 1: exposed as incompetent. If no one knows what you're doing,
Speaker 1: they can't see that if you're doing it poorly, and
Speaker 1: that they could actually do it better, or know somebody
Speaker 1: who could do it better, or it could elect somebody
Speaker 1: who could do it better. And as the way that
Speaker 1: you do that is to just classify everything, keep it
Speaker 1: a secret. Yeah. I've always had the feeling that if
Speaker 1: the federal government in the United States had its drugs,
Speaker 1: they would operate in complete isolated secrecy. Yeah. Well they're
Speaker 1: trying like you wouldn't even have press conferences, right, Like
Speaker 1: they would just shut it down and say don't don't you.
Speaker 1: Let's worry about anything we have it coverage. Just go
Speaker 1: about your day, go about your business. Uh So Moss
Speaker 1: went to uh fellow Democratic President Phil Democrat President Lyndon
Speaker 1: Johnson and said, you know, I think we uh should
Speaker 1: change the way we're doing things here, and Johnson said,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. That's pretty good, John Johnson.
Speaker 1: We should. He's very interesting, Uh, I think, conflicted dude.
Speaker 1: We should do a show on him at some point,
Speaker 1: very ambitious domestic policies like he wanted to be FDR
Speaker 1: like the Second Coming, didn't know a lot about foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not good. No, he's a very interesting dude. Anyway,
Speaker 1: He's a domestic He was a domestic guy. Had I
Speaker 1: never realized that he didn't know about was not his specialty.
Speaker 1: I think he wanted to do great things for this country,
Speaker 1: um in his heart right, but uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I think ever since I saw the Cranston
Speaker 1: play in New York. What's it called all the Way?
Speaker 1: I think, and they made it too. I didn't see
Speaker 1: the movie version, but I saw the play all the Way.
Speaker 1: That's what's called I think. So I think that's like
Speaker 1: a tawdry John Ritter film or something like that. That's
Speaker 1: let's go all the way? Okay, uh oh man, I
Speaker 1: missed John Ritter, sure he was the best. Uh So anyway,
Speaker 1: Johnson said, I don't know about that. All the all
Speaker 1: the federal departments and agency said, I definitely don't know
Speaker 1: about that. Bad idea, but it was the bell had
Speaker 1: been wrong in the House. And this is something that
Speaker 1: is kind of fun to look back on when these days,
Speaker 1: how things are, how they are, how divisive they are.
Speaker 1: Back in the House about a three hundred and seven
Speaker 1: to zero to pass the Moss Freedom of Information Act,
Speaker 1: the fo I A and UH John and signed it,
Speaker 1: and uh didn't have a big press conference when he
Speaker 1: signed it, like they do a lot of big laws
Speaker 1: and bills. He signed it in secrecy. Yeah, he did, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll sign it, but maybe people don't know about it.
Speaker 1: I won't go we don't have to we have to
Speaker 1: go around shooting our mouths off about it. But he
Speaker 1: did say, no one should be able to pull the
Speaker 1: curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without
Speaker 1: injury to the public interest. I signed this measure with
Speaker 1: a deep sense of pride that the United States is
Speaker 1: an open society. Uh, but no one heard that, right,
Speaker 1: the doors are shut, correct? So yeah, he signed it
Speaker 1: in secrecy, which is a little weird, and also opened
Speaker 1: the door for like, you know that that second part
Speaker 1: of the first sentences decisions which can be revealed without
Speaker 1: injury to the public interest, there's a big caveat attached
Speaker 1: to that openness, right exactly. Don't forget we have ways
Speaker 1: around this. Yeah. Um, And you said that it was
Speaker 1: hardening to hear that Congress unanimously passed the four Act, right,
Speaker 1: a little bit, right, This is what it is. This
Speaker 1: is not the only time Congress has come together unanimously
Speaker 1: in defense of FOIA. In two thousand four, team, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later, they did with John Bayner as
Speaker 1: the um at the helm of the House in Obama
Speaker 1: in the White House, and that the Congress divided as
Speaker 1: much as it's ever been. The House came together unanimously
Speaker 1: in in for this Foya Act or Amendment A. There
Speaker 1: was also a time when Gerald Ford was president where
Speaker 1: Congress overrode a veto of his as far as FOYA.
Speaker 1: So FOIA is this one thing because for for those
Speaker 1: of you who don't know, it only pertains to documents
Speaker 1: in the control of the executive branch of the federal government,
Speaker 1: just the executive branch, just the White House. So any
Speaker 1: secrets the president's administration is keeping, that's what it's pertaining to. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Congress very frequently comes together and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we want you to share this information with everybody, including us,
Speaker 1: and they look like the good guys too for coming
Speaker 1: to the aid for open and honest and transparent government.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify, Chuck, like, it's not just like
Speaker 1: the White House. There's tons of agencies, federal agencies that
Speaker 1: fall under the executive branch, including like the FBI or
Speaker 1: the CDC or the UM. There just basically any agency,
Speaker 1: if any federal agencies probably under the purview of the
Speaker 1: the executive branch, so therefore FOYA would apply to it
Speaker 1: as well. That's very nice to point that out, because
Speaker 1: you confused even me off. Sorry about that. Uh So this, uh,
Speaker 1: I think this this bears reading this quote. There's a
Speaker 1: journalist named John Wiener or Winer who he um tried
Speaker 1: for fourteen years to get John Lennon's FBI files through
Speaker 1: f o i A quests, and he very succinctly wrote this,
Speaker 1: and it kind of sums it up to me. The
Speaker 1: basic issue was that government officials everywhere like secrecy by
Speaker 1: keeping the public from learning what they have done, they
Speaker 1: hope to avoid criticism, hinder the opposition, and maintain power
Speaker 1: over citizens. And they're elected representatives. Classified files and official
Speaker 1: secrets lie at the heart of the modern government bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Of such a hard time with that word. It's almost impossible,
Speaker 1: is spell to I don't even try, uh and permit
Speaker 1: the under undemocratic use of power to go unrecognized and
Speaker 1: unchallenged by citizens. And he was just trying to get
Speaker 1: John Lennon's files. That's how riled the peacock. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to rale up a journalists, but that's
Speaker 1: who this pertains to for the most part, I should
Speaker 1: say not entirely, but yeah, for the most part is
Speaker 1: accurate journalists. Journalists are the ones who are supposed to
Speaker 1: be reporting on the goings on of the government, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to exposing wrongdoing, corruption, waste, all this off.
Speaker 1: That's one of the main roles of the media, right yea,
Speaker 1: journalists and more and more now activists, thankfully, citizen activists right.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why citizen activists have gotten
Speaker 1: in on this is because the journalists aren't doing it enough. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but the early on the journalists were largely in support
Speaker 1: of FOYA. The Congress was like, sure, why not, it
Speaker 1: will probably make the president who we don't like, look bad.
Speaker 1: And um. Now we have as of the sixty six Act,
Speaker 1: the Freedom of Information Act, right yeah, which officially, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, people know what this is. This is the
Speaker 1: ability of a of a citizen of the world. Very
Speaker 1: important there. You don't have to just be an American
Speaker 1: citizen to request records of an executive branch like you said,
Speaker 1: government agency. Uh. And along with that Act originally nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six said these are available to the public with
Speaker 1: nine exemptions, which will go over later. Um that protect
Speaker 1: the agency under certain circumstances. And if you were denied,
Speaker 1: there is also now a process in place to appeal
Speaker 1: that denied right. Very important and so when LBJ signed
Speaker 1: it into law, it was basically like, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: just go along with it, but if you don't feel
Speaker 1: like it, you don't have to write right. Um. That's
Speaker 1: kind of went for a while, Yeah until Watergate. The
Speaker 1: Watergate scandal really change people's relationship with government big time.
Speaker 1: That changed government's relationship to government. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that happened was there was an update to
Speaker 1: FOYA and a strengthening of FOYA UM so that there
Speaker 1: were like greater sanctions if you didn't follow through on
Speaker 1: on supplying the requested information. It was harder to just
Speaker 1: say no to deny it. Yeah, they had a specific
Speaker 1: time frame finally, like you couldn't just say yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: get to it, right. So, Uh, Congress puts uh this
Speaker 1: FOI amendments or updates on Gerald Ford's desk to sign,
Speaker 1: and uh, He's like now, well he looked around the
Speaker 1: room and said what should I do? Right? And the
Speaker 1: two people that piped up where Donald ROMs felt his
Speaker 1: chief of staff and Antonin Scalia, who was the chief
Speaker 1: legal counsel for the Justice Department, and they both said,
Speaker 1: don't sign it. Yeah. And apparently at least this article
Speaker 1: says that Rumsfeld early on was a supporter of FOI right,
Speaker 1: I think in the very easily manipulated version. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: when it when it came time to right, he said no,
Speaker 1: don't And so Ford argued that it was unconstitutional, and
Speaker 1: Congress said, you're wrong, and we're overriding your v two.
Speaker 1: That does not happened. Yeah, you say too too, that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen very often that a veto is overridden. I
Speaker 1: don't have ever done one on vitos should because I
Speaker 1: have no idea how often it happens. But I guarantee
Speaker 1: you it's not often. All right, So let's take a break. Um,
Speaker 1: we're just getting heat it up here on this one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as you'll see in the coming segments for your
Speaker 1: changes gets more teeth and less teeth over the years,
Speaker 1: depending on whose office. And we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan. All right, Ronnie, he's here. That's so, like
Speaker 1: I promised, over the years, Foia has um had more
Speaker 1: teeth and less teeth depending on who is running the show. Um,
Speaker 1: probably not so. Surprisingly, when Ronald Reagan got into office
Speaker 1: in two or in nineteen two, he created he made
Speaker 1: it much tougher to uh, to get information, made it
Speaker 1: easier for agencies to withhold stuff. Um, Bill Clinton comes along,
Speaker 1: relaxes things, right, it kind of goes like that in
Speaker 1: our country. Well, Reagan also one of his things was, um,
Speaker 1: he definitely helps spearhead that classify everything mentality under his administration, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said print, he said, manufacturer as many classified rubber
Speaker 1: stamps as you can. Every office needs about a hundred
Speaker 1: of them. And I think, especially during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: the Soviets served as a real boogeyman for keeping citizens
Speaker 1: in the dark. We don't want the Rooskies to find out.
Speaker 1: So no, yeah, we we don't trust you with this
Speaker 1: because you might hand it over to the Rooskies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was what they say. And they said Rooskys too,
Speaker 1: they did so. Like I said, Clinton comes wrong along.
Speaker 1: And there were a few, um, a few big events
Speaker 1: in his administration. But hold and think about it. When
Speaker 1: Clinton comes along, no more uss are well true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no more boogeyman. Right, good times, man, let's part. Uh
Speaker 1: did you like? Yeah, that was good. It was not
Speaker 1: I think together we do the perfect book. Glinton um
Speaker 1: he during an administration had a bunch of big um
Speaker 1: but had a big impact on FOYA. We're calling it
Speaker 1: for you, right, Yeah, Freedom of Information Act. It's a
Speaker 1: perfect acronym because it takes all words into account for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not fake. No, one just like cooked up
Speaker 1: some weird word to throw in there to make it
Speaker 1: a word. So the release an archiving of Cold War
Speaker 1: previously classified Cold War documents was a big one. And
Speaker 1: then a really big see change is when Clinton said,
Speaker 1: you know, get with it and digitize all this stuff,
Speaker 1: like this is the future. We don't need everything on paper.
Speaker 1: Documents make it easier, uh to file and store the stuff.
Speaker 1: He and make it easier to distribute this stuff under
Speaker 1: FOY And it was and also uh they extended that timeline.
Speaker 1: I don't think we initially said it was ten days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had ten days to respond to a fourier request
Speaker 1: as a forficer um and then that was extended to
Speaker 1: twenty days. Although it says in here that that wasn't
Speaker 1: so much of a big deal. Just gave him a
Speaker 1: little more time. Basically no, because an agency that's not
Speaker 1: frequently contacted for FOY information and is not running a backlog,
Speaker 1: it is probably going to do it in about ten
Speaker 1: days anyway, right, An agency that is running a backlog
Speaker 1: is still not going to get in touch with you
Speaker 1: within ten days or twenty days. So it really had
Speaker 1: no effect, but it is on the book still to
Speaker 1: this day. They have twenty days to respond to you
Speaker 1: before you can appeal their lack of response. So UM
Speaker 1: George Bush H George W. Bush comes along, of course,
Speaker 1: and UH titans restrictions again. After September eleven. That was
Speaker 1: the perfect time to tighten the belt on FOY UH
Speaker 1: again because the boogeyman is back USA Patriot Act. So
Speaker 1: after September eleven, UM he ordered or you know, the
Speaker 1: administration ordered thousands of documents and data removed from websites
Speaker 1: agency websites, things like airport UH safety data, things like
Speaker 1: pipeline maps, environmental data. I gotta tell you I don't
Speaker 1: disagree with all of that. This is a double edged sword,
Speaker 1: you know, this, this this topic itself is to unpack
Speaker 1: this thing fully Like it's hard to make an argument
Speaker 1: for full transparency or full secrecy. Sure, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would argue for full transparency. I think just
Speaker 1: by definition we would have to get so far away
Speaker 1: from being like the world's police and doving like military everywhere,
Speaker 1: and like being interventionist and adventuroust and all just basically
Speaker 1: completely changed the complexion of the modern United States. To
Speaker 1: be able to be fully transparent, you can't. And even
Speaker 1: then it might be kind of like Norway can be
Speaker 1: fully transparent, but even still, like can they like maybe
Speaker 1: somebody be like, well, I'm I want to practice being
Speaker 1: a terrorist, So I'm gonna start on Norway because they
Speaker 1: publish all their pipeline information. Yeah, so maybe I'll just
Speaker 1: go see what happens when I blow that up. Or
Speaker 1: the great wooden shoes scandal of the U was that
Speaker 1: Norway or the Netherlands. I don't think they wear wooden
Speaker 1: shoes in Norway. Oh, I just I just think they
Speaker 1: all wear wooden shoes all over the place. They don't.
Speaker 1: We have listeners there, man, they're gonna hear you, I know,
Speaker 1: but they know we're kidding, right, I don't know the
Speaker 1: Australians thought we were serious about drinking fosters down there, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't you see how many emails we got there were
Speaker 1: like gently correcting us that no one actually really drinks
Speaker 1: fosters in Australia's um. Bush Also what he made a
Speaker 1: move to do was limit access to records of former presidents,
Speaker 1: which was sort of a big move. UM. And then
Speaker 1: in the Intelligence Authorization Act of two thousand two wanted
Speaker 1: to limit requests by foreign governments or international organizations. So again, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't really disagree with all of it. One of
Speaker 1: the only things that Bush did too was UM he
Speaker 1: expanded who could get cheap or free access to for you? Yeah, UM, journalists.
Speaker 1: I think as part of the UM Watergate expansion or
Speaker 1: maybe the Clinton expansion, journalists were offered um, expedited and cheap,
Speaker 1: if not free for you UM requests. Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: point out you have to pay for this stuff. No
Speaker 1: journalists get a break. They say that, and apparently there's
Speaker 1: not a there's not a standard fee. It's just that
Speaker 1: as part of the law, an agency can recover costs
Speaker 1: associated directly associated with the search, right, UM, So it
Speaker 1: could be eleven dollars an hour, it could be two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars an hour. Depending journalists get faster expedited service
Speaker 1: as paper at least, and then they get their fees
Speaker 1: waved or else pay a reduced fee. And then what
Speaker 1: Bush did with the changes to FOYA under his watch
Speaker 1: were UM to expand who qualifies as a journalists. It
Speaker 1: now included independent investigative journalists bloggers UM, and then public
Speaker 1: interest groups. Apparently it always been included in that too.
Speaker 1: I just like thinking of w saying the word blogger,
Speaker 1: like I get the feeling that he didn't even know
Speaker 1: what that was. Intelligence. He just always struck me as like,
Speaker 1: I know he got made fun of for intelligence, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's because of intelligence. I think he's
Speaker 1: the dude though that would sit down at a computer
Speaker 1: and just kind of be like, how how do I
Speaker 1: work this thing? You know, just sort of old school roots.
Speaker 1: He he didn't know what a blogger was. Maybe come on,
Speaker 1: maybe not or a vlogger. I agree with you, he
Speaker 1: definitely didn't know it a vlogger or at any rate.
Speaker 1: It was the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. It
Speaker 1: was a good thing that UM and of course Harry
Speaker 1: Reid is who introduced the bill. But UM, see that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Congress is like, we don't like this president.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make them look bad and force a foy
Speaker 1: some new Foya stuff on him. And then all it
Speaker 1: does is just point the point. It shines a light
Speaker 1: on just how secretive the government is. And then Congress
Speaker 1: looks good by trying to pull pull back the curtains.
Speaker 1: That's right. Then Obama gets on his h But hold on,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but that's not to say that even if
Speaker 1: Congress is doing it cynically, that it's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's actually a very good thing. Yes, it's just I
Speaker 1: don't think that Congress is riding to the rescue of
Speaker 1: the American people. I think that their motive is probably
Speaker 1: to make the president look bad. Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: So then Obama mounts his horse and rides into the
Speaker 1: White House. Um. Not great would that have been if
Speaker 1: he literally did that like Ronald Reagan? You probably did? Um.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, he very first day in office,
Speaker 1: he said, here's a memo, We're going to be the
Speaker 1: most transparent government that's in American history. And everyone went, yes,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, and he went you think people bought that?
Speaker 1: He's like, oh my gosh, they did. Yeah, he said
Speaker 1: that he wanted to die. He wrote a memo, like
Speaker 1: you said, the first day in off very first day,
Speaker 1: and he said that federal agencies agencies should adopt a
Speaker 1: presumption in favor of disclosure, so lean toward releasing it
Speaker 1: rather than against it, which is a big difference. And
Speaker 1: he actually had Eric Holder, Um who was running the
Speaker 1: d o J for him. I guess that makes him
Speaker 1: as an attorney general, right, Eric Holder was Attorney general
Speaker 1: Whenney and he said, figure out how to codify this,
Speaker 1: and he did. They came up with UM guidelines for
Speaker 1: the federal agencies to become more transparent. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it this that wasn't two thousand nine By
Speaker 1: the time rolled around. The exact opposite was going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Two thousands and sixteen is when the Foyer Improvement Act
Speaker 1: was was put through and UM foisted onto Obama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was the one that supposedly just kind of reinstated
Speaker 1: a lot of what it was supposed to do to
Speaker 1: begin with that had been shirked over the years from
Speaker 1: what I understand, Yeah, Um, it was also an attempt
Speaker 1: to take that codified presumption of disc of disclosure UM
Speaker 1: that the DJ come up with and put it into law,
Speaker 1: like make it part of the Foyer Act. And a
Speaker 1: FOIA request revealed lobbying by the Obama administration, tense lobbying
Speaker 1: by the Obama administration to prevent that that that codification,
Speaker 1: that that an administration had come up with, to prevent
Speaker 1: that from becoming part of FOIL law. And at the
Speaker 1: same time they're talking about how they're the most transparent
Speaker 1: administration ever, but they're also behind the scenes lobbying against it. Um.
Speaker 1: And the thing that caught everyone's attention, or at least
Speaker 1: the people who filed these Foyer requests to get this
Speaker 1: information UM, is that in two thousand fourteen, Congress, well,
Speaker 1: the House passed a bill that had this in it
Speaker 1: four d and ten to nothing, unanimously passed it, and
Speaker 1: then it was never brought up for a final vote.
Speaker 1: John Bayner never called for a final vote, was just
Speaker 1: allowed to die. That's pretty suspicious. So when they finally
Speaker 1: got to the bottom of it, they saw that the
Speaker 1: d o J and the Obama administration and then later
Speaker 1: on the FTC, the Trade Commission, and the Securities and
Speaker 1: Exchange Commission, we're all very much lobbying against the expand
Speaker 1: mentioned because one of the things that um that it
Speaker 1: serves as an exemption to FOY requests is anything that
Speaker 1: has to do with the financial system or the agencies
Speaker 1: that regulate them. So the FTC and the SEC can
Speaker 1: do whatever they want and keep all their documents secret
Speaker 1: and no one can do anything about it. Well, the
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen four Act would have expanded that,
Speaker 1: but that got lobbied out. It is quite disheartening. I
Speaker 1: mean it's but yeah, like the Obama administration being the
Speaker 1: most transparent administration of all time is just such bullocks.
Speaker 1: It's just completely untrue. And yet it's it's a myth
Speaker 1: that that was perpetuated by that administration that still stands today.
Speaker 1: They used the Espionage Act more than all the other
Speaker 1: presidents before them combined since the Espionage Act was was created,
Speaker 1: and I think the beginning of the twentieth century um
Speaker 1: to to prosecute journalists sources. You just didn't go after
Speaker 1: journalists or their sources. The Obama administration was the first
Speaker 1: one to do that. So there's a lot wrong with
Speaker 1: the idea that was the most transparent. Ever. Should we
Speaker 1: take a break, I think all right, we will be
Speaker 1: back in boy it's still like we're still feel like
Speaker 1: we're heating up here. I got a lot to cover.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with how you can file one of
Speaker 1: these things right for this Alright, So, as said before,
Speaker 1: you can be a foreign national, you can be US citizen,
Speaker 1: if you want to file a FOIA request. You can
Speaker 1: be a corporation, can be a news outlet. Uh most
Speaker 1: well probably most times your journalists. Uh and we already
Speaker 1: kind of went over the fees. But um, what you
Speaker 1: do is if you want to request documents, yeah, just
Speaker 1: fill this out and triplicate, get it back to US
Speaker 1: UH to request documents, you appeal um too directly to
Speaker 1: that agency that holds the documents. Well that's just for
Speaker 1: your own so you don't waste time. Well yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to find out who to send it to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um no, I think you legally have to go
Speaker 1: to that agency and to the through the FOI office,
Speaker 1: and then you have to do both. I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: maybe not, but it's a good idea. Well, each agency
Speaker 1: has its own FOY office, right Okay, So uh, well
Speaker 1: yeah that that bears pointing out, like that's part of
Speaker 1: the FOI Act and all the improvements over the years
Speaker 1: is there is somebody at every office that heads us up,
Speaker 1: at least one person, and it's it's got to be
Speaker 1: on their website. There's got to be clear directions on
Speaker 1: how to do this right. And most of the federal
Speaker 1: agencies will have a very easy form that you can
Speaker 1: fill out on there for you, the easy forma what
Speaker 1: what what did we do to your face? Only that
Speaker 1: you want to know exactly? Um, that you just fill
Speaker 1: out these different fields and and you can submit a
Speaker 1: FOIA request like that. Yeah, depending on what you're after,
Speaker 1: we'll determine how long this takes or if you get
Speaker 1: a response at all. Initially, Uh, they say it's first come,
Speaker 1: first serve. Uh. If you're depends on what you're looking
Speaker 1: for and who the agency is. Quite honestly, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a few pages of a document from the
Speaker 1: Forestry Service, you might get that thing turned around pretty quick.
Speaker 1: They will bring it to your house that day if
Speaker 1: you were looking at you with a smile and then
Speaker 1: a little rather little horse away. Everyone's riding horses. Um.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for six hundred pages from the CIA,
Speaker 1: good luck, It'll take a little while. You will undoubtedly
Speaker 1: end up in federal court probably finally complaint. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: in that case, FOI requests very frequently turned into Foyer lawsuits.
Speaker 1: It just happens, umsonal No, not at all, But that
Speaker 1: does suck when it does happen, because that gets a
Speaker 1: lot more expensive. Yeah. This one reporter, Charles Orstein, tried
Speaker 1: to appeal the Department of Defense for a story he
Speaker 1: was doing on drug companies paying doctors. Took three and
Speaker 1: a half years to get the final verdict, which was
Speaker 1: a denial. Yeah, so how about that. So here's the process.
Speaker 1: You file a Foyer request, You wait twenty days, hopefully
Speaker 1: within that time they respond to you. If they don't
Speaker 1: respond to you, you can appeal based on their lack
Speaker 1: of response, or if they respond to you and say no,
Speaker 1: you can appeal the denial after twenty days. Following that,
Speaker 1: you can then go take it to federal court. And
Speaker 1: you can also, and this gets a little funny, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can also file a Foyer request about your Foyer requests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was denied. If it was denied, and then
Speaker 1: that's when this one reporter is like, that's where it
Speaker 1: gets really depressing when you see sort of the beckheind
Speaker 1: the curtain process of this stuff, right. So there there,
Speaker 1: we came across some tips from George Washington University's National
Speaker 1: Security Archive for filing for your requests. Yeah there, It's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward, but it's good to know. Like one of
Speaker 1: the ones that stood out to me was like, don't
Speaker 1: don't be an aggressive jerk to the FOY officer. In
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, the FOY officer might even see
Speaker 1: things your way, but they might be the only person
Speaker 1: at their agency who does. They might work at an
Speaker 1: agency who thinks that FOYA is stupid and UM is
Speaker 1: a threaten to national security, and they have to go
Speaker 1: and convince their colleagues who they have to work with,
Speaker 1: to give them those files to give to you. And
Speaker 1: it's They're probably not the most popular person at their
Speaker 1: their office, so ticking them off if not the best idea.
Speaker 1: So treat them with courtesy, with respect, be direct, don't
Speaker 1: include tons of supporting UM in information and emails. Do
Speaker 1: you want to give them as much information as you
Speaker 1: can but succinct. Yeah, And you also don't want your
Speaker 1: request to be too broad. Although I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of FOIA journalists who would disagree with this, But
Speaker 1: apparently the broader your request, the more difficult it makes, it,
Speaker 1: the more likely it is to be denied and say
Speaker 1: this is what I'm looking for specifically. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: more likely it is to um overlap with other agencies,
Speaker 1: which is just going to complicate things further. Um They say,
Speaker 1: don't include a lot of narratives, even if you think
Speaker 1: your story is important, like like if you if you
Speaker 1: send a request that starts with dear sir, I'm an
Speaker 1: anarchist from Boise, Idaho, and I think whatever when I
Speaker 1: was a boy not not a good way to get started. Right.
Speaker 1: Leave out some of those details. Try and be succinct,
Speaker 1: try and be to the point. A lot of this
Speaker 1: is common sense stuff. Well a lot of it is.
Speaker 1: One of the common sense things that I would not
Speaker 1: have thought to to do first is to look to
Speaker 1: see if this information is already out there. That is
Speaker 1: hu huge, and I would not have thought that either.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of declassified information that exists a lot
Speaker 1: of time on these agency websites. They have it a
Speaker 1: lot of times. I mean it saysn't here, and this
Speaker 1: is very true. I've done it. Congress has a just
Speaker 1: tons and tons of material about public policy, online that
Speaker 1: you can find, so it might already be out there you. UM,
Speaker 1: you can also contact, like if there's a public interest
Speaker 1: group or something like that that's focused on your topic,
Speaker 1: they might have access to it. I read that, UM
Speaker 1: an article about a woman in Oregon who um the
Speaker 1: intercept wrote an article and I can't I think it's
Speaker 1: called the Poison Papers or something. This woman has been
Speaker 1: fighting chemical companies because of what they were doing in
Speaker 1: her backyard for decades and has like a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: pages of internal documents and memos and stuff from lawsuits
Speaker 1: that they're now scanning and digitizing and putting onto the web. Um.
Speaker 1: But UM, she would be a great person to go
Speaker 1: to for those specific art for those YEA, for those sources,
Speaker 1: I bet you. At this point, unless it's something very
Speaker 1: specifically related to you personally or your family, someone has
Speaker 1: probably either asked about it and gotten it and it exists,
Speaker 1: or asked and been denied. Yeah. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is apparently I think the two thou sixteen amendments UM
Speaker 1: said that you if if a document has been requested
Speaker 1: three or more times, they have to release it to
Speaker 1: the public, like it's just released after that and then
Speaker 1: some UM agencies will maintain a fo your reading room
Speaker 1: on their site which will have all the documents that
Speaker 1: have been publicly released through for you. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: three was a pretty heartening number. Actually, I could have
Speaker 1: if it would have said three hundred, I would not
Speaker 1: have been surprised. So the fact that said three, I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, that's legit. It's a magic number.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of um, a lot of loophole
Speaker 1: to this, right, Oh yeah, And I mean also you've
Speaker 1: got to step back here and think about what you're doing, Like,
Speaker 1: you are asking someone in the government to do research
Speaker 1: for you that you could probably do better if only
Speaker 1: you had the access to the stuff that they had access.
Speaker 1: And the whole reason you're having to ask them in
Speaker 1: the first place is because the government is unjustly keeping
Speaker 1: things in secret that it shouldn't be. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: little or welling in to say the least. It is okay,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of loopholes associated with this that
Speaker 1: will keep government agency from from approving your request every time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the first thing they point out in our article,
Speaker 1: which is bears repeating, is you are asking for something
Speaker 1: you were not guaranteed anything. This is a request that
Speaker 1: you're submitting things that you definitely cannot do or get
Speaker 1: physical objects, uh, like you can't request uh like evidence
Speaker 1: from the JFK shooting to be sent to your house,
Speaker 1: send me the magic poet. Uh. Private information about an individual,
Speaker 1: which gets so hinky. That's over the years they've gone
Speaker 1: back and forth on uh really at the basis of it.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to uh these some of these landmark
Speaker 1: court rulings that decided these things. But whether or not
Speaker 1: the public interest outweighs privacy rights, which is a big thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then information that's covered under the nine exemptions that
Speaker 1: I think we kind of have to read through these, right,
Speaker 1: I think, all right, go ahead. The first one is
Speaker 1: any information that's classified for national security purposes. Okay, pretty straightforward. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you've got records that are only about an
Speaker 1: agency's personnel, rules and practices. I did not get that one,
Speaker 1: which makes it seem super shady to me, probably so
Speaker 1: like no, no break room rules, see a break room rules?
Speaker 1: Shall what are you doing in the break room? I
Speaker 1: hadn't even thought about that. Clean up your coffee? Uh.
Speaker 1: Information that's prohibited from being released because of another statute
Speaker 1: that just seems like a very long way of saying
Speaker 1: kind of anything we'd think of um doc mints that
Speaker 1: protect trade secrets or contain information that could damage a
Speaker 1: company's business, Like you can't petition Coca Cola for their
Speaker 1: secret formula or you know, anything that would show that
Speaker 1: the telecoms were working with the n s A for
Speaker 1: the Prism project or something like, and that Coca Cola obviously,
Speaker 1: but petition the government for Coca Cola. UM number five
Speaker 1: is the most used one. Apparently, it's so frequently used.
Speaker 1: It's called the I'm withholding because I want to clause.
Speaker 1: It's it's basically any any documents that contain personal opinions, recommendations,
Speaker 1: or conclusionments, right, And it's it's ostensibly meant to protect
Speaker 1: legal documents, so attorney client privilege, and to promote a
Speaker 1: m a tone of frankness among inner agency and intra
Speaker 1: agency communications. Basically, if you are emailing your colleague and
Speaker 1: you're worried about somebody reading it on the outside, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be as open and frank. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of freeze free speech within the agency. It's so broad,
Speaker 1: so vague and everything falls under it that UM A
Speaker 1: number five is is the exemption most frequently used. Like
Speaker 1: all they really needed is number five. Basically, UM personal
Speaker 1: privacy UM things like social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. UM. Law enforcement documents that could interfere
Speaker 1: with law enforcement deprived person of the fair trial invasion
Speaker 1: of privacy again reveal identities of confidential sources, law enforcement techniques,
Speaker 1: or procedures for investigations or prosecutions, or anything that endangers
Speaker 1: that person's life or safety. Uh, this one is the
Speaker 1: one that drives me up the wall. Information related to
Speaker 1: agencies that are responsible for regulating financial institutions see previous
Speaker 1: rant right. Documents that protect information related to geological or
Speaker 1: geophysical data, including maps, makes sense to me that one does.
Speaker 1: So those are the nine. I don't know if those
Speaker 1: I mean there are originally nine. Are those the original
Speaker 1: nine or those just been tweaked over the years. I
Speaker 1: believe those are the original nine and they're still in use.
Speaker 1: All right. So UM, there's this really good point made
Speaker 1: by a journalist named Philip eel ile E I l Um,
Speaker 1: and he says that if you are a an editor
Speaker 1: who is being approached for the story about how another
Speaker 1: journalist is being stonewalled in their foyer request that you
Speaker 1: kind of have an obligation to tell other people about
Speaker 1: it because if you don't, he says, quote, you're not
Speaker 1: being neutral, you're helping the government keep taxpayers in the dark.
Speaker 1: And so that combined with you know, going up against
Speaker 1: the government and then a light being shined on it
Speaker 1: when the government doesn't cooperate and follow the letter of
Speaker 1: the law just means like you might as well not
Speaker 1: have for you that it's just basically a roll of
Speaker 1: the dice whether you're going to get it or not,
Speaker 1: rather than predictable under the terms of the law. Right,
Speaker 1: So don't don't file a FO your request get denied
Speaker 1: and then just say all right, right, or if you
Speaker 1: go to another publication and you're at that publication, don't
Speaker 1: just be like this is boring, no one cares about that.
Speaker 1: You need to write about it. People need to talk
Speaker 1: about it. And if if stonewalling is going on, from
Speaker 1: FO your requests all right. So we promised a couple
Speaker 1: of landmark court rulings. Um, this first one is good
Speaker 1: ninety six philipp E v. The c I A. I
Speaker 1: think usually when you're v. The C I A, we
Speaker 1: know which way that's gonna work, right, probably not in
Speaker 1: Philippe's favor. Uh. And that's what happened in this case.
Speaker 1: So this was the very famous everyone's heard the phrase
Speaker 1: we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non
Speaker 1: existence of X. This is where that came from. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the original case was the UH there was a
Speaker 1: Soviet submarine sunk off the coat sot Hawaii, and the
Speaker 1: CIA said, who should we partner with to build a
Speaker 1: ship to go look for this thing? Howard Hughes, of course,
Speaker 1: we need to do an episode just on that. On
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes that, yeah, totally uh. And that ship was
Speaker 1: called the Glomar Explorer and UM to salvage the submarine.
Speaker 1: So there was a rolling Stone reporter file the Foyer request,
Speaker 1: and the CIA very famously said, we cannot confirm. Uh.
Speaker 1: We refused to confirm or deny any such a document.
Speaker 1: And he went, what does that even mean? Like no
Speaker 1: one's ever ever even said that before? And the CIA went, Hey,
Speaker 1: nice work. I think we flu mixed everybody did, uh,
Speaker 1: And it did work. So eventually it went to federal
Speaker 1: appeals Court and they said CIA wins uh. And now
Speaker 1: that is known as the Glomar response that you hear
Speaker 1: over and over and over. That's where it's origin. Like
Speaker 1: pretty neat. Um. There's another one that was pretty big.
Speaker 1: It actually came into play pretty quickly after it was ruled,
Speaker 1: I guess so. Two thousand and sixteen, the US Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals said that if you have work related federal
Speaker 1: agency emails and a personal account, you can't get around
Speaker 1: a Foyer request. Who would do that? And that was
Speaker 1: used for a long time, including most famously by Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: who um, her whole email scandal came out of a
Speaker 1: Foyer request. There were a whole bunch of people who
Speaker 1: had filed Foyer requests dating as far back as two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. I think the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
Speaker 1: in Washington crew filed one of the first ones UM,
Speaker 1: and the State Department just kept losing them or said
Speaker 1: they weren't aware of any four requests or whatever. And
Speaker 1: then a Foyer reporter, he's a self styled Foyer terrorist,
Speaker 1: I believe, addresses himself. I think so. UM. Jason Leopold
Speaker 1: filed a Foyer request UM for Clinton stuff as well,
Speaker 1: and then was in talks I believe with the State
Speaker 1: Department for getting that for your request fulfilled, and it
Speaker 1: led to the existence of Clinton's server in her home
Speaker 1: that she was keeping State Department secrets on or using
Speaker 1: for State Department official email. He eventually had a sue
Speaker 1: I think even oh yeah, yeah, right, almost out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Um. But that's a That's another point too,
Speaker 1: is that, like again, a lot of these things quickly
Speaker 1: become foil lawsuits. Which if you're a journalist with a
Speaker 1: big organization that's willing to spend money on foil lawsuits,
Speaker 1: that's great. But if you're just an independent journalist or
Speaker 1: a responsible citizens group or something like that, you might
Speaker 1: not have the money to go to court. And the
Speaker 1: government knows that. So a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: Foyer requests just die upon denial because the person doesn't
Speaker 1: have the resources to take the government to court over it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jason Leopold bears mentioning for sure, because he is uh,
Speaker 1: he's Mr Foya, Dr Foya. Um. He has probably filed
Speaker 1: more fo your lawsuits than anyone. In fact, it says
Speaker 1: so um, anyone more more than anyone except for The
Speaker 1: New York Times. Over the years in the fifteen years.
Speaker 1: He's been the entire New York Times. Yeah. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he worked for Advice for many, many years and now
Speaker 1: works for BuzzFeed. And um was inducted into the National
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Hall of Fame, which I've never heard of.
Speaker 1: But that's adorable. And he's the one who, ah, well,
Speaker 1: he sued for Clinton's emails. He Um, he's the one
Speaker 1: that got information on Guantanamo. He's the one that got
Speaker 1: information on U n s A and and Snowdon Snowdon's revelations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has like a knack for thinking of what to
Speaker 1: ask for. So like he asked for the drafts of
Speaker 1: the talking points for the n s A after this
Speaker 1: emails or the Snowden revelations came through, Which is to
Speaker 1: say he's a great researcher. He's a great researcher's mind.
Speaker 1: He's about as good as they come as far as
Speaker 1: researchers go. Yeah, we should put him on staff. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he'd take us up on it right away. We'd
Speaker 1: be like, we need to look into crayons. You got
Speaker 1: anything else? Nope? Okay, Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about FO, you you know what, send a FO
Speaker 1: your request that's the best way to get acquainted. Figure
Speaker 1: it out, go do it, let us know how it
Speaker 1: turned out. Uh, since I said for your request in
Speaker 1: there somewhere, it's time for listener mail. I think this
Speaker 1: is anonymous. I never heard back from this this person,
Speaker 1: but it's a good one because we got a legit
Speaker 1: um psychopath. Yeah, I think this one's probably anonymous. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just looking to see now did not You're back? Um?
Speaker 1: Hello guys, love your show. Um. I've always wanted a
Speaker 1: reason to write, but I'm endlessly learning and entertained by
Speaker 1: your show. I felt compelled to write as a high
Speaker 1: functioning psychopath. I found a young age after many lock
Speaker 1: up fires, block ups, fires, arrest trouble, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: know I didn't act or react like normis or normal people.
Speaker 1: I realized at thirteen I had to learn to play
Speaker 1: nice with others I would be locked up. Became a
Speaker 1: student of human behavior. Cry when other's cry, show shocked
Speaker 1: when others do. I'm a successful, in good family man. Uh,
Speaker 1: father of two college age kids, one of which is
Speaker 1: a psychopath. And that was a very odd conversation. Yes,
Speaker 1: something is missing in my brain, though I don't count
Speaker 1: this as bad. I've been in so many emergency situations, avalanches,
Speaker 1: swift water rescue, medical emergencies. I've heard people say the
Speaker 1: training takes over and it feels more like taking off
Speaker 1: the mask. Norm's panic and run. I just hit the switch.
Speaker 1: I do agree, however, that people like this should be
Speaker 1: avoided if at all possible, especially if they haven't learned
Speaker 1: to play well with others. It's a little scared recent. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of us on the spectrum are safe and dare
Speaker 1: I say necessary, some of us can learn and care
Speaker 1: and learn to care and feel. I have learned through
Speaker 1: much trouble and strife that I can care through twenty
Speaker 1: years of A and N A so very interesting revealing email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a pretty thrilling life too. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, we heard from another psychopath and I think
Speaker 1: they've come to terms with the fact that their brain
Speaker 1: is different. And I would still like to function in
Speaker 1: the society, so I have learned to do so or
Speaker 1: they'll lock me up, right, And we talked about the spectrum,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's just fascinating to me. That was
Speaker 1: a good episode. Yeah, despite our weird pronunciations. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot anonymous for writing in We appreciate you, um
Speaker 1: and UH. If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: this anonymous or otherwise, you can tweak to us at
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: also hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with me on Twitter too,
Speaker 1: by the way, at josh um Clark. Send us an
Speaker 1: email this stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and it's always hanging out with us at our home
Speaker 1: on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com