Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Chuck, Charles W. Bryant.
Speaker 1: Happy leaf ericson Day, Happy leaf ericson Day? And that
Speaker 1: is today is leaf ericson Day. And if you remember, Josh,
Speaker 1: in our recent podcast on the first Americans May, we
Speaker 1: had a little joke. Do you want to hear it?
Speaker 1: Let's go back. Okay, I'm gonna go back music. Columbus
Speaker 1: was beaten by a good five years by the Norse
Speaker 1: who found who were in Newfoundland. That's not what we
Speaker 1: were taught in history. And definitely there's no Norse day. No, No,
Speaker 1: that'd be awesome. No leaf ericson Day. I don't think
Speaker 1: there is not in the US. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: and there is a leaf eric today and we both
Speaker 1: have a little egg on our faces because we didn't
Speaker 1: know that, and it is today, and it's very ironic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But people that wrote in said, I'm assuming it was
Speaker 1: a joke that you were I know, that's how we
Speaker 1: get away with or I'm going to write the mall
Speaker 1: back and say you got it, got the joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was actually one guy, if you love delicious Irony,
Speaker 1: who said he was making his leaf ericson day Viking
Speaker 1: hat while he was listening to that podcast. Yea, where
Speaker 1: the Clothes the first American? So yeah, as you said,
Speaker 1: happy leaf ericcs and day to utes. So now for
Speaker 1: your intro, which I'm sure you had planned before I
Speaker 1: eviscerated you know you pretty much you eviscerated me. Really,
Speaker 1: maybe it's okay? Well, Chuck, how old your house? Man?
Speaker 1: My house was built in nineteen thirty two, I think
Speaker 1: thirty two. Very nice old house. Yeah, the one I
Speaker 1: live in from nineteen twenty. I believe you always got
Speaker 1: to show me up. I know. I'm sorry, buddy, Okay,
Speaker 1: it wasn't intentional, you own I rant. How about that?
Speaker 1: All right? Well that's the ultimate show up exact. Thank
Speaker 1: you for that, Chuck Um. And I've often wondered, like,
Speaker 1: what has gone on with this house? There's this mysterious
Speaker 1: um tarp that goes across the entire property. A tarp
Speaker 1: like a plastic tarp. It's not plastic, it's woven. It
Speaker 1: looks like you know what they use for silt fence.
Speaker 1: It's just like that, except it's not standing up, and
Speaker 1: it's clearly it was purposefully laid down. And my house
Speaker 1: is on a hill, so I've often wondered like, did
Speaker 1: they build this over an old dump? But did they
Speaker 1: even have dumps like that? In this is under your
Speaker 1: found the foundation of your house. It doesn't go into
Speaker 1: the foundation, but it goes all throughout the yard. And
Speaker 1: like I said, it's on a hill, so it could
Speaker 1: be just to prevent erosion or something like I'm too
Speaker 1: lazy to ask the landlord what the deal is because
Speaker 1: they won't have erosion in n No, they didn't. That
Speaker 1: was that started in the great Erosion Fire of Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: someone will believe that, probably Happy leaf erricks in day
Speaker 1: Chuck YouTube. But my point is is I have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on with my house or what went
Speaker 1: in went on in my house. I know it got
Speaker 1: a roof like a couple of months ago, and that's
Speaker 1: all I know about the house. So the history of
Speaker 1: your home is I got a roof a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago, exactly as far as I can tell. But
Speaker 1: I know some really interesting stuff has gone on there.
Speaker 1: Something can't stand for what almost ninety years um and
Speaker 1: not have something interesting happening. Agreeing it, you would, you would, hope, right.
Speaker 1: And I imagine the same is true for your house,
Speaker 1: like I'm sure there's been squatting that had happened there before. Um,
Speaker 1: And I know somebody who could go talk to about this,
Speaker 1: and that somebody is your wife. Yes, she wrote this article.
Speaker 1: I apologize for that intro. That's all right. Emily wrote
Speaker 1: this article. And she's a freelance writer for how Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: proving it's who you know, Josh agreed in order to
Speaker 1: get jobs to some extent, Yes, especially if who you
Speaker 1: know is hands down the finest writer at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot and also has the finest hair. She knows
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. So, Chuck, let's talk about this. Why did
Speaker 1: I just mention your wife, baket Chuck, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: keep it on you. I thought we just said because
Speaker 1: she wrote this article. Okay, I wasn't listening how to
Speaker 1: find the history of your house on house to porks
Speaker 1: dot com? Would you come up with? Well? Should I
Speaker 1: just get Emily in here? Yeah? We probably should actually
Speaker 1: teach you how to make soap and how to find
Speaker 1: the history of your house all at once. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there are certain steps you can take, and
Speaker 1: we're going to go through those right now, starting with
Speaker 1: talk to your neighbors. This new neighborhood, the neighbors, I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody. I don't talk to anybody, you mean,
Speaker 1: I just moved in a couple of months ago. But
Speaker 1: a classic neighborhood though that you live in it is
Speaker 1: very much so. And I assume that there the neighborhood
Speaker 1: would be much more community oriented. Everybody's kind of doing
Speaker 1: their own thing, you know, everybody like kind of says
Speaker 1: hi when you're passing by. But it's also a thoroughfare
Speaker 1: um for people to get from one place another, So
Speaker 1: I think that kind of lends this trans the nature
Speaker 1: to it to get people speeding through your neighborhood right exactly,
Speaker 1: and everybody's a stranger because of that. Um At the
Speaker 1: last neighborhood was it was off of a major thoroughfare
Speaker 1: and it was kind of isolated and everybody knew each other.
Speaker 1: It was. It was really cool. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: a neighborhood that you'd live in as a kid um
Speaker 1: because you'd go out and play except playing involved like
Speaker 1: heavy drinking that kind of thing. But like, you had
Speaker 1: friends in the neighborhood, right, it was cool like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But there were some neighbors that had lived there since
Speaker 1: the seventies that I knew of, um and had spoken to.
Speaker 1: They weren't old timers, but they were I guess they
Speaker 1: had grown up there a little bit. They were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this place used to be a hotbed for meth. There's
Speaker 1: like a I found out that there had been a
Speaker 1: thriving meth lab just a couple of doors down from
Speaker 1: my house, in my old house. Yeah, the one in
Speaker 1: East Atlanta. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you can learn some
Speaker 1: interesting stuff about your neighborhood just by talking to your
Speaker 1: neighbors exactly. So that's step one. Yeah, that's the easiest
Speaker 1: way to kind of get you get the ball rolling. Right.
Speaker 1: Let's say your neighbors, Um, if you try to go
Speaker 1: up to their house and and even if you're greasing
Speaker 1: their palms with some cookies, they're they're like, get off
Speaker 1: my property. Where do you go from there? Chuck? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to start your investigation in earnest with records,
Speaker 1: you should go find the records, which is at the
Speaker 1: County Recorder's Office. And Emily makes a good point. She's
Speaker 1: she says that although there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are into digging up the history of their home, I
Speaker 1: gat the impression this is a lot like genealogy to
Speaker 1: some people, UM, that there's not that many resources for
Speaker 1: old timey information online. Now you can't find, um, a
Speaker 1: lot of these court records. You know, they're housed on
Speaker 1: paper in you know, the depths of city hall usually,
Speaker 1: and no one has said, hey, maybe we should take
Speaker 1: the time to scan these and put them online. Right,
Speaker 1: So what are we going to find at the County
Speaker 1: Recorder's office. Well, what you want to find is the
Speaker 1: deed history of your house. Okay, you're going to find
Speaker 1: a guy in birkenstocks stocks like playing a recorder. You'll
Speaker 1: probably find that. Sure, you might smell some incense. And
Speaker 1: you want to get the deeds and trace back the
Speaker 1: deeds to the original owner. If that's what your ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is, to find out who originally built our own
Speaker 1: your home. You're also going to find on file. Um,
Speaker 1: and what you would take I guess is your plot
Speaker 1: number or your address, which it can change, which is
Speaker 1: why it's a good idea. To know your plot number.
Speaker 1: That doesn't change, right, I would say, Actually, if you
Speaker 1: have a house that's sent years old, chances are your
Speaker 1: address did change over the years, especially if they doled
Speaker 1: it out kind of haphazardly out the h the when
Speaker 1: somebody builds a new house or something like that. Nobody
Speaker 1: likes to be you know, seven thirty five and a half.
Speaker 1: I was a quarter in the l A. My apartment was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was seven something in a quarter. Because I was
Speaker 1: in a four plex apartment building. I thought below half
Speaker 1: they just started assigning letters. Do this is l A
Speaker 1: because I think they have eights and sixteen people, just
Speaker 1: like Crampton and Linen closets. Right. Another thing you can
Speaker 1: look for, Josh, is have you ever heard of a
Speaker 1: Sandborn map? I hadn't until I read this, and I
Speaker 1: went and did a little research on Sandborn, and god,
Speaker 1: they were interesting. The Sandborn map company was out of Michigan,
Speaker 1: I believe, and they serviced and not in any kind
Speaker 1: of dirty way. The fire insurance industry. Apparently insurance maps
Speaker 1: were big as a whole back then. Yeah, if you were,
Speaker 1: you know, located in Delaware, if your insurance company was
Speaker 1: located in Delaware, and you had somebody in Taos, New
Speaker 1: Mexico who wanted fire insurance from you. Um, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Send some guy out to look at
Speaker 1: every single one? Now, your contract with the Sandborn Map
Speaker 1: Company to make maps of twelve thousand cities and towns
Speaker 1: around the United States and from eighteen sixty seven and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and drawn aerial maps. And these things were detailed, man,
Speaker 1: I mean like they they look like um land use
Speaker 1: maps of today. Um Like there's not a little tiles
Speaker 1: drawn in or bricks or anything like that, but I
Speaker 1: mean like they're detailed, Like here's the closest fire hydrant.
Speaker 1: Here's how many sprinklers this house has. Here's where the
Speaker 1: windows are. Here's what the building nearby is used for.
Speaker 1: I was looking at one. I can't remember what town
Speaker 1: it was, but there was like the foundry or the
Speaker 1: old foundry, and it said like vacant. And then there's
Speaker 1: the other foundry nearby, and here's these houses. Is the
Speaker 1: drawing of a city, And they did it all over
Speaker 1: the place. And again they did it too for the
Speaker 1: fire insurance industry. But these towns also got copies of
Speaker 1: these maps, and a lot of them have them on
Speaker 1: file because it was for the fire insurance. Was why
Speaker 1: you get detailed like where the windows and doors were.
Speaker 1: And I think it also says what materials your house
Speaker 1: was made up. Right. They also did them in Mexico
Speaker 1: and Canada. They also did um maps on sugar refinery
Speaker 1: in places like Cuba and whiskey distilleries throughout the country. Um,
Speaker 1: because those things tend to explode. And uh yeah, they
Speaker 1: the Sandborn company basically made it so that you can
Speaker 1: find what your house looked like any any time during
Speaker 1: this period or where what else is around. It's really
Speaker 1: cool because they also included street names and addresses. So
Speaker 1: if you're if your city has a Sandborn map, you
Speaker 1: are in luck. Yes, agreed. Um. The other thing you
Speaker 1: can do is well, if you if you are able
Speaker 1: to trace the deed back to the original owner, you
Speaker 1: can go to the internet. Then if you've got a name,
Speaker 1: it's always worth a try. Oh, definitely, because you never
Speaker 1: know if someone back then it was noteworthy enough to
Speaker 1: be included somewhere in the historical records on the net.
Speaker 1: Right you and you you if you can't get the deed,
Speaker 1: but you can if you have other records like surveys,
Speaker 1: tax assessors, census um records. Uh, they'll have the name
Speaker 1: and ages and occupations of everybody in the house occupation.
Speaker 1: That's kind cool, it is very cool. Um, well we'd
Speaker 1: be what would we be back then? Yeah? Oh I
Speaker 1: was a cobbler for sure, were you? Yeah? Yeah, Cooper?
Speaker 1: Really wow? I underestimated you, Jerry, what about you? She
Speaker 1: has no idea? And also you can find the occupations
Speaker 1: of the people who own the house through a reverse
Speaker 1: telephone book. Yes, the polk the polk reverse telephone directory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you know about these? Had no idea that. It's
Speaker 1: just such a smart thing, and it's so it sounds
Speaker 1: so old timey reverse telephone directory. Yeah. And that means
Speaker 1: you can search by the address. If you don't have
Speaker 1: the name, right, you search by address and then it
Speaker 1: takes you over the name and that will be at
Speaker 1: your library. So now we've moved on from the County Cord.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I forgot to tell everybody we're at the library.
Speaker 1: Were the library here? That's why it's so quiet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's where you can find the polk directory, and
Speaker 1: that's where you can find the occupation, which I think
Speaker 1: is probably one of the more interesting things. You can't
Speaker 1: in the census records too, well, what if you can't
Speaker 1: find it? All? Right, So now you've got we're also
Speaker 1: we're in the library still so U sorry. Now now
Speaker 1: you've got the name or one of the names of
Speaker 1: one of the homeowners who lived in the house before you.
Speaker 1: Now it can get interested, right because I suggested the internet.
Speaker 1: If the internet uh comes up empty, which it likely
Speaker 1: will not likely, but it may, am I that means
Speaker 1: you need to look at something called microfiche. Yes, and
Speaker 1: if you're under oh i'd say probably thirty years old,
Speaker 1: you probably have no idea what microfiche is. So microfiche is, um,
Speaker 1: it's micro film. I don't know why they call it
Speaker 1: micro fisi instead of micro film. Someone will know and
Speaker 1: we'll find out. Yes, Um, basically, it's a ton of
Speaker 1: information on a very tiny strip and you use a
Speaker 1: little magnifying glass. Actually it's not a little magnifying glass,
Speaker 1: is kind of big machine. Right. You can spin through.
Speaker 1: You got this cool little dial old timing, and you
Speaker 1: can spin through and find um newspaper clippings used to
Speaker 1: use it. I'm sure too, right, And yeah, I was
Speaker 1: never a microfiche, whiz, but I have used it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty fun, but you have to cross references. Like you
Speaker 1: you look for what you're looking for, and then you
Speaker 1: go through like a decade of newspapers on one film,
Speaker 1: and you can find press clippings about whoever's owned your house.
Speaker 1: You might find that there was a murder there, or that, um,
Speaker 1: there were several murders there. Because frankly, Chuck, isn't that
Speaker 1: what everybody is doing? A house history is ultimately looking for.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, I should show you my note
Speaker 1: right here. The real reason is to find out if
Speaker 1: anyone's been murdered there exactly. That's the number one reason
Speaker 1: I would say anyone would look at their house history.
Speaker 1: I would say, let's cut to the chase. But man,
Speaker 1: it took us a long time to get to the
Speaker 1: ultimate point. I know. Yeah. Um. I do have one
Speaker 1: more point about microfiche though, because a lot of people
Speaker 1: think they're like Google Masters and research on Google line.
Speaker 1: I'm so good at it. You don't know research, dude,
Speaker 1: until you get on microfiche. That's where it's really hours
Speaker 1: and hours in the library, and it'll seriously test your
Speaker 1: investigative skills. Yeah, these people who like write a book
Speaker 1: based on a year of experience that they took a
Speaker 1: year out of life to go do something and then
Speaker 1: they wrote a book about it. Those people don't know
Speaker 1: writing a book. Talk to like Norman Mailer, Go talk
Speaker 1: to like um Robert Woodward. Go talk to these people
Speaker 1: who actually hand to go do research on micro feache
Speaker 1: and didn't just blog about something they were doing for
Speaker 1: a year. It's not writing a book. That's called lucking out,
Speaker 1: it's called dropping out. Wow, so chuck microfiche. Are we
Speaker 1: done with that part? Uh? Yeah, I think so. Um.
Speaker 1: The library is also we're going to find the census
Speaker 1: records so that you were talking about. Wait, I thought
Speaker 1: that be at the at the city hall. It could
Speaker 1: be in both. Actually, if you strike out at the
Speaker 1: city hall, you can look at the library at the
Speaker 1: hall at the city Hall. And the other thing you
Speaker 1: can look at the library is look up some books.
Speaker 1: There may be a book called the history of East
Speaker 1: Lake in Atlanta, and start thumbing through it, and there
Speaker 1: may be a picture of your house, and you know,
Speaker 1: the original mayor of Eastlake lived there. And when you
Speaker 1: find that out, try to contain yourself. Remember you're in
Speaker 1: a library, don't shout funny. You should bring up east
Speaker 1: like Chuck, because number one, that's where you live. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and number two, Emily wrote about Eastlake. She did some
Speaker 1: research on Eastlake, right yeah, I think she in order
Speaker 1: to write the article, she just did a little digging
Speaker 1: around about her own hood to uh kind of live
Speaker 1: the experience maybe, and she found out some pretty cool stuff. Actually,
Speaker 1: I had no idea she did. Eastlake is probably best
Speaker 1: known now as the home of the Eastlake Country Club
Speaker 1: Old country Club, host of the recent PGA tournament there
Speaker 1: for they've been hosting it for a while, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they usually have one tournament there every year, but now
Speaker 1: I think they finished the season there every year. So
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods was just in town. Hun, he was right
Speaker 1: across the street from me. He's kind of foul mouth,
Speaker 1: he does, actually, And I was able to make a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred bucks parking cars in my yard. That's right.
Speaker 1: Last year, Chuck um it up a bloody Mary stand
Speaker 1: in his front yard and I was able to sell
Speaker 1: one before the cops came and h took the joint down. Chuck.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant is what we call a hustler. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a sterling idea. It was a great idea.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't have a liquor license. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the only rub there. Soeeah, I was shut down
Speaker 1: to it. Sweet. So East Like, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: back in the day, the turn of the century, it
Speaker 1: was a farm five miles outside of the downtown center
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. This was most of America at the turn
Speaker 1: of the last century. Absolutely, we should say the last century. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it had two creeks and a five spring watershed.
Speaker 1: And the owner of a streetcar company in Atlanta bought
Speaker 1: this farm. He damned it up and created a lake
Speaker 1: and like a beach community around this lake, and the
Speaker 1: old built hotels. And it was actually one of the
Speaker 1: first quote unquote suburbs of Atlanta, which is funny because
Speaker 1: it's the suburbs in Atlanta. Now, are you know, forty
Speaker 1: miles away. Yeah, if you're a fan of urban sprawl,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love Atlanta. But East Like is Atlanta now,
Speaker 1: it's not considered by any stretch of them very much.
Speaker 1: Five miles from downtown is that it's just a neighborhood,
Speaker 1: although I suspect with traffic the way it is. It
Speaker 1: takes as long to get downtown from East Lake these
Speaker 1: days as it did in Now you kidding me, No,
Speaker 1: I just shoot down to cab Avenue turns into Marriad
Speaker 1: and you're there. Uh so the horse and buggy that
Speaker 1: was quicker, you think, Uh yeah, Okay, Now you have
Speaker 1: hopefully found out the owner of your house, the original owner.
Speaker 1: You've gotten some information, and you may have gotten some
Speaker 1: information on the building of your house because you said
Speaker 1: the reason you would really want to find out to
Speaker 1: see if anyone was killed there. There are other reasons
Speaker 1: to like if like you were talking about, architecturally, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of architectural oddities. Many times in these old
Speaker 1: houses don't make any sense unless you find out the
Speaker 1: history of the home. Yeah, Emily says, um that you
Speaker 1: might find out that your kitchen is where you're living
Speaker 1: room you should be, which explains some of the odd
Speaker 1: angles as you which you're talking about your house. Actually,
Speaker 1: we don't really have anything that odd, except for the
Speaker 1: flooding issue in the basement, which I can't figure out.
Speaker 1: But like something more interesting. Let's say you have a
Speaker 1: window in your uh this little tiny closet and you think,
Speaker 1: why would there ever be a silly little window there?
Speaker 1: And then you find out that it was a back
Speaker 1: room distillery during prohibition or something. You never know. The
Speaker 1: house I grew up in as a child in Talita
Speaker 1: had a secret passageway, no way, I kid you not,
Speaker 1: in a in the back of a linen closet which
Speaker 1: the walls in the back were painted black. Um. If
Speaker 1: you pushed on the back wall, you went through a
Speaker 1: little door and you crawled through when you were on
Speaker 1: the steps going down to the basement on the other
Speaker 1: side of the house. So how old was the house?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I don't actually like seventies ranch, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. No, it's definitely, uh fifties at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was fun to play. How you can go
Speaker 1: seeking there? Well, if you, I bet, if you have
Speaker 1: some architectural audity in your home and you you know
Speaker 1: you're into this kind of thing, would be looking into
Speaker 1: for sure. Definitely. Um. Also, if you are a renovator
Speaker 1: and you've been tasked with restoring a house, I mean,
Speaker 1: how are you how else you going to find out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: If you're really big into conservation and you have a say,
Speaker 1: an old Victorian home and you really want to bring
Speaker 1: it back to its former glory. You should, you know,
Speaker 1: respect the original plans of the house. Definitely, and you
Speaker 1: can also charge an arm and a leg if you
Speaker 1: do all this extra research to renovate to the original state. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and chuck um. One last thing I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: um ghosts. Sure, I didn't know this. In California and Hawaii,
Speaker 1: you are required to disclose any ghostly activity in a
Speaker 1: house when you're selling it. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I didn't either. But if you suspect that there's ghostly
Speaker 1: activity in your house, and you don't live in any
Speaker 1: of these states, you might go back and find out
Speaker 1: that there was that murder that you've been looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how cool is that? What do you want to
Speaker 1: part or that? Yeah, if you found out someone is
Speaker 1: murdered in your house, wouldn't that be cool? That wouldn't
Speaker 1: scare me. I think it was neat unless obviously it
Speaker 1: turned into like an amiable horror type of scene. But well, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's a good reason, I would say, if you have
Speaker 1: blood coming out of your wallpaper, that's a good reason
Speaker 1: to research the history. And the other The other final
Speaker 1: reason I think is if, um, you might find out
Speaker 1: that someone famous used to own it, or someone famous
Speaker 1: might have stayed there, and you could potentially get it
Speaker 1: listed as a historical site and save that house forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll bet your house ends up on the register in
Speaker 1: fifty years. Okay, but I'm gonna find out the history
Speaker 1: of it though, all right, are you really? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look into it when happens. You're not just saying that? Do?
Speaker 1: I usually not follow through my podcast promises. Well, if
Speaker 1: you have a really interesting history for your house and
Speaker 1: you want a little more detail, you can read Emily's article, Um,
Speaker 1: how to find the history of your home. You can
Speaker 1: type that in the handy search part works dot com
Speaker 1: go find a Sandborn map just to look at him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are pretty interesting. You can find them online. Um,
Speaker 1: in some cases not all um. And since I said
Speaker 1: handy search bar, that means, of course that it's time
Speaker 1: for a listener maid listener mail Josh. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that give a special thank
Speaker 1: you to the boys and the Henry Clay people. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm holding their couzy right now right. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you remember a few weeks ago, we mentioned that some
Speaker 1: band in southern California rote us and they were fans
Speaker 1: of the show, and I like the CD, and I
Speaker 1: tried to get everyone together to go to the performance,
Speaker 1: which was a few nights ago, and I was the
Speaker 1: only one able to make it, unfortunately. So I met
Speaker 1: the boys in the band. I met Joey and Andy,
Speaker 1: the two brothers, and I met the drummer. I believe
Speaker 1: his name was Mike, and that was the only other
Speaker 1: guy I met. Hung out, had some beers. They're super
Speaker 1: cool kids, very very talented. And remember we said that
Speaker 1: we were going to be at that show, and we
Speaker 1: actually had two fans come out seeking us out. And
Speaker 1: you introduced your friend justin to them as me as Josh.
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of funny. This lady comes
Speaker 1: up in the lobby after the show and I'm hanging
Speaker 1: out with the band, and I think your name was
Speaker 1: Jeannie and Jeannie. If I got that wrong, I apologize.
Speaker 1: I had a few beers at that point, and Jeanne
Speaker 1: and her husband came up and introduced themselves and they
Speaker 1: were super nice and very complimentary, and they came to
Speaker 1: the show on our recommendation and rate Josh and Chuck Sider.
Speaker 1: So in the city of Atlanta. We had two people
Speaker 1: interested in coming to see us. It's awesome, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Well, that's not bad. It's like the people
Speaker 1: in Atlanta listening to us, and it was cool. I
Speaker 1: talked you know, you know, me and my band stuff.
Speaker 1: I just peppered them with questions about being in a band.
Speaker 1: I feel, I know we hit it off. I feel
Speaker 1: like an honorary Henry Clay person. And you may meet
Speaker 1: him in December if you come to l A with me.
Speaker 1: I'm not you're not gonna be able to come up.
Speaker 1: So you got any letters? Yeah, I got a letter. Um,
Speaker 1: this is from Emily, and we're gonna see her last
Speaker 1: name because it's a special thing. Emily friedened All wrote us,
Speaker 1: I've been a big fan of the podcast since I
Speaker 1: discovered them in July. I was working at temp job,
Speaker 1: filing and making binders for eight hours at a time
Speaker 1: in a back room of a lighting company. Not fun. Um.
Speaker 1: The podcast helper get through all this. We get a
Speaker 1: lot of these emails of people born jobs. And she
Speaker 1: thanks us for that, and then she says, in fact,
Speaker 1: it got me so excited about how stuff works and
Speaker 1: the topics you covered. I decided it would be kind
Speaker 1: of a dream gig to be able to write some
Speaker 1: of the articles that you covered. So I went online
Speaker 1: submitted materials to be a freelance writer. And I just
Speaker 1: found out a few hours ago that I was accepted.
Speaker 1: She's a colleague and only is now a co worker,
Speaker 1: and she says she can't wait to start rolling on
Speaker 1: a project. And have you guys to thank for inspiration
Speaker 1: and for helping me put myself out there. And I
Speaker 1: emailed her a few times and told her congratulations, welcome aboard,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll try and pick out one of
Speaker 1: our articles the podcast. That's awesome. Congratulations Only So she's
Speaker 1: she's a co worker officially, Sweet Chuck, is that the
Speaker 1: only letter you got? Okay, Um, let's plug Kiva. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. So ok had the bright idea of setting
Speaker 1: up a Kiva dot org. Stuff you should know team
Speaker 1: uh And if you're not familiar with Kiva, it is
Speaker 1: a micro lending website. It's a nonprofit UH, meaning you
Speaker 1: don't get any return on investment, but you do get
Speaker 1: your investment back if you choose and loans as small
Speaker 1: as twenty five dollars go to fund bigger loans for
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs in um developing countries, and we talked about it
Speaker 1: on the micro Lending uh podcast. If you want to
Speaker 1: familiarize yourself with that, you can go listen to that
Speaker 1: when it was pretty good. So you can go to www.
Speaker 1: Dot Kiva dot org, slash teams, slash stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: and you'll come to the Stuff you Should Known Nation's
Speaker 1: team page. You can donate whatever you want as little
Speaker 1: as twenty five bucks. And like I said, don't forget
Speaker 1: you this, this is repaid. The loan is repaid. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also have gift certificates on Kiva dot org and
Speaker 1: it's a really good cost. And um, we've already got
Speaker 1: seven fifty bucks done age I and what like twenty
Speaker 1: team members huh. And we're stoked and we want to
Speaker 1: call out again the lousy Colbert Report and to see
Speaker 1: that learning email we got from somebody. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like don't do you know what happens when you
Speaker 1: call out student Colbert? Yes, you get his attention, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what we're trying to do. So we're calling
Speaker 1: we're calling them Outain is lousy fans who are cheap
Speaker 1: and we want to Bury. We're the ones that crossover
Speaker 1: between share of course, so we we want to beat
Speaker 1: them and get their attention and challenge into a kiva off.
Speaker 1: So if you have an interesting story about your house,
Speaker 1: if there's a murder there chucking, I definitely want to
Speaker 1: hear about it. Have any suggestions about the key the team,
Speaker 1: let us know or if he's wanted say high, unicorns, tornadoes, torpedoes,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. Send in an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more house stuff Works, check out
Speaker 1: our blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
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