How Big is the US Military?

is that? Well, because it was six oh two am and apparently that was two hours before the Swiss Air Force came to work on and that can't be true. Yeah, they at least it wasn't two thousand fourteen. So here's a quote I found from the Guardian. It says, um, there's something almost too civilized about a country whose fighter jet stick to office hours. I mean, this is crazy.

So they supposedly keep this eight to five schedule, they'll break for an hour and a half for lunch, and until two thousand seventeen there was no service on weekends. It's pretty crazy. And I know this all sounds crazy, but it was also because the Swiss didn't feel the need for it, and they're military budget and so they just they'd make arrangements when neighboring air forces to you know, be on call whenever they were off. And it's an

interesting way to spend military money. I don't think this is how it's done in the U. S. If I'm not mistaken, but it did make me wonder like, how much does our country spend on the military and where exactly does that money go? And that's what today's episode is all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part

Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man gues Ticketer, and the man on the other side of the soundproof glass wearing camo in honor of today's topic is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. He's always so prepared noticed this. Oh wait, he's saluting us, thinking, good job, Kristen. All right, so today we're answering the question how big is the U. S. Military? And we're gonna be answering that from a few different angles.

You know, how much money has been how many people are employed by the military, how many bases does the US have and then other questions like how many countries are we obligated to protect based on treaties and you know things like this. Yeah, and our goal with this episode is to answer these questions out of pure curiosity, not to make any sort of political point. It's kind of funny when you cover a topic like these, people are always a little on edge and so ready to

pounce if they sense any bias. It always makes me think about that time in Mental Floss and the year we published a cover of the magazine with the headline Wildest Rides to the White House. Yeah, and keep in mind this was about a decade ago. Anyway. The cover showed to roller coaster ride and in the roller coaster was I think Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and of course Hillary Clinton. Well, and if you remember, you

could see Lincoln's hat flying off in the background. And now again, we we always tried to stay pretty free of politics Mental Flaws because we saw ourselves as kind of this break from the news and all of that.

But that issue generated so much angry male like more than any other issue did from both sides of the political spectrum, and those on the left were angry that we used the photo of Hillary looking like she was screaming, and and those on the right, we're angry because Hillary didn't belong in that car, having never been a president.

But the reality is we felt we had no other choice but to use that photo because there were no fewer than like a hundred photos online of Hillary doing the roller coaster face at least there are so many to choose from it. But you're right, I mean, it looked so real And you can actually google image search this cover today. Just type in mental Flaws, Wildest Rise to the White House and you'll see the cover that

we're talking about. That's a great example of what we're dealing with here, And so as you listen to the episode, try to keep in mind what our goal is, and that's to answer this question. All right, So let's get started.

You know, the timing on this topic is pretty interesting because while we're watching all of the fighting going on over healthcare and a new tax plan and things like the National Anthem, it almost went unnoticed that a couple of weeks ago, the Senate passed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act, and unlike so many other votes

these days, this one wasn't even close. The vote was I think like eighty nine to eight, and they passed this authorization of a seven hundred billion dollar funding for the military for the upcoming fiscal year. And that happens to be even more than the Trump administration had proposed, which is crazy. And I thought it was a bill of over twelve hundred pages, and you know, well, one of these days I want to do an episode entirely on how bills of that length are actually drafted, because

that's a lot of pages. Kidding, I wonder if anybody read all twelve hundred pages. But yeah, that's seven hundred billion included six hundred forty billion for basic Pentagon operations and then another sixty billion for ongoing war operations. So we're talking places like Iraq and Syria, Afghanistan, you know,

those are the biggies in the group. Yeah, and so most of that funding goes to the Department of Defense, but there are additional funds to the Department of Energy, which is is uh, you know, responsible for the US nuclear program, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, the Military Retirement Trust Fund, and also health care for retired military members as well. As allocations for intelligence agencies because they have specific defense assignments. Yeah, and and and

those also have money authorized separately. So there are some estimates you know that when you look at all the agencies involved in our national security and military it it may actually be closer to a trillion dollars annually. So if we go with that seven billion dollar figure, the military comes in second in terms of the largest federal expenditures. You know what's first? What's that Social Security that comes in around one trillion dollars? But where does that put

us in comparison to other countries? Well, you can look at this in a few ways, but I think maybe we should look at it into So first you can look at it as total dollar amounts spent um, and then you can also look at it as a percentage of GDP. Now, in terms of total dollar amounts, the US spends more each year than the next eight countries combined. So what I want to tell me what those eight

countries are? No, I want you to guess. All right, I'm looking at the two thousand sixteen figures here and and the estimates on the US spending from that year were about six hundred billion. Actually a little bit more than six hundred billion. So I mean, I probably have to guess the first two or past the US are China and Russia. Maybe yeah, you'd be right to guess them in exactly that order, but they're not as close

as you might think. So the estimates I was looking at have China spending about two hundred and fifteen billion on their military and Russia only spending about sixty nine billion. So that's less than a third of what China spent. That's crazy, Um, But I mean I guess it kind of makes sense when you think about the population, because I think China's population is about like ten times that of Russia and they have something like one point four billion people. I think, yeah, that's a good point. But

I feel like you're just kind of stalling. Here are you looking at your phone? I'm just texting with my mom. Okay, all right, Well what's your next guest? Um? Germany? I guess yeah, they coming at number nine at forty one billion dollars, And uh, what you know, North Korea is in the news. How where where do they fit into this? Well, you know, they spend a massive amount on their military.

We all know that. But because they're so secretive we actually really can't know, so they're not included in the list that I'm looking at here, So we're gonna put them aside for now. But alright, one more guests and then I'll just go ahead and tell you the rest of the list. How about the UK, Yeah, they coming at number six at about forty eight billions. So let's go back to the top ones here at fourth is Saudi Arabia sixty yeah, and then India at fifty five billion.

And one of the things surprised me the most in terms of just how high they ranked is France at fifty six billion dollars. Then you've got the UK as we mentioned, Japan, Germany as we also mentioned, and then South Korea rounding at the top ten at about thirty

seven billion dollars. So I think you're saying it's a slightly different picture if you look at the spending as a percentage of the g d P. Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting, not just to look at it in terms of how much other countries spend and comparing it to that, but even looking at it, you know, it's compared to previous decades. So the US spends a smaller percentage of its GDP on military now than it did in the mid twentieth century. And that's also the case for most

countries in Europe and the Americas. So let's go back to nineteen sixty and we were talking about in the neighborhood of like eight point four percent of our GDP being spent on the military at that time here in the US at least, and in two thousand and sixteen that was only three point three percent. So it's a significant decline when you're looking at it in those terms. And according to the World Bank, the world average in nineteen sixty was around six percent. Today it's around two

point two percent. So you've seen a decline really across the globe in terms of percent of GDP. But last year, the country that spent the most on their military as a percentage of GDP was Oman at thirteen point seven uh Saudi Arabia being a close a second there, let's see they were at just under ten percent, and then the Democratic Republic of the Congo at a little over seven percent. Now, again keep in mind that because North Korea is so secretive about all this, we really don't

know exactly what they spend. But I've seen some reports that were guessing around thirty of their GDP being spent on the military, which I clearly that that isn't that surprising. But so, so back to the u S. How is that money divvied up? All? Right? Well, since the vast majority goes to the Department of Defenses budget, so let's let's look at that right now. The biggest percentage of that at about goes to their general day to day

operation and maintenance. So you know, this includes things like equipment maintenance and training and healthcare program. And you know, it's also where civilian employees and contractors go, which I feel like we should talk about in a bit, But

this isn't where the members of the military go. Now, that's a separate category of its own, and that makes up about twenty seven or twenty eight percent, And that includes not just the pay for those in uniform, but things like housing and subsistence allowances and other costs like those moving you know, military families to new locations stuff like that. So I'm scribbling these numbers down fort Okay, so, speaking of military families living on bases around the world,

I just wanted to do this quick Tangent. Do you know that stores on military basis don't accept pennies and nickels? Apparently they're not worth their costs and shipping because they way too much. But back to your Matthew, I scribbled it down and it looks like it's at about sixty seven or sixty eight percent between those two. So what else is on there? Well, first of all, I enjoyed

that Tangent. I did not know that. Well, the other big category, about thirty one percent, combines all the investment in new technologies, you know, R and D, as well as testing an evaluation of that R and D work, and this is some really fascinating stuff and it's no surprise that it would require a ton of money to stay on top of the latest technologies, really in many ways to create the latest technologies, when you think about how important that is for the military. So let me

just give an example of this. And as a side note, it's super interesting to look through the various budget allowances for specific R and D projects, and you can do this through the Department of Defense Investment budgets search. Alright, So so the example here the armies zero six zero three seven one zero A night Vision Advanced Technology. I have no idea what those numbers stand for, but I kind of like saying that to just make me sound official. I know, I was gonna ask if you're sequence in

the army Army reserves. Yeah, I'm not at liberty to say a mango, so but but but anyway, the cost for the fiscal year two thousand and seventeen is just shy of forty five billion dollars. And here's the description of that project. Project Case seven zero pursues technologies that improve the soldiers ability to see at night and provide rapid wide area search to enable passive long range target identification.

Evaluate sensors and algorithms designed to detect targets, you know, whether that's vehicles or personnel, and in camouflage or concealment and deception from airborne platforms. So this is some super sophisticated stuff. Yeah, and and I mean they're spending four million dollars on it, so it's got to be pretty incredible. But uh so, according to my map based on your number, is I think that all adds up to about eight

or of my calculations are correct. Yeah, there's a few other things there, so that the remaining like two ish person is a combination of smaller things like military construction or family housing, just a few odds and ends that all add up right there. So this is the thing that just like baffles me with with such a huge budget and so many people involved in making these spending decisions, like,

how is all of that managed? Well, it's definitely not easy, and they've actually had some issues with this, and so they brought in some people from Mackenzie to even consult on this and and just to make sure they could wrap their heads around how all the money was being spent. So this was back in two thousand, fourteen and fifteen, and the Department of Defense found that it was spending about a fourth of its budget on overhead and administrative matters.

So that's a ton of people in it, and you can imagine that it's difficult to really keep a handle on that and easy to see how that could swell out of control in some ways, or at least do so in a way that they don't know exactly how

it's being spent. So, in fact, the Pentagon's back office bureaucracy employed over a million people, so that's about three hundred thousand of those being in the military, almost four hundred and fifty thousand of those being civilians, and then another two hundred sixty eight thousand I think it was being contractors. It's a lot of people. So Mackenzie and this advisory board, they worked to help the Department of Defense kind of you get a much better handle on

what they were spending. And after their analysis, they realized the department was spending about fifty more than they'd previously guessed on business operations alone. That's kind of crazy. So well, I I definitely have a couple of other questions for you before we get to the size of the military from a personal perspective, which I actually looked into. But before we tackle any of that, why don't we break for a quick quiz? All right, mango, So it's time

to play a little quiz. And as you know, we've allowed some of our listeners to write in and tell us why they should be on the show. And one of those wrote in. His name is Liam and he was a nuclear trained electrician on submarines in the Navy. How perfect an episode on How Big is the US Military? But Liam, welcome to Part time Genius. Thank you, glad to be here and where are you joining us from

Hampton Roads, Virginia? Okay, terrific? All right, well, you know, let's let's start with that fact that you were a nuclear trained electrician on submarines in the Navy. So, so what exactly is a nuclear trained electrician? So? Uh? By rate? Uh or you know, job description. When I joined the Navy,

I was an electrician. I went to school for that, and then later went to school to learn how to operate and maintain a nuclear power plant because all of our submarines are nuclear powered and the aircraft carriers are also nuclear powered, and that was that was the job I got to do. Wow, well, thank you for doing a good job with that. That's really cool. Um. And so how long were you on submarines for? Uh? Well,

I was in the Navy for thirteen years. Most of that time was was on board submarines, with a short stint at a shore duty command and the training before that, so I don't say about eight of those years I was on submarines. Wow, what's the most fun thing that happens on submarines? The most fun thing? Well, I'd probably say halfway night, um, halfway through underway and schedule underway. We have a little celebration just getting to that port point and knowing that, you know, it's all down hail

from there. We're heading home soon. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, well, Liam, you may have thought it was a tough job to to be an electrician in the Navy, but but actually we've got something even tougher for you. We've got one of our very important quizzes. Mango. What's the name of today's quiz. It's called Oh captain, my captain? All right, So every answer is a fictional captain, and we're gonna see how many of these eight fictional captains you can

get right in. What are we saying? Ninety seconds? So we're gonna set the clock to ninety seconds. This is some high press your stuff, just like summer in, just like submarines. Are you ready, Liam, I'm ready? All right, here we go. We'll get started. The captain that hung out with Spock on the Enterprise. Also his middle name is Tiberius Captain Kirk, that's right. This captain is featured on cereal boxes and sales the s s Guppy Captain Crunch.

This captain considers Peter Pan his nemesis, but he's more afraid of crocodiles. Hook Hook Hook. This captain is from a kid show played by Bob Keishan was named for a marsupial. Oh Captain, Kangaroo. That's right. This captain sits on the label of spiced rum bottles. Oh Captain. This captain once punched Hitler on the cover of his comic

book Captain America. This captain was featured in Moby Dick Moby Dick that one my mom would would would kill me for not knowing that she was big in the literature. But don't remember that. Let's go to the last one real quick. This captain slash environmental superhero used to save the Earth on Saturday mornings. Captain Planet. He's a hero. So Liam went seven for eight. He still had thirty

seconds on o'clock and he just missed Captain Ahab. That's the only one in which which I think probably qualifies in for a big prize. What do you think. Yeah, we're gonna send you a big box of Captain crunch. Well, Liam, thanks so much for all the work you did in the U. S. Navy, and thanks so much for joining us on part time genius. Oh thanks for having me, guys, I I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Welcome back to

part time Genius now le Mango. Before the break, you were saying you had a couple more questions and before we dive into personnel and look at our bases around the world, let's let's talk about those. Yes, something I've seen several reporters write about only is something they referred to as the quote black budget. Okay, can you explain what that is? Yeah? Sure, that this is where the

funding for you know, covert military programs comes from. And and in most recent years it appears this was something like fifty to sixty billion dollars allocated to to this black budget. And there was a really interesting Wired article back in two thousand and twelve, and the quote from that it says, to put it in perspective, the Pentagon is still spending more unclassified projects than most nations spend on their entire military forces in a year. So that

doesn't include the regular budget for intelligence funding, right. Yeah, So when you include the funding from you know, the national intelligence program, which is where agencies like the CIA would fall, we're talking another fifty billion or so. So when it's all added up, we're probably looking at like a hundred and twenty billion dollars for these black accounts,

as you call them. Sure, and and these days the US is covert and intelligence gathering operations are super important and a big part of the way the government looks to protect citizens from terrorist attacks or other dangers. Yeah, and and the amounts have fallen in a pretty similar range for many years now. And and during the Cold War spending was almost certainly about the same, though it's really difficult to pull historical data on intelligence spending for

for reasons that aren't all that surprising. But all right, well, why don't we jump to personnel now, since this is something that you looked into, So why don't you tell me what you got. Sure, So, I've pulled a lot of numbers, and and here's the overall sense of it. In two thousand fifteen, the U s is total number of active duty military personnel was a million threety seven thousand, And that's just shy of five percent of the total

number of active duty military personnel in the entire world. So, and that's if you combine all the militaries of all the countries, and then if you include the reserve forces, the current number of military personnel is over three point five million. That means that about point four percent of the US population is on active duty and a little over one percent or either active duty or reserve personnel.

And how does that compare to previous years? I mean, I feel like that total number is down a little bit over the past couple of decades. Right, Yeah, So if you go back to like two thousand, the total number of active duty is a little over five percent smaller now than it was back in two thousand. And if you go back to all military branches except for the Coastguard, have really seen a decrease in active duty members, Like the current military is active duty is historically small

for everything post World War Two. All right, well, why don't you tell me what the breakdown looks branch by branch. I mean, I think the Army is the largest, right, So I've got these numbers here. The Army has just over four hundred sixty thousand on active duty, The Navy has about three twenty thousand, the Air Force has about three hundred eighteen thousand, and the Marines have about a hundred eighty five thousand. And then you've got the Coast

Guard with much smaller. It's at forty thousand. Actually, I didn't realize the Navy and the Air Force were so close in size. I mean, I kind of always assumed the Navy was much bigger for some reason. But speaking of the Air Force, I know it's time for you to go to Tangent Town. I know you would bring up this fact, so I'm gonna go ahead and tee you up for it. But I'm assuming you know some of our listeners probably know this, but just in case,

we've got got Bob Ross to talk about. Yeah, Bob Ross, And I suppose this one's pretty well known, kind of like the Julia child being a spy thing, but it's still pretty great. So you know, Bob Ross, who everyone knows is the guy who painted happy little trees and I could do that in his sleep and helped us all find inner peace through his art. He was actually a master sergeant in the US Air Force, and he

was apparently required to be mean and tough. He even said he was the guy who would be forced to yell at you to clean a latrine until it sparkled. And after twenty years in the military he decided enough was enough and he would never scream again, and that was three years before he started The Joy of Painting. I never saw him scream on that. Also, he hated

his perm Oh nice tangent. All right, Well, I've got a couple of quick facts on my own here about the Coast Guard, which often gets ignored when people talk about the military because you know, it is pretty small, and actually it's even smaller than the size of the New York City Police Department. I don't know if you do that as far as personnel goes, but they're definitely

an active force. I saw one stat according to military dot Com, the Coast Guard sees is a hundred and sixty nine pounds of marijuana and three hundred and six pounds of cocaine, worth just shy of ten million dollars every single day, every day. What do they do with all those drugs? Well, I think they've got this like massive toilet that they flush it down. Actually have no idea what they do with all of it. I mean, if that's every single day, that's an enormous amount. But

it's crazy. Alright. So, so you mentioned the active duty forces, but but we've also got the reserve forces, and that's not a small number. Of people. Yeah, the various divisions of the U S Military serve Forces are are where you'll find another eight hundred twenty six thousand people in the selected reserves. So this would include members of the National Guard and those in the reserves that be called into active duty. About two thirds of these come from

the Army National art and the Army Reserves. But in addition, you've got you know, the Navy Reserve, of the Marine Corps, Reserve, of the Air National Guard, the Air Force Reserve, and also the Coastguard Reserve. Wow. That's a lot to keep up with. But all right, well, let's get to our presence around the world. And I'm guessing you're talking about the hundred seventy golf courses around the world that the military is responsible for. No. I mean, but somebody's got

to keep those greens green and those sand traps trappy. Right, that's an old saying, I think, Are you serious A hundred and seventy golf courses. Yes, these are on militaries or it's their recreation spots in various places around the world. But let's back up a little and talk about those numbers. If you count the small installations the US military currently has about eight hundred bases abroad and in about eighty countries, and all other countries combined have about thirty bases outside

their own borders. Oh wow, So that's eight hundred bases around the world for the US and just thirty for all other countries combined. Is way more than thirty. I'm pretty sure where we went on that, and that's incredible. All right, Well, I'm hoping you can walk us through how this came to be, but but actually, first, can

you just explain like how a base is defined? Yeah, so, so the definition can vary a bit based on who you ask, But according to David Vine, the author of Base Nation Quote, bases come in all sizes and shapes, from massive sides in Germany and Japan to small radar facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico. Other bases include posts and air fields, repair facilities, nuclear weapon installations, warehouses, military schools, drone bases, military hospitals. It's all that type of thing.

And even military resorts and recreation areas in places like Tuscany and Soul those are also kind of bases. And that's where we get the hundred seventy golf courses that is a lot. Actually, I was reading about one of these bases. I've never heard about this before, but in nineteen sixty have you have you heard of Camp Century. So it was this top secret US military base and they were looking for a place to house certain missiles, and so they built this base under the ice sheets

in Greenland. Was just unbelievable, and it was, you know, they pretended that this place was there for climate research, and so there was something like two people there and it was actually powered by the world's first portable nuclear reactors. So it's a pretty fascinating place. And it went without anyone knowing about it until Denmark uncovered this base. I think it was in like nine so we're talking like thirty years or so before anybody realized this thing was there.

That's crazy, all right, But but I guess what may be more surprising to me, since we, you know, we grew up knowing that our military head bases all over the world, is that other really big countries have so few. Yeah. So, according to a couple counts, I saw, the US has somewhere around of the world's foreign basis, and yet China just opened its first military base abroad in Djibouty last month.

That really is surprising. So as far as our presence around the world, I mean, how did this come to be? I'm assuming like World War Two was a big part of this. Yeah, the U. S. Began building military bases abroad, and by the end of World War Two we had over two thousand, and now about half of those were abandoned after the war. And and then you see this up and down as we built more during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and then declined after each and then

back up again during the Cold War. During the nineties, the military abandoned a little more than half of those, and and today we have about half as many bases, but in twice as many countries as we did in Yeah, it's just looking back that number you mentioned at the end of World War two, so two thousand bases around the world. Yeah, and if you consider how quickly they

were built, it's also really wild. So according to mine, by ninety five, the U. S. Military was building base facilities at a rate of a hundred twelve a month, and in only five years, the US had developed history's first truly global network of bases. And he says it vastly overshadowed out of the British Empire upon which the sun never set. It's definitely an impressive accomplishment for sure. And you know, it makes more sense when I look back at the annual budget and see that the maintenance

of bases costs somewhere like five ninety billion dollars each year. Well, there's one other piece of this that I think we need to know, and that's the obligation the US has to provide military to others. What do you mean by that? Well, this political science professor from Tufts his his name's Michael Beckley. He looked at the network of treaties and all the defensive packs we've entered into since World War Two, and through those we're actually bound to protect sixty nine nations

comprising of the world's population. But you know that there's an economic and economic stability aspect to these nations also represent of the global economy in terms of output. Wow, so t of the world's population, and I have to assume some of these came about from these like big

multi nation agreements that we've entered in over the years. Yeah, definitely, So you've got the big ease like the Organization of American States, the os or NATO UM, the Australian New Zealand and U. S. Security Treaty, and and then there's several like by Lateral Defensive fact so um, most of these we signed in the fifties and early sixties, but there were places like Israel, Japan, Pakistan, Philippine and South Korea, Taiwan.

I mean there's just a few of them. Yeah, and I mean I guess I would add it to a significant percentage of the world's population. So well, I don't know about you, but I definitely learned a lot about how big the US military is today. But we're not done yet because there's one more really important thing to take care of, the PGG fact off. That's right, ye, all right, so I'll kick us off here. So we've been talking about how much larger the U. S. Military

is than all other countries. So it's not a surprise that the U. S. Air Force is the largest air force in the world. But you know what the second largest air force in the world is. It's the U. S. Navy. It's a true question. Got you on that one. Well, speaking of lots of planes, I I laughed when I saw a fact that after off Gun came out in six the Navy saw this huge increase in the number of men who wanted to become naval aviators, reportedly by

as much as five. Apparently they're just low high five. And all right, Well, I guess we're just gonna keep talking about big records here. So take a guess who the largest employer in America is the Army. No, it's another trick question. It's Walmart whatever, two million employees. I think it's actually like two point two million. About one point three million of those are actually based in the US. But the Army comes in second with about a million

and active duty or the reserves. Okay, so I'm going to go back to the Air Force for another fact. Apparently, after researchers looked into how bumblebees fly, the Air Force was so inspired to use the air dynamics discovered from the research that they developed the F one seventeen fighter.

Oh wow, that's pretty crazy. Well, there's this really interesting article for Atlas Obscure that's definitely worth looking up, and it's about how the US government spent more than twenty million dollars over the course of a couple of decades, and they did is to train telepaths to help the military. Curious how that all turned out. Um, So you may remember from a few years ago a few people try to make a big deal online about a marine holding

this umbrella over President Obama and the rain. Everyone was up in arms because while female Marines are allowed to carry umbrella, as male marines are instructed early on that they're not to hold an umbrella no matter how hard it's raining. However, as Marine spokesman Captain Eric Flanagan told The Washington Post, according to the US Code, marines are to quote perform such other duties as the President may direct.

So that means if the President says he wants an umbrella held over him, he's gonna get an umbrella held over him. I vaguely remember this, but that's some serious controversy there, And you know, I feel like a fact about an umbrella controversy is worthy of the PTG Trophy. So I'm going to give you today's prize. So congratulations. But before we go, what episodes that we have coming up manga? We've got some good ones, right, Yeah, We've got two really good ones in works. We've got the

incredibly important history of Breakfast Cereal. I know we're both huge fans of Cereals, so that should be a good one. And and then next week we're looking at the worst jobs in America. Yeah, both of those are going to be really fun. And thank you again to all our listeners who are writing to us at Part Time Genius and How Stuff Works dot com or calling seven Fact hotline.

It is still seven magas one eight four four pt Genius, and I hope you've all noticed we're trying really hard to respond to everyone who writes or calls or hits us up on Facebook or Twitter, So we look forward to hearing from you guys. And if you like this episode, please do us a big favor and share it with a friend, and if you're feeling extra generous, give us a review on Apple Podcast. But that's it for today.

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