Prohibition: Turns Out That America Loves to Drink

it away. I don't remember it. It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. It was jam packed, overflowing with people, just like New York was. We had John and Joe and Dave and everyone had a blast. We lost again. We were in the lead until the last question, and I ruined it for everybody if I remember correctly. Yeah, but you know what, you did not ruin it because no one had the right answer on our team, thankfully. That would have been crushing. Do you want to you

want to do this? The question? What was the last question? The last question was what is the second leading album of all times sales? Wise second behind three selling album of all time. And I believe you said Dark Side of the Moon, which I thought was a really great guess. Uh, someone else, Joe Randaza said the Eagles greatest hits, another great guests and both of us were wrong, or both of you were wrong. But we went with Dark Side of the Moon, didn't we? Wasn't that our team answer?

I think so? Um, it was a C D C's back and black. Yeah, and you know what, I somewhere in my brain, I knew that that was really high up the list. It didn't come to me, but yeah, we were in second place. We end up losing on the last question first and going into the last but no one wants to see his win. It's no fun if we're like, yeah, that's what I told Hodgman. He went, no, No, I want to win and I want to rub it there face well, get a better team than Hodsman. What

are you doing hanging out with us? It was a lot of fun though, and thanks to everyone who came out and hopefully will be coming too a city near you. We're still trying trying to get that together. Okay, so while we're doing this, um, I think we need to let more people know about our Facebook page. I suspect that there is a small but substantial and by that I mean really large segment of stuff. You should know. Listeners who don't necessarily go all the way to listener mail,

don't listen to the whole podcast. That's where the gold is. We call them s y S listeners. That's right. Um, so we always talk about our Facebook page there, So there's it's possible if people out there who don't know that this thing exists, right, Chuck, that's right. And it's good for us if you go there and click like, And it's not only good for us, but it's a

it's a good Facebook page. It is you know, it's like fun and people contribute and chat back and forth, and we talk back and forth with We come down from our ivory tire everyone and walk around gland hand people and then like have some people beat up for amazement and then go back up to our ivory tower. Know. We we put great music videos on there, and by

music videos I mean music on YouTube. Uh cool, interesting links to great articles and studies and stuff like that, as do most of the people who are on this page. So go check it out. Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. Yeah, and if you if you click like, you can hide us still if you don't want it in your news feed, well you are buddy in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Rhodes Uh send us an email. You saw this right, He's saying you can like us, so we still get

the like, which again makes us look good. Um, but you you you can also select and not receive updates from whenever we update if you want to feed, so you won't be bothered by us, and you can come and check at your leisure, but you could still like it too. And then Twitter real quick, Chuck, Um, we are on Twitter and we're at s Y s K podcast. Okay, yes, all right, so Chuck, this wonderful time that we had on Wednesday night, Yes, ah, at a brewery. Yeah, there

was one of the darkest periods of American history. There was a time not too long ago where that could have never happened, or if it had, we would have been outlaws. Yeah, it would have been on the We couldn't have publicized it on a podcast. That would have been on the down low at a private place. We would have to just whisper it on the street or we could have drawn in chalk like speak easy this way. Sure the s Y s K speak easy trivia night

this way. This dark period in American history is also referred to as prohibition, also referred to as the Noble Experiment by some. It was a noble experiment. The reason why is because the whole reason prohibition was ever enacted, or largely one of the reasons why, was because we realized, remember the addiction podcast. Did that come out yet? I don't think so? Okay, so look real the addiction podcast.

But consider this. It wasn't until about the nineteenth century that people started talking about um being addicted to alcohol. An awareness of that there was such thing as alcoholism came about. When there was there were some really nice people in the world who said, you know what, since you can't give it up, we're gonna all of us are going to give it up together, so you won't be tempted any longer. Because I mean, consider nowadays, being an alcoholic and trying to give up alcohol and seeing

it everywhere, it's gotta make it that much harder. So that the goal of prohibition of this um. The temperance movement that eventually lead to prohibition was to not tempt alcoholics any longer. Yeah. You know what's funny too. When I was reading this, a lot of the reasons, which we'll get into, they mentioned, are you know that the alcohol can lead to, um, domestic violence and child abuse, and Henry Ford said it leads to a lack of

productivity at work. And I was reading all this thinking, yeah, you know, that a lot of great points, but that still didn't mean that you should try and prohibit people from drinking. It was just a bad idea, even though a lot of the points they had were solid. Of course, it leads and they remain. If you look at the Old House Stuff Works employee handbook, one of the things that says specifically is don't drink at work. I know, I almost didn't take the job for that reason, but

I did. But no, there were a lot of very solid points that everybody's kind of realized about alcohol. That, yeah, it's it's directly connected to physical violence in the home and outside arrests. Um. Also you know moonings then all goes up when alcohol is around, right. Um. But as you were saying, it was a failed noble experiment, It was a bad idea, but it was one that we had to learn the hard way, and we've learned much

from it. Right. Sure, Even people that I thought it was a great idea at the end of the Noble Experiment said that wasn't such a good idea. I guess still hate alcohol, but that you just can't do this. Um, So let's talk about this. From nineteen thirty three, the United States had on the books an amendment, an amendment to the Constitution that's huge, and plus it makes this Congress look ridiculous that they did this. Um. The Eighteenth Amendment went on the books, was enacted in ninety and

it forbade the sale, manufacturer, and transport of alcohol and importation. Okay, which transport, Well, no, you can still transport within Like you couldn't carry it from Kentucky to Georgia, right, nor imported from Canada to the US. You see what I'm saying. But you could keep it in your home and you could drink your face off. Well. The cool thing is too, is they I believe it was passed and then a

year later is when it went into effect. So they basically were like, you got a year, right, you can fill your basement full of booze. Yeah, And we don't know. I'm not be breaking the law. That's I didn't actually realize this that it wasn't that you were allowed to drink at yourself. And did you you didn't get the pictures? Did you know? There is a haunting photograph on page

zero of this article, the first page. It was taken in ne and to speakeasy and like the people are all wearing it looks like the photo and the shining and there's this one gentleman who's not even necessarily the focus of the photo and he is just staring out from nineteen thirty one into your soul. That's a very creepy pick. That alone is reason enough to go check out this this photo because he's on the stunt gravy, the jazz juice, the giggle juice, giggle water. So Josh started.

But we have to go back in time just a little bit um when it really started century pretty much, yeah and eight in the eighteen thirties. The idea of getting rid of alcohol is is when it first started to pick up from Steam and the temperance movement got going. Society started springing up, and by the time they actually

had the Federal the Amendment to the Constitution. I believed there were, um, how many states had already h sixteen sixteen states had already banned alcohol in some way, so it was already going on, Chuck this nineteen states of the towns in America had some sort of ban already going on. It was a very popular movement, UM And there are a lot of reasons, but one one reason is that these people have been doing this for a

century before it finally took place. UM And as early as eighteen thirty eight, Massachusetts UM created i think the country's first law against alcohol, where basically they said, you can buy all the alcohol you want, but it has to be in no less than this quantity, and that quantity just so happens to be more than any of you drunks can afford. So we're de fact though banning alcohol because we're putting it out of your price range. The m surprise Massachusetts was one of the early states

because really come around lately. Yeah, because most of the temperance movement had a lot of support obviously in the Bible Belt in places like New York and Boston. In these larger cities, they were kind of like, I'm not so behind this, right, well, don't forget Massachusetts not too far before this was burning, which is at the state as guess it's a good point, right. So that was eighteen forty six, Maine became the first state to pass

a statewide prohibition law. That makes more sense sure being Maine teetotal Maine. Yeah. Um. And so this temperance movement's going on. And remember this is the women were at the forefront of this movement. In large part. They weren't they certainly weren't the only ones, but they were, um at the forefront, not just because that they were, you know,

nagging people. Um, they they actually this is before they had the right to vote, and prior to having the right to vote, women figured out, you're not gonna give us the right to vote. Well, we're gonna learn. We're gonna be one of the first groups to learn to

organize effectively. Um. And it wasn't just with the temperance movement. Um. The women women uh basically created this movement alongside the labor movement in the early twentieth century or nineteenth century, that was the consumer movement, and they were extremely effective in promoting consumer rights and they were also really big into rabble Rousing like Them Committee against the High Cost of Living in Detroit. That was the name of the committee.

It was a woman's organization UM and they would they would do basically, they would do everything from consumer education on the street like you deserve government protection of milk standards, to um boycotts of local grocers, to actually storming meat packing plants and pouring kerosene on thousands of pounds of meat so nobody could buy it. And they had these

really effective campaigns. And the Temperance Movement came about at the same time at this where women like had to organize they have their voice her because they didn't have the right to vote yet they didn't have suffrage. That's right, Josh. And specifically, the Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed in

eighteen seventy three in Ohio. Uh years before that, eighteen sixty nine, the Official Prohibition Party was formed because there are people are like Democrats and Republicans are kind of dragging their feet on this, so let's actually form a party. Right in Holland, the the Women's Christian Temperance Movement right union, Yes union that that woman who led that Carrie Nation is an excellent example like the kind of boisterous nature

of this, this kind of organization and protest. She was known um for hanging out around saloons, praying on the front steps save these people's souls, and the people who tried to come in, she would ward them off with the hatchet and she was arrested, um a couple of hundred. She was a rested thirty times between basically said busting up bars. Yeah, she basically said, I can't vote, so I'm going to become a huge thorn in your side and you can't stop me. And she had direct experience

from it. They credit her um feracity ferociousness. I think I just made up a word. Her ferociousness against alcohol for um, due to a short lived marriage to an alcoholic, left an imprint on her that, you know, being a motivated individual. Yeah. What what's that bumper sticker about guns don't kill people? I do know something about well behaved women rarely make history something like that. Yeah, yeah, I like that. It's good. Um, civil war comes along, Josh

Jerry laughed at that for some reason because she has that. Okay, the Civil War came along and that kind of slowed things down a little bit. But it was just temporarily because the war ended in people like the liquor industry started booming again, which you would think would slow it more. But what really happened was it started booming such that the temperance movement got even more active to try and

take care of business basically right. And one of the things that really as as usual, I'm I'm loath to say, but one of the things that really drew popular support together um was finding the proper scapegoats Germans and Irish immigrants.

This country has a long standing tradition of forgetting that we're all immigrants and targeting the most recent immigrants to the country as the source of all of our worries, and then our political parties go, yeah, it's their fault, and that it just kind of goes down to hell from there because Irish like to drink, the Irish like to drink, and the Germans love to brew beer, and that they became the the sources we should we should

go ahead and correct that. There was a popular perception that the Irish likely drink exactly and the Germans really did. Um run most of the breweries still reason necessarily, but there was a lot of German owned breweries in the US, So the popular perception was the Germans are ruined, the Irish are drinking. We need to target these two groups. Sure,

so everybody hate them. And then that's how prohibition ended up being passed in large part, right, Uh yeah, I mean there were some a lot of groups against it as well as as many as there were for it. I don't know about as many, but there were also groups like the Association Against Prohibition Amendment and the Women's

Organization for National Prohibition Reform exactly. So it wasn't everybody, but it gathered enough support where eventually Congress, that awful, awful Congress of nineteen nineteen, basically said, uh, you know, we kind of have to do this, and you've got a year to get all your booze, and what we're gonna do to enforce this is past the Volstead Act as well. Well. What was what really put it over the top, because this is nineteen nineteen and the in

World War One had just ended. But what really whipped up prohibition pro prohibition sentiment up was World War One. We're fighting the Kaiser and these Germans are sitting here using all the grain that we could feed our soldiers with the brew beer and you're not in American if you're drinking beer, right, right? And Mr Anheiser and Mr Bush were like no, they were like dis day night. Yeah.

So that led to, like you said, Chuck, the eighteenth Amendment, and the eighteenth Amendment and of itself didn't do anything. It had no teeth. It was a paper tiger. Well, yeah, that's why the Volstad Act, right, and what did that do? Well? I mean, you can't enforce anything unless you have a way to do it, and that's what the Volstad A did. It um define like the penalties if you were caught doing this, exceptions which uh they had exceptions for medicinal

use and religious ceremony use. Yes, and apparently a lot of doctors prescribed alcohol during the prom how many? How many? Uh? They estimate that more than one million gallons of liquor were consumed a year from prescription whisky. Wait till what is it? Prop nineteen passes. Yeah, they got nothing on me. Naffodil, daffanel, medefanel menaffodil. You're thinking of monodyl and I bet there were a lot of religious ceremonies going on to you know what I mean. Well, yeah, you got to think

about the Catholics. I'm sure we're like, whoa, hey, yeah, blood of Christ and everything over here, right, yeah, we need to do this like twice a week now. And then they went enchanted. Now they did their communion, and um, that also defined what qualified as an intoxicating limit, which was anything more than point five percent alcohol. And you know what, that's actually still the case. Um. Back when

I was for near beer. Yes, for back when I was a strapping, fat ten year old boy, I used to cross the road tracks and go to open pantry and I would enjoy six packs of Kingsbury non alcoholic beer. Who woa, whoa you drink not alcohol beer? Wet age ten eleven? Secretly no secret right from your parents? No. No, Sometimes, like I go back and I look at some of the stuff that I did, and I'm like, I had a lot of freedom as a child. See, alcohol was

like a big no now in my house hold. On Um, the reason why is because I knew I was in the right. Another reason point five right is non alcoholic. I can buy any non alcoholic beverage. Why this root beer is non alcoholic and I can buy that and I actually had an argument once with a clerk at open pantry, and I think just the fact that this ten year old was like stating his case. Finally, the guy was like, I finally care, just get out of here.

And yeah, no, I don't think my family liked it, but they just didn't want to get into it with me. I would have gotten in big trouble for even that because alcohol was stun gravy to my household. It was bad, it was the devil's juice, and it was not allowed in the house. It was a really big deal. It's amazing that I ever touched the stuff, you know, when I like, I didn't drink it all in high school. I was a straight edge. What's more amazing to me

is that you didn't. You weren't more likely to touch this stuff because it was prohibited. That was well. That was one of the major effects of prohibition was that alcohol use when it did increase, overall, alcohol decreased as an effective prohibition, but when it did increase, brother it increased big time. Right, Yeah, let's talk about some of the effects, because it had effects on what you could call the good side and the bad side, both medically

and economically. Actually, most of the economic effects were pretty bad. They were bad unless you were al capone. But alcohol trafficking obviously increased things like speakeasies and this will alcohol rings, bootlegger rings are pretty much comparable to today's drug dealers. Rum runners. Yeah, there were European rum fleets is what they call them, right, because no prohibition in Europe most

of Europe. UM. So they just sail out into international waters and people there at midnight and then they would offload their cargo two bootleggers and you know that was that. Um. They the one reason they knew that things were really getting pretty bad on the bootlegging scene that I didn't realize.

This is pretty funny to me. Demand for ten thousand dollar bills reached a high in the United States and nine and basically that was a pretty clear sign that people wanted very large bills so they didn't have to have trunks full of money to make their switches in international waters. Um. Political corruption was huge. In fact, there's a very famous quote from Mayor LaGuardia, who was running New York at the time, who said this is a

great one. He said something along the lines of it is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country, and they're going to name an airport after the guy. Another awesome, awesome fact, Josh, as far as when you said it started booming in a big way prior to this. Prior to prohibition, there were less than

fifteen thousand bars legal bars in the US. After prohibition in I'm sorry, in the midst of it, there were more than thirty thousand, more than double the amount of illegal speakeasies, and there were an estimated hundred thousand people brewing alcohol of all sorts in their homes illegally. I can tell you they were probably like ten prior to prohibition, people who like went to the trouble making their own right.

But I mean, it's the same thing, like, don't you think that if California legalizes pot, don't you think that all those people who have a couple of plants growing illegally in their house are gonna stop doing that and just go buy it at the store like everybody else. I don't know. The artisans would probably still grow their own, but maybe so, but in much the same way that people homebrew beer now like there's a lot of trouble

to go to that not everybody wants to do. You know, well, you mentioned the non enforcement, and there's another stat here that, uh, it's pretty startling. At one point, they said, in New York City, New York City, Yes, New York City, seven thousand arrests were made for alcohol violations and seventeen of those ended up in convictions. Even when they tried to enforce it, it wouldn't make it all the way through the legal system. That was the guardiest town by the way.

Well exactly, and they said in nineteen five, by nine six states had laws that basically said quit investigating prohibition cases or we're bust you down to private or whatever the police entry level is. We're gonna bust you down to Keystone cop level. That's right, Chuck, Josh, you were speaking economically, that was illegally. All that crime came up and corruption developed directly as a result of Prohibition al capone.

It was big for him, as you said, he turned a I don't want to say two bit, but a fledgling empire from Johnny Torrio into a hundred million dollar a year enterprise, which that's a lot of cheese by today's standards. Well, yeah, and he he was doing a pretty good job of it there in Chicago until the mayor, who was in his hip pocket, said I want to get out of your hip pocket. I'm you're You're done here.

I can't believe he lived. But that led to component's downfall, right. Um. On a much larger scale economically, prohibition was a very terrible idea, especially in the midst of the Great Depression. UM. Some companies, some brewers specifically, like Anheuser Busch, as you mentioned, UM said, you know, we Germans also like to supply you with things like root beer and ice cream and and corn syrup. So don't don't round us up, okay. Um. Well,

that allowed him to keep their doors open. Basically that that did not everybody could do that. Not everybody could make that switch. An Huser Busch was already I think, pretty big at the time. UM So in St. Louis alone before prohibition, there were twenty two breweries operating. After prohibition was repealed, I just gave away the spoiler. UM nine reopened so that it had a huge hit just

on the brewing industry. Um. It also took away all the tax revenue that America was making before prohibition taxing legal sales of liquor. All of this was on tax bootlagers weren't paying any taxes. They're getting rich. And then so in the when the depression came along, Um, that really kind of turned the tide as far as America was concerned, Like, Okay, we're sick of this. A lot of crime has come about, a lot of corruption. The US is in the depression and we're losing out on

viable taxable income and this is just stupid. Everybody's drunk anyway, and the ones who were just kind of moderate drinkers before are big time drinkers. Right. So for example, um, apparently the they by the end of the twenties, there were more alcoholics than there were before prohibition, right, like clinical alcoholics. Um, adult rated or contaminated liquor brought on more than fifty thousand deaths, not to mention cases of

blindness and paralysis. Remembering it was either the Hangover podcast or the Moonshine podcast, we talked about coningers, the impurities and alcohol that can kill you. Yeah yeah, yeah, uh those did kill a lot of pre prohibition. On the flip side, though cirosis declined from ten point seven men per one hundred thousand to twenty nine. All right, I'm sorry, it dropped to ten point seven from twenty nine point five per one thousand over from nineteen eleven to twenty nine,

So you just mr silver lining. Well no, that's my point though, is they'll point to some stats that will say, well, si rosas strap, but then fifty thousand people died because of can you know, making liquor in your tub, right and again and again. Overall alcohol consumption across the board dropped from between thirty and fifty, which is substantial, but the ones who it didn't drop in it kicked their

drinking into hyper drive. Yeah. I think some people just like to be bad, Like this is forbidden, right, so I'm gonna do it all the time. You know that. Actually, the parallel there with the marijuana movement in this country now is pretty striking, pretty similar because the recent economic downturns that we've had. I don't know if you noticed, but a lot of states started saying, like California, you know what we could make revenue wise if we legalized spot.

It's a very interesting. Uh. I think it's Cato Institute. You know, they're a libertarian think tank, and they issued basically like you want to know exactly how much you can make and save by decriminalizing marijuana. Here it is, and it was all the money spend in the legal system, plus all the revenue that can be grace taxes comes up to like fourteen billion a year or something like that. It's a fourteen or forty four or something. There was a four in there. Same thing with the stunt Grady.

We should give credit to that. That's John Hodgman's words from his book The Area of My Expertise. But you can get on Amazon. I don't want people to think Chuck is so funny. He thought it's stun gravy because I did not. Um, Chuck comes around. Everybody's sick and tired of prohibition. Uh. And Congress, a new Congress says, you know what, we're going to repeal this a much

hip or drunker Congress. So they created the twenty first Amendment because it takes an amendment to repeal another amendment right. And in the history of the United States, this is the first time an amendment was passed to restore the rights taken away by a previous amendment. She on that one. Yeah. You know what's funny is just about two weeks ago, I was having a conversation with my friend Kirk about prohibition, and I said, why don't they just remove the eighteenth

and twenty first Amendment now? And just I mean, why you even have that in there anymore? And he got he got kind of upset, and he's like, this is the U. S. Constitution you're talking about, And I said, well, I know, but it's just it seems silly now to still have that on the books, unless I guess it's just you know, the constant reminder of this is what our country went through, and see we repealed it. But to me, I'm just like, just take them out. It's

kind of like, don't be stupid in there. It's a clear message to the people of today. But I wasn't trying to like desecrate the Constitution by doing that. I just thought it made it a more efficient document. You just remove this too useless, So Chuck. They that Congress passed the twenty first Amendment, they had to wait for two thirds of the states to ratify it, which happened on December five, ninety three. Uh. John d Rockefeller comes

out with the famous quote, drinking is generally increased. The speakeasy has replaced the saloon. A vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale. A clerk stamped the document and everybody went back to drinking legally again. In it that that night probably resembled our trivia night recently would be my best cast. Uh So after that, Josh went to the states to decide how

to govern this and a lot of states. Twenty ones probably a pretty good day to start drinking a lot of states, or some said, like, I think Louisiana and held out for a long time. Georgia even was eighteen for a long time. I remember Georgia's I remember when Ohio did there. That was like in the mid eighties. And and um, because my sister was in between there, she was like nineteen at the time, she was like no um. And I remember Louisiana also finally caved because um,

the Feds were holding out on their highway funds. They may have been the last one there, and they finally were just like, we can't take these potholes any longer, so they caved. So Josh, since prohibition so long ago was repealed and done away with, you would think that now in the United States you can go anywhere you want, any day you want by your boost, you would You would be wrong. And I know that you know what that's wrong because you live in Georgia. Pal Georgia has

a blue law. No Sunday sales. Nope, you can buy it in a restaurant after twelve thirty. So if you like to go to brunch early und very funny how the brunch crowd really turns up around twelve fifteen. Before then, you can get a seat anywhere on a Sunday um but because of the fear of enticing people away from church with booze or partying too hard on a Saturday night leading to a desire to keep drinking Sunday morning in the mischurch, there's that blue law. Yeah, and they

said that. I didn't know this. They said that, And this is not just in Georgia, but period in the United States. That was that came about during the colonial times. They said, you know what, they let's keep the Sabbath dry. Yeah, And what you've just made reference to is the last sentence of this article Um, it is, in my opinion, the strangest sentence ever used to end a half stuff works article. Would you do me the favor of reading

that sentence verbatim? This law was the up in colonial times to honor to honor the Christian Sabbath day in colonial times. The end it's a little redundant, isn't it, don't you think? Let's talk about some of these other states though, Um, about half of Mississippi's counties are dry. And you can't even drive through a dry county with booze, even if you're just taking it home unless you feel like paying a bribe to the sheriff. Yeah, or if

you sneak it. But you can't go to a wet county and say, oh, I'm gonna get my Sunday or my beer for the week. You can't drive. You have to take a circuitous route certuitous kircuitis if you want to even take your beer to your house. Right, it's pretty pretty serious. Kentucky dry dry law, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Virginia,

a lot of these states, Alaska, Alaska. Actually you've found like this pretty cool supplemental article, um about Alaska having a hundred and twenty nine of the dry towns that's mentioned in this article you found an all. It explains why because apparently there's a strong tradition of binge drinking brought over by Russians and Finns, and Finland actually had its own a bout with prohibition as well, right, Uh,

yeah they did. And I should also point out that this is introduced me to my favorite new expression that I've never heard before, frontier drinking style. Yeah, they had frontier drinking style. It usually ends with bear wrestling. Bear wrestling. And uh, it's interesting though that they they've done a lot of studies and they've shown that the volume and pattern of how you drink correlate with your your culture. Yeah.

So there's the European the Southern European wet culture, which is frequent but moderate drinking, like basically like French kids of age seven drinking wine at dinner exactly, right. And then you've got the Northern European culture, the dry culture, which is like you don't drink very often, but when you do, you drink like NonStop for three days frontier style, and then wrestle a bear exactly, and then you commit some sort of crime or something over and over again.

In the midst of this well and in the end, um, places like Canada followed America and had prohibition for a little while. Um, really punch we we inhibition in nineteen nineteen. Canada's prohibition lasted from nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen. Exactly. It's just like the beer bearing episode of The Simpsons exactly. Uh. And in Finland, Josh, they appeal In Finland, it really really backfired. They enacted prohibition in nineteen nineteen. It was

all going on at the same time. It's pretty interesting all over the world. And um, basically people publicly and privately thumb their nose at it. And they said that they estimate the alcohol consumption tripled perhaps in Finland after prohibition, and not only that, people were originally drinking vodka, and

during prohibition people started drinking basically moonshine like spirits. Yeah, they said, you know what you're gonna do, prohibition, We're gonna get drunk er more more often than we ever have before, and we're gonna get in our saunas and we're gonna get wasted, and you can't do anything about it. That that seems like a bad idea. I've been sauning like crazy lately, and I found out that heat cuts

off the circulation in my calves. And Josh Finland uh clearly had a failed experiment and they repealed it in nineteen thirty two, so it did last a while. But Alaska, they say, to this day, Native peoples of Alaska and Native Americans, they still a lot of alcohol problems, just proportionately so um. And the sad thing is that it

was brought by Europeans. The bench drinking, the frontier style band drinking was introduced to the Inuits and the Natives of a last goodbye Finns, Russians and yeah, um, I guess old timey uh clean jumpers who came up from the Western United States. Gabby Johnson. Russia actually experimented for a little while too in nineteen fourteen. Through that's I figured Russia would have been the one that was like

six months later. And though they must have vodka, do you know, like the average lifespan of a Russian male these days is down to like fifty nine because of vodka. Really, because it's drinking, like they just drink like fishes. Apparently even even um, yeah, the knows yeah, I mean it would look like a that wasn't a gin blossom, that was a bluemn onion. That's the end of that podcast. If you want to know more about prohibition, type that word into the search bart house to works dot com again.

It's going to bring up that really super cool picture on page zero. I'm glad you showed me that. That's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. And click all the way through to the last page two to find these strangest sentence ever used to end in the house Stuff Works article. Uh and since I said search bar at some point in the not too distant past, that means it's time for listener mail. Josh. I'm gonna call this email from a guy whose life has eerily

resembled our podcast Slate. I discovered your podcast with my two friends and I went on a road trip from our school and Providence, Rhode Island to Minnesota. Go Golden Gophers in that Minnesota. Yeah, it was according to the Fargo, I was looking for something to listen to in a car on the way and randomly downloaded a bunch of your podcasts. So, by sheer luck, Josh, how often does that happen, you think, and people continue to listen. Yeah, never this one time. Uh. Then we began our epic

quest across the country. Whatever we listened to came true. Guys, we were in Toledo when Josh said he was from Toledo. We were with a katie from Wisconsin. When you read a listener mail from a katie from Wisconsin, we're not the same person, and we want a trivia contest because of your Habeas Corpus podcast. The winning answer was the body.

Our brakes failed in Pennsylvania and we hung out with some Amish while we waited for them to be fixed, and we even felt the membranes connecting our brain and skull being stretched in Chicago, what is a hangover? A stretch? Yeah, that's what I thought. We also met some friends along the way and combined our knowledge from the Redheads and

Flirting podcast. On the way back from our week long honyssey, we reminisced about our favorite parts of the trip, and all three of us mentioned your podcast on our list Alight, So thanks for helping us out such a great time. Then he goes on to suggests we do a podcast on the School of America's which we have one right here in Atlanta. No, the School of the America's supposedly and now defunct assassins school that we have at Fort Benning that was used to train Latin Americans in the

basically an insurgency. Is he completely wrong about this in the School of the Americas is just one place, but it's pretty interesting and scary. Well, then, Paul, I've have some words for you, my friend. You've just misled us, intentionally mislead you, and I would like to recant every bit of the enthusiasm I showed for your previous email. Are you sure he wasn't just misinformed? I don't care. Okay,

there's something called fact checking, even for emails. If you do, you want to try to mislead chuck Er I, we'd like to hear that. No me, chuck Er, me, mislead me, mislead chuck or me we want to hear it in an email. And if you don't feel like doing something that mean, you could also actually don't even try to

mislead us. It takes us off. Lou bega um. If you have a favorite strange sentence that you've ever come across in your life that can beat this law, was developed in colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath Day and colonial times. We want to hear it. Wrap it up in an email, spanking on the bottom. Send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. H brought to you by the

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