October 6, 2022 • 55 mins
The first tags were required just a few years after the firs cars debuted, as a way to catch jerks scaring horses and running down pedestrians. A century on, they continue to protect both. Plus they’ve accrued some interesting history along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do Do Do yay. You know what that means. Everyone.
It's been a while since you've heard it, But after
three long years, we're finally going to return to the
live stage, starting well, actually ending with Sketch Fest in
San Francisco in February three, and then on February one
and second. We haven't quite nailed it down, but it's
going to be Seattle in Portland. Uh, not sure of
(00:22):
the order, but we were gonna be putting all this
information out on our social media channels right yep. And
on Friday, October seven, tickets will be on sale for
all three shows, and you can watch our social media
handles for information and ticket links. How about that? That
sounds great. Can't wait to be back on stage. We
really really missed it, yea. And we'll see you guys
(00:44):
in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Harry's here too, providing
us with last minute facts and informations and tidbits. And
(01:05):
that makes this a banger of an episode of Stuff
You Should Not It's a banger? Is that how they say?
At the brutes. Yeah, is that your British accent? That
was that your John Klice by way of Chicago. M
Uh can I make a quick announcement? Sure, it just
occurred to me that I'm clean to announce us now
(01:28):
that I go into the recording studio of my basement
which is now full of my wife Emily's business. Oh yeah, okay,
because you've you've known this for a while, Jerry too.
But Emily shut down her business everybody. Uh and rather
than me trying to stumble through her thought process, uh,
she has here. She is now. Um, she has it
(01:51):
her full like statement on her website, I love your
Mama dot com and all the handwringing that went into it,
and uh, she had a twenty year run. It was
a great thing. And she's going to keep her website
going though, because she's gonna she's gonna still do like
she said, She's gonna make things from only from things
she can grow. So the business itself as a hey,
(02:14):
I gotta dominate the world because I'm ambitious type of thing. Yeah,
I'm an into pet woman of the es that has
gone away, But she's gonna still do probably some uh
face prays and things like that anything she can grow
from her own herb garden on a very small level,
very limited things she's got. It figured out that she's
(02:38):
not retiring anything, but um, just big thanks to every
She got a lot of support from the stuff you
should know Army over the years, both emotionally and by
buying things every time we mentioned her, so it really
meant a lot to her. Uh and she wanted me
to pass that along. That was very nice. And congratulations
to Emily on a twenty year run. That is rather
respectable for a small business, I think so, and we're
(03:01):
all proud of her. And now I'm the walls are
closing up here in the basement right so because she
couldn't get rid of everything, we have two storage spaces
in now our basement, so she'll be working on that
getting rid of that stuff for a while as well.
I'll bet it smells amazing. At least it smells better
than it ever has down here, you know what. I'll
bet it smells better than chuck a dirty old license plate,
(03:25):
that's right, especially one that's a Sportsman's Paradise from Louisiana
that they got out of the stomach of a shark
and jaw right or asked man from New York City.
It's the ass man. You got that straight. So, by
the way, since you brought up Steinfeld, I went back
and started watching um uh Larry Sanders show on HBO. Great,
(03:49):
like maybe the greatest. Actually, like I'm rewatching, I'm like
this is this is even better than it was years ago.
And I've come to believe that Jerry Seinfeld is a
twee impression of Gary Shandling. Gary Shandling is the legit
o G and Seinfeld is just a aberration of him.
(04:13):
I think Seinfeld would certainly own up to being influenced
by Gary Schandling. He probably really punched me in the
stomach for calling him twee though. Uh No, he would
just say will you again? That's right, and I just
go home devastated. Now, great show, but I think ahead
of its time as well, Larry Sanders. Yeah, absolutely ahead
(04:35):
of its time for sure. It's definitely worth watching. If
you have HBO Max it's all over it and just
go watch it and thank me later, I guess, is
what I'm trying to say. Uh, and uh, sorry, let's
let me give it one more kudo. Uh, all respect
to thirty Rock, But Larry Sanders is easily the best
sort of behind the scenes of a TV show movie
(04:58):
set type of thing I've ever seen. Yeah, even better
than the Player because it was way funnier. Well yeah,
Player was great in some way though. Yeah, but it's
no Larry Sanders show correct. Um. So one more thing
while we're shouting out TV shows, UM, I also saw
both of them are in Netflix, um. And they're both
horror TV shows, and they are awesome. One is like
(05:21):
straight ahead scare you to death horror, Japanese horror. It's
ju on the origins, so you know, the The Grudge,
so it was Juan in Japan and this TV show
it's like an eight part series, I think maybe six.
It's like the origins that lead up to Juan, like
The Grudge. It's amazingly well done. It's perfectly tailored to
(05:43):
fit it just precisely, so well done. And then the
other one is called mary Anne, and it's a French
language which story um set in today's time, but it
deals with like a sixteenth century which I think, and
it's not quite as straight a head scary, but it's
really really good. Nonetheless, it's very engrossing. You guys watch
(06:05):
a lot of horror. Yeah, yeah, you MEI has to
just buy proxy. But yes, I watch a lot of horror.
I don't get too because Emily is not into it.
But we've been loving the Bear and of course I
shouted out a lot, but another shout out to Reservation
Dogs b J and the Bear O the Bear Chuck. No,
I haven't is the Oh wait, good, wait a minute
(06:27):
that the Chicago restaurant I tried, and I was like,
it's very stressful. No, it wasn't even that. It was
very boring. I thought, oh, that's interesting because it's like
the most adrenaline fueled show on TV. I know it's
really weird, but I was like, I could not be
more bored than I am right now. But I get
what you're saying. It was it was a weird juxtaposition
(06:48):
because I know I was supposed to be like feeling intense,
and I was just like, this is I don't like it,
So say what, you've also done some heroin that probably
that couldn't stay awake. No, I definitely did not do
any heroine. It was just that show was extremely boring
to me. But again, I mean, if you like it.
(07:10):
That's great. I'm not trying to tell you not to.
I'm just that was take on it. So I'm glad
we ate up some time because Chuck, I I, this
is my pick license plates. And it turns out it's
a little more boring than I had anticipated. Like something
I do too, I do too, and there's some interesting
stuff in there. But something this sweeping, a global, worldwide
(07:31):
phenomenon that's been around for over a hundred years, you
would think there'd be a little more like crazy stuff,
you know, associated with it, and there's just not. I mean,
Ed helped us out with this, and he did, God
bless him, his best work, trying to find anything to
make this interesting and he finally did you know, and
we found some other stuff too. But it's just not
as engrossing as I thought. It's kind of like The Bear,
(07:57):
that great show that is so funny too. I was
watching that the it's hysterical. Um, I disagree. I think
you're selling the short. I think I thought this was
really interesting considering it's a show about letters and numbers
on a piece of metal on the back of a car. Okay,
point made. And also I should say, um, this was
also a listener request a J and Tracy in Pittsburgh, Ish.
(08:20):
Tracy said they requested this one not too long ago,
a few weeks ago. And man, that's the kind of
turnaround time we have here at stuff. You should know. Yeah,
and we know it's them because their license plates says
PTS B R G I s H. That's pretty great,
the great new show. You just did that off the
cuff too. Man, I'm impressed. Well, there's too many characters
(08:43):
in there, but everyone gets a joke. Okay, So what
country do you think invented the license plate? Chuck? Had
to be the United States, with the industry and automobiles,
you would think so, but no, As a matter of fact,
the French had us beat by a good decade, a
full decade, not that kind of rough decade. It could
be anywhere from like six to eight years, a ten
(09:03):
year stretch. The There was actually one guy who who
kind of originated him. He was the prefect of the
Paris Police Force. His name is Louis Limpin, and in
he said, Hey, we're starting to get more cars on
the road, and I think we need to kind of
regulate them a little better than we are, which is
to say we're not doing that at all. Yeah, So
they came up with all kinds of stuff plates, driver's test,
(09:27):
driver i D. Speed limits, stuff like that, and the US,
as we do, look to the French for all things.
And in I believe that New York was the first
US state to require a law and this was in
nineteen o one April that basically said, all right, here's
the deal. You need to put your initials on your
(09:50):
car somewhere. They need to be three inches tall, but
otherwise go wild. It's up to you how you want
to do this. If you want to make them out
of little garfields that no one will understand for many years,
you you do that. Uh. And the New Yorkers did it.
And I think that this sort of customization allowed for
some kind of creative New Yorkers to do different things,
(10:14):
everything from like would to leather and I'm sure all
kinds of crazy fonts. Sure, definitely, like a lot of
people just went to the hardware store and bought house numbers. Um.
Some people just painted them directly on their cars. And like,
the one one thing I saw is this is so early.
There's so few cars on the road that this was
not like a revenue generating move. They were actually using
(10:36):
it like you had to put your own initials on
the car, so that if you terrorized a horse or
drove drove up on the sidewalk, or did donuts in
the middle of Times Square, they would know who did that.
And that's the kind of like usage that cars were getting.
There were a lot of like jerks driving cars initially, um,
and that was the way to kind of rain their
(10:58):
behavior in. Yeah. And then the tenure mark like you
talked about in nineteen o three is basically at the
point when they said, all right, we gotta start issuing
these things because this initial we didn't really think out
this initial plan because people have the same initials. There's
a lot more cars, and we can't go around just
looking for every you know, g R. L in New
(11:21):
York to find out who was terrorizing the horse. Yeah,
Gary Larson. Wait, Gary Regis Larson. Well, it depends on
if you're doing a monogram. Okay, so it could be
Gary Larson. Read just I could have been correct. What's
the deal of that? Well, we should do a short
step on Monica. The idea but a great idea. Um.
So nineteen o three it was kind of like a
(11:44):
watershed year for license plates in the United States. And
also I realized, I'm sad to realize that it was
a rough decade from to nineteen o one. It wasn't
a full decade, but um, nineteen o three. That's why
I thought it was a full decade, because it was
just such a huge year where all these other states said, yeah,
we're going to get on board. First it was Philadelphia,
(12:05):
not a state, but it's in Pennsylvania, kind of near
Pittsburgh ish if you think about it. And they were
the first city to issue official license plates. Cleveland was
technically the first city in the whole country, even before
New York, to require license plates, but they didn't issue them.
Philadelphia was the first city to actually issue them in
the US. Right, And apparently Pennsylvania likes to say they
(12:29):
you know, that makes them the first state to do so,
technically correct, But the state of Massachusetts was the first
state to do a statewide program, uh, and not just
the city of Philadelphia. Um so, and this is kind
of the cool thing and put a pin in this
as for collectibles later on. But Massachusetts did the thing
(12:49):
that a lot of other states did was they started
at one, and they just started working their way up
and apparently the Highway Commission how a commission member named
Frederick Tutor got license plate number one and that they
still his his ancestors years later still have that number. Yeah,
and Frederick Tudor ties in with our transcendentalist episode because
(13:11):
his father was the ice King, the guy who harvested
ice on Walden Pond while they and shipped it all
over the world. So very strange, surprising tie in, Chuck, Um,
should we go over what we like to call our
bulleted list? I love them. They're so great that it's
just packed with information, no frills, you know, man, I
(13:32):
used to do a lot of those on the Old
House Stuff Works articles. I think Katie, my editor as
used to make fun of me because I used to
do bulleted list to get the point across, and like,
you can absorb them so easily. I love bulleted lists. Buddy,
you didn't do them a lot though you were into
the pros. Yeah. I'd like to hear myself talk, but
I respect a bulleted list. It is funny. Personality wise,
(13:53):
I'm definitely a bullet list personality guy. I made this
bulleted list. It's in my personality as well. I really
took paragraphs and broke them into so I'm bullet too. Okay,
I can hang out with the bullet people too. Did
you do the bullets his little movie slates? Or was
(14:14):
that some accident on my end? There was an accident
on your end, but a happy accident. Yeah. When I
printed this out instead of little round bullets, there a
little you know, movie clappers movie slate. Don't know how
I did that, but I'll try to recreate it. I
didn't know it was even possible anyway. Uh, what do
we got here? First hit the first one? Okay, So
(14:35):
the first slogan on license plate was Idaho potatoes, which
is pretty cool. I mean that would hang around for
a while. Um, but they actually embossed a brown potato
that took up most of the license plate and it
looked a lot like poop. And it didn't It didn't
stick around very long. I think that was just a
one year thing. Uh. Something that has stuck around is
(14:58):
the longest slogan Sreek in the United States, and it's
one of my favorite license plates because of this started
in nineteen thirty six in the Great State of uh mean,
in the Great State of Maine. Vacation Land also the
title of our friend John Hodgman's book, one of Them.
And it's been on Main's license plates since nineteen thirty
six every year since then. That's quite a streak. That's
(15:20):
far and away the longest streak. I think the next
longest is like nineteen and I can't remember which which
slogan it is. I just love that slogan. It just
sounds so welcoming vacation land. Yeah, and the fact that
it's like one word too, it's just prints. They like
nailed it right on the head, right out of the gate,
basically absolutely what else. Florida had a grapefruit. I used
(15:41):
to have a grape fruit on their plates starting in
nineteen thirty five, but it just took a year because
it looked like the sort of the cartoon bombs, the
little little black uh circle with the fuse coming out
of it and looks very much like a grapefruit now
that you think of it. Yeah, And that license plate
became known as the bomb license plate, So that was
long before the bomb meant something good, and they just
(16:03):
they took it out of circulation. And actually there's um
something that that wasn't an error like that was intentional,
but they didn't mean for it to look like a bomb.
There was a straight up controversial error that happened in
in Ohio where they issued the brand new license plate,
this beautiful license plate um and there's a banner being
(16:24):
pulled by the right Butt Brothers airplane. But after they
announced it and it printed thirty thousand of these things already,
some people pointed out on the internet, I think on Twitter,
that they had the airplane back backwards on the license plate.
You can tell it looks like a box kite. It does,
and it looks like the way that they had it originally.
(16:45):
You can understand how they got it like that, but
they just didn't check their work. And then North Carolina,
you know, North Carolina and Ohio have been going back
and forth about which place actually was the birthplace of aviation.
They went on Twitter and they said, y'all leave Ohio owned.
They wouldn't know because they weren't there. Yeah, it was
pretty pretty good burn actually, but that was very recent controversy.
(17:08):
One of the most interesting things about license plates the
first vanity plates Great State of Pennsylvania once again. Yeah,
what else I think in fifty seven they standardized the
size nationwide, which is six, but twelve unless you were
riding a motor scooter or a motorbike. And those are
(17:30):
those are the cutest plates of all. I love those things. Yeah,
and those aren't standardized. Apparently they're just supposed to be smaller.
I guess, yeah, like something that doesn't look dumb on
the back of a motors right, not oversized, you know,
you wanted to be proportionate. UM In the nineteen seventy
one was a big year too, because that was when
three M started supplying reflective sheeting to UM license plates.
(17:52):
Like in leading up to that time, at night, you
were pretty much s O L. But now you could
shine some headlights on these newfangled license plates and they
would just glow right back at you and you could
see who was driving recklessly in front of you, right, UM.
And that actually is going to be kind of controversial,
as we'll see in the coming years starting after nineteen
seventy one. But I say we take an break and
(18:16):
we'll get back to all that right after it. How
about that It sounds great. Well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh can chuck it stuff you should know,
all right, So, Chuck, if you look at all of
(18:45):
the license plates in the United States, they the fonts
that are actually like the string of numbers or if
it's vanity plate, like the actual like word or abbreviation whatever,
those look remarkably similar across the United States. But they're
not quite the same. I saw somewhere that there's like
four different characterizations or four different types, and they're they're
(19:07):
characterized by just little changes, like the edges are squared
around it, that kind of thing. But they're remarkably similar.
And supposedly there's the reason for that is there's one
company in the US that's supplied all of the dies
for the embossing for many many years, Yes, the John R.
Wald Company. And uh Ed points out that he got
(19:30):
a lot of ins information from a couple of a
few different websites of license plate collectors. And you know,
usually we pride ourselves on like super legit sources, and
it's not to say these aren't, but for an episode
like this, you know, this about as legit as you
can get. But he does point out that these collectors
are really really serious people about their collecting so it's
(19:54):
probably more verifiable than just about anything that we ever
look up, you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure,
UM I agree, because there is a lot there's a
real dearth of information out There's like a list of
ten interesting facts about license plates in there, and that's
copied and pasted everywhere all over the internet basically. But
um ed did turn up something really interesting about European plates, right, Yeah,
(20:17):
and it sort of to back up this story, we
should talk briefly about its uh predecessor in Chicago. When
they started making plates in Chicago early on, they realized
pretty quickly that people could fake their license tags, so
they started making UM they started issuing numbers to people,
like just the metal numbers they had to mount on
(20:37):
their own because they were making these metal numbers, uh
basically in a in a way that was unique enough
to where they were like you couldn't pick it up
at your local hardware store, uh, so you could spot
the fakes. And this came back later in Europe in
the nineteen seventies in Germany when a left wing radical
group called the Red Army Faction was um doing car
(21:01):
bombings and kidnappings and bank robberies and all kinds of
bad things, and they were using fake you know, they
were faking their license plates. Uh, those cool, cool European
license plates that are shorter and longer and just as
James bondy as you can imagine. Yeah, because when they
flip up, there's a machine gun behind them or in
(21:22):
oils like. Um. It's funny because I think a lot
of Americans think European plates look super cool, and I've
talked to some Europeans that think American plates look cool
with the graphics and stuff. So maybe it's just a
grassy screener thing, but I think those europan plates are awesome.
I'm all about the American plates, I have to admit. Okay.
So anyway, they were faking these license plates getting away
(21:45):
with it, and they realized that the font that they
were using d I N fourteen fifty one was really uniform,
and it was you know, I mean, like a lot
of fonts, if you take the leg off of an R,
you've got a pe. But this was sort of that
to the extreme where it was really easy just to
sort of remove certain strokes to come up with other
(22:06):
letters and still have the plate look believable. Yeah, you
could just put like black or white electrical tape over it.
And the problem was Germany did use that same font
d I n. Fourteen fifty one throughout the entire country,
and so um the Red Army faction had the whole
country so nervous and scared that the government was like,
we need to come up with a new font for
our license plates. And they set a calligrapher and design
(22:30):
professor named Carl George one word hoofer, and he created
something called ffi Shrift, an entirely new font from scratch,
in just a few months in the I think the
summer of nineteen seventy eight. And you took German in
high school, you're gonna say the word even practicing, I
was like, I probably shouldn't say this on the podcast.
(22:50):
I had to. Yeah, it's tough. I had to break
it down, and even with my German experience, I mean,
it is a long word. I didn't count the letters,
but it looks like the German alphabet basically looks like
the American alphabet. I've had it, buddy, So I'm gonna
say it's fell schumser schwer unders fell shun ser Schwerinda shrift.
(23:14):
Very nice, Yeah, that's it. I think that's right. And
the first word before shrift that was all one word, isn't.
It's quite a word. It's a long word, and it means,
from what I understand in German, either fraud preventing or
falsification hindering. And then shrift means font, so it's a
falsification hindering font. And the way that um, Carl George
(23:34):
Hoofer um came up with this font, or the way
that he made it difficult to forge, is he added
what are known as sir reefs or seraph's. I think
it's Sarah, right, and that's Sarah. I I had never
known what a Sarah was until really I started researching
this episode. Yeah, I never knew. Kidding me, no, So
(23:55):
Sarah for those of you who are like me, like
how I used to be, so I can remember, I
can really identify with you, guys. But as Sarah is
like a little extra flourish on a letter that gives
it a little extra pop, a little oomph. So if
you draw a letter I and then you make crossbars
at the top and bottom, those crossbars are technically Seraph's right. Yeah,
(24:18):
and just let me explain the reason I was shocked.
Was because of your uh, your past history and publishing
and newspaper things and as a writer, and Sarah's and
San Sarah's is just something I would have thought you
would have never bothered to go figure it out. I
walked around knowing I did not know what a seraph was,
or that Sarah was even necessarily a thing I did
(24:40):
know and is. I think it's sans serif. And this
is why chuck, because songs in French means without, so
I think it's Sarah. I knew that sans meant without, Okay,
I just never put the two together. This, Yes, it's
all very embarrassing all of a sudden. I thought I
thought admitting this would just kind of make the episode
(25:02):
move along more smoothly. But there's a spotlight on me.
I'm sweating quite a bit, and I'm really very uncomfortable,
and we took an ad break too recently ago to
just go to it. I'm really sorry. This all surprises
me because you're very much a song seraph guy. Uh,
(25:23):
Like you're like, yeah, I mean, aren't you sort of
calibri or like, what's your fint calibri? Is my font calibre?
On ten point. See, I'm Times New Roman fourteen point
all the way, as you know. Uh so I'm looking
at Sarah's all day long, all the time. What's funny
is Calibri ten point is way more bullet list ee
(25:43):
than Times the Roman on fourteen. So it's funny we
kind of cross over to one another side in different places. Yeah,
it's funny whenever you do live shows like you're tiny,
little fine, I just who reads ten point vont that's
so tiny paper, which is great? Yours is so big
the front row can follow along with the episode. They
(26:05):
can see it. So clearly we should settle at twelve,
which is I think the standard. Right, Yeah, it's still
too big for me. Yeah, all right, I'm challenging my eyes.
All right. Sorry to tease you about the seraph stuff.
I forgive you. But the point is he added the
seraph's basically here and there to make it to where
(26:26):
it was really hard to replicate. Yeah, and again he
basically cheering this out in a few months because Germany
was in like this emergency state because the Red Army
faction was terrorizing literally the country. And then by the
time it was ready for production, I guess the Red
Army faction had been largely broken up, and they just
shelved Effie Shrift until I think the mid nineties, for
(26:48):
almost fifteen or so years. It just went away. But
luckily they already kind of had it. So when the
European Unions started to try to standardize UM license plates
across the whole, Germany stepped up and said, hey, we've
got this really great font called FFF shripped. What do
you guys think about this one? And they're like, what's
the FE stand for? In Germany said don't ask. Yeah, yeah,
(27:12):
it's twenty two letters long. You don't want to know.
I mean it looks Icelandic almost. Yeah. Um. So now
we come to the very scintillating part of the episode
where we talk about tag fees. UM. There are not
standardized tag fees across the country because states handle this.
It's not federalized, at least not yet. And uh Ed
(27:36):
used New York as an example because Ed lives in
New York and but most states are about the same
and that you can usually pay a little bit of
extra money anywhere from well ten dollars is the low,
which is Virginia, which we'll get to that in a
second um, although we have to like sixty even I
think Washington, d C Is about the most expensive at
(27:59):
a hundred, but at least it was recently to get
a specialty plate, which one do you know which plate? Yeah?
That which specialty plate is a hundred bucks in DC
is at the Texas without representation one. Well I think
that actually maybe for vanity which you know, we should
point out those are two different things. Especially plate can
be uh, you know, support the A s p C
(28:22):
A or support veterans, or hey, I'm a teacher or
I'm a firefighter, or this is an antique car, like
any of those sort of standard things. You can pay
extra four. But then you can also obviously get to
your your vanity plate, which you're going to pay even
more on top of that. So I was looking up
cool Um specialty plates around the country and um, there
(28:44):
are some new ones I found. I think a popular
mechanics slide show Montana has this really cool one. It's
just black and white, mostly black field with some white
here there, and they have a t Rex skull on
there's it's like supports the museums in the state. UM,
Florida has a great one. It's got a space shuttle
taking off, um with you know, on the rockets and
(29:06):
all the boosters and all that stuff. Um, and it's
it's too um commemorate the Challenger in Columbia disasters. It's
very good looking. And then California has one that supports
its museums. And um, I guess Charles Schultze's estate lent
Snoopy out just to help drum up money. So you
can get a Snoopy license plate in California. Yeah, and
(29:26):
that's the whole deal is usually some of this money
goes toward these organizations. Um, and not just like in
the coffers of the state. Uh. Since you brought up California,
I can say that we used to love trying to
spot when I lived there, the old um blue for
my money, the coolest license plate ever, the blue with
yellow letter California license plate from the seventies that used
(29:47):
to see on chips all the time, and you would
occasionally still see those out in l A And it
was it was always kind of a cool thing. I
think they have that you can get it to throwback. Um,
I guess I saw it just like the nineteen SI
the five edition and like so you know, there's so
many people into like hot rods and stuff out in California.
They're like going crazy for that because it makes their
(30:08):
car look that much more authentic. I love it. I
would totally get one. So vanity plates, like you said,
they're a different thing. They're gonna cost you a lot
more depending on where you are. And did you see
that huff Post slide show that I sent? Yeah, Like
I was literally laughing an hour or so after last
looking at it, like just could not stop lappy. There
(30:30):
was one can you guess what my favorite one was? No,
there was one. I think it was either Minnesota or
North Carolina, and it was Jay is Lord, as in
Jesus is Lord. But that took up all of the
spaces on the license plate, so it was one word
j I s Lord And like I can't, I could
(30:51):
not stop laughing about that yesterday because I'm sure the
guy who got a Jesus Lord license plate gets so
mad when you point out what else it looked like, um, yeah,
And if you haven't just sounded out j I scored
all one word. Yeah. I mean a lot of those
are um I think well intended that turned out to
look like other things kind of like asked man on Seinfeld. Uh,
(31:15):
and that was a very popular one in Florida. That
was true at least, Nope said so that wash And
I'm not gonna spell this one out. You just got
to use your imagination, folks. A five five and then
remember there's a big uh orange in the middle. It
looks like an oh a A five five and then
(31:35):
that symbol and then R G Y which just just
write it down. I mean they had to like slip
past them. They just because there wasn't an O and there,
they used the orange for the oh. Surely the people
were just like they didn't think anything of it, right,
very very creative. I saw it. I saw it. Um.
I think a medium article. I can't remember who wrote it,
(31:56):
but um the author was talking about how like some
d m v s will like use Urban Dictionary and
like scroll the internet and like try to figure out
what people are saying in these things to decide whether
it didn't approve them, especially these days. Um. And actually
we'll get to that in a second on on free speech.
But with vanity plates, there are certain rules. Obviously, you're
(32:19):
not supposed to say naughty, dirty things, even though people
try and get by it in creative ways, like we
just mentioned. You're not allowed to use um like an oh,
the letter I'm sorry, like the In fact, some states
don't even use the letter zero or the letter oh
because you can intersperse the or interchange those to make
it look like the other to get around the no
(32:42):
profanity thing. Uh. And then as far as vanity plates go,
and I was shocked at this number or this list
of Virginia being number one in vanity plates, but it's
by percentage, which makes a lot more sense because when
I went to California for the first time when I
was I think eighteen, I had never seen so many
(33:04):
vanity plates in my life as in l A. And
I was like, this is crazy and and I thought,
kind of dumb, but that's your thing. That's your thing.
But Virginia has a sixteen point one nine percent of
their plate and it's because they're cheap there. It's only
ten bucks. Uh. And I think in New Hampshire was next,
followed by Illinois, Nevada, Montana, and Texas was the lowest
(33:26):
at point five percent. And then Canadians, we don't want
to forget about you. Ontario leads the way with four
point nine five nine percent, followed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon,
and then the lowest was British Columbia at point five
nine percent. There don't there's some sociological study just begging
to be designed through, right, you know, I'm not quite
(33:48):
sure what it is, but I can see it in
there somewhere. So yeah, Texas is just like, yeah, we
don't care, We're from Texas. UM. So the whole thing
with vanity plate and you know, your ability to say
whatever you want in the state being able to deny
you from getting a plate that you want UM brings
(34:08):
up in the United States free speech issues because you
are paying for this UM and you're displaying it on
your car. It's like you are saying this that's automatically
protected by the First Amendment. But it's a little fuzzy
chuck because the state is issuing this thing that you're
saying whatever you want to say on and in some
(34:30):
way you're repping them as well, or they're repped on
the license plate, so they may or may not want
to be associated with whatever you're saying. Yeah, and when
it's come to the courts, they have generally sided with people,
uh like ed gave the example there was a license
plate issue in North Carolina that said white power w
(34:50):
y T E DASH. I guess p w r R
P w E R p O w r oh. It
was the full the full word, so you know, uh,
free speech ehaw uh. And courts generally generally side with uh.
And I think when it becomes um, dirty words and stuff,
(35:10):
as they get a little more involved, yeah, definitely can't
do things like that. But I don't know, it's interesting, so, um,
there's there. I saw. It goes both ways. They don't necessarily,
as a rule, you know, side with the the individual.
Like there was a woman in I want to say
New Hampshire or Vermont maybe, and in the nineties I
(35:30):
think she, um, she requested s h T hp N
S the second part is happens, and her whole thing
was like she had it as just a reminder she
went through a really terrible year and she had it
as a reminder that, like, you know, this stuff happens,
you just kind of get through it or whatever. And
the state was like, no, those first three letters are dirty.
(35:51):
And I think the Supreme Court ruled in the state's favor.
They're like, yep, that's dirty, can't have it. And she
was like, this is so like think about context and
nuance eyes and they were like no, and she could
not have her s h T hp N S license plate.
I wonder if anyone has s Y s K fan
(36:12):
oh man that that's if they do. I want to
hear about it, because mine says s Y s K
host and mine says s Y s K h s
T right uh, and Jerry says me so nice man. Um, No,
of course mine doesn't say that, but it's funny. I do.
(36:34):
I did have, and I think I mentioned this on
on an episode at some point. One of my pickup
truck that I still have has six six six accident,
which I thought was kind of funny. Sure, yeah, I don't.
I'm sure they would give you six six six if
you wanted it. But it's way funnier when it's accidental
six six six or l S T. Those accidental ones
(36:56):
are hilarious. Yeah. It is interesting though, the question of
what is allowed, um, because I could see some like
religious conservatives saying they don't want someone to be able
to say Hail Satan on their plate. Uh, But I mean, truly,
that's free speech, Like the courts would decide on the
favor of the car owner in that case. I would
(37:18):
think so because it's free speech and that you're just
saying what you want to say. But it's also religion.
You can certainly make an argument, and I could see them.
I could see the state being like, Okay, fine, you know,
I think it tends to be like you said, where
it's a foul word according to the state, and or
like a straight up like straight up hate speech or
(37:40):
a racial slur or something like that. Sadly, in the
United States, some people try to get license plates that
have racial slurs and they tend to be like out
of hand and eyed, and I don't really think a
court would would side with that person. I now have
a new goal in life. I just realized, I want
to get an old uh an old full side is
(38:00):
woody station wagon from the sixties or seventies, and I
want the license plate to say Hale st n w
g N to b g N, not Hale Satan Hale
station wagon. Oh nice, but it looks like Hale station
Hale Satan. I'm so bad at that. Um I would
be like Hale stand wang. So that happened to me
(38:22):
in l a lot. I would be like, I don't
even know what that means. Yeah, No, I'm with you.
That's a very uncle you mean is actually really good
at it. And she admitted last night that it was
because she practiced so much as a kid. Because there
was a game show on I think in the eighties
called like Bumper Busters or bumper Buddies, and the whole
game show is you guessing what a license plate says.
(38:45):
I'm not kidding, that was it. I just kept waiting
for like the next round to come up, and Nope,
that was all they did. That's really funny. Yeah. And also,
while we're on at Chuck, just real quick, I gotta
shout out, um that Medium article that I was talking about, Um,
the never ending free speech fight over vanity license plates
by Zara Stone. All right, how about we take a break. Well,
(39:10):
I'll dream up a couple of more great vanity plates.
Even though hail station Wagon. I think I just came
up with something. Breakin. It's wonderful, and we'll talk about
whiskey plates and who makes these things right after this. Well,
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck it.
(39:30):
You should know all right, all right, I mentioned whiskey
plates before we took a break, and whiskey plates have
(39:50):
nothing to do with whiskey or the whiskey industry. Uh.
It is because W is whiskey in the NATO alphabet,
and they just call them whiskey plates in Minnesota. But
there is an interesting tie in that you get a
W at the front of your license plate if you
have been uh if basically you've had your is it
(40:13):
your license revoked because of a d U? I? Yeah,
but they revoke it so hard. They take your license
plates too, right, But they can't take your car because
other people in your family might need to drive that car.
So what they do is they give you a plate
with the W at the beginning that basically tells everybody, Hey,
I have had my license plate revoked because of drunken driving. Yeah,
(40:34):
and UM Minnesota is not the only UM state to
do this. Ohio has their own one, and they, they,
I guess, very un ironically use scarlet letters or there's
no joke. I have family members with that. Do you
really know why that? That's amazing? So apparently judges weren't
using them as much as they they as much as
(40:56):
the legislature wanted. So the legislature changed the law, saying
judges had to use them um for I think starting
in the two thousand teens. So yeah, I guess you're
probably seeing a lot more scarlet letters on cars in
Ohio these days. Yeah. I didn't know what it was.
And this is uh. I don't want to be too specific,
but when I was in Ohio visiting Emily's family, I
(41:17):
remember walking up the driveway to a family function and
I think my father in law was like, check it out. Look,
he's got the scarlet letter, Uncle, glug glug exactly. Yeah.
I wanted to ask about it, and I but I
was confused whether I shoot or not after that rope
injury story that I failed to ask you about. So
(41:37):
now I'm like all shaky and nervous all the time
mentioned stories. I'm like, should I ask God on um? So.
Another thing that's happened over the years is people have
gotten themselves into trouble for being a little too clever
for their own good by having a license plate that
says no tags or no plates or something like that.
(41:57):
Because when a cop files a report for a car
that doesn't have license plate. This is generally what they
would write, no plate or no tags, so it gets
filed as you know, a violator, and then all of
a sudden you're getting pulled over. And this is you know,
verifiably happened before. There was a case in the late
seventies of a guy who got um a lot of
fines because of stuff that he didn't do, because he
(42:20):
was like, I got a no plates vanity plate. Okay,
so I want to I want to defend this guy,
Robert barber Um. He did have a no plates vanity plate,
but it was accidental because he was applying for vanity
plates and you have to put your three your top
three choices. He wanted boating, sailing, and then if these
two weren't available, he didn't want a vanity plate, so
(42:42):
he unwisely wrote no plates DMV totally humorouss always looking
out for dirty words. Just great, this guy wants to
no plates license plate. Let's give it to him. Yeah, well,
of course, what was it boating and sailing? That's not
gonna be on there. He I guess he was just
rolling the dice. Jimmy Christopher Cross owns those in every
(43:03):
stage he does very famously. So um. Also, chuck. There's
a long standing rumor that I think we should put
to rest that um prison inmates in the United States
make the license plates in this country. True false, it's false.
Well no, I was about to say myth or busted. Uh,
(43:25):
and I combined false and myth. So I think I
just kind of coined a new term. You don't have
to say false or myth anymore. You can just say
false it is true. Actually, um, And I don't I
don't think I crossed the board. But a lot of
times prison inmates still do make license plates. And uh,
you know, it's part of the the sort of um,
(43:47):
little to no wage labor system that the prisons take
advantage of in this country. Yeah, so um. Thanks to
the thirteenth Amendment, you cannot enslave a person unless they're
being jailed for a crime. So most licensed plays, I
believe it is most chuck um are produced in the
United States by slave labor incarcerated prisoners. Um. And because
(44:09):
you can't say, well, I'm gonna fire you, and you're
not gonna get any wages because you're not paying them anyway,
they coerce them into working in other ways, like like
removing their ability to see family, maybe putting them in
solitary um, basically punishing them if they won't work for free.
And that's how the United States gets most of its
license plates. And even worse, it's not just the Bureau
(44:31):
of Prisons running this. They usually contract with an outside
company who uses slave labor legally to produce these license plates,
from which they make a profit that they when they
give them to the state. Yeah, it's a terrible, terrible
thing and it's something that needs to be changed, but
that's not on just about anyone's radar. I think as
(44:52):
far as changing laws goes, well, it became kind of
a joke, like making license plates you're going to jail. Yeah,
especially the ones in New Hampshire where the license plates
they live free or die. Well, speaking of that, um,
and we're not gonna go over the whole process of
how they're made because it's not super interesting. But um,
I looked and there was a thing on Reddit where
(45:14):
a guy went through I think there was a h
or maybe he just did it on its own and
made a map of the states that still have embossed
plates rather than the just sort of printed on aluminum
that we have now in Georgia, arts are not embossed
any longer, even though Jerry Wildest she's got an embossed
plate from like twenty something years ago. Still back to
(45:34):
the podcast and hangs onto it. But uh, from what
I could tell, and I lost count because the picture
was really small. And then other people chimed in after
this was in twenty nineteen then saying like, hey, now
Kansas is not embossed anymore, so it looks like it's
about roughly half and half of states that are still embossing. Uh.
(45:54):
And just one little fun note about this, I did
not know we gotta and I know the Vermonters out
there just waiting. I will not forget about you, because
Vermont is the only state that has d BOSS license plates.
Oh no, it is not raised lettering. It is depressed
depressed in Vermont. Very very cool. So UM, if you
want to kind of take a little nostalgic trip. I
(46:16):
found out by accident, there's a title max um dot
com post. It's called fifty years of license Plates in
the US UM and you can see fifty years of
license plates state by state, and if you choose like
the decade you were a kid and just go, you know,
scroll down. It's like being back on the road again
age ten, and like the back of your parents car.
(46:38):
It's pretty great. Yeah, I mean I remember when they,
as many people do, when they started just including little
logos like the Georgia peach, and it wasn't just the
straight up letters and numbers, and I remember thinking like, wow,
is this is this the future here that we're looking at? Well,
speaking of the future, So they went from embossed or
d embossed too, flat rented UM license plates. Now apparently
(47:03):
there's some disruptors out of Silicon Valley because that's where
they come from, and they've come up with digital license
plates and some states are starting to be like, yep,
you can do that. So for a fee, I think
it's like fourteen dollars a month or two fifty dollars
for four years something like that. This company keeps your
plate up to date. UM you can have it personalized
(47:23):
a little bit, and it looks super cool. You know.
If you especially if you have an electric car, you
could do worse than putting a digital plate on the
back of it. But obviously not everybody has two hundred
fifty bucks for four years. And I think that's in
addition to all of the normal fees that apply for
a license plate too, that's right. Uh. And speaking of fees,
that's something that you would not be able to collect.
(47:45):
But people get really into collecting license plates. Uh. And
there are a couple of different ways. One UM is
a little well, I'm not gonna say that. One is
just collecting license plates, physical license plates, maybe all of
them through history in your state, maybe all of them
throughout the whole country over the years, or just once
you think are super cool. Uh. And you know rare
(48:05):
runs UM, like innycollectible are going to go for a
lot more money. Um. You can also buy big lots
of them on eBay for not much money. But the
big money comes in collecting the actual ownership of a
tag number. Because if you remember earlier we mentioned UM,
license plates in many states started at one and work
(48:25):
their way up. There's a lot of rich people with
way too much money, I guess, way too much that
want to pay a lot of money to have like
eight as their license plate, and they will pay hundreds
of thousands of dollars to get that. Yeah. Apparently in
the states, Delaware is the state that's craziest for this.
There's a real secondary market where yes, people pay six
(48:48):
figures for a license plate number. And it's like, you know,
when you buy a car, the plate gets transferred to you,
so you can continue to keep this plate over and
over again, so you're actually buying it from the person
and use really you you get the car with it,
but you're like, I don't care about the car, I'm
just after the plate. But as crazy as Delaware is
for their plates, um and again, I think seven grand
(49:10):
is the most someone paid for tag number six in Delaware.
Pretty crazy in other countries, especially Dubai, the uae Abu, Dhabi,
Hong Kong. There, it's just insane the amount of money
they spend on on that stuff. I couldn't believe these numbers.
But someone in New York apparently paid twenty million dollars
(49:34):
for a plate that said to New York. Yeah. The
kicker of that one is it came with the nineties
Volvo wagon that it was attached to. I'm not kidding.
Oh was it really Evolva? Somebody paid for a Volvo wagon? Uh?
And then the one in UH and in the Brits
I believe they paid someone in is it Great? Britain?
(49:56):
Is it the UK? Is it? England paid twenty million
bucks for an F one license plate tag. So if
you if you want to get gagged with the spoon,
head on over to Lux Digital with an E after
the X and just read about the most expensive car
tags ever, because you will find little gems like this,
(50:18):
said Abdul Gaffar. Kury paid nine point five million dollars
for one in Abu Dhabi because quote, it's the best number.
And then the Lux Digital says, quote by hanging one
from his fenders, coury boldly let the world know that
he was a man of confidence and prestige. Someone actually
wrote that down and was dead serious about it. Yeah,
(50:41):
it reminds me that I'm number one hat on SNL.
I don't remember that. Oh you don't like Will Ferrell's ad,
like this black tie dinner and he's like showing up
all the other men because he's wearing a mesh backed
I'm number one hat. It's just completely incongruous with everything
he's trying to do, but he's like showing everybody I'm
(51:02):
number one. That's pretty pretty great, pretty great stuff. I
guess one final thing we put a pin in, so
we have to take that pin out or people say
what about the pin? As you mentioned three M making
the reflective plates. Apparently three M continually lobbies politicians to
pass laws making people get license plates more often than
(51:25):
they need to so they can get bigger government contracts
for those reflective plates, reflective backing, and apparently even police
departments are like, we don't need new plates this often.
This is we don't shouldn't have to do this. Yeah,
and three M's like, come on, you're not paying for it.
Your residents are who cares, it's nothing to your residences,
millions of dollars to us, just do it like they
(51:46):
lobby for that, which is gross. In addition to using
enslaved prison labor to create license plates, there are a
lot more tawdry than you'd think at first plans agreed.
Um so turned out to be a really great pick,
Tracy and a j Thank you for the suggestion, Chuck,
thank you for turning this into an absolutely delightful episode,
(52:09):
and thank you for listening. And since I said that, everybody,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. Oh
this is a good one. Uh, this is a little
bit on cultural appropriation because in the Mariachi episode, I
talked about wanting a charro suit and said I would
(52:29):
fear being accused of cultural appropriation, and he said, nay
to that, Nay, uh wear it because people would you know,
you're you're celebrating that culture, and uh, we heard from
a lot of people. Um, and I'm gonna read a
couple of them from our Mexican friends who and I'm
not I'm not patting the results here, but literally our
(52:53):
Mexican listeners roundly said, do it, dude, we love it
and that would be awesome Mexican and Mexican American. Yes,
of course. Um, hey, guys, is a Mexican myself. I
listened to the episodes, Um about our country knowing so
much on the topic, and you guys are always so
spot on. Makes me love the podcast even more. With
(53:15):
the Mariachi episode, I love mariachi music and personally love
singing Vincente Fernandez music, and I want to let check no, chuck, no,
you should definitely dress at least once in that style.
Mexican people love when other ethnicities love their culture and style,
and I would say in Mexico they would even encourage
you to try on a chr os suit. Keep doing
(53:35):
what you're doing. That's from Joel Hernandez. And then we
received one from Jamie Cavazos Cova rubious, great great name.
Actually it's uh, it's himI, okay, right, not Jamie spelled
Ji and right. Mexican came to the US when I
was twenty four years old. I want to congratulate you
on the preparation and pronunciation on the mariachi up. You
(53:58):
guys did a great job, especially rolling those ours with
your Spanish second Chuck. You should wear a mariachi suit
any day and be a champ. I was born and
raised in Mexico, and I feel proud when a person
likes my culture. Makes me happy that someone is interested
in anything regarding the great parts of Mexico, like food, music,
and it's folklore and many other good things. I will
(54:19):
not call it cultural appropriation because I feel joy when
the world likes even a little bit of what I
am and want to keep spreading the beautiful roots from
Mexican culture. Uh. It actually works both ways, guys. Because
I live in the North Alabama area, after seven years,
I probably call myself Southern. Now you can ask any
Mexican person if they feel offended if you wear a
mariachi suit, and I'm confident they will encourage you to
(54:41):
keep doing it. Uh. And then they imi encouraged us
to talk about in the future Mexican trio Romantico music,
which we're gonna look into. Um. And not to poopa
on anyone, but the couple of no one really scolded me,
but the couple of emails that we did get that,
We're like, hey, maybe think to ice, Um, we're from
(55:01):
Caucasian people, Uh, taking up the fight for our Mexican
and Mexican American friends. So just just laying that out there.
Thanks nicely put And who was it in addition to
him whose email you read that would be Joel Hernandez,
Joel Him and Joel thank you so much for writing in.
Everybody who wrote in, thank you very much. Regardless of
(55:24):
what your opinion was, We appreciate it, and we're always
looking for good emails regardless of what your opinion is.
You can wrap it up spanking on the bottom and
send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(55:46):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Do Do Do yay. You know what that means. Everyone.
It's been a while since you've heard it, But after
three long years, we're finally going to return to the
live stage, starting well, actually ending with Sketch Fest in
San Francisco in February three, and then on February one
and second. We haven't quite nailed it down, but it's
going to be Seattle in Portland. Uh, not sure of
(00:22):
the order, but we were gonna be putting all this
information out on our social media channels right yep. And
on Friday, October seven, tickets will be on sale for
all three shows, and you can watch our social media
handles for information and ticket links. How about that? That
sounds great. Can't wait to be back on stage. We
really really missed it, yea. And we'll see you guys
(00:44):
in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Harry's here too, providing
us with last minute facts and informations and tidbits. And
(01:05):
that makes this a banger of an episode of Stuff
You Should Not It's a banger? Is that how they say?
At the brutes. Yeah, is that your British accent? That
was that your John Klice by way of Chicago. M
Uh can I make a quick announcement? Sure, it just
occurred to me that I'm clean to announce us now
(01:28):
that I go into the recording studio of my basement
which is now full of my wife Emily's business. Oh yeah, okay,
because you've you've known this for a while, Jerry too.
But Emily shut down her business everybody. Uh and rather
than me trying to stumble through her thought process, uh,
she has here. She is now. Um, she has it
(01:51):
her full like statement on her website, I love your
Mama dot com and all the handwringing that went into it,
and uh, she had a twenty year run. It was
a great thing. And she's going to keep her website
going though, because she's gonna she's gonna still do like
she said, She's gonna make things from only from things
she can grow. So the business itself as a hey,
(02:14):
I gotta dominate the world because I'm ambitious type of thing. Yeah,
I'm an into pet woman of the es that has
gone away, But she's gonna still do probably some uh
face prays and things like that anything she can grow
from her own herb garden on a very small level,
very limited things she's got. It figured out that she's
(02:38):
not retiring anything, but um, just big thanks to every
She got a lot of support from the stuff you
should know Army over the years, both emotionally and by
buying things every time we mentioned her, so it really
meant a lot to her. Uh and she wanted me
to pass that along. That was very nice. And congratulations
to Emily on a twenty year run. That is rather
respectable for a small business, I think so, and we're
(03:01):
all proud of her. And now I'm the walls are
closing up here in the basement right so because she
couldn't get rid of everything, we have two storage spaces
in now our basement, so she'll be working on that
getting rid of that stuff for a while as well.
I'll bet it smells amazing. At least it smells better
than it ever has down here, you know what. I'll
bet it smells better than chuck a dirty old license plate,
(03:25):
that's right, especially one that's a Sportsman's Paradise from Louisiana
that they got out of the stomach of a shark
and jaw right or asked man from New York City.
It's the ass man. You got that straight. So, by
the way, since you brought up Steinfeld, I went back
and started watching um uh Larry Sanders show on HBO. Great,
(03:49):
like maybe the greatest. Actually, like I'm rewatching, I'm like
this is this is even better than it was years ago.
And I've come to believe that Jerry Seinfeld is a
twee impression of Gary Shandling. Gary Shandling is the legit
o G and Seinfeld is just a aberration of him.
(04:13):
I think Seinfeld would certainly own up to being influenced
by Gary Schandling. He probably really punched me in the
stomach for calling him twee though. Uh No, he would
just say will you again? That's right, and I just
go home devastated. Now, great show, but I think ahead
of its time as well, Larry Sanders. Yeah, absolutely ahead
(04:35):
of its time for sure. It's definitely worth watching. If
you have HBO Max it's all over it and just
go watch it and thank me later, I guess, is
what I'm trying to say. Uh, and uh, sorry, let's
let me give it one more kudo. Uh, all respect
to thirty Rock, But Larry Sanders is easily the best
sort of behind the scenes of a TV show movie
(04:58):
set type of thing I've ever seen. Yeah, even better
than the Player because it was way funnier. Well yeah,
Player was great in some way though. Yeah, but it's
no Larry Sanders show correct. Um. So one more thing
while we're shouting out TV shows, UM, I also saw
both of them are in Netflix, um. And they're both
horror TV shows, and they are awesome. One is like
(05:21):
straight ahead scare you to death horror, Japanese horror. It's
ju on the origins, so you know, the The Grudge,
so it was Juan in Japan and this TV show
it's like an eight part series, I think maybe six.
It's like the origins that lead up to Juan, like
The Grudge. It's amazingly well done. It's perfectly tailored to
(05:43):
fit it just precisely, so well done. And then the
other one is called mary Anne, and it's a French
language which story um set in today's time, but it
deals with like a sixteenth century which I think, and
it's not quite as straight a head scary, but it's
really really good. Nonetheless, it's very engrossing. You guys watch
(06:05):
a lot of horror. Yeah, yeah, you MEI has to
just buy proxy. But yes, I watch a lot of horror.
I don't get too because Emily is not into it.
But we've been loving the Bear and of course I
shouted out a lot, but another shout out to Reservation
Dogs b J and the Bear O the Bear Chuck. No,
I haven't is the Oh wait, good, wait a minute
(06:27):
that the Chicago restaurant I tried, and I was like,
it's very stressful. No, it wasn't even that. It was
very boring. I thought, oh, that's interesting because it's like
the most adrenaline fueled show on TV. I know it's
really weird, but I was like, I could not be
more bored than I am right now. But I get
what you're saying. It was it was a weird juxtaposition
(06:48):
because I know I was supposed to be like feeling intense,
and I was just like, this is I don't like it,
So say what, you've also done some heroin that probably
that couldn't stay awake. No, I definitely did not do
any heroine. It was just that show was extremely boring
to me. But again, I mean, if you like it.
(07:10):
That's great. I'm not trying to tell you not to.
I'm just that was take on it. So I'm glad
we ate up some time because Chuck, I I, this
is my pick license plates. And it turns out it's
a little more boring than I had anticipated. Like something
I do too, I do too, and there's some interesting
stuff in there. But something this sweeping, a global, worldwide
(07:31):
phenomenon that's been around for over a hundred years, you
would think there'd be a little more like crazy stuff,
you know, associated with it, and there's just not. I mean,
Ed helped us out with this, and he did, God
bless him, his best work, trying to find anything to
make this interesting and he finally did you know, and
we found some other stuff too. But it's just not
as engrossing as I thought. It's kind of like The Bear,
(07:57):
that great show that is so funny too. I was
watching that the it's hysterical. Um, I disagree. I think
you're selling the short. I think I thought this was
really interesting considering it's a show about letters and numbers
on a piece of metal on the back of a car. Okay,
point made. And also I should say, um, this was
also a listener request a J and Tracy in Pittsburgh, Ish.
(08:20):
Tracy said they requested this one not too long ago,
a few weeks ago. And man, that's the kind of
turnaround time we have here at stuff. You should know. Yeah,
and we know it's them because their license plates says
PTS B R G I s H. That's pretty great,
the great new show. You just did that off the
cuff too. Man, I'm impressed. Well, there's too many characters
(08:43):
in there, but everyone gets a joke. Okay, So what
country do you think invented the license plate? Chuck? Had
to be the United States, with the industry and automobiles,
you would think so, but no, As a matter of fact,
the French had us beat by a good decade, a
full decade, not that kind of rough decade. It could
be anywhere from like six to eight years, a ten
(09:03):
year stretch. The There was actually one guy who who
kind of originated him. He was the prefect of the
Paris Police Force. His name is Louis Limpin, and in
he said, Hey, we're starting to get more cars on
the road, and I think we need to kind of
regulate them a little better than we are, which is
to say we're not doing that at all. Yeah, So
they came up with all kinds of stuff plates, driver's test,
(09:27):
driver i D. Speed limits, stuff like that, and the US,
as we do, look to the French for all things.
And in I believe that New York was the first
US state to require a law and this was in
nineteen o one April that basically said, all right, here's
the deal. You need to put your initials on your
(09:50):
car somewhere. They need to be three inches tall, but
otherwise go wild. It's up to you how you want
to do this. If you want to make them out
of little garfields that no one will understand for many years,
you you do that. Uh. And the New Yorkers did it.
And I think that this sort of customization allowed for
some kind of creative New Yorkers to do different things,
(10:14):
everything from like would to leather and I'm sure all
kinds of crazy fonts. Sure, definitely, like a lot of
people just went to the hardware store and bought house numbers. Um.
Some people just painted them directly on their cars. And like,
the one one thing I saw is this is so early.
There's so few cars on the road that this was
not like a revenue generating move. They were actually using
(10:36):
it like you had to put your own initials on
the car, so that if you terrorized a horse or
drove drove up on the sidewalk, or did donuts in
the middle of Times Square, they would know who did that.
And that's the kind of like usage that cars were getting.
There were a lot of like jerks driving cars initially, um,
and that was the way to kind of rain their
(10:58):
behavior in. Yeah. And then the tenure mark like you
talked about in nineteen o three is basically at the
point when they said, all right, we gotta start issuing
these things because this initial we didn't really think out
this initial plan because people have the same initials. There's
a lot more cars, and we can't go around just
looking for every you know, g R. L in New
(11:21):
York to find out who was terrorizing the horse. Yeah,
Gary Larson. Wait, Gary Regis Larson. Well, it depends on
if you're doing a monogram. Okay, so it could be
Gary Larson. Read just I could have been correct. What's
the deal of that? Well, we should do a short
step on Monica. The idea but a great idea. Um.
So nineteen o three it was kind of like a
(11:44):
watershed year for license plates in the United States. And
also I realized, I'm sad to realize that it was
a rough decade from to nineteen o one. It wasn't
a full decade, but um, nineteen o three. That's why
I thought it was a full decade, because it was
just such a huge year where all these other states said, yeah,
we're going to get on board. First it was Philadelphia,
(12:05):
not a state, but it's in Pennsylvania, kind of near
Pittsburgh ish if you think about it. And they were
the first city to issue official license plates. Cleveland was
technically the first city in the whole country, even before
New York, to require license plates, but they didn't issue them.
Philadelphia was the first city to actually issue them in
the US. Right, And apparently Pennsylvania likes to say they
(12:29):
you know, that makes them the first state to do so,
technically correct, But the state of Massachusetts was the first
state to do a statewide program, uh, and not just
the city of Philadelphia. Um so, and this is kind
of the cool thing and put a pin in this
as for collectibles later on. But Massachusetts did the thing
(12:49):
that a lot of other states did was they started
at one, and they just started working their way up
and apparently the Highway Commission how a commission member named
Frederick Tutor got license plate number one and that they
still his his ancestors years later still have that number. Yeah,
and Frederick Tudor ties in with our transcendentalist episode because
(13:11):
his father was the ice King, the guy who harvested
ice on Walden Pond while they and shipped it all
over the world. So very strange, surprising tie in, Chuck, Um,
should we go over what we like to call our
bulleted list? I love them. They're so great that it's
just packed with information, no frills, you know, man, I
(13:32):
used to do a lot of those on the Old
House Stuff Works articles. I think Katie, my editor as
used to make fun of me because I used to
do bulleted list to get the point across, and like,
you can absorb them so easily. I love bulleted lists. Buddy,
you didn't do them a lot though you were into
the pros. Yeah. I'd like to hear myself talk, but
I respect a bulleted list. It is funny. Personality wise,
(13:53):
I'm definitely a bullet list personality guy. I made this
bulleted list. It's in my personality as well. I really
took paragraphs and broke them into so I'm bullet too. Okay,
I can hang out with the bullet people too. Did
you do the bullets his little movie slates? Or was
(14:14):
that some accident on my end? There was an accident
on your end, but a happy accident. Yeah. When I
printed this out instead of little round bullets, there a
little you know, movie clappers movie slate. Don't know how
I did that, but I'll try to recreate it. I
didn't know it was even possible anyway. Uh, what do
we got here? First hit the first one? Okay, So
(14:35):
the first slogan on license plate was Idaho potatoes, which
is pretty cool. I mean that would hang around for
a while. Um, but they actually embossed a brown potato
that took up most of the license plate and it
looked a lot like poop. And it didn't It didn't
stick around very long. I think that was just a
one year thing. Uh. Something that has stuck around is
(14:58):
the longest slogan Sreek in the United States, and it's
one of my favorite license plates because of this started
in nineteen thirty six in the Great State of uh mean,
in the Great State of Maine. Vacation Land also the
title of our friend John Hodgman's book, one of Them.
And it's been on Main's license plates since nineteen thirty
six every year since then. That's quite a streak. That's
(15:20):
far and away the longest streak. I think the next
longest is like nineteen and I can't remember which which
slogan it is. I just love that slogan. It just
sounds so welcoming vacation land. Yeah, and the fact that
it's like one word too, it's just prints. They like
nailed it right on the head, right out of the gate,
basically absolutely what else. Florida had a grapefruit. I used
(15:41):
to have a grape fruit on their plates starting in
nineteen thirty five, but it just took a year because
it looked like the sort of the cartoon bombs, the
little little black uh circle with the fuse coming out
of it and looks very much like a grapefruit now
that you think of it. Yeah, And that license plate
became known as the bomb license plate, So that was
long before the bomb meant something good, and they just
(16:03):
they took it out of circulation. And actually there's um
something that that wasn't an error like that was intentional,
but they didn't mean for it to look like a bomb.
There was a straight up controversial error that happened in
in Ohio where they issued the brand new license plate,
this beautiful license plate um and there's a banner being
(16:24):
pulled by the right Butt Brothers airplane. But after they
announced it and it printed thirty thousand of these things already,
some people pointed out on the internet, I think on Twitter,
that they had the airplane back backwards on the license plate.
You can tell it looks like a box kite. It does,
and it looks like the way that they had it originally.
(16:45):
You can understand how they got it like that, but
they just didn't check their work. And then North Carolina,
you know, North Carolina and Ohio have been going back
and forth about which place actually was the birthplace of aviation.
They went on Twitter and they said, y'all leave Ohio owned.
They wouldn't know because they weren't there. Yeah, it was
pretty pretty good burn actually, but that was very recent controversy.
(17:08):
One of the most interesting things about license plates the
first vanity plates Great State of Pennsylvania once again. Yeah,
what else I think in fifty seven they standardized the
size nationwide, which is six, but twelve unless you were
riding a motor scooter or a motorbike. And those are
(17:30):
those are the cutest plates of all. I love those things. Yeah,
and those aren't standardized. Apparently they're just supposed to be smaller.
I guess, yeah, like something that doesn't look dumb on
the back of a motors right, not oversized, you know,
you wanted to be proportionate. UM In the nineteen seventy
one was a big year too, because that was when
three M started supplying reflective sheeting to UM license plates.
(17:52):
Like in leading up to that time, at night, you
were pretty much s O L. But now you could
shine some headlights on these newfangled license plates and they
would just glow right back at you and you could
see who was driving recklessly in front of you, right, UM.
And that actually is going to be kind of controversial,
as we'll see in the coming years starting after nineteen
seventy one. But I say we take an break and
(18:16):
we'll get back to all that right after it. How
about that It sounds great. Well, now we're on the road,
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh can chuck it stuff you should know,
all right, So, Chuck, if you look at all of
(18:45):
the license plates in the United States, they the fonts
that are actually like the string of numbers or if
it's vanity plate, like the actual like word or abbreviation whatever,
those look remarkably similar across the United States. But they're
not quite the same. I saw somewhere that there's like
four different characterizations or four different types, and they're they're
(19:07):
characterized by just little changes, like the edges are squared
around it, that kind of thing. But they're remarkably similar.
And supposedly there's the reason for that is there's one
company in the US that's supplied all of the dies
for the embossing for many many years, Yes, the John R.
Wald Company. And uh Ed points out that he got
(19:30):
a lot of ins information from a couple of a
few different websites of license plate collectors. And you know,
usually we pride ourselves on like super legit sources, and
it's not to say these aren't, but for an episode
like this, you know, this about as legit as you
can get. But he does point out that these collectors
are really really serious people about their collecting so it's
(19:54):
probably more verifiable than just about anything that we ever
look up, you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure,
UM I agree, because there is a lot there's a
real dearth of information out There's like a list of
ten interesting facts about license plates in there, and that's
copied and pasted everywhere all over the internet basically. But
um ed did turn up something really interesting about European plates, right, Yeah,
(20:17):
and it sort of to back up this story, we
should talk briefly about its uh predecessor in Chicago. When
they started making plates in Chicago early on, they realized
pretty quickly that people could fake their license tags, so
they started making UM they started issuing numbers to people,
like just the metal numbers they had to mount on
(20:37):
their own because they were making these metal numbers, uh
basically in a in a way that was unique enough
to where they were like you couldn't pick it up
at your local hardware store, uh, so you could spot
the fakes. And this came back later in Europe in
the nineteen seventies in Germany when a left wing radical
group called the Red Army Faction was um doing car
(21:01):
bombings and kidnappings and bank robberies and all kinds of
bad things, and they were using fake you know, they
were faking their license plates. Uh, those cool, cool European
license plates that are shorter and longer and just as
James bondy as you can imagine. Yeah, because when they
flip up, there's a machine gun behind them or in
(21:22):
oils like. Um. It's funny because I think a lot
of Americans think European plates look super cool, and I've
talked to some Europeans that think American plates look cool
with the graphics and stuff. So maybe it's just a
grassy screener thing, but I think those europan plates are awesome.
I'm all about the American plates, I have to admit. Okay.
So anyway, they were faking these license plates getting away
(21:45):
with it, and they realized that the font that they
were using d I N fourteen fifty one was really uniform,
and it was you know, I mean, like a lot
of fonts, if you take the leg off of an R,
you've got a pe. But this was sort of that
to the extreme where it was really easy just to
sort of remove certain strokes to come up with other
(22:06):
letters and still have the plate look believable. Yeah, you
could just put like black or white electrical tape over it.
And the problem was Germany did use that same font
d I n. Fourteen fifty one throughout the entire country,
and so um the Red Army faction had the whole
country so nervous and scared that the government was like,
we need to come up with a new font for
our license plates. And they set a calligrapher and design
(22:30):
professor named Carl George one word hoofer, and he created
something called ffi Shrift, an entirely new font from scratch,
in just a few months in the I think the
summer of nineteen seventy eight. And you took German in
high school, you're gonna say the word even practicing, I
was like, I probably shouldn't say this on the podcast.
(22:50):
I had to. Yeah, it's tough. I had to break
it down, and even with my German experience, I mean,
it is a long word. I didn't count the letters,
but it looks like the German alphabet basically looks like
the American alphabet. I've had it, buddy, So I'm gonna
say it's fell schumser schwer unders fell shun ser Schwerinda shrift.
(23:14):
Very nice, Yeah, that's it. I think that's right. And
the first word before shrift that was all one word, isn't.
It's quite a word. It's a long word, and it means,
from what I understand in German, either fraud preventing or
falsification hindering. And then shrift means font, so it's a
falsification hindering font. And the way that um, Carl George
(23:34):
Hoofer um came up with this font, or the way
that he made it difficult to forge, is he added
what are known as sir reefs or seraph's. I think
it's Sarah, right, and that's Sarah. I I had never
known what a Sarah was until really I started researching
this episode. Yeah, I never knew. Kidding me, no, So
(23:55):
Sarah for those of you who are like me, like
how I used to be, so I can remember, I
can really identify with you, guys. But as Sarah is
like a little extra flourish on a letter that gives
it a little extra pop, a little oomph. So if
you draw a letter I and then you make crossbars
at the top and bottom, those crossbars are technically Seraph's right. Yeah,
(24:18):
and just let me explain the reason I was shocked.
Was because of your uh, your past history and publishing
and newspaper things and as a writer, and Sarah's and
San Sarah's is just something I would have thought you
would have never bothered to go figure it out. I
walked around knowing I did not know what a seraph was,
or that Sarah was even necessarily a thing I did
(24:40):
know and is. I think it's sans serif. And this
is why chuck, because songs in French means without, so
I think it's Sarah. I knew that sans meant without, Okay,
I just never put the two together. This, Yes, it's
all very embarrassing all of a sudden. I thought I
thought admitting this would just kind of make the episode
(25:02):
move along more smoothly. But there's a spotlight on me.
I'm sweating quite a bit, and I'm really very uncomfortable,
and we took an ad break too recently ago to
just go to it. I'm really sorry. This all surprises
me because you're very much a song seraph guy. Uh,
(25:23):
Like you're like, yeah, I mean, aren't you sort of
calibri or like, what's your fint calibri? Is my font calibre?
On ten point. See, I'm Times New Roman fourteen point
all the way, as you know. Uh so I'm looking
at Sarah's all day long, all the time. What's funny
is Calibri ten point is way more bullet list ee
(25:43):
than Times the Roman on fourteen. So it's funny we
kind of cross over to one another side in different places. Yeah,
it's funny whenever you do live shows like you're tiny,
little fine, I just who reads ten point vont that's
so tiny paper, which is great? Yours is so big
the front row can follow along with the episode. They
(26:05):
can see it. So clearly we should settle at twelve,
which is I think the standard. Right, Yeah, it's still
too big for me. Yeah, all right, I'm challenging my eyes.
All right. Sorry to tease you about the seraph stuff.
I forgive you. But the point is he added the
seraph's basically here and there to make it to where
(26:26):
it was really hard to replicate. Yeah, and again he
basically cheering this out in a few months because Germany
was in like this emergency state because the Red Army
faction was terrorizing literally the country. And then by the
time it was ready for production, I guess the Red
Army faction had been largely broken up, and they just
shelved Effie Shrift until I think the mid nineties, for
(26:48):
almost fifteen or so years. It just went away. But
luckily they already kind of had it. So when the
European Unions started to try to standardize UM license plates
across the whole, Germany stepped up and said, hey, we've
got this really great font called FFF shripped. What do
you guys think about this one? And they're like, what's
the FE stand for? In Germany said don't ask. Yeah, yeah,
(27:12):
it's twenty two letters long. You don't want to know.
I mean it looks Icelandic almost. Yeah. Um. So now
we come to the very scintillating part of the episode
where we talk about tag fees. UM. There are not
standardized tag fees across the country because states handle this.
It's not federalized, at least not yet. And uh Ed
(27:36):
used New York as an example because Ed lives in
New York and but most states are about the same
and that you can usually pay a little bit of
extra money anywhere from well ten dollars is the low,
which is Virginia, which we'll get to that in a
second um, although we have to like sixty even I
think Washington, d C Is about the most expensive at
(27:59):
a hundred, but at least it was recently to get
a specialty plate, which one do you know which plate? Yeah?
That which specialty plate is a hundred bucks in DC
is at the Texas without representation one. Well I think
that actually maybe for vanity which you know, we should
point out those are two different things. Especially plate can
be uh, you know, support the A s p C
(28:22):
A or support veterans, or hey, I'm a teacher or
I'm a firefighter, or this is an antique car, like
any of those sort of standard things. You can pay
extra four. But then you can also obviously get to
your your vanity plate, which you're going to pay even
more on top of that. So I was looking up
cool Um specialty plates around the country and um, there
(28:44):
are some new ones I found. I think a popular
mechanics slide show Montana has this really cool one. It's
just black and white, mostly black field with some white
here there, and they have a t Rex skull on
there's it's like supports the museums in the state. UM,
Florida has a great one. It's got a space shuttle
taking off, um with you know, on the rockets and
(29:06):
all the boosters and all that stuff. Um, and it's
it's too um commemorate the Challenger in Columbia disasters. It's
very good looking. And then California has one that supports
its museums. And um, I guess Charles Schultze's estate lent
Snoopy out just to help drum up money. So you
can get a Snoopy license plate in California. Yeah, and
(29:26):
that's the whole deal is usually some of this money
goes toward these organizations. Um, and not just like in
the coffers of the state. Uh. Since you brought up California,
I can say that we used to love trying to
spot when I lived there, the old um blue for
my money, the coolest license plate ever, the blue with
yellow letter California license plate from the seventies that used
(29:47):
to see on chips all the time, and you would
occasionally still see those out in l A And it
was it was always kind of a cool thing. I
think they have that you can get it to throwback. Um,
I guess I saw it just like the nineteen SI
the five edition and like so you know, there's so
many people into like hot rods and stuff out in California.
They're like going crazy for that because it makes their
(30:08):
car look that much more authentic. I love it. I
would totally get one. So vanity plates, like you said,
they're a different thing. They're gonna cost you a lot
more depending on where you are. And did you see
that huff Post slide show that I sent? Yeah, Like
I was literally laughing an hour or so after last
looking at it, like just could not stop lappy. There
(30:30):
was one can you guess what my favorite one was? No,
there was one. I think it was either Minnesota or
North Carolina, and it was Jay is Lord, as in
Jesus is Lord. But that took up all of the
spaces on the license plate, so it was one word
j I s Lord And like I can't, I could
(30:51):
not stop laughing about that yesterday because I'm sure the
guy who got a Jesus Lord license plate gets so
mad when you point out what else it looked like, um, yeah,
And if you haven't just sounded out j I scored
all one word. Yeah. I mean a lot of those
are um I think well intended that turned out to
look like other things kind of like asked man on Seinfeld. Uh,
(31:15):
and that was a very popular one in Florida. That
was true at least, Nope said so that wash And
I'm not gonna spell this one out. You just got
to use your imagination, folks. A five five and then
remember there's a big uh orange in the middle. It
looks like an oh a A five five and then
(31:35):
that symbol and then R G Y which just just
write it down. I mean they had to like slip
past them. They just because there wasn't an O and there,
they used the orange for the oh. Surely the people
were just like they didn't think anything of it, right,
very very creative. I saw it. I saw it. Um.
I think a medium article. I can't remember who wrote it,
(31:56):
but um the author was talking about how like some
d m v s will like use Urban Dictionary and
like scroll the internet and like try to figure out
what people are saying in these things to decide whether
it didn't approve them, especially these days. Um. And actually
we'll get to that in a second on on free speech.
But with vanity plates, there are certain rules. Obviously, you're
(32:19):
not supposed to say naughty, dirty things, even though people
try and get by it in creative ways, like we
just mentioned. You're not allowed to use um like an oh,
the letter I'm sorry, like the In fact, some states
don't even use the letter zero or the letter oh
because you can intersperse the or interchange those to make
it look like the other to get around the no
(32:42):
profanity thing. Uh. And then as far as vanity plates go,
and I was shocked at this number or this list
of Virginia being number one in vanity plates, but it's
by percentage, which makes a lot more sense because when
I went to California for the first time when I
was I think eighteen, I had never seen so many
(33:04):
vanity plates in my life as in l A. And
I was like, this is crazy and and I thought,
kind of dumb, but that's your thing. That's your thing.
But Virginia has a sixteen point one nine percent of
their plate and it's because they're cheap there. It's only
ten bucks. Uh. And I think in New Hampshire was next,
followed by Illinois, Nevada, Montana, and Texas was the lowest
(33:26):
at point five percent. And then Canadians, we don't want
to forget about you. Ontario leads the way with four
point nine five nine percent, followed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon,
and then the lowest was British Columbia at point five
nine percent. There don't there's some sociological study just begging
to be designed through, right, you know, I'm not quite
(33:48):
sure what it is, but I can see it in
there somewhere. So yeah, Texas is just like, yeah, we
don't care, We're from Texas. UM. So the whole thing
with vanity plate and you know, your ability to say
whatever you want in the state being able to deny
you from getting a plate that you want UM brings
(34:08):
up in the United States free speech issues because you
are paying for this UM and you're displaying it on
your car. It's like you are saying this that's automatically
protected by the First Amendment. But it's a little fuzzy
chuck because the state is issuing this thing that you're
saying whatever you want to say on and in some
(34:30):
way you're repping them as well, or they're repped on
the license plate, so they may or may not want
to be associated with whatever you're saying. Yeah, and when
it's come to the courts, they have generally sided with people,
uh like ed gave the example there was a license
plate issue in North Carolina that said white power w
(34:50):
y T E DASH. I guess p w r R
P w E R p O w r oh. It
was the full the full word, so you know, uh,
free speech ehaw uh. And courts generally generally side with uh.
And I think when it becomes um, dirty words and stuff,
(35:10):
as they get a little more involved, yeah, definitely can't
do things like that. But I don't know, it's interesting, so, um,
there's there. I saw. It goes both ways. They don't necessarily,
as a rule, you know, side with the the individual.
Like there was a woman in I want to say
New Hampshire or Vermont maybe, and in the nineties I
(35:30):
think she, um, she requested s h T hp N
S the second part is happens, and her whole thing
was like she had it as just a reminder she
went through a really terrible year and she had it
as a reminder that, like, you know, this stuff happens,
you just kind of get through it or whatever. And
the state was like, no, those first three letters are dirty.
(35:51):
And I think the Supreme Court ruled in the state's favor.
They're like, yep, that's dirty, can't have it. And she
was like, this is so like think about context and
nuance eyes and they were like no, and she could
not have her s h T hp N S license plate.
I wonder if anyone has s Y s K fan
(36:12):
oh man that that's if they do. I want to
hear about it, because mine says s Y s K
host and mine says s Y s K h s
T right uh, and Jerry says me so nice man. Um, No,
of course mine doesn't say that, but it's funny. I do.
(36:34):
I did have, and I think I mentioned this on
on an episode at some point. One of my pickup
truck that I still have has six six six accident,
which I thought was kind of funny. Sure, yeah, I don't.
I'm sure they would give you six six six if
you wanted it. But it's way funnier when it's accidental
six six six or l S T. Those accidental ones
(36:56):
are hilarious. Yeah. It is interesting though, the question of
what is allowed, um, because I could see some like
religious conservatives saying they don't want someone to be able
to say Hail Satan on their plate. Uh, But I mean, truly,
that's free speech, Like the courts would decide on the
favor of the car owner in that case. I would
(37:18):
think so because it's free speech and that you're just
saying what you want to say. But it's also religion.
You can certainly make an argument, and I could see them.
I could see the state being like, Okay, fine, you know,
I think it tends to be like you said, where
it's a foul word according to the state, and or
like a straight up like straight up hate speech or
(37:40):
a racial slur or something like that. Sadly, in the
United States, some people try to get license plates that
have racial slurs and they tend to be like out
of hand and eyed, and I don't really think a
court would would side with that person. I now have
a new goal in life. I just realized, I want
to get an old uh an old full side is
(38:00):
woody station wagon from the sixties or seventies, and I
want the license plate to say Hale st n w
g N to b g N, not Hale Satan Hale
station wagon. Oh nice, but it looks like Hale station
Hale Satan. I'm so bad at that. Um I would
be like Hale stand wang. So that happened to me
(38:22):
in l a lot. I would be like, I don't
even know what that means. Yeah, No, I'm with you.
That's a very uncle you mean is actually really good
at it. And she admitted last night that it was
because she practiced so much as a kid. Because there
was a game show on I think in the eighties
called like Bumper Busters or bumper Buddies, and the whole
game show is you guessing what a license plate says.
(38:45):
I'm not kidding, that was it. I just kept waiting
for like the next round to come up, and Nope,
that was all they did. That's really funny. Yeah. And also,
while we're on at Chuck, just real quick, I gotta
shout out, um that Medium article that I was talking about, Um,
the never ending free speech fight over vanity license plates
by Zara Stone. All right, how about we take a break. Well,
(39:10):
I'll dream up a couple of more great vanity plates.
Even though hail station Wagon. I think I just came
up with something. Breakin. It's wonderful, and we'll talk about
whiskey plates and who makes these things right after this. Well,
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck it.
(39:30):
You should know all right, all right, I mentioned whiskey
plates before we took a break, and whiskey plates have
(39:50):
nothing to do with whiskey or the whiskey industry. Uh.
It is because W is whiskey in the NATO alphabet,
and they just call them whiskey plates in Minnesota. But
there is an interesting tie in that you get a
W at the front of your license plate if you
have been uh if basically you've had your is it
(40:13):
your license revoked because of a d U? I? Yeah,
but they revoke it so hard. They take your license
plates too, right, But they can't take your car because
other people in your family might need to drive that car.
So what they do is they give you a plate
with the W at the beginning that basically tells everybody, Hey,
I have had my license plate revoked because of drunken driving. Yeah,
(40:34):
and UM Minnesota is not the only UM state to
do this. Ohio has their own one, and they, they,
I guess, very un ironically use scarlet letters or there's
no joke. I have family members with that. Do you
really know why that? That's amazing? So apparently judges weren't
using them as much as they they as much as
(40:56):
the legislature wanted. So the legislature changed the law, saying
judges had to use them um for I think starting
in the two thousand teens. So yeah, I guess you're
probably seeing a lot more scarlet letters on cars in
Ohio these days. Yeah. I didn't know what it was.
And this is uh. I don't want to be too specific,
but when I was in Ohio visiting Emily's family, I
(41:17):
remember walking up the driveway to a family function and
I think my father in law was like, check it out. Look,
he's got the scarlet letter, Uncle, glug glug exactly. Yeah.
I wanted to ask about it, and I but I
was confused whether I shoot or not after that rope
injury story that I failed to ask you about. So
(41:37):
now I'm like all shaky and nervous all the time
mentioned stories. I'm like, should I ask God on um? So.
Another thing that's happened over the years is people have
gotten themselves into trouble for being a little too clever
for their own good by having a license plate that
says no tags or no plates or something like that.
(41:57):
Because when a cop files a report for a car
that doesn't have license plate. This is generally what they
would write, no plate or no tags, so it gets
filed as you know, a violator, and then all of
a sudden you're getting pulled over. And this is you know,
verifiably happened before. There was a case in the late
seventies of a guy who got um a lot of
fines because of stuff that he didn't do, because he
(42:20):
was like, I got a no plates vanity plate. Okay,
so I want to I want to defend this guy,
Robert barber Um. He did have a no plates vanity plate,
but it was accidental because he was applying for vanity
plates and you have to put your three your top
three choices. He wanted boating, sailing, and then if these
two weren't available, he didn't want a vanity plate, so
(42:42):
he unwisely wrote no plates DMV totally humorouss always looking
out for dirty words. Just great, this guy wants to
no plates license plate. Let's give it to him. Yeah, well,
of course, what was it boating and sailing? That's not
gonna be on there. He I guess he was just
rolling the dice. Jimmy Christopher Cross owns those in every
(43:03):
stage he does very famously. So um. Also, chuck. There's
a long standing rumor that I think we should put
to rest that um prison inmates in the United States
make the license plates in this country. True false, it's false.
Well no, I was about to say myth or busted. Uh,
(43:25):
and I combined false and myth. So I think I
just kind of coined a new term. You don't have
to say false or myth anymore. You can just say
false it is true. Actually, um, And I don't I
don't think I crossed the board. But a lot of
times prison inmates still do make license plates. And uh,
you know, it's part of the the sort of um,
(43:47):
little to no wage labor system that the prisons take
advantage of in this country. Yeah, so um. Thanks to
the thirteenth Amendment, you cannot enslave a person unless they're
being jailed for a crime. So most licensed plays, I
believe it is most chuck um are produced in the
United States by slave labor incarcerated prisoners. Um. And because
(44:09):
you can't say, well, I'm gonna fire you, and you're
not gonna get any wages because you're not paying them anyway,
they coerce them into working in other ways, like like
removing their ability to see family, maybe putting them in
solitary um, basically punishing them if they won't work for free.
And that's how the United States gets most of its
license plates. And even worse, it's not just the Bureau
(44:31):
of Prisons running this. They usually contract with an outside
company who uses slave labor legally to produce these license plates,
from which they make a profit that they when they
give them to the state. Yeah, it's a terrible, terrible
thing and it's something that needs to be changed, but
that's not on just about anyone's radar. I think as
(44:52):
far as changing laws goes, well, it became kind of
a joke, like making license plates you're going to jail. Yeah,
especially the ones in New Hampshire where the license plates
they live free or die. Well, speaking of that, um,
and we're not gonna go over the whole process of
how they're made because it's not super interesting. But um,
I looked and there was a thing on Reddit where
(45:14):
a guy went through I think there was a h
or maybe he just did it on its own and
made a map of the states that still have embossed
plates rather than the just sort of printed on aluminum
that we have now in Georgia, arts are not embossed
any longer, even though Jerry Wildest she's got an embossed
plate from like twenty something years ago. Still back to
(45:34):
the podcast and hangs onto it. But uh, from what
I could tell, and I lost count because the picture
was really small. And then other people chimed in after
this was in twenty nineteen then saying like, hey, now
Kansas is not embossed anymore, so it looks like it's
about roughly half and half of states that are still embossing. Uh.
(45:54):
And just one little fun note about this, I did
not know we gotta and I know the Vermonters out
there just waiting. I will not forget about you, because
Vermont is the only state that has d BOSS license plates.
Oh no, it is not raised lettering. It is depressed
depressed in Vermont. Very very cool. So UM, if you
want to kind of take a little nostalgic trip. I
(46:16):
found out by accident, there's a title max um dot
com post. It's called fifty years of license Plates in
the US UM and you can see fifty years of
license plates state by state, and if you choose like
the decade you were a kid and just go, you know,
scroll down. It's like being back on the road again
age ten, and like the back of your parents car.
(46:38):
It's pretty great. Yeah, I mean I remember when they,
as many people do, when they started just including little
logos like the Georgia peach, and it wasn't just the
straight up letters and numbers, and I remember thinking like, wow,
is this is this the future here that we're looking at? Well,
speaking of the future, So they went from embossed or
d embossed too, flat rented UM license plates. Now apparently
(47:03):
there's some disruptors out of Silicon Valley because that's where
they come from, and they've come up with digital license
plates and some states are starting to be like, yep,
you can do that. So for a fee, I think
it's like fourteen dollars a month or two fifty dollars
for four years something like that. This company keeps your
plate up to date. UM you can have it personalized
(47:23):
a little bit, and it looks super cool. You know.
If you especially if you have an electric car, you
could do worse than putting a digital plate on the
back of it. But obviously not everybody has two hundred
fifty bucks for four years. And I think that's in
addition to all of the normal fees that apply for
a license plate too, that's right. Uh. And speaking of fees,
that's something that you would not be able to collect.
(47:45):
But people get really into collecting license plates. Uh. And
there are a couple of different ways. One UM is
a little well, I'm not gonna say that. One is
just collecting license plates, physical license plates, maybe all of
them through history in your state, maybe all of them
throughout the whole country over the years, or just once
you think are super cool. Uh. And you know rare
(48:05):
runs UM, like innycollectible are going to go for a
lot more money. Um. You can also buy big lots
of them on eBay for not much money. But the
big money comes in collecting the actual ownership of a
tag number. Because if you remember earlier we mentioned UM,
license plates in many states started at one and work
(48:25):
their way up. There's a lot of rich people with
way too much money, I guess, way too much that
want to pay a lot of money to have like
eight as their license plate, and they will pay hundreds
of thousands of dollars to get that. Yeah. Apparently in
the states, Delaware is the state that's craziest for this.
There's a real secondary market where yes, people pay six
(48:48):
figures for a license plate number. And it's like, you know,
when you buy a car, the plate gets transferred to you,
so you can continue to keep this plate over and
over again, so you're actually buying it from the person
and use really you you get the car with it,
but you're like, I don't care about the car, I'm
just after the plate. But as crazy as Delaware is
for their plates, um and again, I think seven grand
(49:10):
is the most someone paid for tag number six in Delaware.
Pretty crazy in other countries, especially Dubai, the uae Abu, Dhabi,
Hong Kong. There, it's just insane the amount of money
they spend on on that stuff. I couldn't believe these numbers.
But someone in New York apparently paid twenty million dollars
(49:34):
for a plate that said to New York. Yeah. The
kicker of that one is it came with the nineties
Volvo wagon that it was attached to. I'm not kidding.
Oh was it really Evolva? Somebody paid for a Volvo wagon? Uh?
And then the one in UH and in the Brits
I believe they paid someone in is it Great? Britain?
(49:56):
Is it the UK? Is it? England paid twenty million
bucks for an F one license plate tag. So if
you if you want to get gagged with the spoon,
head on over to Lux Digital with an E after
the X and just read about the most expensive car
tags ever, because you will find little gems like this,
(50:18):
said Abdul Gaffar. Kury paid nine point five million dollars
for one in Abu Dhabi because quote, it's the best number.
And then the Lux Digital says, quote by hanging one
from his fenders, coury boldly let the world know that
he was a man of confidence and prestige. Someone actually
wrote that down and was dead serious about it. Yeah,
(50:41):
it reminds me that I'm number one hat on SNL.
I don't remember that. Oh you don't like Will Ferrell's ad,
like this black tie dinner and he's like showing up
all the other men because he's wearing a mesh backed
I'm number one hat. It's just completely incongruous with everything
he's trying to do, but he's like showing everybody I'm
(51:02):
number one. That's pretty pretty great, pretty great stuff. I
guess one final thing we put a pin in, so
we have to take that pin out or people say
what about the pin? As you mentioned three M making
the reflective plates. Apparently three M continually lobbies politicians to
pass laws making people get license plates more often than
(51:25):
they need to so they can get bigger government contracts
for those reflective plates, reflective backing, and apparently even police
departments are like, we don't need new plates this often.
This is we don't shouldn't have to do this. Yeah,
and three M's like, come on, you're not paying for it.
Your residents are who cares, it's nothing to your residences,
millions of dollars to us, just do it like they
(51:46):
lobby for that, which is gross. In addition to using
enslaved prison labor to create license plates, there are a
lot more tawdry than you'd think at first plans agreed.
Um so turned out to be a really great pick,
Tracy and a j Thank you for the suggestion, Chuck,
thank you for turning this into an absolutely delightful episode,
(52:09):
and thank you for listening. And since I said that, everybody,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. Oh
this is a good one. Uh, this is a little
bit on cultural appropriation because in the Mariachi episode, I
talked about wanting a charro suit and said I would
(52:29):
fear being accused of cultural appropriation, and he said, nay
to that, Nay, uh wear it because people would you know,
you're you're celebrating that culture, and uh, we heard from
a lot of people. Um, and I'm gonna read a
couple of them from our Mexican friends who and I'm
not I'm not patting the results here, but literally our
(52:53):
Mexican listeners roundly said, do it, dude, we love it
and that would be awesome Mexican and Mexican American. Yes,
of course. Um, hey, guys, is a Mexican myself. I
listened to the episodes, Um about our country knowing so
much on the topic, and you guys are always so
spot on. Makes me love the podcast even more. With
(53:15):
the Mariachi episode, I love mariachi music and personally love
singing Vincente Fernandez music, and I want to let check no, chuck, no,
you should definitely dress at least once in that style.
Mexican people love when other ethnicities love their culture and style,
and I would say in Mexico they would even encourage
you to try on a chr os suit. Keep doing
(53:35):
what you're doing. That's from Joel Hernandez. And then we
received one from Jamie Cavazos Cova rubious, great great name.
Actually it's uh, it's himI, okay, right, not Jamie spelled
Ji and right. Mexican came to the US when I
was twenty four years old. I want to congratulate you
on the preparation and pronunciation on the mariachi up. You
(53:58):
guys did a great job, especially rolling those ours with
your Spanish second Chuck. You should wear a mariachi suit
any day and be a champ. I was born and
raised in Mexico, and I feel proud when a person
likes my culture. Makes me happy that someone is interested
in anything regarding the great parts of Mexico, like food, music,
and it's folklore and many other good things. I will
(54:19):
not call it cultural appropriation because I feel joy when
the world likes even a little bit of what I
am and want to keep spreading the beautiful roots from
Mexican culture. Uh. It actually works both ways, guys. Because
I live in the North Alabama area, after seven years,
I probably call myself Southern. Now you can ask any
Mexican person if they feel offended if you wear a
mariachi suit, and I'm confident they will encourage you to
(54:41):
keep doing it. Uh. And then they imi encouraged us
to talk about in the future Mexican trio Romantico music,
which we're gonna look into. Um. And not to poopa
on anyone, but the couple of no one really scolded me,
but the couple of emails that we did get that,
We're like, hey, maybe think to ice, Um, we're from
(55:01):
Caucasian people, Uh, taking up the fight for our Mexican
and Mexican American friends. So just just laying that out there.
Thanks nicely put And who was it in addition to
him whose email you read that would be Joel Hernandez,
Joel Him and Joel thank you so much for writing in.
Everybody who wrote in, thank you very much. Regardless of
(55:24):
what your opinion was, We appreciate it, and we're always
looking for good emails regardless of what your opinion is.
You can wrap it up spanking on the bottom and
send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(55:46):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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