September 21, 2021 • 50 mins
Everybody knows mail order marriages are at best a last resort for jerks looking to boss a foreign spouse around or, at worst, a front for human trafficking. Or are they? Yes and no. Mail order marriage comes with nuance and a surprisingly long history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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 Jerry's here too, And this is
stuff you should know about mail order marriages, the murky waters.
(00:25):
Yeah really, Uh yeah, this is one of those where
we researched and researched and read and read, and I
think it's it's one of those deals for me that's
like and this is just my opening statement where it
can be a a positive thing, like a dating service
(00:48):
in some ways, but there is certainly a darker side
to the whole situation. Uh. I already know how you
feel about it, and I feel like it's coming through clearly. Yeah,
I mean, it's just it's very It's one of those
really murky things where sometimes you hear these really great
stories about people that do find are looking for love
(01:10):
and find love with someone from another country and it
works out for everybody, And then sometimes you hear about
stories where it's sort of what the National Organization for
Women's Sonya Sario calls a softer version of human trafficking,
or even worse, occasionally someone turns up murdered. Yeah, that's
(01:32):
I mean, that's the truest dark side. So uh, that's
just me level setting and we can talk about the good,
the bad, and ugly. I think that was a great
level saying. I generally agree with it, But for me,
the jury is still out in thinking about it as
a whole because there's so little hard data on this stuff.
(01:53):
Almost everything is anecdotal, and when like you condemned something
based on anecdotal data, you've got there is a moral hannock,
not necessarily something in in reality. So I'm a little
hesitant to go all the way. The jury is still
out for me, but I definitely recognize the same stuff
you do. For sure. It's definitely there. It exists. It's
just for me, the question is how much does it
(02:13):
exist and does the good outweigh the bad? And I
don't know, So we we should probably like actually define
what we're talking about here, because most people I would
guess are familiar with mail order brides, they're more um
more recently they're they've come to be called mail order
marriages because they've been extended to same sex couples in
the United States. But then also like even more generally
(02:36):
it's called um international marriage brokerage. Right, Yeah. I mean
there's a full industry built around this, with thousands of
websites and agencies that are brokering these marriages. And you know,
from looking into it, it it seems like there are some
really above boardwines that kind of act like uh an
(02:59):
international dating surface in some ways UM where they group
you know, match like people together. And then it seems
like there are a lot of really sketchy ones that
charge people a ton of money and aren't looking out
for the men or the women, And I know that
money is sunk back into making their website. Look at
(03:21):
all nonlu that saw some really really bad websites so
man like comic sans at one point. Yeah, it's hard
to see those and not think, well, A, this is
a scam or b this is a front for some
sort of ceed trafficking operation. Right, yeah, it is tough
not not to think like that. But but what we
(03:43):
are talking about generally is UM A a marriage UM
where the husband and the wife are generally unknown to
each other, maybe have met once, but if they did,
it's possible it was just a day or two before UM.
Or maybe they've met once or twice and have done
(04:03):
some correspondence back and forth for an extended period of time.
But that's pretty new. And and in the classical definitions,
they're generally unknown to one another. Um, and one of
them usually the bride travels a very long distance from
home to move to the husband's home, uh and make
a life there and and be married. Um. That's not
(04:26):
the Webster's definition. There's a lot more stumbling in my definition.
But I think that generally gets it across. Yeah. And
you know, the kind of the classic thing that you
think of is lonely American man who has a little
bit of money in his forties or fifties, can't find
American woman and ends up getting a young, beautiful, young
(04:48):
Ukrainian woman who doesn't speak much English and would love
to live in the United States. Uh, and and fall
in love with an American man. And that's sort of
and you know, of course it happens from all countries,
but a lot of times you think of Russia and
the Ukraine or maybe in Southeast Asia or something like that. Uh.
That is sort of I feel like when people say
(05:10):
that term, most people, that's probably what pops into their head. Yeah,
or I think you're being rather generous. I think a
lot of people would be like, you know, some sad
sack who can't like find a woman in America has
to go look elsewhere to get really judge you about it,
And I think people are really judging about mail order marriages.
I think there's a long standing tradition in the United
(05:31):
States of considering people who who go outside the traditional
channels of marriage and basically take it into their own hands,
like through mail order marriage, are they're they're very much
judged harshly and criticized, maybe maybe fairly, maybe not. But
I think there's another component too, especially these days, is
that the men who who are looking for women for
(05:53):
mail order brides are also dominant, domineering, possibly abusive, and
their look king for docile UH women who will do
whatever they say because they're the husband. So they have
to go to other cultures where that might be more
prevalent and where they can select from women who might
respond to that kind of thing a lot better than
(06:14):
an American woman who wouldn't put up with his guff. Yeah.
I mean, that is certainly a part of what happens sometimes,
and some of these agencies UH promote that the submissive nature. UM.
There was one that literally said that these young women
are quote unspoiled by feminism, and you have potential homemaking
savings of a hundred and fifty dollars a week because
(06:36):
you're essentially getting a you know, sort of a live
in domestic servant. So you know, that's the underbelly in
the dark side. But we you know, I did find
some that do seem very above board, and people that
do genuinely look like they're looking for love and have
struck out at home, so they're looking elsewhere. So I said, Chuck,
and we should also say one other thing to like,
(06:56):
you know, um, it's pretty like it's a pretty well
own thing in America. It's not like on everybody's lips.
You don't hear it in every monologue on the late
night talk shows or anything like that. But like, generally
people in America are familiar and I know about mail
order marriages, but it turns out it's even bigger in
other countries like Taiwan and South Korea have huge mail
(07:20):
order marriage industries. Um that may even dwarf the United States.
And it's pretty I don't want to say it's huge
in the United States, but it's not like just some
small speck of sliver of like arcane group of people
like it's bigger than you think, but it's even bigger
in some other Asian countries as well. Yeah, and Dave
Ruce helped us put this together, and this was a
(07:41):
tough assignment for him, but he used um a lot
of information from a book by a legal professor originally
from University of South Carolina and Marcia's zug called Buying
a Bride insert colon music Jerry and engaging history of
mail order matches, where it seems like she gives a
(08:05):
you know, a fair but fairly full throated defense of
its history through the ages as far as and we'll
get into this, but as far as an opportunity for
a lot of women to gain more agency and to
gain more rights at a time when they might not
have any, all the way up through today, where uh
she still defends it to a certain degree and and says,
(08:29):
you know, like sure, these situations can be bad, but
what's really bad is what undocumented immigrants have to suffer
through in this country because they have no legal rights.
They can't go to the police, they can't leave their
their uh spouse or or their partner for fear of deportation,
and uh, it's an interesting take, I think. And and
(08:52):
I'm glad that Dave found this book, you know, because
I don't. I'm not sure that I would have been
as fair. Yeah, yeah, no, she definitely almost. I get
the impression that she um is defensive on behalf of
the industry just because of how mistreated it's been, in
her opinion, unfairly in large part, yeah, because you know,
(09:12):
I think it very much has an antifeminist rap for
good reason. But she does make some compelling arguments that
throughout history it wasn't that way at all. And I
guess we can go ahead and dive into some of
that in um the early days of male order marriages
in the American colonies, there was a lack of women
problem in the in the early colonies, I mean like
(09:33):
the earliest colonies. We're talking like Jamestown here. Yeah, like
you know, the Puritans and Pilgrims. They may have come
over with their families, but there are a lot of
single men that came over, and a lot of them,
Uh some of them may like run off with an
indigenous woman and live with among her tribe and be like,
you know what, I'm kind of done building things for
(09:54):
James down. I'm out of here. So that's no good
if they're looking for young into like kind of help
build up these young colonies. And then other ones were
just lonely and said, hey, I like, uh, there are
no women over here. What are we supposed to do?
So very early on, uh, they started UM sort of
(10:16):
advertising and bringing uh women, you know, supposedly volunteers over
who wanted to come to the colonies and and sort
of have maybe even more rights than they had back home. Yeah,
And this is a really good example of kind of
like a thread that ran through the first couple of
centuries of America's founding um, which was government sanctioned and
(10:39):
supported UM mail order marriages in order to help build
more stable communities. Right, So, the the UM legislatures did
things like create laws that made it more attractive for
a woman to become a mail order bride in this area,
like um, apparently in England, Uh, if you became a widow,
you you got a third of the estate and that
(11:01):
was it. And in places like Virginia and I think
Maryland as well, they set up laws that basically said, hey,
you're gonna keep a lot more than that. You can
run your own business afterwards, like being a widow's gonna rock.
And did we mention also the men are dropping dead
like flies over here, so yeah, your husband's probably gonna
die pretty quick. So if you don't like them, who cares.
(11:22):
You still get to keep all this inheritance and you
get to keep the business and you can't do quite
that well for yourself. And those circumstances back in England,
so that attracted people. And that was like the government
saying like, please come over here and marry these strangers
that you've never met before. Yeah, and you know, it
made sense for a lot of these young women because
many of them were you know, they were from like
(11:45):
the servant class, let's say, so they were looking at
years of servitude uh in England and then they basically
were like, well, hey, forget all that, why don't you
just come over here get married. And like you said,
I think the status even one in three marriages last
a ten years. So they did kind of sell them
on the fact that yeah, it's not so great, they'll
(12:06):
probably be dead soon enough and then you can have
a stuff. Yeah, and it actually I mean like that
that actually did um like attract some women, I think
at least, uh, I don't. I don't know if we
have the number, but there definitely were what they called
tobacco wives who came to marry new tobacco planters who
(12:26):
were setting up their own fortune. And I actually had
to prove that they were a financial means by donating
a hundred and fifty pounds of gold leaf tobacco to
the Virginia Company to to take part in this right
and so UM that that lasted as long as it lasted,
or as long as it needed to. And as the
Eastern colonies started to like become more self sufficient, um
(12:48):
became less rowdy, became more family oriented. As far as
the Europeans were concerned. Um, the the need for like
those mail order schemes, UM kind of went away. But
then as America kind of expanded further and further west,
the frontier kept recreating itself in different places. So you know, UM,
(13:10):
it went from the Eastern colonies to you know, along
the Mississippi, and then further and further out west. And
every time it did that, this new iteration of the
frontier was settled by rowdy men, and they would have
to figure out a way to get women to attract
women to come out to marry the rowdy men so
they would stop beating each other up in bar fights
and and become more productive citizens. And that kept going
(13:32):
on throughout the the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the
United States. Yeah, and you know, if you're already thinking, guys,
this this already sounds terrible, these marriages based on these
financial arrangements, and you know, despite these promises of a
better life, like that's kind of what we're talking about,
like welcome to marriage in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
(13:55):
Don't be so naive. Yeah, that's not that's kind of
what it was. And and've made a good point like
the notion of marrying for true love. That's a very
much like a twentieth century proposition, even if it wasn't
a male order bride situation, it was someone's dowry or
or parents sort of arranging marriages and saying these family,
(14:17):
this family should marry this family, which still goes on today.
I should point out among like the blue chip in
the high society, like and Arthur had to marry Susan.
You know, let's not forget that everybody with a Habsburg
Jaw was an arranged marriage. He could marry Liza Manelli.
I didn't realize you were making the movie reference. I
(14:38):
thought you were Arthur and Susan. I thought you were
using like Biff and Muffy, like general Jenual Arthur and yeah, yeah,
I got it. Now I got it. But the point
is is that marriage was a financial arrangement many and
most times back then. I'm not saying no one ever
married because they were in love. I'm sure that happened, Uh,
(14:58):
but it had to take a lot boxes back then.
So it was just sort of the way it was.
And so this solved problems for early settlers and for
westward expanders. Uh. They made things really attractive in California
for women. They made it easier to divorce your husband
if you wanted to. Uh. They made it easier to
or just legal to own and sell, buy and sell land,
(15:22):
which is not something you could do at other places
in the country. So they were trying to make it
an attractive situation for women to move west because they
needed men and women out there. And uh, I think
the between eighteen fifty and eighteen sixty, the the population
of women in California increased from three percent to nine
(15:43):
percent of the total population. So it was working. Yeah,
it was. And it wasn't just California, but um, Washington
State also participated. I think Oregon may have as well. Um.
And there would be there these schemes, and I don't
mean scheme like you know, like dastardly scheme, with like
a a plan good scheme. Yeah, where like a guy
(16:06):
would go around to the bachelor's out in like Washington
Territory and be like, give me a hundred bucks or
I think three hundred bucks, which is about five grand today, um,
and I will bring you a suitable wife. Um. And
at least one guy did this. ASA Mercer was a
marriage broker and he would go back east say hey,
(16:26):
there's like this great booming economy out west, why don't
you come with me, And like he would return with
like a hundred women and some of them would get
married immediately, some would wait. Um. But it was like
another it was another thing where there was a need
for women, uh, to stabilize it out of control male population. Yeah.
And you know, Zug points out very fairly in her
(16:48):
book that some of these Mercer girls from is they
were called from ASA Mercer's operation became abolitionists. Some became
women's rights advocates and social reformers. One of them's name was, uh,
this great name, Mehitable Haskell Elder uh, And she organized
the Women's Rights Conference in Olympia, Washington, and recruited one
(17:11):
Susan B. Anthony as the territory delicate for the National
Women's Suffrage Association CAN mention. So you know, in a
lot of cases, these women did find agency and they
did get out of a better situation than they were
in back east. Hey, so you want to take a
break and then we'll talk about the probably what was
(17:32):
the real birth of mail order marriages? Sure, Okay, we'll
be right back alright, Chuck. So we've talking to this
(18:00):
point about basically like government sanctioned schemes to kind of
stabilize male populations. There was also, at the same time,
beginning in the nineteenth century, um, I think starting in
England actually in the eighteenth century, that was kind of
simultaneously unfolding, and that was, um the matrimonial advertisement industry,
(18:22):
which to me is like the real birth of the
mail order marriage industry that we understand today. But it
was basically the personal ads. Yeah, it was the birth
of personal ads, the birth of dating services. Uh. It's
really interesting in that, Uh, women would put ads in
London and then later on in the United States, ads
(18:43):
in the paper basically saying you know, hi, this is
who I am, this is what I'm looking for. I mean,
much like you would see these days in like a
dating profile. And it was a way for them to,
you know, to take some agency over avoiding the arranged
marriage that their parents had set up for him and
maybe get a little bit of choice of suitors, right,
And I mean like that is like taking control of
(19:06):
your own um, of your own marriage prospects. And it
was I guess radical is probably a pretty good word.
But it picked up, It caught on um, especially in
the US. By the end of the nineteenth century, it
really started to catch on to where they were like
um magazines that were like dedicated just to matrimonial advertisements. Right,
(19:29):
Like there was the Matrimonial News, which is actually the
most straight ahead of all of them. Yeah, I like
Cupid's Messenger. That sounds like a cute one. What about
heart and Hand, Heart in Hand And then to me
this one. I guess they were just trying to play
it really safe, the standard correspondence club. Right, good day
(19:49):
to you, right exactly. So yeah, so these things were
like kind of popular by the end of the nineteenth century.
But then it's like you said earlier, the by by
the end of the night teenth century the beginning of
the twentieth century, our ideas about what constituted marriage, the
reasons for marriage had transitioned from financial arrangements into love
in America, right, And so there was simultaneously the popularity
(20:14):
of matrimonial advertisements and people taking control of their own
marriage prospects, and at the same time, UM, a criticism
and a uh like society generally looking down upon people
who did that kind of thing. So there would be
stories in the paper of people like sad sack bachelor's
(20:35):
or lonely heart widows getting conned or swindled or getting
fool catfish basically is what you call it today, UM.
And people love to read that kind of stuff and
laugh at their misfortune and look down on these people. UM.
And that that that's where like the root of what
people still do today to the mail order marriage industry,
(20:55):
at least in America. UM really finds its roots in
the in the twentieth tree. Yeah, and this is when
things started transitioning to overseas, when American men started bringing
in women from foreign countries. And that's when I think
that's when it became a bit more of an industry.
And this is when Congress got kind of full on
(21:19):
racist and trying to control this thing, because there was
you know, there were women saying, I don't want these
women coming into our country and disrupting our our feminist
agenda that we're trying to push. There were men saying,
we don't want this, uh people from China or Japan
coming in here, and you know, they can they can
(21:41):
have babies once a year, and they like there were
senators literally saying these things, and so they would enact
laws like, you know, we're gonna be overrun basically, so
they would enact laws, uh, like the Chinese Exclusion Act
of eighteen eighty two UH to to ban Chinese immigration. UH.
There was a loophole for pan with the nineteen o
seven Gentleman's Agreement, which basically said if you that a
(22:06):
Japanese woman uh and and their kids could come over
if they were married. So there were Japanese single men
already in the United States that immigrated over here that
would get married sight unseen from like a catalog basically
to in order to gain immigration status for the Japanese women.
And then that ultimately got shut down in four with
(22:26):
the Immigration Act and they just said no Japanese immigration
of any any kind now after that. So there was
a huge anti Asian thread from the late nineteenth century
in the early twentieth century, um based on immigration, and
a lot of that kind of centered on mail order marriages. UM.
But then uh, one of the other things that that
(22:48):
really kind of cropped up as a result of mail
order marriages going from like women back east or women
coming from Europe, to women coming from Asia U to
marry white American men. Um. Was there there was this
idea that the women were nothing more than like looking
for um, a green card basically American citizenship, trying to
(23:10):
escape their own country. And you run into that criticism today,
I mean just as much as you would have back
in when they passed the the Immigration Act against Japanese people.
Oh yeah, because you know, uh, and this is from
Zug's book. She talks about you know, Mexican women, Greek women,
Asian women, Jewish women, Italian women, they were much more
(23:33):
likely to be deported under an LPC charge, which is
a person that is likely to become a public charge
basically like to come over and sort of live off
the government. Uh. If they were from these countries, in
a way around that was to get married and get
that green card. So that criticism like came pretty straight away,
I think, right. And then the other one is that
(23:55):
that they were basically all just sex workers in disguise,
coming over under the guise of being mail order brides,
but really they were coming over here to prostitute themselves
and behave immorally. Um. And again this is another accusation
that you see today, except the the onus has or
(24:16):
the focus the empathy, I guess has evolved from being
put on society um, being attacked by these immoral women,
to the women themselves being trafficked by international criminals. But
it's still generally the same accusation. It's just been it's
just altered itself some you know what I'm saying, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, um.
(24:40):
And you know that sort of h antifeminist charge from
American women saying that you know, these women from other
countries are coming over here and they they do whatever
their husbands tell them, and this is setting us back. Uh.
They would say the same thing though about war brides.
If you were a soldier in Korea or Vietnam and
brought a men back over, they would have that same
(25:02):
kind of charge levied against them, saying, the only reason
you're bringing these women back is because of the power
imbalance that is now gained. And you know that can
be fair to a certain degree. There's a lot there is.
It's really hard to talk about marriage like this without
(25:22):
talking about uh inequity and a power imbalance from the beginning. Um,
not to say that that doesn't change and that there
aren't great success stories where uh, both partners are equal
and they both contribute and they both you know, respect
one another's viewpoints. But there any time you are in
(25:44):
a situation where you are bringing someone over from another
country that is escaping a bad situation and looking for
a more prosperous situation and you can provide that and
you are paying the money to the service for linking you,
there's a power imbalance there from the beginning. Yeah, well
there's a power imbalance in that. Like you probably don't
speak the language as the mail order bride. You don't
(26:05):
have any friends, you don't have any family, you don't
have any social structure to depend on. The only person
you have to depend on is your husband. He's not
very nice to you or even worse abusive towards you. Um,
you're in You're in big trouble. And then it's also,
like you said, if you are escaping poverty back home,
you might show up with basically no money. And so
(26:25):
if you just found out that this guy is not
always cracked up to be, or he is abusive, or um,
he's actually got a terrible criminal record or terrible credit
or all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't have otherwise
come over for um, you're stuck here. And according to
some human trafficking groups, that is a that is a
broad definition of human trafficking where a person has moved
(26:47):
from one place to another for financial means and then
ends up becoming dependent financially uh in a situation that
they otherwise wouldn't want to be in, they would not
have chosen to put themselves in. That's as much as
trafficking in a broad definition as somebody being kidnapped and
forced into uh sex work. Yeah, and even if there
(27:07):
is no uh, you know, no literal violence or abuse,
that doesn't mean that it's an equitable situation because someone
can essentially be a almost a captive in their own home,
like you said, if they don't speak the language, they
have no advocates, so we here for themselves or friends
to help them and speak up for them. And it's uh,
(27:29):
you can see why it gets a bad rap for sure.
So on the flip side, though, there have to be
men out there who just struck out consistently with America
or American women or men and took matters into their
own hands and looked abroad. And the best way to
do that is a marriage broker, and there's plenty of
(27:51):
places you can do that. Um. And then also the
other problem with just basically characterizing um Millerner Bride's nothing
but like victims right for exploitation is to really miss
the personalities of a lot of them. Where to put
yourself out there is a mail or to bride shows
(28:13):
a UM or demonstrates like a lot of initiative compared
to just staying back home and making do with your
lot in life. Like if you're a widow in some
countries and you have kids, you might not be remarriable,
there might not be anybody who wants to marry you,
and so you're doomed to a life of solitude and
(28:34):
single motherhood, whether you like it or not. So if
you just say, okay, well that's my lot in life,
that's what I'm doing, Okay, fine. But if you say,
you know what, now, there's another way out, and it
might not be the most tasteful thing that I would
have chosen for myself before, but I really want to
make sure my kids are taken care of and I'm
going to go seek husband elsewhere. That shows, that demonstrates
(28:56):
a lot of um self startered nous. I guess that
that UM, I think kind of undermines a lot of
the view of of mail orderprises these kind of like
simple minded docile women um that that can't fend for
themselves or stick up for themselves. Yeah, and you, it's
(29:17):
also a real slippery slope to to judge. I mean, well,
we all think like, oh, it should you should only
fall in love with love at first sight and that
should be all it is, and that should be what
marriage is based on, full stop. It's a real slippery
slope too. Uh, to judge someone other's someone else's situation
(29:38):
if it's working out for both of them. If if
it is a rich old guy in his sixties who
is like, you know what, I want to live out
the last fifteen years of my life, uh, with a partner,
And there's a beautiful young Ukrainian woman who's like, you
know what, I've got nothing going on over here. I
don't have a lot of prospects. My country is not,
you know, doing me any favors. And so I'm gonna
(30:00):
go over and marry some rich guy and we're gonna
be happy for the last fifteen years of his life.
And they travel and they do take cruises and they
have a good time together. Like it's a real slippery
sloped for someone to come in and say, well, no,
that's wrong, because you guys just didn't meet and fall
in love like you know, meeting in a bar drunk
one night, like a like all Americans. Again and again.
(30:23):
That seems to be a long standing criticism that stretches
back at least a century here in America too, for sure. Okay,
so enough of that, enough of that, I feel like
we should talk about some of the nuts and bolts
of um the mail order marriage industry. Okay, yeah, uh,
let's do it. Well, let's start. So I found this
um contemporary journalism um from your c J right uh
(30:50):
in the New York Times, and they basically just checked
in with the mail order marriage industry at the time,
and it gave a really good snapshot of how things
used to be and of the reasons why mail order
brides were called mail order brides, because time was that
you would find a mail order marriage service, you would
subscribe to that service of The New York Times says
(31:11):
anywhere between fifty to five hundred dollars a year um,
and every well that was for a catalog annual subscribe.
And then every month or every couple of months, or
maybe twice a month, probably not twice a month, you
would get a catalog that was clearly made by somebody
who didn't major in catalog making in college of pictures
(31:33):
of the of like a prospective bride, her stats, physical stats,
her likes, her dislikes, that kind of thing. Basically a blurb,
and you were you'd flipped through a catalog and you'd
get back in touch of this subscription service and say
I like number eight eight nine, seven two UM, and
I also like thirty seven fifty five, And you just
(31:55):
give them a list of women that you wanted them
to reach out to on your half, and all of
a sudden you would start exchanging letters. Uh. Little by little,
you would narrow down the women that you were talking to,
and then you would eventually probably go over and meet
one and maybe in that trip marry them, like have
(32:16):
have your wedding like that the day you meet them
or the day after you met them. And that was
pretty standard for the seventies and eighties as far as
mail order goes, and I think into the nineties as well. Yeah,
and of course it's all online now and depending on
which agency you go through, and like I said, there
are thousands. They offer a range of services to you know,
(32:38):
bleed you of as much money as they can in
the process, whether it's subscription fees, or will will write
your letters first letters for you and translate them for
a fee, Or if you want to video chat or
have phone calls, we can arrange that for a fee.
Everything has a fee. I think this one and this
is from an anti trafficking Internet national website article. They
(33:02):
said that estimate show um people spend about six to
ten thou dollars. Each client spends about six to ten
tho dollars. And I think this is for you know,
the I guess more high end, more reputable ones. I
think I think some of those places are happy if
they get like five bucks out of the you end
(33:24):
then you leave. Well. I think you can be like
a skin flint husband um and just do it strictly
online and then go meet them and marry them. But
there are ones that offer like tours for like five
grand um, which depending on the country, may or may
not be legal where you like, if you went to Vietnam,
(33:44):
it would be illegal in Vietnam, mail order um marriages,
the whole industry is illegal, but it's also rampant there
um and they're there are like whole hotels that where
a woman goes and stays and then tours of like
eyes from Taiwan or South Korea or the United States
come through and meet them. Uh. And I think human
(34:07):
trafficking people are like and do god knows what else
for money and um. Then if if you hit it
off with one, maybe you like start talking to them
a little more or you marry them on the spot.
That kind of thing. But there's like there's tours you
can go on, and depending on your view of the
mail order marriage industry, it's either a tour where you're
(34:28):
going and meeting a lot of perspective brides, or it's
basically a sex tour to Vietnam, right. And they also
will do things where it's really hard to not read
as uh, a man sort of buying a woman, where
they say like, well, you know, we'll put them up
in this hotel and we'll have them go checked out
(34:49):
by our doctors and our psychologists to have a psychological evaluation,
and all of this information will be sent to you,
the man with the money, to make your decision on
whether or not you're gonna sort of pay for this bride.
And it's it's really hard to look at that any
other way. Then that like you really got to stretch
your mind. But then you will read a story about
(35:12):
a couple that that are deeply in love for twenty
years on and who had kids in American who had
a great life together. Uh, And and they were like, no,
it was really more like an international dating service. Uh.
And they just sort of match maked um or matchmated,
made matched maked. Uh. So, it's like it's just I
(35:33):
don't know if we've ever had a topic where I
was so like, all right, well this doesn't sound too bad,
and like, oh my god, this sounds terrible. Yeah, I
got you, Yeah I can't. And then maybe the industry,
you know, yeah, I mean I think it can be
both those things. Yeah, it makes you, yes, And it
surely is both of those things. Again, the question is
is one way more than the other, And if so,
(35:55):
which way is a lopside? And if so, do we
need to like follow Vietnam's footsteps and outlaw the marriage
the mail order marriage industry. You know what I'm saying.
It's like that that may be a really big red flag,
like why did Vietnam outlaw in the entire industry that's
totally like fine and legal here in the United States? Right, So, Um,
should we take a break, Yeah, I think we should
(36:15):
take a break in. Um, we'll talk about mail order
marriages in the Internet age because things have changed a
little bit. Yeah, and some of the laws right right,
all right, we'll be right back all right, um really quickly,
(36:50):
this uh the great article I found that from the
Anti Trafficking International site. They did kind of talk a
little bit about what it means for your immigration status
and how because I mentioned earlier that Zug said, you
know who's really at risk or undocumented immigrants because they
have no recourse. Um, but even if you do come
over as a mail order bride, and uh, here here's
(37:13):
basically what happens. The Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendment, which was
enacted in eighty six is basically, the husband will apply
for a spouse or a fiance visa and then the
bride Mary's has to marry the husband within three months
upon arrival in the US. So there's a three month
sort of tried out period. But the bride only has
(37:36):
conditional resident status for two years. So in that two
year period um at the end of which they have
to apply jointly for her permanent status as a resident.
In that conditional two year period, that is the dodgy
territory where they're basically, like the bridest, completely dependent on
the husband. He holds all the cards. Uh, They're very
(37:59):
vulnerable at this point. They may have linguistic isolation or
and or cultural isolation. They may not have that social
network that we're talking about, or be completely economically dependent
on the husband, and they might be afraid that he'll
be like, you know what, it's in that two year frame,
I can still have you sent home, so you better
you better be nice. Uh. And this is basically where
(38:21):
they're saying, this is just sort of a a softer
version of trafficking, even though and there is real trafficking
attached to this, we're not talking about that. We're talking
about women who do come over voluntarily, but they still
see that as a sort of a softer version of
that so um and that power dynamic and the one
where you mentioned where the men were supplied with all
(38:42):
the information where the mail or to bride'shead basically none
about the men. Um that that's changed in the last
few years thanks to the Internet and thanks to things
like video chat and texting and Facebook and Skype, and
now women are able just through the simple tools on
the internet um to to be much more discerning and
(39:06):
discriminating in the men they choose. It's not just like
I'm gonna put myself in a catalog and cross my fingers. Um.
They're they're they're putting themselves out there much more, at
least ones that are are members of legitimate mail order
marriage brokerage is right. Yeah, and there was, uh, there
were very sadly a couple of high profile murders leading
(39:28):
up to the International Marriage broker Regulation Act in two
thousand five. And this is where things really kind of
changed as far as at least trying to help adjust
that power dynamic in that, uh, if you are a
legitimate brokerage agency, you're required to UM provide these women
with a lot of information now about the men, UM
(39:49):
whether or not they're on state or national sex offender registries, UM,
background on their like financials. They're given information on on
domestic violence and like what that looks like, you know,
and how to go to the police and stuff like that,
and that you can do stuff like that UM arrest
history history, marital history, residence history if they have kids,
(40:13):
all kinds of stuff now that these agencies have to
provide about the men for the women. Yeah, And so
people who are like, hey, that's not that's not cool. Man,
if you were an American woman just dating an American man,
you wouldn't have access to that kind of information. That's
truly invasive. It is true. It's also almost basically a
(40:35):
straw man argument because an American woman is not going
to be in the kind of isolated, completely dependent situation
that a mailoorder bride is going to be. And and
so the mailoorder bride needs a lot more safeguards than
just an average American woman is going to need. So
nice try, but that argument doesn't well water at all. Yeah,
(40:58):
I agree. Um, you talked earlier at the beginning about
a lack of data and statistics. They don't even really
know how often this is happening, much less how many
are successful and how many times they end like poorly
or in abuse and things like that. There there are
a few numbers out there. Uh, I think the uh
(41:20):
how do you pronounce that? I want to say? Um
to hear to hear he to Hearing Justice Center. They
estimate between eleven thousand and sixteen thousand women immigrate each
year through a marriage broker. Uh. The I n S
has it more like four to six thousand. Uh, So
you kind of can't really tell how much this is
(41:42):
even going on. So it's really hard to you know,
like you said, if you don't have the data for
for nubes like us, it's kind of hard to form
a hard opinion. Right, But it's not just nubes like
us who don't have the data, Like, no one has
the data, so it's like, you know, no one can
form a hard opinion, and you if in that case,
you have to treat it on like a case by
(42:03):
case basis, and like if you if you have nothing
but anecdotal data or evidence, you can't just say like, yes,
the mail order marriage industry is just a front for
human trafficking and sex trafficking. That's that is a moral
panic that you've just started right there. Um, so we
have to go out and get the data. But at
the same time, that doesn't mean you can't simultaneously offer
(42:27):
support to women who might be suffering from that, Like
what if it turns out to be true, Like yeah,
it's all just a big front for human trafficking, and
these women need help. Roll out the red carpet, like
get those services broadcast, Like figure out how to get
them help if they need it, and see if anybody
comes out of the woodwork. In the meantime, while you're
conducting those studies to come up with that data, one
(42:48):
way or another can't hurt. It's just money, and that's
a pretty good thing to spend money on. If you
ask me. Yeah, I agree. There are some studies that
show spousal abuse rates are about three times higher. But
this is just for immigrant women married to US husbands.
I don't think I think that includes all immigrant women.
I don't think it's just mail order situations. So that's
(43:11):
data that doesn't exactly help UM, but it does shine
a light on that power dynamic as a whole. I
think yeah, And I couldn't I couldn't tell the UM.
Dave mentioned that there were three UM murdered women male
mail order brides in the United States. I think between
two thousand and ten and two thousand twenty maybe, And
if using the high UM the high number that the
(43:35):
uh UM to Hear You Justice Center uses for how
many came over every year, you've got a hundred and
sixty thousand of them. So three murders out of a
hundred and sixty thousand population is I think point eighteen percent.
But out of UM all the women, all the married
women in America, it's like sixty four million married women
(43:57):
UM seventeen thousand, two hundred and fifty on average died,
but we're murdered by their partner in that same time,
which is two point six so I probably got the
math wrong. But if it is right, then that means
you're actually less likely to be murdered by your husband
as a mail order bride than you are just as
an American woman, um who was married and just part
(44:19):
of the general population. So that's great, right of the
stats you can't feel good about, No, exactly, that's a
great That is an excellent point for sure, Chuck. I mean,
I think shines a light that we need to basically
do away with, um spousal murder. I think we can
all get behind that. Yeah, what it is. What it
(44:41):
does though, again, is it makes you I think maybe
let's concentrate on the real problems. And if that's not,
I if the mail order bride situation isn't the real problem,
then we just and we all know this, but we
we have a real domestic violence problem in this country anyway. Yeah,
it's the same thing. What was the last one we
talked about, oh, the inter danger where it was like, oh, no, actually,
(45:02):
your cousin is going to like rape and murder you
way more frequently than just some strangers. But let's all
concentrate on the stranger your your spouse is possibly going
to murder you. But let's ignore that and concentrate on
mail order brides being murdered instead, even if it's just
a much less of a chance, Like that's the that's
(45:23):
the definition of a moral panic, and you've got to
sort those out because they obvius skate important things. Yeah,
and you know at the beginning of the episode you
mentioned l g B t Q rights. Um. That's why
we call it mail order marriages now because with the
Supreme Court striking down parts of the Defensive Marriage Act, uh,
it allowed and there has been a, you know since then,
(45:46):
a sort of a a big time rise in l
g B t Q people UM doing the exact same thing.
And a lot of times these people in other countries
are literally fleeing for their life because they have no
rights in their own country as uh as a person
from that community. So that's one of those where you
look at and you're like, they could literally be saving
(46:09):
someone's life by getting them out of their country over here.
And men do it too. I saw there was a
I was curious about male order husbands and if that
was even a thing. And apparently Ireland in recent years
has got some of this going on where these Irish
Men are putting themselves out there and saying, hey, I'm
a strapping young irish Man and I'm happy to come
(46:32):
marry you and live in your country. Very nice, that's
the thing in Ireland. Did not know that. I had
no idea either, But leave it to Ireland to just
try something new. So good for you, Ireland, Good for you.
Are you got anything else on mail order marriages? I
got nothing else I can take off my roller skates. Now,
this one was it was it was danger at every turn.
(46:53):
I thought you did great. I thought we did great.
It's good. I'm pretty sure. Oh god, I hope. So. Uh.
If you want to know more about mail order marrinces,
go check it out and see what you think for yourself.
Don't take our words for it. Um. And since I
said don't take our words for it, it's time for
listener mail. Uh, listener mail. This is this is a
(47:15):
sad case, so a bit of a trigger warning here,
especially if you've lost a family member to COVID. But
I've had a back and forth with this gentleman and
he really felt strongly about reading this on the air
in the name of getting people vaccinated. Hey, guys, haven't
written in quite some time. Been listening since two thousand eight.
You've been around for so many personal milestones, even though
(47:37):
we've never met, even though I did ask you the
best question ever at your live show in Phoenix. Uh.
My father taught me how to play guitar. I've been
playing for nearly thirty years because of his influence. There's
never been a question of Gibson or Fender in my family.
It's always been clear where a Fender family. He played
a strat and I played a telly. Uh. The last
(47:58):
this last Tuesday, I said good eye to my father.
COVID had done its job and completely overtaken his body.
After he passed. Later that day, I went into my
truck and took a few minutes and decided I needed
some Josh and Chuck to get my mind off of things.
And I was absolutely shocked. On that day Leo Fender
and Les Paul came through in my feed. Uh. My
(48:19):
father and I did not have anything we bonded over
more than our love of music and playing guitar, an
affinity for Fender, and a dislike of all things Gibson. Sorry, Chuck. Uh,
there could not have been more perfect topic to help
me through one of the hardest days of my life.
I look forward to someday when I might be able
to shake your hands after a good hand washing and sanitization,
and just thank you for being with me through so
(48:40):
many good days and so many bad days. And he
included a song that he gave his father that he
wrote for him. It's great and uh, this is from Eddie,
and Eddie said, please read this on the air. He said, Uh,
my mother decided to get vaccinated because of this, and
they were not vaccinated, and he said, just please send
(49:02):
the message out to people that it can happen to
you and your family and just go out there and
get that vaccination already. Thanks for that, Eddie, UM, and
definitely our condolences on your father's passing. I'm really sorry
to hear that, but I'm glad we could bring you
a little measure of comfort at a terrible time. So
thank you for letting us know about that, and also
thank you for telling everybody to get vaccinated, because that's
(49:24):
a pretty good thing to use your position for. UM.
So I think, like Eddie said, go get vaccinated. Yeah,
we said it, Go get vaccinated. Okay, okay, agreed, And
in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
with us, you can send us an email. The Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
(49:45):
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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 Jerry's here too, And this is
stuff you should know about mail order marriages, the murky waters.
(00:25):
Yeah really, Uh yeah, this is one of those where
we researched and researched and read and read, and I
think it's it's one of those deals for me that's
like and this is just my opening statement where it
can be a a positive thing, like a dating service
(00:48):
in some ways, but there is certainly a darker side
to the whole situation. Uh. I already know how you
feel about it, and I feel like it's coming through clearly. Yeah,
I mean, it's just it's very It's one of those
really murky things where sometimes you hear these really great
stories about people that do find are looking for love
(01:10):
and find love with someone from another country and it
works out for everybody, And then sometimes you hear about
stories where it's sort of what the National Organization for
Women's Sonya Sario calls a softer version of human trafficking,
or even worse, occasionally someone turns up murdered. Yeah, that's
(01:32):
I mean, that's the truest dark side. So uh, that's
just me level setting and we can talk about the good,
the bad, and ugly. I think that was a great
level saying. I generally agree with it, But for me,
the jury is still out in thinking about it as
a whole because there's so little hard data on this stuff.
(01:53):
Almost everything is anecdotal, and when like you condemned something
based on anecdotal data, you've got there is a moral hannock,
not necessarily something in in reality. So I'm a little
hesitant to go all the way. The jury is still
out for me, but I definitely recognize the same stuff
you do. For sure. It's definitely there. It exists. It's
just for me, the question is how much does it
(02:13):
exist and does the good outweigh the bad? And I
don't know, So we we should probably like actually define
what we're talking about here, because most people I would
guess are familiar with mail order brides, they're more um
more recently they're they've come to be called mail order
marriages because they've been extended to same sex couples in
the United States. But then also like even more generally
(02:36):
it's called um international marriage brokerage. Right, Yeah. I mean
there's a full industry built around this, with thousands of
websites and agencies that are brokering these marriages. And you know,
from looking into it, it it seems like there are some
really above boardwines that kind of act like uh an
(02:59):
international dating surface in some ways UM where they group
you know, match like people together. And then it seems
like there are a lot of really sketchy ones that
charge people a ton of money and aren't looking out
for the men or the women, And I know that
money is sunk back into making their website. Look at
(03:21):
all nonlu that saw some really really bad websites so
man like comic sans at one point. Yeah, it's hard
to see those and not think, well, A, this is
a scam or b this is a front for some
sort of ceed trafficking operation. Right, yeah, it is tough
not not to think like that. But but what we
(03:43):
are talking about generally is UM A a marriage UM
where the husband and the wife are generally unknown to
each other, maybe have met once, but if they did,
it's possible it was just a day or two before UM.
Or maybe they've met once or twice and have done
(04:03):
some correspondence back and forth for an extended period of time.
But that's pretty new. And and in the classical definitions,
they're generally unknown to one another. Um, and one of
them usually the bride travels a very long distance from
home to move to the husband's home, uh and make
a life there and and be married. Um. That's not
(04:26):
the Webster's definition. There's a lot more stumbling in my definition.
But I think that generally gets it across. Yeah. And
you know, the kind of the classic thing that you
think of is lonely American man who has a little
bit of money in his forties or fifties, can't find
American woman and ends up getting a young, beautiful, young
(04:48):
Ukrainian woman who doesn't speak much English and would love
to live in the United States. Uh, and and fall
in love with an American man. And that's sort of
and you know, of course it happens from all countries,
but a lot of times you think of Russia and
the Ukraine or maybe in Southeast Asia or something like that. Uh.
That is sort of I feel like when people say
(05:10):
that term, most people, that's probably what pops into their head. Yeah,
or I think you're being rather generous. I think a
lot of people would be like, you know, some sad
sack who can't like find a woman in America has
to go look elsewhere to get really judge you about it,
And I think people are really judging about mail order marriages.
I think there's a long standing tradition in the United
(05:31):
States of considering people who who go outside the traditional
channels of marriage and basically take it into their own hands,
like through mail order marriage, are they're they're very much
judged harshly and criticized, maybe maybe fairly, maybe not. But
I think there's another component too, especially these days, is
that the men who who are looking for women for
(05:53):
mail order brides are also dominant, domineering, possibly abusive, and
their look king for docile UH women who will do
whatever they say because they're the husband. So they have
to go to other cultures where that might be more
prevalent and where they can select from women who might
respond to that kind of thing a lot better than
(06:14):
an American woman who wouldn't put up with his guff. Yeah.
I mean, that is certainly a part of what happens sometimes,
and some of these agencies UH promote that the submissive nature. UM.
There was one that literally said that these young women
are quote unspoiled by feminism, and you have potential homemaking
savings of a hundred and fifty dollars a week because
(06:36):
you're essentially getting a you know, sort of a live
in domestic servant. So you know, that's the underbelly in
the dark side. But we you know, I did find
some that do seem very above board, and people that
do genuinely look like they're looking for love and have
struck out at home, so they're looking elsewhere. So I said, Chuck,
and we should also say one other thing to like,
(06:56):
you know, um, it's pretty like it's a pretty well
own thing in America. It's not like on everybody's lips.
You don't hear it in every monologue on the late
night talk shows or anything like that. But like, generally
people in America are familiar and I know about mail
order marriages, but it turns out it's even bigger in
other countries like Taiwan and South Korea have huge mail
(07:20):
order marriage industries. Um that may even dwarf the United States.
And it's pretty I don't want to say it's huge
in the United States, but it's not like just some
small speck of sliver of like arcane group of people
like it's bigger than you think, but it's even bigger
in some other Asian countries as well. Yeah, and Dave
Ruce helped us put this together, and this was a
(07:41):
tough assignment for him, but he used um a lot
of information from a book by a legal professor originally
from University of South Carolina and Marcia's zug called Buying
a Bride insert colon music Jerry and engaging history of
mail order matches, where it seems like she gives a
(08:05):
you know, a fair but fairly full throated defense of
its history through the ages as far as and we'll
get into this, but as far as an opportunity for
a lot of women to gain more agency and to
gain more rights at a time when they might not
have any, all the way up through today, where uh
she still defends it to a certain degree and and says,
(08:29):
you know, like sure, these situations can be bad, but
what's really bad is what undocumented immigrants have to suffer
through in this country because they have no legal rights.
They can't go to the police, they can't leave their
their uh spouse or or their partner for fear of deportation,
and uh, it's an interesting take, I think. And and
(08:52):
I'm glad that Dave found this book, you know, because
I don't. I'm not sure that I would have been
as fair. Yeah, yeah, no, she definitely almost. I get
the impression that she um is defensive on behalf of
the industry just because of how mistreated it's been, in
her opinion, unfairly in large part, yeah, because you know,
(09:12):
I think it very much has an antifeminist rap for
good reason. But she does make some compelling arguments that
throughout history it wasn't that way at all. And I
guess we can go ahead and dive into some of
that in um the early days of male order marriages
in the American colonies, there was a lack of women
problem in the in the early colonies, I mean like
(09:33):
the earliest colonies. We're talking like Jamestown here. Yeah, like
you know, the Puritans and Pilgrims. They may have come
over with their families, but there are a lot of
single men that came over, and a lot of them,
Uh some of them may like run off with an
indigenous woman and live with among her tribe and be like,
you know what, I'm kind of done building things for
(09:54):
James down. I'm out of here. So that's no good
if they're looking for young into like kind of help
build up these young colonies. And then other ones were
just lonely and said, hey, I like, uh, there are
no women over here. What are we supposed to do?
So very early on, uh, they started UM sort of
(10:16):
advertising and bringing uh women, you know, supposedly volunteers over
who wanted to come to the colonies and and sort
of have maybe even more rights than they had back home. Yeah,
And this is a really good example of kind of
like a thread that ran through the first couple of
centuries of America's founding um, which was government sanctioned and
(10:39):
supported UM mail order marriages in order to help build
more stable communities. Right, So, the the UM legislatures did
things like create laws that made it more attractive for
a woman to become a mail order bride in this area,
like um, apparently in England, Uh, if you became a widow,
you you got a third of the estate and that
(11:01):
was it. And in places like Virginia and I think
Maryland as well, they set up laws that basically said, hey,
you're gonna keep a lot more than that. You can
run your own business afterwards, like being a widow's gonna rock.
And did we mention also the men are dropping dead
like flies over here, so yeah, your husband's probably gonna
die pretty quick. So if you don't like them, who cares.
(11:22):
You still get to keep all this inheritance and you
get to keep the business and you can't do quite
that well for yourself. And those circumstances back in England,
so that attracted people. And that was like the government
saying like, please come over here and marry these strangers
that you've never met before. Yeah, and you know, it
made sense for a lot of these young women because
many of them were you know, they were from like
(11:45):
the servant class, let's say, so they were looking at
years of servitude uh in England and then they basically
were like, well, hey, forget all that, why don't you
just come over here get married. And like you said,
I think the status even one in three marriages last
a ten years. So they did kind of sell them
on the fact that yeah, it's not so great, they'll
(12:06):
probably be dead soon enough and then you can have
a stuff. Yeah, and it actually I mean like that
that actually did um like attract some women, I think
at least, uh, I don't. I don't know if we
have the number, but there definitely were what they called
tobacco wives who came to marry new tobacco planters who
(12:26):
were setting up their own fortune. And I actually had
to prove that they were a financial means by donating
a hundred and fifty pounds of gold leaf tobacco to
the Virginia Company to to take part in this right
and so UM that that lasted as long as it lasted,
or as long as it needed to. And as the
Eastern colonies started to like become more self sufficient, um
(12:48):
became less rowdy, became more family oriented. As far as
the Europeans were concerned. Um, the the need for like
those mail order schemes, UM kind of went away. But
then as America kind of expanded further and further west,
the frontier kept recreating itself in different places. So you know, UM,
(13:10):
it went from the Eastern colonies to you know, along
the Mississippi, and then further and further out west. And
every time it did that, this new iteration of the
frontier was settled by rowdy men, and they would have
to figure out a way to get women to attract
women to come out to marry the rowdy men so
they would stop beating each other up in bar fights
and and become more productive citizens. And that kept going
(13:32):
on throughout the the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the
United States. Yeah, and you know, if you're already thinking, guys,
this this already sounds terrible, these marriages based on these
financial arrangements, and you know, despite these promises of a
better life, like that's kind of what we're talking about,
like welcome to marriage in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
(13:55):
Don't be so naive. Yeah, that's not that's kind of
what it was. And and've made a good point like
the notion of marrying for true love. That's a very
much like a twentieth century proposition, even if it wasn't
a male order bride situation, it was someone's dowry or
or parents sort of arranging marriages and saying these family,
(14:17):
this family should marry this family, which still goes on today.
I should point out among like the blue chip in
the high society, like and Arthur had to marry Susan.
You know, let's not forget that everybody with a Habsburg
Jaw was an arranged marriage. He could marry Liza Manelli.
I didn't realize you were making the movie reference. I
(14:38):
thought you were Arthur and Susan. I thought you were
using like Biff and Muffy, like general Jenual Arthur and yeah, yeah,
I got it. Now I got it. But the point
is is that marriage was a financial arrangement many and
most times back then. I'm not saying no one ever
married because they were in love. I'm sure that happened, Uh,
(14:58):
but it had to take a lot boxes back then.
So it was just sort of the way it was.
And so this solved problems for early settlers and for
westward expanders. Uh. They made things really attractive in California
for women. They made it easier to divorce your husband
if you wanted to. Uh. They made it easier to
or just legal to own and sell, buy and sell land,
(15:22):
which is not something you could do at other places
in the country. So they were trying to make it
an attractive situation for women to move west because they
needed men and women out there. And uh, I think
the between eighteen fifty and eighteen sixty, the the population
of women in California increased from three percent to nine
(15:43):
percent of the total population. So it was working. Yeah,
it was. And it wasn't just California, but um, Washington
State also participated. I think Oregon may have as well. Um.
And there would be there these schemes, and I don't
mean scheme like you know, like dastardly scheme, with like
a a plan good scheme. Yeah, where like a guy
(16:06):
would go around to the bachelor's out in like Washington
Territory and be like, give me a hundred bucks or
I think three hundred bucks, which is about five grand today, um,
and I will bring you a suitable wife. Um. And
at least one guy did this. ASA Mercer was a
marriage broker and he would go back east say hey,
(16:26):
there's like this great booming economy out west, why don't
you come with me, And like he would return with
like a hundred women and some of them would get
married immediately, some would wait. Um. But it was like
another it was another thing where there was a need
for women, uh, to stabilize it out of control male population. Yeah.
And you know, Zug points out very fairly in her
(16:48):
book that some of these Mercer girls from is they
were called from ASA Mercer's operation became abolitionists. Some became
women's rights advocates and social reformers. One of them's name was, uh,
this great name, Mehitable Haskell Elder uh, And she organized
the Women's Rights Conference in Olympia, Washington, and recruited one
(17:11):
Susan B. Anthony as the territory delicate for the National
Women's Suffrage Association CAN mention. So you know, in a
lot of cases, these women did find agency and they
did get out of a better situation than they were
in back east. Hey, so you want to take a
break and then we'll talk about the probably what was
(17:32):
the real birth of mail order marriages? Sure, Okay, we'll
be right back alright, Chuck. So we've talking to this
(18:00):
point about basically like government sanctioned schemes to kind of
stabilize male populations. There was also, at the same time,
beginning in the nineteenth century, um, I think starting in
England actually in the eighteenth century, that was kind of
simultaneously unfolding, and that was, um the matrimonial advertisement industry,
(18:22):
which to me is like the real birth of the
mail order marriage industry that we understand today. But it
was basically the personal ads. Yeah, it was the birth
of personal ads, the birth of dating services. Uh. It's
really interesting in that, Uh, women would put ads in
London and then later on in the United States, ads
(18:43):
in the paper basically saying you know, hi, this is
who I am, this is what I'm looking for. I mean,
much like you would see these days in like a
dating profile. And it was a way for them to,
you know, to take some agency over avoiding the arranged
marriage that their parents had set up for him and
maybe get a little bit of choice of suitors, right,
And I mean like that is like taking control of
(19:06):
your own um, of your own marriage prospects. And it
was I guess radical is probably a pretty good word.
But it picked up, It caught on um, especially in
the US. By the end of the nineteenth century, it
really started to catch on to where they were like
um magazines that were like dedicated just to matrimonial advertisements. Right,
(19:29):
Like there was the Matrimonial News, which is actually the
most straight ahead of all of them. Yeah, I like
Cupid's Messenger. That sounds like a cute one. What about
heart and Hand, Heart in Hand And then to me
this one. I guess they were just trying to play
it really safe, the standard correspondence club. Right, good day
(19:49):
to you, right exactly. So yeah, so these things were
like kind of popular by the end of the nineteenth century.
But then it's like you said earlier, the by by
the end of the night teenth century the beginning of
the twentieth century, our ideas about what constituted marriage, the
reasons for marriage had transitioned from financial arrangements into love
in America, right, And so there was simultaneously the popularity
(20:14):
of matrimonial advertisements and people taking control of their own
marriage prospects, and at the same time, UM, a criticism
and a uh like society generally looking down upon people
who did that kind of thing. So there would be
stories in the paper of people like sad sack bachelor's
(20:35):
or lonely heart widows getting conned or swindled or getting
fool catfish basically is what you call it today, UM.
And people love to read that kind of stuff and
laugh at their misfortune and look down on these people. UM.
And that that that's where like the root of what
people still do today to the mail order marriage industry,
(20:55):
at least in America. UM really finds its roots in
the in the twentieth tree. Yeah, and this is when
things started transitioning to overseas, when American men started bringing
in women from foreign countries. And that's when I think
that's when it became a bit more of an industry.
And this is when Congress got kind of full on
(21:19):
racist and trying to control this thing, because there was
you know, there were women saying, I don't want these
women coming into our country and disrupting our our feminist
agenda that we're trying to push. There were men saying,
we don't want this, uh people from China or Japan
coming in here, and you know, they can they can
(21:41):
have babies once a year, and they like there were
senators literally saying these things, and so they would enact
laws like, you know, we're gonna be overrun basically, so
they would enact laws, uh, like the Chinese Exclusion Act
of eighteen eighty two UH to to ban Chinese immigration. UH.
There was a loophole for pan with the nineteen o
seven Gentleman's Agreement, which basically said if you that a
(22:06):
Japanese woman uh and and their kids could come over
if they were married. So there were Japanese single men
already in the United States that immigrated over here that
would get married sight unseen from like a catalog basically
to in order to gain immigration status for the Japanese women.
And then that ultimately got shut down in four with
(22:26):
the Immigration Act and they just said no Japanese immigration
of any any kind now after that. So there was
a huge anti Asian thread from the late nineteenth century
in the early twentieth century, um based on immigration, and
a lot of that kind of centered on mail order marriages. UM.
But then uh, one of the other things that that
(22:48):
really kind of cropped up as a result of mail
order marriages going from like women back east or women
coming from Europe, to women coming from Asia U to
marry white American men. Um. Was there there was this
idea that the women were nothing more than like looking
for um, a green card basically American citizenship, trying to
(23:10):
escape their own country. And you run into that criticism today,
I mean just as much as you would have back
in when they passed the the Immigration Act against Japanese people.
Oh yeah, because you know, uh, and this is from
Zug's book. She talks about you know, Mexican women, Greek women,
Asian women, Jewish women, Italian women, they were much more
(23:33):
likely to be deported under an LPC charge, which is
a person that is likely to become a public charge
basically like to come over and sort of live off
the government. Uh. If they were from these countries, in
a way around that was to get married and get
that green card. So that criticism like came pretty straight away,
I think, right. And then the other one is that
(23:55):
that they were basically all just sex workers in disguise,
coming over under the guise of being mail order brides,
but really they were coming over here to prostitute themselves
and behave immorally. Um. And again this is another accusation
that you see today, except the the onus has or
(24:16):
the focus the empathy, I guess has evolved from being
put on society um, being attacked by these immoral women,
to the women themselves being trafficked by international criminals. But
it's still generally the same accusation. It's just been it's
just altered itself some you know what I'm saying, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, um.
(24:40):
And you know that sort of h antifeminist charge from
American women saying that you know, these women from other
countries are coming over here and they they do whatever
their husbands tell them, and this is setting us back. Uh.
They would say the same thing though about war brides.
If you were a soldier in Korea or Vietnam and
brought a men back over, they would have that same
(25:02):
kind of charge levied against them, saying, the only reason
you're bringing these women back is because of the power
imbalance that is now gained. And you know that can
be fair to a certain degree. There's a lot there is.
It's really hard to talk about marriage like this without
(25:22):
talking about uh inequity and a power imbalance from the beginning. Um,
not to say that that doesn't change and that there
aren't great success stories where uh, both partners are equal
and they both contribute and they both you know, respect
one another's viewpoints. But there any time you are in
(25:44):
a situation where you are bringing someone over from another
country that is escaping a bad situation and looking for
a more prosperous situation and you can provide that and
you are paying the money to the service for linking you,
there's a power imbalance there from the beginning. Yeah, well
there's a power imbalance in that. Like you probably don't
speak the language as the mail order bride. You don't
(26:05):
have any friends, you don't have any family, you don't
have any social structure to depend on. The only person
you have to depend on is your husband. He's not
very nice to you or even worse abusive towards you. Um,
you're in You're in big trouble. And then it's also,
like you said, if you are escaping poverty back home,
you might show up with basically no money. And so
(26:25):
if you just found out that this guy is not
always cracked up to be, or he is abusive, or um,
he's actually got a terrible criminal record or terrible credit
or all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't have otherwise
come over for um, you're stuck here. And according to
some human trafficking groups, that is a that is a
broad definition of human trafficking where a person has moved
(26:47):
from one place to another for financial means and then
ends up becoming dependent financially uh in a situation that
they otherwise wouldn't want to be in, they would not
have chosen to put themselves in. That's as much as
trafficking in a broad definition as somebody being kidnapped and
forced into uh sex work. Yeah, and even if there
(27:07):
is no uh, you know, no literal violence or abuse,
that doesn't mean that it's an equitable situation because someone
can essentially be a almost a captive in their own home,
like you said, if they don't speak the language, they
have no advocates, so we here for themselves or friends
to help them and speak up for them. And it's uh,
(27:29):
you can see why it gets a bad rap for sure.
So on the flip side, though, there have to be
men out there who just struck out consistently with America
or American women or men and took matters into their
own hands and looked abroad. And the best way to
do that is a marriage broker, and there's plenty of
(27:51):
places you can do that. Um. And then also the
other problem with just basically characterizing um Millerner Bride's nothing
but like victims right for exploitation is to really miss
the personalities of a lot of them. Where to put
yourself out there is a mail or to bride shows
(28:13):
a UM or demonstrates like a lot of initiative compared
to just staying back home and making do with your
lot in life. Like if you're a widow in some
countries and you have kids, you might not be remarriable,
there might not be anybody who wants to marry you,
and so you're doomed to a life of solitude and
(28:34):
single motherhood, whether you like it or not. So if
you just say, okay, well that's my lot in life,
that's what I'm doing, Okay, fine. But if you say,
you know what, now, there's another way out, and it
might not be the most tasteful thing that I would
have chosen for myself before, but I really want to
make sure my kids are taken care of and I'm
going to go seek husband elsewhere. That shows, that demonstrates
(28:56):
a lot of um self startered nous. I guess that
that UM, I think kind of undermines a lot of
the view of of mail orderprises these kind of like
simple minded docile women um that that can't fend for
themselves or stick up for themselves. Yeah, and you, it's
(29:17):
also a real slippery slope to to judge. I mean, well,
we all think like, oh, it should you should only
fall in love with love at first sight and that
should be all it is, and that should be what
marriage is based on, full stop. It's a real slippery
slope too. Uh, to judge someone other's someone else's situation
(29:38):
if it's working out for both of them. If if
it is a rich old guy in his sixties who
is like, you know what, I want to live out
the last fifteen years of my life, uh, with a partner,
And there's a beautiful young Ukrainian woman who's like, you
know what, I've got nothing going on over here. I
don't have a lot of prospects. My country is not,
you know, doing me any favors. And so I'm gonna
(30:00):
go over and marry some rich guy and we're gonna
be happy for the last fifteen years of his life.
And they travel and they do take cruises and they
have a good time together. Like it's a real slippery
sloped for someone to come in and say, well, no,
that's wrong, because you guys just didn't meet and fall
in love like you know, meeting in a bar drunk
one night, like a like all Americans. Again and again.
(30:23):
That seems to be a long standing criticism that stretches
back at least a century here in America too, for sure. Okay,
so enough of that, enough of that, I feel like
we should talk about some of the nuts and bolts
of um the mail order marriage industry. Okay, yeah, uh,
let's do it. Well, let's start. So I found this
um contemporary journalism um from your c J right uh
(30:50):
in the New York Times, and they basically just checked
in with the mail order marriage industry at the time,
and it gave a really good snapshot of how things
used to be and of the reasons why mail order
brides were called mail order brides, because time was that
you would find a mail order marriage service, you would
subscribe to that service of The New York Times says
(31:11):
anywhere between fifty to five hundred dollars a year um,
and every well that was for a catalog annual subscribe.
And then every month or every couple of months, or
maybe twice a month, probably not twice a month, you
would get a catalog that was clearly made by somebody
who didn't major in catalog making in college of pictures
(31:33):
of the of like a prospective bride, her stats, physical stats,
her likes, her dislikes, that kind of thing. Basically a blurb,
and you were you'd flipped through a catalog and you'd
get back in touch of this subscription service and say
I like number eight eight nine, seven two UM, and
I also like thirty seven fifty five, And you just
(31:55):
give them a list of women that you wanted them
to reach out to on your half, and all of
a sudden you would start exchanging letters. Uh. Little by little,
you would narrow down the women that you were talking to,
and then you would eventually probably go over and meet
one and maybe in that trip marry them, like have
(32:16):
have your wedding like that the day you meet them
or the day after you met them. And that was
pretty standard for the seventies and eighties as far as
mail order goes, and I think into the nineties as well. Yeah,
and of course it's all online now and depending on
which agency you go through, and like I said, there
are thousands. They offer a range of services to you know,
(32:38):
bleed you of as much money as they can in
the process, whether it's subscription fees, or will will write
your letters first letters for you and translate them for
a fee, Or if you want to video chat or
have phone calls, we can arrange that for a fee.
Everything has a fee. I think this one and this
is from an anti trafficking Internet national website article. They
(33:02):
said that estimate show um people spend about six to
ten thou dollars. Each client spends about six to ten
tho dollars. And I think this is for you know,
the I guess more high end, more reputable ones. I
think I think some of those places are happy if
they get like five bucks out of the you end
(33:24):
then you leave. Well. I think you can be like
a skin flint husband um and just do it strictly
online and then go meet them and marry them. But
there are ones that offer like tours for like five
grand um, which depending on the country, may or may
not be legal where you like, if you went to Vietnam,
(33:44):
it would be illegal in Vietnam, mail order um marriages,
the whole industry is illegal, but it's also rampant there
um and they're there are like whole hotels that where
a woman goes and stays and then tours of like
eyes from Taiwan or South Korea or the United States
come through and meet them. Uh. And I think human
(34:07):
trafficking people are like and do god knows what else
for money and um. Then if if you hit it
off with one, maybe you like start talking to them
a little more or you marry them on the spot.
That kind of thing. But there's like there's tours you
can go on, and depending on your view of the
mail order marriage industry, it's either a tour where you're
(34:28):
going and meeting a lot of perspective brides, or it's
basically a sex tour to Vietnam, right. And they also
will do things where it's really hard to not read
as uh, a man sort of buying a woman, where
they say like, well, you know, we'll put them up
in this hotel and we'll have them go checked out
(34:49):
by our doctors and our psychologists to have a psychological evaluation,
and all of this information will be sent to you,
the man with the money, to make your decision on
whether or not you're gonna sort of pay for this bride.
And it's it's really hard to look at that any
other way. Then that like you really got to stretch
your mind. But then you will read a story about
(35:12):
a couple that that are deeply in love for twenty
years on and who had kids in American who had
a great life together. Uh, And and they were like, no,
it was really more like an international dating service. Uh.
And they just sort of match maked um or matchmated,
made matched maked. Uh. So, it's like it's just I
(35:33):
don't know if we've ever had a topic where I
was so like, all right, well this doesn't sound too bad,
and like, oh my god, this sounds terrible. Yeah, I
got you, Yeah I can't. And then maybe the industry,
you know, yeah, I mean I think it can be
both those things. Yeah, it makes you, yes, And it
surely is both of those things. Again, the question is
is one way more than the other, And if so,
(35:55):
which way is a lopside? And if so, do we
need to like follow Vietnam's footsteps and outlaw the marriage
the mail order marriage industry. You know what I'm saying.
It's like that that may be a really big red flag,
like why did Vietnam outlaw in the entire industry that's
totally like fine and legal here in the United States? Right, So, Um,
should we take a break, Yeah, I think we should
(36:15):
take a break in. Um, we'll talk about mail order
marriages in the Internet age because things have changed a
little bit. Yeah, and some of the laws right right,
all right, we'll be right back all right, um really quickly,
(36:50):
this uh the great article I found that from the
Anti Trafficking International site. They did kind of talk a
little bit about what it means for your immigration status
and how because I mentioned earlier that Zug said, you
know who's really at risk or undocumented immigrants because they
have no recourse. Um, but even if you do come
over as a mail order bride, and uh, here here's
(37:13):
basically what happens. The Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendment, which was
enacted in eighty six is basically, the husband will apply
for a spouse or a fiance visa and then the
bride Mary's has to marry the husband within three months
upon arrival in the US. So there's a three month
sort of tried out period. But the bride only has
(37:36):
conditional resident status for two years. So in that two
year period um at the end of which they have
to apply jointly for her permanent status as a resident.
In that conditional two year period, that is the dodgy
territory where they're basically, like the bridest, completely dependent on
the husband. He holds all the cards. Uh, They're very
(37:59):
vulnerable at this point. They may have linguistic isolation or
and or cultural isolation. They may not have that social
network that we're talking about, or be completely economically dependent
on the husband, and they might be afraid that he'll
be like, you know what, it's in that two year frame,
I can still have you sent home, so you better
you better be nice. Uh. And this is basically where
(38:21):
they're saying, this is just sort of a a softer
version of trafficking, even though and there is real trafficking
attached to this, we're not talking about that. We're talking
about women who do come over voluntarily, but they still
see that as a sort of a softer version of
that so um and that power dynamic and the one
where you mentioned where the men were supplied with all
(38:42):
the information where the mail or to bride'shead basically none
about the men. Um that that's changed in the last
few years thanks to the Internet and thanks to things
like video chat and texting and Facebook and Skype, and
now women are able just through the simple tools on
the internet um to to be much more discerning and
(39:06):
discriminating in the men they choose. It's not just like
I'm gonna put myself in a catalog and cross my fingers. Um.
They're they're they're putting themselves out there much more, at
least ones that are are members of legitimate mail order
marriage brokerage is right. Yeah, and there was, uh, there
were very sadly a couple of high profile murders leading
(39:28):
up to the International Marriage broker Regulation Act in two
thousand five. And this is where things really kind of
changed as far as at least trying to help adjust
that power dynamic in that, uh, if you are a
legitimate brokerage agency, you're required to UM provide these women
with a lot of information now about the men, UM
(39:49):
whether or not they're on state or national sex offender registries, UM,
background on their like financials. They're given information on on
domestic violence and like what that looks like, you know,
and how to go to the police and stuff like that,
and that you can do stuff like that UM arrest
history history, marital history, residence history if they have kids,
(40:13):
all kinds of stuff now that these agencies have to
provide about the men for the women. Yeah, And so
people who are like, hey, that's not that's not cool. Man,
if you were an American woman just dating an American man,
you wouldn't have access to that kind of information. That's
truly invasive. It is true. It's also almost basically a
(40:35):
straw man argument because an American woman is not going
to be in the kind of isolated, completely dependent situation
that a mailoorder bride is going to be. And and
so the mailoorder bride needs a lot more safeguards than
just an average American woman is going to need. So
nice try, but that argument doesn't well water at all. Yeah,
(40:58):
I agree. Um, you talked earlier at the beginning about
a lack of data and statistics. They don't even really
know how often this is happening, much less how many
are successful and how many times they end like poorly
or in abuse and things like that. There there are
a few numbers out there. Uh, I think the uh
(41:20):
how do you pronounce that? I want to say? Um
to hear to hear he to Hearing Justice Center. They
estimate between eleven thousand and sixteen thousand women immigrate each
year through a marriage broker. Uh. The I n S
has it more like four to six thousand. Uh, So
you kind of can't really tell how much this is
(41:42):
even going on. So it's really hard to you know,
like you said, if you don't have the data for
for nubes like us, it's kind of hard to form
a hard opinion. Right, But it's not just nubes like
us who don't have the data, Like, no one has
the data, so it's like, you know, no one can
form a hard opinion, and you if in that case,
you have to treat it on like a case by
(42:03):
case basis, and like if you if you have nothing
but anecdotal data or evidence, you can't just say like, yes,
the mail order marriage industry is just a front for
human trafficking and sex trafficking. That's that is a moral
panic that you've just started right there. Um, so we
have to go out and get the data. But at
the same time, that doesn't mean you can't simultaneously offer
(42:27):
support to women who might be suffering from that, Like
what if it turns out to be true, Like yeah,
it's all just a big front for human trafficking, and
these women need help. Roll out the red carpet, like
get those services broadcast, Like figure out how to get
them help if they need it, and see if anybody
comes out of the woodwork. In the meantime, while you're
conducting those studies to come up with that data, one
(42:48):
way or another can't hurt. It's just money, and that's
a pretty good thing to spend money on. If you
ask me. Yeah, I agree. There are some studies that
show spousal abuse rates are about three times higher. But
this is just for immigrant women married to US husbands.
I don't think I think that includes all immigrant women.
I don't think it's just mail order situations. So that's
(43:11):
data that doesn't exactly help UM, but it does shine
a light on that power dynamic as a whole. I
think yeah, And I couldn't I couldn't tell the UM.
Dave mentioned that there were three UM murdered women male
mail order brides in the United States. I think between
two thousand and ten and two thousand twenty maybe, And
if using the high UM the high number that the
(43:35):
uh UM to Hear You Justice Center uses for how
many came over every year, you've got a hundred and
sixty thousand of them. So three murders out of a
hundred and sixty thousand population is I think point eighteen percent.
But out of UM all the women, all the married
women in America, it's like sixty four million married women
(43:57):
UM seventeen thousand, two hundred and fifty on average died,
but we're murdered by their partner in that same time,
which is two point six so I probably got the
math wrong. But if it is right, then that means
you're actually less likely to be murdered by your husband
as a mail order bride than you are just as
an American woman, um who was married and just part
(44:19):
of the general population. So that's great, right of the
stats you can't feel good about, No, exactly, that's a
great That is an excellent point for sure, Chuck. I mean,
I think shines a light that we need to basically
do away with, um spousal murder. I think we can
all get behind that. Yeah, what it is. What it
(44:41):
does though, again, is it makes you I think maybe
let's concentrate on the real problems. And if that's not,
I if the mail order bride situation isn't the real problem,
then we just and we all know this, but we
we have a real domestic violence problem in this country anyway. Yeah,
it's the same thing. What was the last one we
talked about, oh, the inter danger where it was like, oh, no, actually,
(45:02):
your cousin is going to like rape and murder you
way more frequently than just some strangers. But let's all
concentrate on the stranger your your spouse is possibly going
to murder you. But let's ignore that and concentrate on
mail order brides being murdered instead, even if it's just
a much less of a chance, Like that's the that's
(45:23):
the definition of a moral panic, and you've got to
sort those out because they obvius skate important things. Yeah,
and you know at the beginning of the episode you
mentioned l g B t Q rights. Um. That's why
we call it mail order marriages now because with the
Supreme Court striking down parts of the Defensive Marriage Act, uh,
it allowed and there has been a, you know since then,
(45:46):
a sort of a a big time rise in l
g B t Q people UM doing the exact same thing.
And a lot of times these people in other countries
are literally fleeing for their life because they have no
rights in their own country as uh as a person
from that community. So that's one of those where you
look at and you're like, they could literally be saving
(46:09):
someone's life by getting them out of their country over here.
And men do it too. I saw there was a
I was curious about male order husbands and if that
was even a thing. And apparently Ireland in recent years
has got some of this going on where these Irish
Men are putting themselves out there and saying, hey, I'm
a strapping young irish Man and I'm happy to come
(46:32):
marry you and live in your country. Very nice, that's
the thing in Ireland. Did not know that. I had
no idea either, But leave it to Ireland to just
try something new. So good for you, Ireland, Good for you.
Are you got anything else on mail order marriages? I
got nothing else I can take off my roller skates. Now,
this one was it was it was danger at every turn.
(46:53):
I thought you did great. I thought we did great.
It's good. I'm pretty sure. Oh god, I hope. So. Uh.
If you want to know more about mail order marrinces,
go check it out and see what you think for yourself.
Don't take our words for it. Um. And since I
said don't take our words for it, it's time for
listener mail. Uh, listener mail. This is this is a
(47:15):
sad case, so a bit of a trigger warning here,
especially if you've lost a family member to COVID. But
I've had a back and forth with this gentleman and
he really felt strongly about reading this on the air
in the name of getting people vaccinated. Hey, guys, haven't
written in quite some time. Been listening since two thousand eight.
You've been around for so many personal milestones, even though
(47:37):
we've never met, even though I did ask you the
best question ever at your live show in Phoenix. Uh.
My father taught me how to play guitar. I've been
playing for nearly thirty years because of his influence. There's
never been a question of Gibson or Fender in my family.
It's always been clear where a Fender family. He played
a strat and I played a telly. Uh. The last
(47:58):
this last Tuesday, I said good eye to my father.
COVID had done its job and completely overtaken his body.
After he passed. Later that day, I went into my
truck and took a few minutes and decided I needed
some Josh and Chuck to get my mind off of things.
And I was absolutely shocked. On that day Leo Fender
and Les Paul came through in my feed. Uh. My
(48:19):
father and I did not have anything we bonded over
more than our love of music and playing guitar, an
affinity for Fender, and a dislike of all things Gibson. Sorry, Chuck. Uh,
there could not have been more perfect topic to help
me through one of the hardest days of my life.
I look forward to someday when I might be able
to shake your hands after a good hand washing and sanitization,
and just thank you for being with me through so
(48:40):
many good days and so many bad days. And he
included a song that he gave his father that he
wrote for him. It's great and uh, this is from Eddie,
and Eddie said, please read this on the air. He said, Uh,
my mother decided to get vaccinated because of this, and
they were not vaccinated, and he said, just please send
(49:02):
the message out to people that it can happen to
you and your family and just go out there and
get that vaccination already. Thanks for that, Eddie, UM, and
definitely our condolences on your father's passing. I'm really sorry
to hear that, but I'm glad we could bring you
a little measure of comfort at a terrible time. So
thank you for letting us know about that, and also
thank you for telling everybody to get vaccinated, because that's
(49:24):
a pretty good thing to use your position for. UM.
So I think, like Eddie said, go get vaccinated. Yeah,
we said it, Go get vaccinated. Okay, okay, agreed, And
in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
with us, you can send us an email. The Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
(49:45):
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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