October 27, 2015 • 36 mins
The concept of passports - that people should enjoy protected freedom of movement - is an ancient one. It wasn't until WWI that they became universal. Learn all about this overlooked, important document.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel. This the Autumn
of Noel continues. Yeah, Autumn of Noel. That's a good
(00:24):
album title. I get royalties from it if anyone uses it.
I think that we should entitle this, uh passports Colin
go to sleep now, man. I know this is one
of the ones that gets chalked up in the calm
of well, we've gotta explain everything. Yeah, it's okay. Oh yeah,
(00:47):
I don't want to talk down before we start. But
it's not scentilating. We're supposed to be enticing people with
actually kind of chasing them off. Now, I think this
files under like informational, helpful, informational podcast. There you go.
We're not gonna blow your mind with like the coolest
stories on Earth, but you're going to know how to
get a passport. Yes you are, especially if you live
(01:08):
in the United States. Yeah. Um, all right, Well let's
start with the name Chuck. You know, there's a there's
a a great debate over what passport the word comes from. Yeah,
it depends on whether you are British or a Francophile.
In British it means quite literally what it sounds like.
It's passed. It allows passage through a port, like whereas
(01:30):
ship docks. You come in, you say, here are my papers,
this is a passport. Let me pass if your French
port p r t e means like gate or door,
so you would be allowed passage through like the gates
of a city. Never never been settled. No one knows
exactly which one is correct, but it's probably one of
those two that the word comes from. It's never been
(01:51):
settled because they could arguing about it. Yeah, there's like
it doesn't matter who um, but it does underscore the
fact that passports are quite old. Actually, yeah, you dug
up this article from the Guardian, the Brief History of
the Passport, which um, I thought it was kind of interesting.
The uh back even in Biblical times they had things
(02:12):
that were like passports that obviously didn't call them passports,
but in the Book of Nea Maiah very underrated it. Yeah,
of course I used to have them all memorized. You
had the Book of Nea Maiah. No, no, no, all
the books of the Bible memorized. I can still say
them up through a certain point nice, and then I
(02:34):
just forget and then start shaking. Is neo Maiah involved
included in what you can remember? Uh? No, I think
I go through like judges. Yeah, and then I forget
to do alphabetically. No, I just didn't order I could
start rattling him and off that. I don't think we
need to go there. Uh and Nea Maia though there
(02:54):
was a profit working as the Royal cup bearer and
basically we had to travel to Judah and said I
need some help king so I don't get uh, I
guess drawn and quartered, which they probably didn't even do
back then. Um, so can I get safe passage? And
that was sort of the earliest idea of a government
sort of agency saying, please allow this person to pass
(03:18):
into your town. No molest star, no molestar, don't touch
this guy. Just leave him alone. He's got my protection.
I will bring the full force of my kingdom down
upon you. That's right. This actually ties in with our
episode on Diplomatic Community that they it's basically the same thing. Um.
But so yeah, this idea of of getting some sort
(03:38):
of protection to travel abroad. Um, it's pretty old in
early medieval and then up until late medieval Europe, there
is this idea that people should have a freedom of movement. Right,
King John, the same guy from the Magna Carta he
he Um, was the first to at least in Europe,
(03:58):
to enshrine the idea of freedom of movement. That you
should be able to leave your homeland, go somewhere for
business or pleasure or whatever, and then come back to
your homeland without any real problems. It shouldn't be a
big deal. You shouldn't be trapped in your homeline. You
shouldn't be excluded from your homeline. You should be able
to move back and forth. Yeah, And since then it's
been considered something of a universal human rights, this freedom
(04:21):
of movement. You think so, and in well, in fact,
in the u N's Universal Declaration of Human Rights that
came after World War Two, it's enshrined in there as well.
Freedom of movement. Pretty neat, It is pretty neat. But
part of that is this idea that you have some
sort of papers that says this is a citizen of
our country. Please give them, uh, you know, please treat
(04:44):
them well. And in fact, well I don't know about that,
but at least I'm to come and go right there. Uh.
In fact, in our own US passports still something a
lot of people probably don't even read. There there in
lies the important statement that says that still, like you know,
the please allow the citizen. I don't think it says please,
it says normal les star star. It's very important. Uh
(05:06):
and jolly old England. I thought this was pretty interesting.
From the seventeen nine on the Office of the Secretary
of State took over passport issuance and um, the Home
Office right it just says the Office of Secretary of State.
I think that's the Home Office, okay. Uh, and they
have every passport since sevent still in record. Yeah. It's
(05:29):
pretty awesome yeah, or frightening where you're coming from. I
saw another thing about British passports. Um, the photos have
evolved over time. Like it used to be, they were
just like kid, just make sure you're in the photo.
Like s Arthur Conan Doyle has a photo of himself
with his family and their dog on his old passport. Yeah. Um,
(05:50):
over time those we'll see. There's definitely strict regulations about
what you can and can't use for your passport photo. Yeah.
And also in England, they used to um, British passports
had descriptions as well, so a lot of people didn't
like this. That would have you know, things like you know,
big nose, prominent, eight head, b D eyes, b D eyes.
(06:13):
And eventually they're like, maybe we should just let the
photo do the talking, right. Um. So about the eighteen sixties,
Europe said, you know what, to heck with this, this
is a pain. We don't want to check everybody's papers.
Let's just do away with passports. And they were fine
with that. America went the exact opposite way. Um. Up
(06:33):
until about the Civil War, it was pretty easy to
come and go into the United States without any kind
of papers whatsoever. Um. But then apparently because they were
worried about um, well, they wanted to keep track of
who was coming into America and who was going. And
that's a really good way to do it, is right,
is to require documentation for that kind of international travel.
(06:56):
So America started its passport requirements around then. And then finally,
when World War One came, everybody started using passports. Yeah.
That seemed like the point where the whole world said,
you know, let's really keep track of this. Yeah, and
they used to be pretty cumbersome. I think that the
United States passport was like an eleven by eighteen inch document. Yeah,
(07:17):
that's a biggie. Yeah. This was taken from a book
that you found called The Passport in America by Craig Robertson.
And this dude really did his homework. And um, there
was even a direct quote from somebody in the nineteenth
century that said, no pocket of any sex would tolerate them. No,
they were just too big. Like that was the yelp
review passport. I gave for this in my pocket. Nobody could. Um.
(07:43):
So the came around in the United States dropped it
down to about the standard three by five, and that
became the trend around the world. Um, and uh, there's
your Everything interesting about passports is just coming on. That's
not true that England called There's Old Blue for a
long time. Yeah. Apparently it was very beloved. And then
(08:04):
they moved over to Burgundy and I was like, okay,
old Burgundy. I guess it's fine. Um, all right, should
we take a break here? Why not? All right, let's
take a break and we'll get back to the scintillating
details of passports. All right, we're back with passports. Welcome
(08:43):
back to passport talk. We should do a whole series
of it. Uh So in the US, if you are issued, um,
you're issued a passport from a number of places. Uh
the state department. Well, the state department issues them. Well, yeah,
they get routed through there for sure. Right, you can
apply in different places. So there's twenty seven passport agencies
(09:06):
now in all fifty states. But you don't have to
go to a passport agency. No, you don't unless really quickly.
That's only about a week quicker. It depends though, we'll
talk about we'll get to that. But yeah, most people
just go to the post office. You can go the
post office, you can go to uh a court. Um,
(09:28):
there are other authorities around. If you look up that
you can apply for your passport. You can apply at home,
like print it out yourself. What's the form d A
stroke eleven? I think that is that's the one. So yeah,
you and you can print it out at home. But
the thing is that you're gonna need to if it's
we should say, there's really two big circumstances that will
(09:50):
change all this stuff. If this is your first passport,
you can print it at home all day long. You're
gonna have to go somewhere to show up in person
to apply. They want to see you. They wanted to
verify you are who you are and smell. Yes, they
wanted to take in your your scent um. And uh
so your first passport you have to jump through a
(10:11):
little bit of hoops. We should say, however, this is
not difficult stuff. No, no, and there's really no excuse
whatsoever for you to not have a passport. No, it's
I think when you reach a certain age. Uh, it's
good to have just in case. It's good for ten
years if you're over eighteen and I think sixteen, Yeah, yeah,
(10:35):
I think so. All right, Well, ten years is a
long time, and we'll get into trying to get it
one quick like. But you can save yourself a lot
of money and a lot of trouble and a lot
of stress if you just say, I'll go ahead and
get my passport in case I ever need to leave
the country in a hurry for fun. Uh. And cost
now is um for first time first timers. It's a
(10:59):
hundred and five dollars for an adult, hundred and five
for child. Uh. If you renew your passport, which is
a little bit of a misnumber because they say you
can't renew a passport. You can't renew it, and that
you keep your same passport you get a new one.
But if you have a previous passport, you can't get
(11:20):
it renewed. It'll just be a new one and it's cheaper, right. Yeah.
So the first time you go to apply for a passport,
you're going to fill out the form what is it,
the DS eleven D stroke eleven, and you're going to
take it down there with some proof of identity um,
and you are going to sign it in front of
the person at the post office or the clerk of
(11:41):
court wherever. You don't sign it at home, no, no, um.
And then they're going to take all of your stuff
and then you will get a passport of the mail.
After that, you can fill out a totally different form,
pay less money and just mail your old passport in
and they'll send you a new one, yeah, along with
the old one, which is kind of neat if you
like to keep sake. Yeah, what I can say is
(12:02):
don't tear pages out of your passport as keepsakes, because uh,
I know someone who ended up on a watch list
by doing that. Wow. Family member actually really, yeah, just
want They're like, hey, this was a special trip. Let
me keep this page big no no, yeah, apparently you
could be prosecuted mutilating your passport yescause how do they
(12:24):
put it? So don't worry. They'll mail you back your
old passport if you just want to hang on. And
and I don't know if it's changed. When I was
doing my traveling abroad in the nineties, I didn't even
get stamped in every country, so it's not like I
had a passport full of amazing memorable stamps. I think
about half the country has even bothered stamping it. They
may be more strict on it now. I don't know. Uh,
(12:46):
you always get stamps, I mean here there most of
the time, okay, but not always. Yeah, I've never figured
out what the deal is. Maybe they would or wouldn't
stamp it seems like it literally comes down to like,
do I feel like doing this with my hand? Yeah,
that's seeing pressure I have as well. But I mean
that seems like a serious lack of yeah, you know,
uh standardization maybe sure, yeah, I guess, Yeah, there's there's
(13:12):
something wrong with that, I think. So if you want
to go abroad, um, you should do this a few
months ahead of time, just to take all the stress
out of it. You're gonna get your passport. It usually
takes a couple of weeks, but you don't want to
chance anything. No, no, UM, just normally just using all
the normal channels, going to the post office, not paying
(13:33):
for any kind of expedite service. The State Department estimates
you should get your passport from the time of your
application about four to six weeks. Yeah, but it never
takes that long. But again it shouldn't, but it could.
It could. That's the worst case scenario, which is what
they tell you. So Uncle Chuck will tell you it'll
take a couple of weeks. But again, don't risk that. No.
(13:54):
And there's there's actually a fairly recent history UM shows
us that you you really shouldn't risk it. UM. Back
in two thousand seven, something called the Western Hemisphere Travel
Initiative went into effect. And it used to be that
you could get to Canada and Mexico and parts of
the Caribbean with just your birth certificate and maybe a
(14:15):
driver's license. UM. That was totally fine. That kind of
traveled through North America. UH. In two thousand seven, they
said no, if you're traveling by air, you have to
have a passport, even if you're coming from Mexico or
Canada into the US. If you're traveling by lander by sea,
you need to at least have a passport card, which
(14:35):
they created which is about half price. This caused a
huge run on passports in two thousand seven, and the
backlog suddenly went to like a fifteen week wait, which
was a real headache for a lot of people who
had waited assuming it was going to be four to
six weeks, and all of a sudden it was fifteen weeks. Well,
if your travel was in that time, you're in big
(14:57):
trouble right um, and oh, the State Department is warning
we're about to get to the ten year anniversary of that.
So if your passports coming up for renewal, you may
want to do it sooner than later because that same
backlog is going to come again as people have to
renew after ten years. So if you were a chump before,
don't be a chump twice. Well they'll be prepared to
(15:20):
be a chump again, almost, I guess, or else run
out and do it right now. So the little card
is for first timer's is fifty five for adults and
forty for kids. Uh, which is a lot cheaper and
it fits in your wallet. And I guess if you
are in the U S, you're like, I like to
go to the Caribbean every now and then or Mexico
and that's about it. Um. Yeah, but that's just if
(15:40):
you're going by land or sea. Yeah, if you're flying,
you have to have a passport every single time. You
should say that at least two more times. If you're flying,
you have to have a passport. All right, that's three.
I think I think we got it across. Uh. But
like I said, no, you know yourself. You know what
kind of travel you'd like to do. If you just
say I like to go on the occasion cruise, Okay,
(16:01):
see that gets your little card. Let's see travel that's covered.
I don't want anybody getting the customs being like but
Josh and Chuck said, and that's ruining their vacation. No,
I think we've we've really hammered that. I'm I'm okay,
I'm fine. No, yourself, know your travel style, get the card.
(16:21):
If the card is good for you, get old Blue.
Well we don't call it old blue. The British caller
is old blue though everything it was it burgundy, now
old Burgundy. Um, alright, so we're traveling abroad. By the way,
you have a baby, your baby's gotta have a passport. Yeah,
and I thought there would be some like exemption, but no,
(16:44):
you gotta get your baby photographed. Any live human has
to have a passport, at least in the United States,
but increasingly across the world, like passport laws are are
becoming more and more standardized, you know. All right, So
we talked about a lying in person OBVI, if it's
your first passport, you have to do that. We already
said that. Um, if you lost or had your passport stolen,
(17:09):
you have to go again in person. If your passport
is expired, was issued more than fifteen years ago, you
gotta go again. And by the way, the reason they
I think when you're a kid you have it only
last so long because you change the way you look more,
which makes sense. Yeah, they have no idea what you're
going to grow up to look like. You could look
like a freak and they don't know. So was it
(17:31):
every five years if you're under age sixteen five years?
And hey, if you're getting multiple passports before the age
of fifteen, then lucky you kid. Uh. If your passport
expired was issued when you were under sixteen, you gotta
go in person. Or if your name has changed, then
you gotta go in person. Uh. If your name has
changed and you don't have any kind of legal document
(17:53):
showing change, you can send that in right. Yeah, you
can totally. Um, you can change your name just by
through the mail. Actually, as long as you have a
certified supporting document. Uh. Here's what I thought was interesting.
To prove your identity. Um, if you don't have a
birth a certified birth certificate, you can actually still get
a passport through a letter of no record basically a
(18:15):
letter saying this dude doesn't have a certified birth certificate
for whatever reason. It starts out you're not gonna believe this,
but get this, this guy doesn't have a birth certificate.
I like that they take you know, there's an allowance
for that though, you know, yeah, I think it's necessary. Um.
And this is this is different from like a hospital
(18:37):
birth certificate. The hospital actually reports the birth and then
the the birth is recorded with the city or the county.
That's the birth certificate you want. But if your city
or county lost it or whatever and can't find it,
then they should issue you a letter of no documentation.
That in and of itself isn't going to be enough
for you to necessarily get a passport. Um, you also
(18:59):
want to find other stuff that supports the fact that
you were in fact born. This is a great list.
You know, a census record. Where are you going to
find that? A certificate of circumcision. Yeah, that's one who's
gonna lie about that? Yeah, show them the certificate and
then I guess if they need further proof, you could
the room they're like, please please step around and drop
(19:19):
your pants or no, they wouldn't do that. Baptismal certificate. Now,
if they do do that, you you should get a
free passport and maybe even like like they give you
a state, the state you're in, you just automatically own
it for that, uh, doctor's record of postnatal care. Um.
A family Bible record. I've never heard of that. I
(19:41):
don't I didn't even underline that. You didn't know. That
seems illegitimate, Like a family like you could write anything
in a family Bible? Is that what that means? I think?
So that's some archaics baptismal certificates another one. Uh, then
you want to bring in some proof of I D,
like if your driver's license to her military I D,
government I D. Basically, you want to load up on
(20:03):
anything you can, including a signature I D uh and
say please let me leave the country and come back right.
And there's actually a form called the D S slash
ten a, and it is a form that you can
have a blood relative who's older than It's my favorite thing,
um David saying like, yes, this person was born, I
(20:25):
remember when he or she was born because they're my
favorite niece or nephew. And um, they are who they
say they are. They don't even need to be related.
I really thought it was a blood relative. Now you
just have to know you for two years. Oh that's
a different form. That's the form DS slash seventy one. Oh,
I thought, what's yours again? DS slash ten a. Let's
get it, let's get it straight. But they both do
(20:47):
the same thing. One is a blood relative, and I
think it holds more weight. The D S seventy one
is where somebody who's knowing you for two years says
I vouched for this person. How long did you know Rob,
they've been and yeah, I could have vouched for I guess,
could he vouch for you? I guess yeah. I'm sure
we knew each other for longer than two years. But
I mean, think about it. That's I think that's like
(21:09):
the last resort. It's like this person has been posing
as this person for at least two years? Is what
the form ds slash seventy. He's my neighbor, h showed up.
I know that the older couple who lived in the
house just suddenly didn't live there anymore, and this man did.
He doesn't have an accent. That's weird, all right. So
(21:32):
let's talk about the worst case scenario, which we were
talking about, which is, oh, no, I have to get
to uh Bruges in Belgium tomorrow. Okay, what do you do? Well,
it depends on why you have to get there. If
you have a family member who just fell down and
hit their head, and is that the death doorstep you
(21:54):
have what the state department considers to be a life
and death circumstance. Um, you and go there and say, hey,
this hospital and Bruges just sent me the facts. That's
my is my my brothers medical records and I have
to go and they will work with you. Um, if
you have. If you say, hey, I just thought of
(22:17):
going out of town at the last minute. Um, I
booked a trip for tomorrow for fun because I'm an idiot, right,
so I need a passport. They'll actually work with you. Um.
It's not gonna be fun. No, and and you're gonna
have to jump through hoops. But you can conceivably get
a passport within twenty four hours or less, sometimes the
(22:39):
same day. Yeah. You can go to a private agency
and pay anywhere from hundred and eighty to like three
hundred dollars to get a same day passport. Yes, that's real, right,
it's not like you know the back alley. They should
do it. Um. There's I saw one here in Atlanta.
They have an office, um where for two nine five
(23:00):
dollars you can get a a passport in eight hours
that they'll go get you one. Um. But that is
again if you have If you say just need it
to be renewed or need pages added to it or
something like that, if you have to do it and
it's your first passport, you're gonna have to do it
yourself either way. And actually you can save yourself those
fees by simply making an appointment and going to one
(23:22):
of the regional offices if you're lucky enough to live
in that city, and then you should be able to
get it the same day, as long as you can
prove that you need it within that time and if
you pay the sixty rush fee. Yeah, because if you
hire this private service, you're gonna have to pay all
the normal passport fees, including the rush fee plus there um.
(23:43):
This this private services fees of like three dollars on
top of all of the other feed you'll have to pay. Um.
All right, let's take a break in Let's talk about
the all important passport photo after this. All right, Josh,
(24:22):
this is kind of fun too, because passport photos have
very specific requirements and you would think they would just
be common sense, but you know, some dummy might take
their own passport photo. What you can do with like
Beats headphones and a Braves hat and sunglasses on your
dumb dumb Especially if you mail that off and expect
(24:45):
your passport to come back, you're going to get a
letter of denial. Now. Instead, you have to be facing front.
You want it to be mostly a headshot. It has
to be a two inch by two inch photo. Um,
and you need a duplicate of it, and your head
has to take up one one in three eight inches
of this photo from the bottom of the gins to
the top of the head exactly. You don't want anything
(25:06):
covering your hair or your hair line. You don't want
to be wearing sunglasses. But if say, like you wear
a wig, or you wear glasses, or you wear something
that that is a separate feature on your face, but
you know you normally wear that, you would want to
wear that in the photo. Yeah. They want it to
look as much like you look every day. And that
doesn't mean I wear my last chance garage at No.
(25:28):
You couldn't. You know, you would get to nine. But
I could say I wear this almost every day and
they'd say sorry, and they say, you're a grown man.
For God's sake, while you're wearing a baseball cap. It's
got to be in color these days. I didn't used
to have to be. And they prefer a neutral expression,
although you are allowed a slight smile, a little maybe
(25:49):
a Mona Lisa smile if you're going, like too to
Paris for the Tour de France Finale. So where it
is We'll say, Frances, all right, Uh, you might be
a little excited and smile a little bit, but keep
it to yourself, keep it tamped down forever. Um, or
(26:10):
you can if you don't want to do it yourself. Uh.
You know you're supposed to have a white background or
tan background. You gotta go to Kinko's or someplace, or
just google passport photos. And there's plenty of places that
aren't the photo booth. Yeah, which again, technically, as long
as it fits the criteria, they don't care if you
got it done in a photo booth as long as
you're following all of the standards. But it is a
(26:32):
lot easier for you to go to just the drug
store and say I need passport photos. The person taking
your picture should know what to do. We've already talked
about renewal, but that is DS stroke A T two
if you want to download that sucker. Uh. And again
it is cheaper to renew and as long as you
fit the other requirements, you can just send it, send
it right in and get it replaced, which is great, right. So, um,
(26:56):
if you were to tear open your pastor As of
two thousand six, in the United States, you would, Well,
first of all, you be arrested probably, which is nuts.
But if you go and read page six, it says
that it's property of the U. S. Government. You don't
own it, no, and that if a US authority requests
(27:18):
that you surrender it, you have to surrender it. That's right,
which we'll talk about in a second, because it's kind
of a big deal. But if you tore it up
and you would find um an r F I D
chip that makes your passport's considered an E passport and
that has all sorts of information as a duplicate of
your photo has biometric information about you, and uh, it
(27:39):
makes it a lot harder to travel under a fake
passport or forge a passport than it used to be.
And that's radio frequency identifications what that stands for. And
the U S gets a lot of credit for the
E passport, but it actually was introduced in Malaysia earlier.
And another big feature that makes it difficult to forge, well,
(28:00):
a lot of different features like special inks and different
types of illustrations and threatening and stuff like that, that
was actually introduced by Nicaragua. Yeah, there's apparently it's one
of the most difficult documents to forge in the world. Yeah,
I think it's become the standard. But they they're the
ones who started it. Actually they started the trend. Um
(28:21):
So I said that your passport is technically not yours.
It's basically on loan from the government. This really irks
a lot of people. There's um a couple of laws
that have become proposed recently where UM one is if
you owe the I R. S. Fifty dollars or more,
you can have your passport revoked. Another is if you
(28:43):
owe five thousand dollars or more in child support, you
can have your passport revoked. And another one is if
you have if you're accused of associating with terrorist organizations,
you can have your passport revoked. Well, all three of
those are meeting resist by people who say, hey, man,
like there are ways for you, the U. S. Government
(29:05):
to track all the people you need to track without
revoking passports. We don't like you having that power overtly
written down in law like this is a right that
dates back to the Magna Carta. Um so let's just
lay off of that. The U. S. Government says, shut up,
we own your passports and you, by the way. Um
So there is resistance to it, but I don't know
(29:27):
how how well it's being met. And this program of
revoking passports among um terrorists people associated with terrorist organizations.
Have you read the drone papers from the intercept yet?
So in it they talk about how that's becoming like
a thing, and it suggests that it's a way of
laying the groundwork for assassinations. Yeah, it's like your passports revoked,
(29:52):
your technically not assistant anymore, so you're open for assassination
overseas by like a drone strike or something. So yeah,
so a lot of people are like, let's just leave
the passports alone or save the passports out of this.
You guys are really taking this, this this right and
and provoking it based on like a hundred people in
(30:13):
the whole world and in the whole country. Yeah. Um,
so it's a it's a big thing. Interesting. Yeah, if
you lose your passport while you're abroad, it's no fun. Um.
And that's why they always recommend that you make copies
of your passport and leave with like a family member
at home that will help you get it back quicker
after you fill out DS stroke sixty four. Yeah, and
(30:35):
don't forget to make copies and keep them with you
as well, like setting in your luggage too. That's a
good idea. Uh. And I think what you can get
hooked up at the embassy right whatever country you're in. Yeah,
that's the first place i'd go if I was in trouble.
Oh sure, because that's what they do in the movies.
That's what Matt Damon always does. Did you see the
(30:55):
thing about camouflage passports. This woman named on a Umla
no no, what was her name? Donna Walker? Back in
the eighties, she came up with this idea of camouflage passports.
It's like a fake passport that somebody can have. That
is is it's for a made up country. That sounds uninteresting.
(31:17):
So if a terrorist is looking for Americans to kill
and you show them your East Team or or well
that's the country. Yeah, but like a made up passport
that looks real, they might just pass you by for
you know, somebody else. And uh, it's a real thing.
They've been made an issue and people have made it
out of Kuwait. I think Europeans made it out of
(31:39):
Kuwait using camouflage passports. But it's also really wide open
for you know, fraud, in that kind of that sounds
argo esque, very argo esque. I'm from sea Land. Don't shoot, well,
that's a real place to see land, dud dude didn't
does that see theme? No? I can't. Oh, I think
(32:05):
that was hey man, maybe go ahead? Go ahead? Is
that where we are now? John looks like you're about well, Josh,
you said go ahead, So that listening mail I did.
I thought this was more passport stuff here about treating,
so you don't have anything else? They take it? I don't.
I mean, there's some other nitty gritty stuff. But what
(32:26):
I would recommend as you read the how Stuff Works
article because that's where it all lives, and there are
some more details in there that we didn't reveal, and
you will find that by typing that word in the
search bar how stuff works dot com And I said,
search bar. Now it's time for the go ahead. All right,
all right, this is very special listener mail by the
way from David. Hey, guys, just listen to the Vestigil
(32:49):
Organs episode, and for the first time ever, you hit
a flat note with me. Chuck was talking about receiving
some criticism for joking around about calling men dumb. Josh
seemed to dismiss the idea of anybody and eating to
raise the mantle of men. Uh. It is clear to
me that you were just being funny by deprecating maleness
to shine a light on how great women are. I've
always admired how thoughtful and gentleminely you guys are in
regards to women. So I felt a twinch of pain
(33:12):
at your apathy for the struggle of some men uh
with their gender. And we gotta say, David, we didn't
like you really opened their eyes here. I'm a male.
I am also gay and short and introverted and emotional insensitive.
Um it sounds like me, except I'm straight. As a child,
(33:33):
being mail meant that I couldn't play with the toys
I wanted to. I had a rough, had to rough
alson play football with boys twice my size. As a teenager,
I sat on the sidelines while all my female friends
were going on dates and getting their first kisses from
the boys I secretly liked. Eventually grew out of those problems,
but even today I work in female dominated fields as
an administrative assistant. My bosses are generally men, and I
(33:55):
have missed out on a lot of opportunity because they
often prefer my prettier female colleagues. I've often wondered, UH,
if there's a part of their brain that is concerned
with how they would be perceived working with a male assistant,
Which a good point. Um. I've always wanted to be
a father, and when I looked into a few years
back I looked into it, I was dismayed with the
(34:16):
suspicion and ignorance many people hold for single men who
want to adopt, Uh, which is crazy. That's me talking.
And of course, up until recently, being male prevented me
from marrying the man I love. Being male has been
an obstacle I've had overcome to get everything I have
ever really wanted out of life. Perhaps being male has
(34:36):
made a lot of men's lives easier, but for me
it's been opposite. There's an increasingly wide gender disparity and
academic achievement. Uh. Some devoted fathers suffered from bias family
law that values female parents above male parents, and male
victims of rape and domestic abuse face a lack of
resources and an unsympathetic public. Man, this guy's hitting all
(34:57):
the points. Male privileged doesn't work for all men. I
know you didn't mean anything by the dumb guys comment
was perhaps for two straight guys, was seemingly very happy lives.
It isn't immediately apparent that other guys have you the
advantages and disadvantages of being mailed differently. I hate to
shine a light on this one small thing. These guys
are awesome and do a great job. Uh. Just as
(35:18):
you have alerted me to the complexities of hundreds of
topics in your podcast, I hope you will examine the
complexities of maleness and see that we cannot all be
painted with one wide privileged brush. This is probably one
of the best listener males we've ever gotten. Great, intelligent, uh, insightful,
I mean, change changed just my perspective on things like
(35:40):
I realized that by us saying, like, you know, us
taking the liberty of on behalf of all men, putting
down men in order to boost up women, that we
were that like that in and of itself is the
definition of male privilege, because we were just assuming that
everybody has it as great as we do. And this
guy pointed out that we were wrong. And thank you, David, Seriously,
(36:03):
that is one of the best listener mails we've ever had. Yeah,
thank you. A great way to end a bad podcast.
If you want to see what you got, and you
can try to compete with David's all time great listener mail.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
(36:24):
Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel. This the Autumn
of Noel continues. Yeah, Autumn of Noel. That's a good
(00:24):
album title. I get royalties from it if anyone uses it.
I think that we should entitle this, uh passports Colin
go to sleep now, man. I know this is one
of the ones that gets chalked up in the calm
of well, we've gotta explain everything. Yeah, it's okay. Oh yeah,
(00:47):
I don't want to talk down before we start. But
it's not scentilating. We're supposed to be enticing people with
actually kind of chasing them off. Now, I think this
files under like informational, helpful, informational podcast. There you go.
We're not gonna blow your mind with like the coolest
stories on Earth, but you're going to know how to
get a passport. Yes you are, especially if you live
(01:08):
in the United States. Yeah. Um, all right, Well let's
start with the name Chuck. You know, there's a there's
a a great debate over what passport the word comes from. Yeah,
it depends on whether you are British or a Francophile.
In British it means quite literally what it sounds like.
It's passed. It allows passage through a port, like whereas
(01:30):
ship docks. You come in, you say, here are my papers,
this is a passport. Let me pass if your French
port p r t e means like gate or door,
so you would be allowed passage through like the gates
of a city. Never never been settled. No one knows
exactly which one is correct, but it's probably one of
those two that the word comes from. It's never been
(01:51):
settled because they could arguing about it. Yeah, there's like
it doesn't matter who um, but it does underscore the
fact that passports are quite old. Actually, yeah, you dug
up this article from the Guardian, the Brief History of
the Passport, which um, I thought it was kind of interesting.
The uh back even in Biblical times they had things
(02:12):
that were like passports that obviously didn't call them passports,
but in the Book of Nea Maiah very underrated it. Yeah,
of course I used to have them all memorized. You
had the Book of Nea Maiah. No, no, no, all
the books of the Bible memorized. I can still say
them up through a certain point nice, and then I
(02:34):
just forget and then start shaking. Is neo Maiah involved
included in what you can remember? Uh? No, I think
I go through like judges. Yeah, and then I forget
to do alphabetically. No, I just didn't order I could
start rattling him and off that. I don't think we
need to go there. Uh and Nea Maia though there
(02:54):
was a profit working as the Royal cup bearer and
basically we had to travel to Judah and said I
need some help king so I don't get uh, I
guess drawn and quartered, which they probably didn't even do
back then. Um, so can I get safe passage? And
that was sort of the earliest idea of a government
sort of agency saying, please allow this person to pass
(03:18):
into your town. No molest star, no molestar, don't touch
this guy. Just leave him alone. He's got my protection.
I will bring the full force of my kingdom down
upon you. That's right. This actually ties in with our
episode on Diplomatic Community that they it's basically the same thing. Um.
But so yeah, this idea of of getting some sort
(03:38):
of protection to travel abroad. Um, it's pretty old in
early medieval and then up until late medieval Europe, there
is this idea that people should have a freedom of movement. Right,
King John, the same guy from the Magna Carta he
he Um, was the first to at least in Europe,
(03:58):
to enshrine the idea of freedom of movement. That you
should be able to leave your homeland, go somewhere for
business or pleasure or whatever, and then come back to
your homeland without any real problems. It shouldn't be a
big deal. You shouldn't be trapped in your homeline. You
shouldn't be excluded from your homeline. You should be able
to move back and forth. Yeah, And since then it's
been considered something of a universal human rights, this freedom
(04:21):
of movement. You think so, and in well, in fact,
in the u N's Universal Declaration of Human Rights that
came after World War Two, it's enshrined in there as well.
Freedom of movement. Pretty neat, It is pretty neat. But
part of that is this idea that you have some
sort of papers that says this is a citizen of
our country. Please give them, uh, you know, please treat
(04:44):
them well. And in fact, well I don't know about that,
but at least I'm to come and go right there. Uh.
In fact, in our own US passports still something a
lot of people probably don't even read. There there in
lies the important statement that says that still, like you know,
the please allow the citizen. I don't think it says please,
it says normal les star star. It's very important. Uh
(05:06):
and jolly old England. I thought this was pretty interesting.
From the seventeen nine on the Office of the Secretary
of State took over passport issuance and um, the Home
Office right it just says the Office of Secretary of State.
I think that's the Home Office, okay. Uh, and they
have every passport since sevent still in record. Yeah. It's
(05:29):
pretty awesome yeah, or frightening where you're coming from. I
saw another thing about British passports. Um, the photos have
evolved over time. Like it used to be, they were
just like kid, just make sure you're in the photo.
Like s Arthur Conan Doyle has a photo of himself
with his family and their dog on his old passport. Yeah. Um,
(05:50):
over time those we'll see. There's definitely strict regulations about
what you can and can't use for your passport photo. Yeah.
And also in England, they used to um, British passports
had descriptions as well, so a lot of people didn't
like this. That would have you know, things like you know,
big nose, prominent, eight head, b D eyes, b D eyes.
(06:13):
And eventually they're like, maybe we should just let the
photo do the talking, right. Um. So about the eighteen sixties,
Europe said, you know what, to heck with this, this
is a pain. We don't want to check everybody's papers.
Let's just do away with passports. And they were fine
with that. America went the exact opposite way. Um. Up
(06:33):
until about the Civil War, it was pretty easy to
come and go into the United States without any kind
of papers whatsoever. Um. But then apparently because they were
worried about um, well, they wanted to keep track of
who was coming into America and who was going. And
that's a really good way to do it, is right,
is to require documentation for that kind of international travel.
(06:56):
So America started its passport requirements around then. And then finally,
when World War One came, everybody started using passports. Yeah.
That seemed like the point where the whole world said,
you know, let's really keep track of this. Yeah, and
they used to be pretty cumbersome. I think that the
United States passport was like an eleven by eighteen inch document. Yeah,
(07:17):
that's a biggie. Yeah. This was taken from a book
that you found called The Passport in America by Craig Robertson.
And this dude really did his homework. And um, there
was even a direct quote from somebody in the nineteenth
century that said, no pocket of any sex would tolerate them. No,
they were just too big. Like that was the yelp
review passport. I gave for this in my pocket. Nobody could. Um.
(07:43):
So the came around in the United States dropped it
down to about the standard three by five, and that
became the trend around the world. Um, and uh, there's
your Everything interesting about passports is just coming on. That's
not true that England called There's Old Blue for a
long time. Yeah. Apparently it was very beloved. And then
(08:04):
they moved over to Burgundy and I was like, okay,
old Burgundy. I guess it's fine. Um, all right, should
we take a break here? Why not? All right, let's
take a break and we'll get back to the scintillating
details of passports. All right, we're back with passports. Welcome
(08:43):
back to passport talk. We should do a whole series
of it. Uh So in the US, if you are issued, um,
you're issued a passport from a number of places. Uh
the state department. Well, the state department issues them. Well, yeah,
they get routed through there for sure. Right, you can
apply in different places. So there's twenty seven passport agencies
(09:06):
now in all fifty states. But you don't have to
go to a passport agency. No, you don't unless really quickly.
That's only about a week quicker. It depends though, we'll
talk about we'll get to that. But yeah, most people
just go to the post office. You can go the
post office, you can go to uh a court. Um,
(09:28):
there are other authorities around. If you look up that
you can apply for your passport. You can apply at home,
like print it out yourself. What's the form d A
stroke eleven? I think that is that's the one. So yeah,
you and you can print it out at home. But
the thing is that you're gonna need to if it's
we should say, there's really two big circumstances that will
(09:50):
change all this stuff. If this is your first passport,
you can print it at home all day long. You're
gonna have to go somewhere to show up in person
to apply. They want to see you. They wanted to
verify you are who you are and smell. Yes, they
wanted to take in your your scent um. And uh
so your first passport you have to jump through a
(10:11):
little bit of hoops. We should say, however, this is
not difficult stuff. No, no, and there's really no excuse
whatsoever for you to not have a passport. No, it's
I think when you reach a certain age. Uh, it's
good to have just in case. It's good for ten
years if you're over eighteen and I think sixteen, Yeah, yeah,
(10:35):
I think so. All right, Well, ten years is a
long time, and we'll get into trying to get it
one quick like. But you can save yourself a lot
of money and a lot of trouble and a lot
of stress if you just say, I'll go ahead and
get my passport in case I ever need to leave
the country in a hurry for fun. Uh. And cost
now is um for first time first timers. It's a
(10:59):
hundred and five dollars for an adult, hundred and five
for child. Uh. If you renew your passport, which is
a little bit of a misnumber because they say you
can't renew a passport. You can't renew it, and that
you keep your same passport you get a new one.
But if you have a previous passport, you can't get
(11:20):
it renewed. It'll just be a new one and it's cheaper, right. Yeah.
So the first time you go to apply for a passport,
you're going to fill out the form what is it,
the DS eleven D stroke eleven, and you're going to
take it down there with some proof of identity um,
and you are going to sign it in front of
the person at the post office or the clerk of
(11:41):
court wherever. You don't sign it at home, no, no, um.
And then they're going to take all of your stuff
and then you will get a passport of the mail.
After that, you can fill out a totally different form,
pay less money and just mail your old passport in
and they'll send you a new one, yeah, along with
the old one, which is kind of neat if you
like to keep sake. Yeah, what I can say is
(12:02):
don't tear pages out of your passport as keepsakes, because uh,
I know someone who ended up on a watch list
by doing that. Wow. Family member actually really, yeah, just
want They're like, hey, this was a special trip. Let
me keep this page big no no, yeah, apparently you
could be prosecuted mutilating your passport yescause how do they
(12:24):
put it? So don't worry. They'll mail you back your
old passport if you just want to hang on. And
and I don't know if it's changed. When I was
doing my traveling abroad in the nineties, I didn't even
get stamped in every country, so it's not like I
had a passport full of amazing memorable stamps. I think
about half the country has even bothered stamping it. They
may be more strict on it now. I don't know. Uh,
(12:46):
you always get stamps, I mean here there most of
the time, okay, but not always. Yeah, I've never figured
out what the deal is. Maybe they would or wouldn't
stamp it seems like it literally comes down to like,
do I feel like doing this with my hand? Yeah,
that's seeing pressure I have as well. But I mean
that seems like a serious lack of yeah, you know,
uh standardization maybe sure, yeah, I guess, Yeah, there's there's
(13:12):
something wrong with that, I think. So if you want
to go abroad, um, you should do this a few
months ahead of time, just to take all the stress
out of it. You're gonna get your passport. It usually
takes a couple of weeks, but you don't want to
chance anything. No, no, UM, just normally just using all
the normal channels, going to the post office, not paying
(13:33):
for any kind of expedite service. The State Department estimates
you should get your passport from the time of your
application about four to six weeks. Yeah, but it never
takes that long. But again it shouldn't, but it could.
It could. That's the worst case scenario, which is what
they tell you. So Uncle Chuck will tell you it'll
take a couple of weeks. But again, don't risk that. No.
(13:54):
And there's there's actually a fairly recent history UM shows
us that you you really shouldn't risk it. UM. Back
in two thousand seven, something called the Western Hemisphere Travel
Initiative went into effect. And it used to be that
you could get to Canada and Mexico and parts of
the Caribbean with just your birth certificate and maybe a
(14:15):
driver's license. UM. That was totally fine. That kind of
traveled through North America. UH. In two thousand seven, they
said no, if you're traveling by air, you have to
have a passport, even if you're coming from Mexico or
Canada into the US. If you're traveling by lander by sea,
you need to at least have a passport card, which
(14:35):
they created which is about half price. This caused a
huge run on passports in two thousand seven, and the
backlog suddenly went to like a fifteen week wait, which
was a real headache for a lot of people who
had waited assuming it was going to be four to
six weeks, and all of a sudden it was fifteen weeks. Well,
if your travel was in that time, you're in big
(14:57):
trouble right um, and oh, the State Department is warning
we're about to get to the ten year anniversary of that.
So if your passports coming up for renewal, you may
want to do it sooner than later because that same
backlog is going to come again as people have to
renew after ten years. So if you were a chump before,
don't be a chump twice. Well they'll be prepared to
(15:20):
be a chump again, almost, I guess, or else run
out and do it right now. So the little card
is for first timer's is fifty five for adults and
forty for kids. Uh, which is a lot cheaper and
it fits in your wallet. And I guess if you
are in the U S, you're like, I like to
go to the Caribbean every now and then or Mexico
and that's about it. Um. Yeah, but that's just if
(15:40):
you're going by land or sea. Yeah, if you're flying,
you have to have a passport every single time. You
should say that at least two more times. If you're flying,
you have to have a passport. All right, that's three.
I think I think we got it across. Uh. But
like I said, no, you know yourself. You know what
kind of travel you'd like to do. If you just
say I like to go on the occasion cruise, Okay,
(16:01):
see that gets your little card. Let's see travel that's covered.
I don't want anybody getting the customs being like but
Josh and Chuck said, and that's ruining their vacation. No,
I think we've we've really hammered that. I'm I'm okay,
I'm fine. No, yourself, know your travel style, get the card.
(16:21):
If the card is good for you, get old Blue.
Well we don't call it old blue. The British caller
is old blue though everything it was it burgundy, now
old Burgundy. Um, alright, so we're traveling abroad. By the way,
you have a baby, your baby's gotta have a passport. Yeah,
and I thought there would be some like exemption, but no,
(16:44):
you gotta get your baby photographed. Any live human has
to have a passport, at least in the United States,
but increasingly across the world, like passport laws are are
becoming more and more standardized, you know. All right, So
we talked about a lying in person OBVI, if it's
your first passport, you have to do that. We already
said that. Um, if you lost or had your passport stolen,
(17:09):
you have to go again in person. If your passport
is expired, was issued more than fifteen years ago, you
gotta go again. And by the way, the reason they
I think when you're a kid you have it only
last so long because you change the way you look more,
which makes sense. Yeah, they have no idea what you're
going to grow up to look like. You could look
like a freak and they don't know. So was it
(17:31):
every five years if you're under age sixteen five years?
And hey, if you're getting multiple passports before the age
of fifteen, then lucky you kid. Uh. If your passport
expired was issued when you were under sixteen, you gotta
go in person. Or if your name has changed, then
you gotta go in person. Uh. If your name has
changed and you don't have any kind of legal document
(17:53):
showing change, you can send that in right. Yeah, you
can totally. Um, you can change your name just by
through the mail. Actually, as long as you have a
certified supporting document. Uh. Here's what I thought was interesting.
To prove your identity. Um, if you don't have a
birth a certified birth certificate, you can actually still get
a passport through a letter of no record basically a
(18:15):
letter saying this dude doesn't have a certified birth certificate
for whatever reason. It starts out you're not gonna believe this,
but get this, this guy doesn't have a birth certificate.
I like that they take you know, there's an allowance
for that though, you know, yeah, I think it's necessary. Um.
And this is this is different from like a hospital
(18:37):
birth certificate. The hospital actually reports the birth and then
the the birth is recorded with the city or the county.
That's the birth certificate you want. But if your city
or county lost it or whatever and can't find it,
then they should issue you a letter of no documentation.
That in and of itself isn't going to be enough
for you to necessarily get a passport. Um, you also
(18:59):
want to find other stuff that supports the fact that
you were in fact born. This is a great list.
You know, a census record. Where are you going to
find that? A certificate of circumcision. Yeah, that's one who's
gonna lie about that? Yeah, show them the certificate and
then I guess if they need further proof, you could
the room they're like, please please step around and drop
(19:19):
your pants or no, they wouldn't do that. Baptismal certificate. Now,
if they do do that, you you should get a
free passport and maybe even like like they give you
a state, the state you're in, you just automatically own
it for that, uh, doctor's record of postnatal care. Um.
A family Bible record. I've never heard of that. I
(19:41):
don't I didn't even underline that. You didn't know. That
seems illegitimate, Like a family like you could write anything
in a family Bible? Is that what that means? I think?
So that's some archaics baptismal certificates another one. Uh, then
you want to bring in some proof of I D,
like if your driver's license to her military I D,
government I D. Basically, you want to load up on
(20:03):
anything you can, including a signature I D uh and
say please let me leave the country and come back right.
And there's actually a form called the D S slash
ten a, and it is a form that you can
have a blood relative who's older than It's my favorite thing,
um David saying like, yes, this person was born, I
(20:25):
remember when he or she was born because they're my
favorite niece or nephew. And um, they are who they
say they are. They don't even need to be related.
I really thought it was a blood relative. Now you
just have to know you for two years. Oh that's
a different form. That's the form DS slash seventy one. Oh,
I thought, what's yours again? DS slash ten a. Let's
get it, let's get it straight. But they both do
(20:47):
the same thing. One is a blood relative, and I
think it holds more weight. The D S seventy one
is where somebody who's knowing you for two years says
I vouched for this person. How long did you know Rob,
they've been and yeah, I could have vouched for I guess,
could he vouch for you? I guess yeah. I'm sure
we knew each other for longer than two years. But
I mean, think about it. That's I think that's like
(21:09):
the last resort. It's like this person has been posing
as this person for at least two years? Is what
the form ds slash seventy. He's my neighbor, h showed up.
I know that the older couple who lived in the
house just suddenly didn't live there anymore, and this man did.
He doesn't have an accent. That's weird, all right. So
(21:32):
let's talk about the worst case scenario, which we were
talking about, which is, oh, no, I have to get
to uh Bruges in Belgium tomorrow. Okay, what do you do? Well,
it depends on why you have to get there. If
you have a family member who just fell down and
hit their head, and is that the death doorstep you
(21:54):
have what the state department considers to be a life
and death circumstance. Um, you and go there and say, hey,
this hospital and Bruges just sent me the facts. That's
my is my my brothers medical records and I have
to go and they will work with you. Um, if
you have. If you say, hey, I just thought of
(22:17):
going out of town at the last minute. Um, I
booked a trip for tomorrow for fun because I'm an idiot, right,
so I need a passport. They'll actually work with you. Um.
It's not gonna be fun. No, and and you're gonna
have to jump through hoops. But you can conceivably get
a passport within twenty four hours or less, sometimes the
(22:39):
same day. Yeah. You can go to a private agency
and pay anywhere from hundred and eighty to like three
hundred dollars to get a same day passport. Yes, that's real, right,
it's not like you know the back alley. They should
do it. Um. There's I saw one here in Atlanta.
They have an office, um where for two nine five
(23:00):
dollars you can get a a passport in eight hours
that they'll go get you one. Um. But that is
again if you have If you say just need it
to be renewed or need pages added to it or
something like that, if you have to do it and
it's your first passport, you're gonna have to do it
yourself either way. And actually you can save yourself those
fees by simply making an appointment and going to one
(23:22):
of the regional offices if you're lucky enough to live
in that city, and then you should be able to
get it the same day, as long as you can
prove that you need it within that time and if
you pay the sixty rush fee. Yeah, because if you
hire this private service, you're gonna have to pay all
the normal passport fees, including the rush fee plus there um.
(23:43):
This this private services fees of like three dollars on
top of all of the other feed you'll have to pay. Um.
All right, let's take a break in Let's talk about
the all important passport photo after this. All right, Josh,
(24:22):
this is kind of fun too, because passport photos have
very specific requirements and you would think they would just
be common sense, but you know, some dummy might take
their own passport photo. What you can do with like
Beats headphones and a Braves hat and sunglasses on your
dumb dumb Especially if you mail that off and expect
(24:45):
your passport to come back, you're going to get a
letter of denial. Now. Instead, you have to be facing front.
You want it to be mostly a headshot. It has
to be a two inch by two inch photo. Um,
and you need a duplicate of it, and your head
has to take up one one in three eight inches
of this photo from the bottom of the gins to
the top of the head exactly. You don't want anything
(25:06):
covering your hair or your hair line. You don't want
to be wearing sunglasses. But if say, like you wear
a wig, or you wear glasses, or you wear something
that that is a separate feature on your face, but
you know you normally wear that, you would want to
wear that in the photo. Yeah. They want it to
look as much like you look every day. And that
doesn't mean I wear my last chance garage at No.
(25:28):
You couldn't. You know, you would get to nine. But
I could say I wear this almost every day and
they'd say sorry, and they say, you're a grown man.
For God's sake, while you're wearing a baseball cap. It's
got to be in color these days. I didn't used
to have to be. And they prefer a neutral expression,
although you are allowed a slight smile, a little maybe
(25:49):
a Mona Lisa smile if you're going, like too to
Paris for the Tour de France Finale. So where it
is We'll say, Frances, all right, Uh, you might be
a little excited and smile a little bit, but keep
it to yourself, keep it tamped down forever. Um, or
(26:10):
you can if you don't want to do it yourself. Uh.
You know you're supposed to have a white background or
tan background. You gotta go to Kinko's or someplace, or
just google passport photos. And there's plenty of places that
aren't the photo booth. Yeah, which again, technically, as long
as it fits the criteria, they don't care if you
got it done in a photo booth as long as
you're following all of the standards. But it is a
(26:32):
lot easier for you to go to just the drug
store and say I need passport photos. The person taking
your picture should know what to do. We've already talked
about renewal, but that is DS stroke A T two
if you want to download that sucker. Uh. And again
it is cheaper to renew and as long as you
fit the other requirements, you can just send it, send
it right in and get it replaced, which is great, right. So, um,
(26:56):
if you were to tear open your pastor As of
two thousand six, in the United States, you would, Well,
first of all, you be arrested probably, which is nuts.
But if you go and read page six, it says
that it's property of the U. S. Government. You don't
own it, no, and that if a US authority requests
(27:18):
that you surrender it, you have to surrender it. That's right,
which we'll talk about in a second, because it's kind
of a big deal. But if you tore it up
and you would find um an r F I D
chip that makes your passport's considered an E passport and
that has all sorts of information as a duplicate of
your photo has biometric information about you, and uh, it
(27:39):
makes it a lot harder to travel under a fake
passport or forge a passport than it used to be.
And that's radio frequency identifications what that stands for. And
the U S gets a lot of credit for the
E passport, but it actually was introduced in Malaysia earlier.
And another big feature that makes it difficult to forge, well,
(28:00):
a lot of different features like special inks and different
types of illustrations and threatening and stuff like that, that
was actually introduced by Nicaragua. Yeah, there's apparently it's one
of the most difficult documents to forge in the world. Yeah,
I think it's become the standard. But they they're the
ones who started it. Actually they started the trend. Um
(28:21):
So I said that your passport is technically not yours.
It's basically on loan from the government. This really irks
a lot of people. There's um a couple of laws
that have become proposed recently where UM one is if
you owe the I R. S. Fifty dollars or more,
you can have your passport revoked. Another is if you
(28:43):
owe five thousand dollars or more in child support, you
can have your passport revoked. And another one is if
you have if you're accused of associating with terrorist organizations,
you can have your passport revoked. Well, all three of
those are meeting resist by people who say, hey, man,
like there are ways for you, the U. S. Government
(29:05):
to track all the people you need to track without
revoking passports. We don't like you having that power overtly
written down in law like this is a right that
dates back to the Magna Carta. Um so let's just
lay off of that. The U. S. Government says, shut up,
we own your passports and you, by the way. Um
So there is resistance to it, but I don't know
(29:27):
how how well it's being met. And this program of
revoking passports among um terrorists people associated with terrorist organizations.
Have you read the drone papers from the intercept yet?
So in it they talk about how that's becoming like
a thing, and it suggests that it's a way of
laying the groundwork for assassinations. Yeah, it's like your passports revoked,
(29:52):
your technically not assistant anymore, so you're open for assassination
overseas by like a drone strike or something. So yeah,
so a lot of people are like, let's just leave
the passports alone or save the passports out of this.
You guys are really taking this, this this right and
and provoking it based on like a hundred people in
(30:13):
the whole world and in the whole country. Yeah. Um,
so it's a it's a big thing. Interesting. Yeah, if
you lose your passport while you're abroad, it's no fun. Um.
And that's why they always recommend that you make copies
of your passport and leave with like a family member
at home that will help you get it back quicker
after you fill out DS stroke sixty four. Yeah, and
(30:35):
don't forget to make copies and keep them with you
as well, like setting in your luggage too. That's a
good idea. Uh. And I think what you can get
hooked up at the embassy right whatever country you're in. Yeah,
that's the first place i'd go if I was in trouble.
Oh sure, because that's what they do in the movies.
That's what Matt Damon always does. Did you see the
(30:55):
thing about camouflage passports. This woman named on a Umla
no no, what was her name? Donna Walker? Back in
the eighties, she came up with this idea of camouflage passports.
It's like a fake passport that somebody can have. That
is is it's for a made up country. That sounds uninteresting.
(31:17):
So if a terrorist is looking for Americans to kill
and you show them your East Team or or well
that's the country. Yeah, but like a made up passport
that looks real, they might just pass you by for
you know, somebody else. And uh, it's a real thing.
They've been made an issue and people have made it
out of Kuwait. I think Europeans made it out of
(31:39):
Kuwait using camouflage passports. But it's also really wide open
for you know, fraud, in that kind of that sounds
argo esque, very argo esque. I'm from sea Land. Don't shoot, well,
that's a real place to see land, dud dude didn't
does that see theme? No? I can't. Oh, I think
(32:05):
that was hey man, maybe go ahead? Go ahead? Is
that where we are now? John looks like you're about well, Josh,
you said go ahead, So that listening mail I did.
I thought this was more passport stuff here about treating,
so you don't have anything else? They take it? I don't.
I mean, there's some other nitty gritty stuff. But what
(32:26):
I would recommend as you read the how Stuff Works
article because that's where it all lives, and there are
some more details in there that we didn't reveal, and
you will find that by typing that word in the
search bar how stuff works dot com And I said,
search bar. Now it's time for the go ahead. All right,
all right, this is very special listener mail by the
way from David. Hey, guys, just listen to the Vestigil
(32:49):
Organs episode, and for the first time ever, you hit
a flat note with me. Chuck was talking about receiving
some criticism for joking around about calling men dumb. Josh
seemed to dismiss the idea of anybody and eating to
raise the mantle of men. Uh. It is clear to
me that you were just being funny by deprecating maleness
to shine a light on how great women are. I've
always admired how thoughtful and gentleminely you guys are in
regards to women. So I felt a twinch of pain
(33:12):
at your apathy for the struggle of some men uh
with their gender. And we gotta say, David, we didn't
like you really opened their eyes here. I'm a male.
I am also gay and short and introverted and emotional insensitive.
Um it sounds like me, except I'm straight. As a child,
(33:33):
being mail meant that I couldn't play with the toys
I wanted to. I had a rough, had to rough
alson play football with boys twice my size. As a teenager,
I sat on the sidelines while all my female friends
were going on dates and getting their first kisses from
the boys I secretly liked. Eventually grew out of those problems,
but even today I work in female dominated fields as
an administrative assistant. My bosses are generally men, and I
(33:55):
have missed out on a lot of opportunity because they
often prefer my prettier female colleagues. I've often wondered, UH,
if there's a part of their brain that is concerned
with how they would be perceived working with a male assistant,
Which a good point. Um. I've always wanted to be
a father, and when I looked into a few years
back I looked into it, I was dismayed with the
(34:16):
suspicion and ignorance many people hold for single men who
want to adopt, Uh, which is crazy. That's me talking.
And of course, up until recently, being male prevented me
from marrying the man I love. Being male has been
an obstacle I've had overcome to get everything I have
ever really wanted out of life. Perhaps being male has
(34:36):
made a lot of men's lives easier, but for me
it's been opposite. There's an increasingly wide gender disparity and
academic achievement. Uh. Some devoted fathers suffered from bias family
law that values female parents above male parents, and male
victims of rape and domestic abuse face a lack of
resources and an unsympathetic public. Man, this guy's hitting all
(34:57):
the points. Male privileged doesn't work for all men. I
know you didn't mean anything by the dumb guys comment
was perhaps for two straight guys, was seemingly very happy lives.
It isn't immediately apparent that other guys have you the
advantages and disadvantages of being mailed differently. I hate to
shine a light on this one small thing. These guys
are awesome and do a great job. Uh. Just as
(35:18):
you have alerted me to the complexities of hundreds of
topics in your podcast, I hope you will examine the
complexities of maleness and see that we cannot all be
painted with one wide privileged brush. This is probably one
of the best listener males we've ever gotten. Great, intelligent, uh, insightful,
I mean, change changed just my perspective on things like
(35:40):
I realized that by us saying, like, you know, us
taking the liberty of on behalf of all men, putting
down men in order to boost up women, that we
were that like that in and of itself is the
definition of male privilege, because we were just assuming that
everybody has it as great as we do. And this
guy pointed out that we were wrong. And thank you, David, Seriously,
(36:03):
that is one of the best listener mails we've ever had. Yeah,
thank you. A great way to end a bad podcast.
If you want to see what you got, and you
can try to compete with David's all time great listener mail.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
(36:24):
Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
com
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