Prohibition: Turns Out That America Loves to Drink

Prohibition was a 13-year period in American history when selling or producing alcohol was illegal. What led to this astonishing development? Why did it end? Josh and Chuck take a look at Prohibition's fascinating history in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from housetof Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. And that makes the Stuff you should know

(00:23):
the podcast the sequel, or it makes it a greasy
Wednesday night on top of a rooftop brewery. Yeah, you
want to do a little recap for everybody? Yeah, let's
do a very brief recap of our trivia night. Pack
it away. I don't remember it. It was awesome. It
was a lot of fun. It was jam packed, overflowing

(00:43):
with people, just like New York was. We had John
and Joe and Dave and everyone had a blast. We
lost again. We were in the lead until the last question,
and I ruined it for everybody if I remember correctly. Yeah,
but you know what, you did not ruin it because
no one had the right answer on our team, thankfully.
That would have been crushing. Do you want to you
want to do this? The question? What was the last question?

(01:04):
The last question was what is the second leading album
of all times sales? Wise second behind three selling album
of all time. And I believe you said Dark Side
of the Moon, which I thought was a really great guess. Uh,
someone else, Joe Randaza said the Eagles greatest hits, another
great guests and both of us were wrong, or both
of you were wrong. But we went with Dark Side

(01:26):
of the Moon, didn't we? Wasn't that our team answer?
I think so? Um, it was a C D C's
back and black. Yeah, and you know what, I somewhere
in my brain, I knew that that was really high
up the list. It didn't come to me, but yeah,
we were in second place. We end up losing on
the last question first and going into the last but
no one wants to see his win. It's no fun

(01:47):
if we're like, yeah, that's what I told Hodgman. He went, no, No,
I want to win and I want to rub it
there face well, get a better team than Hodsman. What
are you doing hanging out with us? It was a
lot of fun though, and thanks to everyone who came
out and hopefully will be coming too a city near you.
We're still trying trying to get that together. Okay, so
while we're doing this, um, I think we need to

(02:08):
let more people know about our Facebook page. I suspect
that there is a small but substantial and by that
I mean really large segment of stuff. You should know.
Listeners who don't necessarily go all the way to listener mail,
don't listen to the whole podcast. That's where the gold is.
We call them s y S listeners. That's right. Um,

(02:29):
so we always talk about our Facebook page there, So
there's it's possible if people out there who don't know
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good for us if you go there and click like,
And it's not only good for us, but it's a
it's a good Facebook page. It is you know, it's
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(02:50):
from our ivory tire everyone and walk around gland hand
people and then like have some people beat up for
amazement and then go back up to our ivory tower. Know.
We we put great music videos on there, and by
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(03:11):
as do most of the people who are on this page.
So go check it out. Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. Yeah, and if you if you click like,
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Lieutenant Rhodes Uh send us an email. You saw this right,
He's saying you can like us, so we still get

(03:32):
the like, which again makes us look good. Um, but
you you you can also select and not receive updates
from whenever we update if you want to feed, so
you won't be bothered by us, and you can come
and check at your leisure, but you could still like
it too. And then Twitter real quick, Chuck, Um, we
are on Twitter and we're at s Y s K podcast. Okay, yes,

(03:55):
all right, so Chuck, this wonderful time that we had
on Wednesday night, Yes, ah, at a brewery. Yeah, there
was one of the darkest periods of American history. There
was a time not too long ago where that could
have never happened, or if it had, we would have
been outlaws. Yeah, it would have been on the We

(04:19):
couldn't have publicized it on a podcast. That would have
been on the down low at a private place. We
would have to just whisper it on the street or
we could have drawn in chalk like speak easy this way.
Sure the s Y s K speak easy trivia night
this way. This dark period in American history is also

(04:39):
referred to as prohibition, also referred to as the Noble
Experiment by some. It was a noble experiment. The reason
why is because the whole reason prohibition was ever enacted,
or largely one of the reasons why, was because we realized,
remember the addiction podcast. Did that come out yet? I
don't think so? Okay, so look real the addiction podcast.

(05:01):
But consider this. It wasn't until about the nineteenth century
that people started talking about um being addicted to alcohol.
An awareness of that there was such thing as alcoholism
came about. When there was there were some really nice
people in the world who said, you know what, since
you can't give it up, we're gonna all of us

(05:21):
are going to give it up together, so you won't
be tempted any longer. Because I mean, consider nowadays, being
an alcoholic and trying to give up alcohol and seeing
it everywhere, it's gotta make it that much harder. So
that the goal of prohibition of this um. The temperance
movement that eventually lead to prohibition was to not tempt

(05:43):
alcoholics any longer. Yeah. You know what's funny too. When
I was reading this, a lot of the reasons, which
we'll get into, they mentioned, are you know that the
alcohol can lead to, um, domestic violence and child abuse,
and Henry Ford said it leads to a lack of
productivity at work. And I was reading all this thinking, yeah,
you know, that a lot of great points, but that
still didn't mean that you should try and prohibit people

(06:06):
from drinking. It was just a bad idea, even though
a lot of the points they had were solid. Of course,
it leads and they remain. If you look at the
Old House Stuff Works employee handbook, one of the things
that says specifically is don't drink at work. I know,
I almost didn't take the job for that reason, but
I did. But no, there were a lot of very
solid points that everybody's kind of realized about alcohol. That, yeah,

(06:31):
it's it's directly connected to physical violence in the home
and outside arrests. Um. Also you know moonings then all
goes up when alcohol is around, right. Um. But as
you were saying, it was a failed noble experiment, It
was a bad idea, but it was one that we
had to learn the hard way, and we've learned much

(06:51):
from it. Right. Sure, Even people that I thought it
was a great idea at the end of the Noble
Experiment said that wasn't such a good idea. I guess
still hate alcohol, but that you just can't do this. Um,
So let's talk about this. From nineteen thirty three, the
United States had on the books an amendment, an amendment

(07:11):
to the Constitution that's huge, and plus it makes this
Congress look ridiculous that they did this. Um. The Eighteenth
Amendment went on the books, was enacted in ninety and
it forbade the sale, manufacturer, and transport of alcohol and importation. Okay,
which transport, Well, no, you can still transport within Like

(07:35):
you couldn't carry it from Kentucky to Georgia, right, nor
imported from Canada to the US. You see what I'm saying.
But you could keep it in your home and you
could drink your face off. Well. The cool thing is too,
is they I believe it was passed and then a
year later is when it went into effect. So they
basically were like, you got a year, right, you can

(07:58):
fill your basement full of booze. Yeah, And we don't know.
I'm not be breaking the law. That's I didn't actually
realize this that it wasn't that you were allowed to
drink at yourself. And did you you didn't get the pictures?
Did you know? There is a haunting photograph on page
zero of this article, the first page. It was taken
in ne and to speakeasy and like the people are

(08:20):
all wearing it looks like the photo and the shining
and there's this one gentleman who's not even necessarily the
focus of the photo and he is just staring out
from nineteen thirty one into your soul. That's a very
creepy pick. That alone is reason enough to go check
out this this photo because he's on the stunt gravy,

(08:42):
the jazz juice, the giggle juice, giggle water. So Josh started.
But we have to go back in time just a
little bit um when it really started century pretty much,
yeah and eight in the eighteen thirties. The idea of
getting rid of alcohol is is when it first started
to pick up from Steam and the temperance movement got going.
Society started springing up, and by the time they actually

(09:05):
had the Federal the Amendment to the Constitution. I believed
there were, um, how many states had already h sixteen
sixteen states had already banned alcohol in some way, so
it was already going on, Chuck this nineteen states of
the towns in America had some sort of ban already

(09:26):
going on. It was a very popular movement, UM And
there are a lot of reasons, but one one reason
is that these people have been doing this for a
century before it finally took place. UM And as early
as eighteen thirty eight, Massachusetts UM created i think the
country's first law against alcohol, where basically they said, you

(09:48):
can buy all the alcohol you want, but it has
to be in no less than this quantity, and that
quantity just so happens to be more than any of
you drunks can afford. So we're de fact though banning
alcohol because we're putting it out of your price range.
The m surprise Massachusetts was one of the early states
because really come around lately. Yeah, because most of the

(10:09):
temperance movement had a lot of support obviously in the
Bible Belt in places like New York and Boston. In
these larger cities, they were kind of like, I'm not
so behind this, right, well, don't forget Massachusetts not too
far before this was burning, which is at the state
as guess it's a good point, right. So that was
eighteen forty six, Maine became the first state to pass
a statewide prohibition law. That makes more sense sure being

(10:33):
Maine teetotal Maine. Yeah. Um. And so this temperance movement's
going on. And remember this is the women were at
the forefront of this movement. In large part. They weren't
they certainly weren't the only ones, but they were, um
at the forefront, not just because that they were, you know,
nagging people. Um, they they actually this is before they

(10:56):
had the right to vote, and prior to having the
right to vote, women figured out, you're not gonna give
us the right to vote. Well, we're gonna learn. We're
gonna be one of the first groups to learn to
organize effectively. Um. And it wasn't just with the temperance movement. Um.
The women women uh basically created this movement alongside the
labor movement in the early twentieth century or nineteenth century,

(11:19):
that was the consumer movement, and they were extremely effective
in promoting consumer rights and they were also really big
into rabble Rousing like Them Committee against the High Cost
of Living in Detroit. That was the name of the committee.
It was a woman's organization UM and they would they

(11:39):
would do basically, they would do everything from consumer education
on the street like you deserve government protection of milk standards,
to um boycotts of local grocers, to actually storming meat
packing plants and pouring kerosene on thousands of pounds of
meat so nobody could buy it. And they had these

(12:00):
really effective campaigns. And the Temperance Movement came about at
the same time at this where women like had to
organize they have their voice her because they didn't have
the right to vote yet they didn't have suffrage. That's right, Josh.
And specifically, the Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed in
eighteen seventy three in Ohio. Uh years before that, eighteen

(12:22):
sixty nine, the Official Prohibition Party was formed because there
are people are like Democrats and Republicans are kind of
dragging their feet on this, so let's actually form a party.
Right in Holland, the the Women's Christian Temperance Movement right union,
Yes union that that woman who led that Carrie Nation
is an excellent example like the kind of boisterous nature

(12:42):
of this, this kind of organization and protest. She was
known um for hanging out around saloons, praying on the
front steps save these people's souls, and the people who
tried to come in, she would ward them off with
the hatchet and she was arrested, um a couple of hundred.
She was a rested thirty times between basically said busting

(13:04):
up bars. Yeah, she basically said, I can't vote, so
I'm going to become a huge thorn in your side
and you can't stop me. And she had direct experience
from it. They credit her um feracity ferociousness. I think
I just made up a word. Her ferociousness against alcohol
for um, due to a short lived marriage to an alcoholic,

(13:26):
left an imprint on her that, you know, being a
motivated individual. Yeah. What what's that bumper sticker about guns
don't kill people? I do know something about well behaved
women rarely make history something like that. Yeah, yeah, I
like that. It's good. Um, civil war comes along, Josh
Jerry laughed at that for some reason because she has that. Okay,

(13:49):
the Civil War came along and that kind of slowed
things down a little bit. But it was just temporarily
because the war ended in people like the liquor industry
started booming again, which you would think would slow it more.
But what really happened was it started booming such that
the temperance movement got even more active to try and
take care of business basically right. And one of the
things that really as as usual, I'm I'm loath to say,

(14:14):
but one of the things that really drew popular support
together um was finding the proper scapegoats Germans and Irish immigrants.
This country has a long standing tradition of forgetting that
we're all immigrants and targeting the most recent immigrants to
the country as the source of all of our worries,

(14:34):
and then our political parties go, yeah, it's their fault,
and that it just kind of goes down to hell
from there because Irish like to drink, the Irish like
to drink, and the Germans love to brew beer, and
that they became the the sources we should we should
go ahead and correct that. There was a popular perception
that the Irish likely drink exactly and the Germans really did.

(14:55):
Um run most of the breweries still reason necessarily, but
there was a lot of German owned breweries in the US,
So the popular perception was the Germans are ruined, the
Irish are drinking. We need to target these two groups. Sure,
so everybody hate them. And then that's how prohibition ended
up being passed in large part, right, Uh yeah, I

(15:17):
mean there were some a lot of groups against it
as well as as many as there were for it.
I don't know about as many, but there were also
groups like the Association Against Prohibition Amendment and the Women's
Organization for National Prohibition Reform exactly. So it wasn't everybody,
but it gathered enough support where eventually Congress, that awful,

(15:37):
awful Congress of nineteen nineteen, basically said, uh, you know,
we kind of have to do this, and you've got
a year to get all your booze, and what we're
gonna do to enforce this is past the Volstead Act
as well. Well. What was what really put it over
the top, because this is nineteen nineteen and the in
World War One had just ended. But what really whipped

(15:58):
up prohibition pro prohibition sentiment up was World War One.
We're fighting the Kaiser and these Germans are sitting here
using all the grain that we could feed our soldiers
with the brew beer and you're not in American if
you're drinking beer, right, right? And Mr Anheiser and Mr
Bush were like no, they were like dis day night. Yeah.

(16:19):
So that led to, like you said, Chuck, the eighteenth Amendment,
and the eighteenth Amendment and of itself didn't do anything.
It had no teeth. It was a paper tiger. Well, yeah,
that's why the Volstad Act, right, and what did that do? Well?
I mean, you can't enforce anything unless you have a
way to do it, and that's what the Volstad A did.
It um define like the penalties if you were caught
doing this, exceptions which uh they had exceptions for medicinal

(16:42):
use and religious ceremony use. Yes, and apparently a lot
of doctors prescribed alcohol during the prom how many? How many? Uh?
They estimate that more than one million gallons of liquor
were consumed a year from prescription whisky. Wait till what
is it? Prop nineteen passes. Yeah, they got nothing on me. Naffodil, daffanel,

(17:05):
medefanel menaffodil. You're thinking of monodyl and I bet there
were a lot of religious ceremonies going on to you
know what I mean. Well, yeah, you got to think
about the Catholics. I'm sure we're like, whoa, hey, yeah,
blood of Christ and everything over here, right, yeah, we
need to do this like twice a week now. And
then they went enchanted. Now they did their communion, and um,

(17:26):
that also defined what qualified as an intoxicating limit, which
was anything more than point five percent alcohol. And you
know what, that's actually still the case. Um. Back when
I was for near beer. Yes, for back when I
was a strapping, fat ten year old boy, I used
to cross the road tracks and go to open pantry
and I would enjoy six packs of Kingsbury non alcoholic beer.

(17:48):
Who woa, whoa you drink not alcohol beer? Wet age
ten eleven? Secretly no secret right from your parents? No. No, Sometimes,
like I go back and I look at some of
the stuff that I did, and I'm like, I had
a lot of freedom as a child. See, alcohol was
like a big no now in my house hold. On Um,

(18:09):
the reason why is because I knew I was in
the right. Another reason point five right is non alcoholic.
I can buy any non alcoholic beverage. Why this root
beer is non alcoholic and I can buy that and
I actually had an argument once with a clerk at
open pantry, and I think just the fact that this
ten year old was like stating his case. Finally, the
guy was like, I finally care, just get out of here.

(18:32):
And yeah, no, I don't think my family liked it,
but they just didn't want to get into it with me.
I would have gotten in big trouble for even that
because alcohol was stun gravy to my household. It was bad,
it was the devil's juice, and it was not allowed
in the house. It was a really big deal. It's
amazing that I ever touched the stuff, you know, when
I like, I didn't drink it all in high school.

(18:54):
I was a straight edge. What's more amazing to me
is that you didn't. You weren't more likely to touch
this stuff because it was prohibited. That was well. That
was one of the major effects of prohibition was that
alcohol use when it did increase, overall, alcohol decreased as
an effective prohibition, but when it did increase, brother it

(19:16):
increased big time. Right, Yeah, let's talk about some of
the effects, because it had effects on what you could
call the good side and the bad side, both medically
and economically. Actually, most of the economic effects were pretty bad.
They were bad unless you were al capone. But alcohol
trafficking obviously increased things like speakeasies and this will alcohol rings,

(19:39):
bootlegger rings are pretty much comparable to today's drug dealers.
Rum runners. Yeah, there were European rum fleets is what
they call them, right, because no prohibition in Europe most
of Europe. UM. So they just sail out into international
waters and people there at midnight and then they would
offload their cargo two bootleggers and you know that was that. Um.

(20:03):
They the one reason they knew that things were really
getting pretty bad on the bootlegging scene that I didn't realize.
This is pretty funny to me. Demand for ten thousand
dollar bills reached a high in the United States and
nine and basically that was a pretty clear sign that
people wanted very large bills so they didn't have to
have trunks full of money to make their switches in

(20:28):
international waters. Um. Political corruption was huge. In fact, there's
a very famous quote from Mayor LaGuardia, who was running
New York at the time, who said this is a
great one. He said something along the lines of it
is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing
or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in
this country, and they're going to name an airport after

(20:49):
the guy. Another awesome, awesome fact, Josh, as far as
when you said it started booming in a big way
prior to this. Prior to prohibition, there were less than
fifteen thousand bars legal bars in the US. After prohibition
in I'm sorry, in the midst of it, there were
more than thirty thousand, more than double the amount of

(21:11):
illegal speakeasies, and there were an estimated hundred thousand people
brewing alcohol of all sorts in their homes illegally. I
can tell you they were probably like ten prior to prohibition,
people who like went to the trouble making their own right.
But I mean, it's the same thing, like, don't you
think that if California legalizes pot, don't you think that

(21:35):
all those people who have a couple of plants growing
illegally in their house are gonna stop doing that and
just go buy it at the store like everybody else.
I don't know. The artisans would probably still grow their own,
but maybe so, but in much the same way that
people homebrew beer now like there's a lot of trouble
to go to that not everybody wants to do. You know, well,

(21:58):
you mentioned the non enforcement, and there's another stat here that, uh,
it's pretty startling. At one point, they said, in New
York City, New York City, Yes, New York City, seven
thousand arrests were made for alcohol violations and seventeen of
those ended up in convictions. Even when they tried to
enforce it, it wouldn't make it all the way through
the legal system. That was the guardiest town by the way.

(22:20):
Well exactly, and they said in nineteen five, by nine
six states had laws that basically said quit investigating prohibition
cases or we're bust you down to private or whatever
the police entry level is. We're gonna bust you down
to Keystone cop level. That's right, Chuck, Josh, you were

(22:42):
speaking economically, that was illegally. All that crime came up
and corruption developed directly as a result of Prohibition al capone.
It was big for him, as you said, he turned
a I don't want to say two bit, but a
fledgling empire from Johnny Torrio into a hundred million dollar
a year enterprise, which that's a lot of cheese by

(23:04):
today's standards. Well, yeah, and he he was doing a
pretty good job of it there in Chicago until the mayor,
who was in his hip pocket, said I want to
get out of your hip pocket. I'm you're You're done here.
I can't believe he lived. But that led to component's downfall, right. Um.
On a much larger scale economically, prohibition was a very
terrible idea, especially in the midst of the Great Depression. UM.

(23:26):
Some companies, some brewers specifically, like Anheuser Busch, as you mentioned,
UM said, you know, we Germans also like to supply
you with things like root beer and ice cream and
and corn syrup. So don't don't round us up, okay. Um. Well,
that allowed him to keep their doors open. Basically that
that did not everybody could do that. Not everybody could

(23:48):
make that switch. An Huser Busch was already I think,
pretty big at the time. UM So in St. Louis
alone before prohibition, there were twenty two breweries operating. After
prohibition was repealed, I just gave away the spoiler. UM
nine reopened so that it had a huge hit just
on the brewing industry. Um. It also took away all

(24:10):
the tax revenue that America was making before prohibition taxing
legal sales of liquor. All of this was on tax
bootlagers weren't paying any taxes. They're getting rich. And then
so in the when the depression came along, Um, that
really kind of turned the tide as far as America
was concerned, Like, Okay, we're sick of this. A lot

(24:31):
of crime has come about, a lot of corruption. The
US is in the depression and we're losing out on
viable taxable income and this is just stupid. Everybody's drunk anyway,
and the ones who were just kind of moderate drinkers
before are big time drinkers. Right. So for example, um,

(24:51):
apparently the they by the end of the twenties, there
were more alcoholics than there were before prohibition, right, like
clinical alcoholics. Um, adult rated or contaminated liquor brought on
more than fifty thousand deaths, not to mention cases of
blindness and paralysis. Remembering it was either the Hangover podcast

(25:14):
or the Moonshine podcast, we talked about coningers, the impurities
and alcohol that can kill you. Yeah yeah, yeah, uh
those did kill a lot of pre prohibition. On the
flip side, though cirosis declined from ten point seven men
per one hundred thousand to twenty nine. All right, I'm sorry,
it dropped to ten point seven from twenty nine point
five per one thousand over from nineteen eleven to twenty nine,

(25:37):
So you just mr silver lining. Well no, that's my
point though, is they'll point to some stats that will say, well,
si rosas strap, but then fifty thousand people died because
of can you know, making liquor in your tub, right
and again and again. Overall alcohol consumption across the board
dropped from between thirty and fifty, which is substantial, but

(25:58):
the ones who it didn't drop in it kicked their
drinking into hyper drive. Yeah. I think some people just
like to be bad, Like this is forbidden, right, so
I'm gonna do it all the time. You know that. Actually,
the parallel there with the marijuana movement in this country
now is pretty striking, pretty similar because the recent economic
downturns that we've had. I don't know if you noticed,

(26:19):
but a lot of states started saying, like California, you
know what we could make revenue wise if we legalized spot.
It's a very interesting. Uh. I think it's Cato Institute.
You know, they're a libertarian think tank, and they issued
basically like you want to know exactly how much you
can make and save by decriminalizing marijuana. Here it is,
and it was all the money spend in the legal system,

(26:42):
plus all the revenue that can be grace taxes comes
up to like fourteen billion a year or something like that.
It's a fourteen or forty four or something. There was
a four in there. Same thing with the stunt Grady.
We should give credit to that. That's John Hodgman's words
from his book The Area of My Expertise. But you
can get on Amazon. I don't want people to think
Chuck is so funny. He thought it's stun gravy because

(27:03):
I did not. Um, Chuck comes around. Everybody's sick and
tired of prohibition. Uh. And Congress, a new Congress says,
you know what, we're going to repeal this a much
hip or drunker Congress. So they created the twenty first
Amendment because it takes an amendment to repeal another amendment right.

(27:24):
And in the history of the United States, this is
the first time an amendment was passed to restore the
rights taken away by a previous amendment. She on that one. Yeah.
You know what's funny is just about two weeks ago,
I was having a conversation with my friend Kirk about prohibition,
and I said, why don't they just remove the eighteenth
and twenty first Amendment now? And just I mean, why

(27:46):
you even have that in there anymore? And he got
he got kind of upset, and he's like, this is
the U. S. Constitution you're talking about, And I said, well,
I know, but it's just it seems silly now to
still have that on the books, unless I guess it's
just you know, the constant reminder of this is what
our country went through, and see we repealed it. But
to me, I'm just like, just take them out. It's
kind of like, don't be stupid in there. It's a

(28:09):
clear message to the people of today. But I wasn't
trying to like desecrate the Constitution by doing that. I
just thought it made it a more efficient document. You
just remove this too useless, So Chuck. They that Congress
passed the twenty first Amendment, they had to wait for
two thirds of the states to ratify it, which happened
on December five, ninety three. Uh. John d Rockefeller comes

(28:30):
out with the famous quote, drinking is generally increased. The
speakeasy has replaced the saloon. A vast army of lawbreakers
has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale. A
clerk stamped the document and everybody went back to drinking
legally again. In it that that night probably resembled our
trivia night recently would be my best cast. Uh So

(28:54):
after that, Josh went to the states to decide how
to govern this and a lot of states. Twenty ones
probably a pretty good day to start drinking a lot
of states, or some said, like, I think Louisiana and
held out for a long time. Georgia even was eighteen
for a long time. I remember Georgia's I remember when
Ohio did there. That was like in the mid eighties.

(29:14):
And and um, because my sister was in between there,
she was like nineteen at the time, she was like
no um. And I remember Louisiana also finally caved because um,
the Feds were holding out on their highway funds. They
may have been the last one there, and they finally

(29:34):
were just like, we can't take these potholes any longer,
so they caved. So Josh, since prohibition so long ago
was repealed and done away with, you would think that
now in the United States you can go anywhere you want,
any day you want by your boost, you would You
would be wrong. And I know that you know what

(29:55):
that's wrong because you live in Georgia. Pal Georgia has
a blue law. No Sunday sales. Nope, you can buy
it in a restaurant after twelve thirty. So if you
like to go to brunch early und very funny how
the brunch crowd really turns up around twelve fifteen. Before then,
you can get a seat anywhere on a Sunday um

(30:15):
but because of the fear of enticing people away from
church with booze or partying too hard on a Saturday
night leading to a desire to keep drinking Sunday morning
in the mischurch, there's that blue law. Yeah, and they
said that. I didn't know this. They said that, And

(30:36):
this is not just in Georgia, but period in the
United States. That was that came about during the colonial times.
They said, you know what, they let's keep the Sabbath dry. Yeah,
And what you've just made reference to is the last
sentence of this article Um, it is, in my opinion,
the strangest sentence ever used to end a half stuff
works article. Would you do me the favor of reading

(30:56):
that sentence verbatim? This law was the up in colonial
times to honor to honor the Christian Sabbath day in
colonial times. The end it's a little redundant, isn't it,
don't you think? Let's talk about some of these other
states though, Um, about half of Mississippi's counties are dry.
And you can't even drive through a dry county with booze,

(31:18):
even if you're just taking it home unless you feel
like paying a bribe to the sheriff. Yeah, or if
you sneak it. But you can't go to a wet
county and say, oh, I'm gonna get my Sunday or
my beer for the week. You can't drive. You have
to take a circuitous route certuitous kircuitis if you want
to even take your beer to your house. Right, it's

(31:40):
pretty pretty serious. Kentucky dry dry law, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Virginia,
a lot of these states, Alaska, Alaska. Actually you've found
like this pretty cool supplemental article, um about Alaska having
a hundred and twenty nine of the dry towns that's
mentioned in this article you found an all. It explains

(32:00):
why because apparently there's a strong tradition of binge drinking
brought over by Russians and Finns, and Finland actually had
its own a bout with prohibition as well, right, Uh,
yeah they did. And I should also point out that
this is introduced me to my favorite new expression that

(32:21):
I've never heard before, frontier drinking style. Yeah, they had
frontier drinking style. It usually ends with bear wrestling. Bear wrestling.
And uh, it's interesting though that they they've done a
lot of studies and they've shown that the volume and
pattern of how you drink correlate with your your culture. Yeah.

(32:43):
So there's the European the Southern European wet culture, which
is frequent but moderate drinking, like basically like French kids
of age seven drinking wine at dinner exactly, right. And
then you've got the Northern European culture, the dry culture,
which is like you don't drink very often, but when
you do, you drink like NonStop for three days frontier style,

(33:07):
and then wrestle a bear exactly, and then you commit
some sort of crime or something over and over again.
In the midst of this well and in the end, um,
places like Canada followed America and had prohibition for a
little while. Um, really punch we we inhibition in nineteen nineteen.

(33:28):
Canada's prohibition lasted from nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen. Exactly.
It's just like the beer bearing episode of The Simpsons exactly. Uh.
And in Finland, Josh, they appeal In Finland, it really
really backfired. They enacted prohibition in nineteen nineteen. It was
all going on at the same time. It's pretty interesting

(33:49):
all over the world. And um, basically people publicly and
privately thumb their nose at it. And they said that
they estimate the alcohol consumption tripled perhaps in Finland after prohibition,
and not only that, people were originally drinking vodka, and
during prohibition people started drinking basically moonshine like spirits. Yeah,

(34:13):
they said, you know what you're gonna do, prohibition, We're
gonna get drunk er more more often than we ever
have before, and we're gonna get in our saunas and
we're gonna get wasted, and you can't do anything about it.
That that seems like a bad idea. I've been sauning
like crazy lately, and I found out that heat cuts
off the circulation in my calves. And Josh Finland uh

(34:36):
clearly had a failed experiment and they repealed it in
nineteen thirty two, so it did last a while. But Alaska,
they say, to this day, Native peoples of Alaska and
Native Americans, they still a lot of alcohol problems, just
proportionately so um. And the sad thing is that it
was brought by Europeans. The bench drinking, the frontier style
band drinking was introduced to the Inuits and the Natives

(34:59):
of a last goodbye Finns, Russians and yeah, um, I
guess old timey uh clean jumpers who came up from
the Western United States. Gabby Johnson. Russia actually experimented for
a little while too in nineteen fourteen. Through that's I

(35:19):
figured Russia would have been the one that was like
six months later. And though they must have vodka, do
you know, like the average lifespan of a Russian male
these days is down to like fifty nine because of vodka. Really,
because it's drinking, like they just drink like fishes. Apparently
even even um, yeah, the knows yeah, I mean it
would look like a that wasn't a gin blossom, that

(35:42):
was a bluemn onion. That's the end of that podcast.
If you want to know more about prohibition, type that
word into the search bart house to works dot com again.
It's going to bring up that really super cool picture
on page zero. I'm glad you showed me that. That's
one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. And click
all the way through to the last page two to
find these strangest sentence ever used to end in the

(36:04):
house Stuff Works article. Uh and since I said search
bar at some point in the not too distant past,
that means it's time for listener mail. Josh. I'm gonna
call this email from a guy whose life has eerily
resembled our podcast Slate. I discovered your podcast with my
two friends and I went on a road trip from
our school and Providence, Rhode Island to Minnesota. Go Golden

(36:28):
Gophers in that Minnesota. Yeah, it was according to the Fargo,
I was looking for something to listen to in a
car on the way and randomly downloaded a bunch of
your podcasts. So, by sheer luck, Josh, how often does
that happen, you think, and people continue to listen. Yeah,
never this one time. Uh. Then we began our epic

(36:51):
quest across the country. Whatever we listened to came true. Guys,
we were in Toledo when Josh said he was from Toledo.
We were with a katie from Wisconsin. When you read
a listener mail from a katie from Wisconsin, we're not
the same person, and we want a trivia contest because
of your Habeas Corpus podcast. The winning answer was the body.

(37:12):
Our brakes failed in Pennsylvania and we hung out with
some Amish while we waited for them to be fixed,
and we even felt the membranes connecting our brain and
skull being stretched in Chicago, what is a hangover? A stretch? Yeah,
that's what I thought. We also met some friends along
the way and combined our knowledge from the Redheads and
Flirting podcast. On the way back from our week long honyssey,

(37:33):
we reminisced about our favorite parts of the trip, and
all three of us mentioned your podcast on our list Alight,
So thanks for helping us out such a great time.
Then he goes on to suggests we do a podcast
on the School of America's which we have one right
here in Atlanta. No, the School of the America's supposedly
and now defunct assassins school that we have at Fort

(37:55):
Benning that was used to train Latin Americans in the
basically an insurgency. Is he completely wrong about this in
the School of the Americas is just one place, but
it's pretty interesting and scary. Well, then, Paul, I've have
some words for you, my friend. You've just misled us,
intentionally mislead you, and I would like to recant every

(38:16):
bit of the enthusiasm I showed for your previous email.
Are you sure he wasn't just misinformed? I don't care. Okay,
there's something called fact checking, even for emails. If you do,
you want to try to mislead chuck Er I, we'd
like to hear that. No me, chuck Er, me, mislead me,
mislead chuck or me we want to hear it in

(38:37):
an email. And if you don't feel like doing something
that mean, you could also actually don't even try to
mislead us. It takes us off. Lou bega um. If
you have a favorite strange sentence that you've ever come
across in your life that can beat this law, was
developed in colonial times to honor the Christian Sabbath Day

(38:58):
and colonial times. We want to hear it. Wrap it
up in an email, spanking on the bottom. Send it
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. H brought to you by the

(39:33):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you