Selects: Child Labor: Not Funny

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Stuff You Should Know" – Episode: "Selects: Child Labor: Not Funny"

Release Date: July 12, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Production: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction: Revisiting Child Labor

In this episode, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the serious and often overlooked issue of child labor. Selecting their August 2021 episode as a focal point, they emphasize the significance of understanding the historical and ongoing challenges surrounding child labor both in the United States and globally.

Josh Clark [01:11]: "It's a fairly bleak episode, as you might guess, but it also goes to show how far we've come."

Personal Reflections: Early Work Experiences

Josh and Chuck begin by sharing their own childhood work experiences, distinguishing these from the harsh realities of child labor. Chuck reminisces about working at a barbecue restaurant at age 13 for $3.35 an hour, while Josh talks about being a paperboy from the age of 9 or 10.

Chuck Bryant [02:14]: "JJ's barbecue. 335 an hour, baby."
Josh Clark [03:03]: "I was like a paperboy. My mom and my oldest sister would have to do my route once in a while."

Defining Child Labor vs. Childhood Jobs

The hosts clarify the difference between typical childhood jobs and genuine child labor. They highlight that while their early jobs were relatively benign, child laborers today often work in dangerous conditions with little to no pay, sacrificing their childhoods for survival.

Josh Clark [04:03]: "There are actual kids out there who are like, real deal child laborers who work in dangerous conditions for little to no pay."

Historical Context: From Colonial America to the Industrial Revolution

Josh and Chuck trace the roots of child labor back to colonial America, where children worked alongside their families on farms or as apprentices. They discuss how the Protestant work ethic ingrained the notion that children should contribute to family livelihoods from a young age.

Chuck Bryant [05:39]: "They were working from a pretty young age... either go work and get a job or to become an apprentice."

As the Industrial Revolution took hold, child labor conditions worsened. The advent of factories, fueled by unbridled capitalism, led to increased exploitation of children in hazardous environments like cotton mills and coal mines.

Josh Clark [12:33]: "When you inject unbridled capitalism into an economy that allows for child labor, you can imagine that things are gonna get much, much worse for the children."

Types of Child Labor: Diverse and Dangerous

The episode details various forms of child labor prevalent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries:

• Canneries: Children worked long hours canning food, often facing harsh conditions.

  Chuck Bryant [17:01]: "Working at a cannery would probably not have been very fun."

• Textile Mills (Bobbin Boys and Girls): Young children performed repetitive tasks such as replacing bobbins, often exposed to dangerous machinery.

  Josh Clark [20:24]: "There's no way it wasn't dangerous. It had to have been dangerous."

• Newsies: Newspaper delivery boys and girls who faced not only the physical demands of the job but also the pressure of selling papers, sometimes coercing payments from delinquent subscribers.

  Chuck Bryant [25:10]: "They sold them for a penny a piece. So they would make half a penny per paper."

• Breaker Boys: In Appalachian coal mines, boys worked as breaker boys, manually breaking coal into uniform pieces, leading to severe health issues.

  Josh Clark [22:15]: "They have to absorb all of this coal dust into their skin, get all sorts of little cuts and calluses."

Legislative Efforts and Social Reform

The discussion moves to the Progressive Era's battle against child labor. Influential figures and organizations, notably the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) and photographer Lewis Hine, played pivotal roles in exposing the grim realities of child labor through compelling imagery and advocacy.

Chuck Bryant [37:37]: "Lewis Hine took 5,000 photos documenting what was going on with these kids."

Despite early legislative attempts like the Keating Act of 1916, which was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court, sustained efforts during the Great Depression culminated in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This landmark legislation established national minimum wages, maximum work hours, and restrictions on child labor, particularly in hazardous industries.

Chuck Bryant [42:38]: "The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938... set a national minimum wage for the very first time."

Current Child Labor Laws in the U.S.

While significant progress has been made, current U.S. child labor laws still exhibit notable gaps. The Fair Labor Standards Act distinguishes between agricultural and non-agricultural labor, with agricultural child labor receiving less protection. For instance, children under 16 on family farms can work unlimited hours and in hazardous conditions.

Josh Clark [45:34]: "Agricultural though, they have very little protection. Almost shamefully little protection."

Despite these deficiencies, ongoing efforts aim to extend protections universally and address global child labor issues.

Global Child Labor: A Persistent Problem

Josh and Chuck highlight the alarming statistics of child labor worldwide, noting that approximately 158 million children are engaged in labor, with 71% involved in agriculture. Countries like Zimbabwe continue to struggle with child labor in dangerous industries, including mining and tobacco farming.

Chuck Bryant [48:22]: "158 million kids are estimated to be the victims of child labor around the world."

Solutions and International Efforts

The International Labour Organization (ILO) outlines pragmatic solutions to combat child labor:

1. Expand Access to Education: Ensuring free and accessible education to keep children in schools.
2. Help Families Meet Basic Needs: Implementing social support systems like universal basic income to reduce the economic necessity for children to work.
3. Enforce Existing Laws: Strengthening enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with child labor regulations.

Josh Clark [50:07]: "All through education. It's a great, great organization."

Conclusion: A Call to Action

The episode concludes with a call to support organizations working towards eliminating child labor and a reminder of the importance of continued advocacy and enforcement.

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Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [04:03]: "There are actual kids out there who are like, real deal child laborers who work in dangerous conditions for little to no pay."
• Chuck Bryant [17:01]: "Working at a cannery would probably not have been very fun."
• Josh Clark [20:24]: "There's no way it wasn't dangerous. It had to have been dangerous."
• Chuck Bryant [37:37]: "Lewis Hine took 5,000 photos documenting what was going on with these kids."
• Josh Clark [45:34]: "Agricultural though, they have very little protection. Almost shamefully little protection."
• Chuck Bryant [48:22]: "158 million kids are estimated to be the victims of child labor around the world."

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This episode of "Stuff You Should Know" provides a comprehensive exploration of child labor, blending historical context with current issues and highlighting the ongoing need for effective solutions to protect vulnerable children worldwide.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Hey, everybody, this is Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our August 2021 episode on child labor. It's one of those rare episodes that contains a mention of an episode that we should do that we actually did, the newsy strike. So it's significant for that reason, and it is a fairly bleak episode, as you might guess, but it also goes to show how far we've come.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's out there hovering around in the digital, weird audio ether. And this is stuff you should know. This is gonna be a good, uplifting, fun one. A bouncy, light one.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so. And it's, you know, hot off the presses from our. My daughter just wrote this episode for us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. In record time, too. I was impressed. You didn't pay her, did you?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but it's funny. I went to look up. You know, I've talked before about the fact that I started working when I was 13 at a barbecue restaurant and minimum wage when I started working was $3.35 an hour.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. How far we've come.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, not far. They've doubled it the past, whatever, 40 years.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't that nuts, dude?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and, you know, we'll get to that. But I have a list of kind of where we ended up with minimum wage along the years. But yeah, JJ's barbecue. 335 an hour, baby.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that's pretty great. My first job was even younger than that. I was like 9 or 10 when I was a paperboy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't have made more than. Because I was only. It's not like I was working every night. I was working weekends. I probably made, like, less than $50 a week.

[Josh Clark]

Hmm. But I mean, you're 13. What were you spending it on? 13 in, like, a good, clean, Christian kid. You weren't spending that on anything.

[Chuck Bryant]

Archie Comics. That buys a lot of Archie comics.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it does. Yes, it does. Although they have a lot of variations. So you could easily spend $50 a week on Archie Comics.

[Chuck Bryant]

Back then, though, those things were cheap. I was living high on the hog.

[Josh Clark]

So it sounds like it, man. So our buddy Dave helped us out with this one Dave ruse, and he makes a really good point that you and I sitting around talking about, you know, you made 50 bucks a week. I was a paper boy. Like, whatever stresses and troubles that we ran into post, you know, 1970 something, as far as our first jobs go when we were younger, that does not qualify as child labor. That's. That's not really what we're talking about here today.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's called a kid having a job.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. It's called. You just stop your griping right now. Because there are actual kids out there who are like, real deal child laborers who work in, like, dangerous conditions for little to no pay, who don't get to play, who may not socialize with other kids their age. They may live and work in a mining camp with nothing but adults and grownups. Like. Like, they're. They're. They would. They would kill for, you know, a JJ's barbecue job, basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this is a good time to be talking about that in particular, because this is 2021 is the international year for the elimination of child labor. And as you'll see throughout this episode, we've made a lot of strides here in the US but like you said, it's not that way everywhere, and it should be.

[Josh Clark]

And I should say it's probably a little off the mark to say that a child laborer would kill for a better job. They would probably kill to just not have to work at all in general, and just to get. Get to Be a kid. And I think ultimately for people who are activists against child labor, that's the goal is to not, like, get better working conditions for six year olds. It's to, like, just make six year olds not have to work any longer. And we'll talk about how to solve that, how that International Year for the Elimination of Child labor aims to do that. They have some pretty pragmatic ideas. And so hopefully this episode will have a nice bow on the end, but we're gonna have to slog through some misery to get there. Chuck, take it away.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's no better place to slog through misery than the founding of this country. Way back in the old days, when the new world was new and settlers came over and they very much believed. And why did I think this was Ed? You said this is Dave.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm almost positive it was Dave.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was Ed.

[Josh Clark]

It reads like a Dave to me, but oh, man, if it's Ed, I'm sorry. Sorry to both of you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure. We need to get those guys together one day.

[Josh Clark]

I think the universe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or maybe we should keep them far apart.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. They might turn against us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they believe very much that the idol's hands were the devil's workshop. That old saying. And, you know, this is one of those that was kind of hard for me to, you know, let's just lop off, you know, developing nations today, which is clearly awful. I found myself as an adult more and more with the cultural relativism, thinking like, obviously five year olds shouldn't be working in factories. But when I read about, like 12 and 13 year olds working hard back then, I was kind of like, it's not great, but that's just kind of how it was at the time. If you had parents that were farmers, you're not gonna be just hanging out until your sweet 16th birthday, having a good time. You're gonna be working from a pretty young age. And I found myself more and more thinking like, you know, in certain situations, that wasn't the worst thing. But then you get to the industrial revolutions and that's when things really got bad. But kind of early on, that's really what we were talking about, was a lot of kids working on the farms, a lot of boys working on the farm, girls working in the house alongside their sisters and mom. And, you know, this kind of started when they were about 13 years old. They were sort of expected to either go work and get a job and work full time, or to become an apprentice, an unpaid apprentice, to work for food and board and training.

[Josh Clark]

And I think also in addition to that Protestant work ethic of like, like just completely in the fabric of America that was just coming out in you, it's also this idea of, like, what else are you gonna do? It's not like you can sit around and play video games or watch TV or do almost anything else except just play outside. Yeah. But Chuck, I went back and looked to see if it was always this way. And apparently in medieval England you played basically until you hit puberty, and then you started to get put to work.

[Chuck Bryant]

When you hit puberty at 4.

[Josh Clark]

Right. More like 14. But, like, there was like a childhood and it seems to have been somewhat wiped out by that Protestant work ethic that the Puritans brought over. Or at the very least, it was set back a little more, you know, age wise, where you started working maybe a little sooner than you would have had you been in medieval England at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. I think. I guess I'm just trying to draw a line between life in the 1640s and then life in 1938, when we eventually did something about it in the US.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, no, totally. And there is an enormous distinction between that because it was like, widespread, but it just, it seemed like they were mostly working with their families and it was just kind of the way that things were. That was how life was. But it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

You had to try and like, keep your family alive. It's not like, you know, they were trying to just all survive basically.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And that's actually the reason why it's still around in other parts of the world today. It's not even necessarily like a work ethic where children should work because idle hands are the devil's playthings, like the Puritans thought. Instead, it's like, this is an extra worker we can have go out and make money to keep the rest of the family alive. We just don't have a choice in not doing that. And that's what drives it still today.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. When the Industrial Revolution came around and we're talking about basically cotton factories in a big, big way, there were a lot of little kids working there. And people like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton thought that was awesome.

[Josh Clark]

They did. And like, we're going to be skewered for even suggesting that Hamilton said this, but he did. He said that women and children in America would be, quote, rendered more useful by manufacturing establishments than they otherwise would be. And I think what he was saying is, like, I'm not even going to paraphrase what he was saying. I think you can Understand it on its face.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he's saying, you know, they're not doing much use for us, these kids. And he's mainly talking about kids here who would. Other what quote, who would otherwise be idle. This isn't Lin Manuel Miranda saying this. We all love him.

[Josh Clark]

No, this isn't. He didn't say this in a charming rap.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, this is the real Alexander Hamilton. And again, it was just a different time. But even way back then, in the early 1800s, not everyone thought this was a great thing. There was a future mayor of Boston named Josiah Quincy Diamond Joe Quimby.

[Josh Clark]

Who.

[Chuck Bryant]

Toured a cotton factory, a cotton spinning factory, and they had 4 year olds working there all the way to 10, maybe 10, 12 hours a day for anywhere from 12 to 25 cents a day, not an hour.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he said, compassion calls us to pity these little creatures plying in a contracted room among flyers and cogs at an age when nature requires for them air space and sports. There was a dull dejection in the countenance of all of them. And, you know, we'll get to some of these photos of some of these kids later on. When you look at them, they look like beaten down miniature adults.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, they really do.

[Chuck Bryant]

They look like us.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. They look ready to retire. They look unhappy. They look. Yeah, just beaten down. But they're miniature and they're kids, their children. And it's really upsetting to see that photograph of that. I'm sure it's even more upsetting to see it in real life. And that's actually how a lot of change came through, is just people being exposed to seeing that and kind of being shocked, having their conscience shocked. But as potentially like, bad as it was for the children of colonial America who were forced to work, it got way, way worse when the second industrial revolution kicked off, the one powered by steam and steel and railroads, ten little hands and unbridled capitalism. When you inject unbridled capitalism into an economy that allows for child labor, you can imagine that things are gonna get much, much worse for the children before it finally gets better.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And things did get worse when all of a sudden you have a robust steel industry and coal mining industry, you have railroads that need this stuff in a big, big way.

[Josh Clark]

And.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they partially kind of ran out of workers and partially just saw what was right underneath their noses, which is these kids who at this point, they had long known that they could work and farm and work hard. So they said, you know what, A lot of these families in rural America Farming dried up a bit, so they moved to the city. A lot of it was immigrant labor as millions of people came into the country from Europe. Fleeting. Their poverty, famine stricken countries. And no matter where they came from, it was all under the thumb of the robber barons, which was. I can't remember when we did it. It feels like a few two or three years ago, but pretty good podcast on the robber barons.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And we also talked about them in our book. We talked about keeping up with the Joneses. They played a big role in that too. But yeah, so like these, the robber barons got rich through innovation, through consolidation, through some pretty clever stuff. A lot of them invented new techniques or processes or procedures. So, like, they. They definitely were doing something. They were being productive, but they also got to be filthy rich off of the backs of immigrant labor, child labor that they directly exploited. And it was basically like there was just nobody looking out for anybody else at this time. It was just such a period of such enormous economic insurgents that there weren't anybody or there wasn't anybody who was sitting there saying, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody, we need to stop and really think about this and do this in a much more directed, smarter, healthier way for our society. It was like, just go, go. Let's see where this takes us. And a lot of people got trampled underfoot. And that definitely included children laborers or child laborers.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And I think that's a good time for a break. Yay.

[Josh Clark]

Yay.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's two yays. Any nays? So we'll be back and we'll talk a little bit about what some of these jobs might have been in the late 19th century for these kids right after this.

[Josh Clark]

I'm Eric Glass. On this American Life, we tell real.

[Chuck Bryant]

Life stories, really good ones.

[Josh Clark]

My mother said, I'm sorry you weren't here because Father Sager was here visiting and he found a very nice orphanage for you. And I said, but I'm not an orphan, Ma.

[Chuck Bryant]

Surprising stories every week. This American Life.

[Josh Clark]

Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, I wonder how many gallons of coffee. Everyone who has listened to this, this show since the beginning has heard me drink.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't even hear you drinking.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you didn't? When I said I had a mouthful of cafe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting. I have no shirt on.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. That's awesome, man. You just top mine. You said, no, that's not true. I think you should have left it mysterious, Chuck, because there were a few people out there who were about to email and say, I was offended that Chuck said he Wasn't wearing a shirt?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, no, I put it on right before we recorded. I had it off.

[Josh Clark]

It's a little hot.

[Chuck Bryant]

I felt like I needed to dress up. Put the T shirt back on.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Are you wearing one of those tuxedo shirt T shirts?

[Chuck Bryant]

You ever had one of those? Did you ever have one?

[Josh Clark]

No, I didn't.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I didn't either.

[Josh Clark]

You didn't. You didn't wear them with your rainbow suspenders?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that stuff was a little too cutesy even for me.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha. Okay, what about the one that looks like I would wear it? Okay, what about one that looks like a, like a ripped, like, chest and abdomen? Have you ever worn a T shirt like that?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. Those are fun though, for certain people.

[Josh Clark]

They're fun. They're also like really good at boosting your ego quietly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. There's nothing like me looking in a mirror at my beer belly covered in spray painted abs.

[Josh Clark]

It really works your brain. The brain is so dumb that it falls for it every time. I can attack.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we were going to talk about what some of these jobs might be. And it kind of really depended on where you were living, if you lived in a city or if you lived in a company town where they had these factories. You were going to be working in factories. Out in the rural areas, you can be working on farms.

[Josh Clark]

And most Americans still lived on farms at the time. So most child labor took place on farms.

[Chuck Bryant]

But if you were on that farm, you're going to be picking cotton and tobacco, you're going to be picking a lot of stuff and doing all the sort of stuff that goes on after the picking, which is stemming, D.C. all that stuff shucking and stuff I did when I was a kid. We had a big, big garden and my mom took us to the cannery and it was awful. I hated it.

[Josh Clark]

Took you to the cannery, like for a sightseeing trip or for work to can. So, like, there was a cannery that your mom went to. You guys had so much stuff, you had to go to a second location to can.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was a Cannery in DeKalb County, a sort of industrial cannery for the people.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we would take green beans and corn and we made preserves and all kinds of stuff. And they had like. And, you know, you could can your own junk there.

[Josh Clark]

Sounds like a lot of. It sounds Utopia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we would, you know, put sharpie, like beans on the can and sharpie put it in the pantry.

[Josh Clark]

Huh. That's really interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's really interesting.

[Josh Clark]

I had no Idea that there was a Cannery in DeKalb County.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Not too far from where I live now, actually. It's like 15 minutes away, probably.

[Josh Clark]

Do you shudder every time you pass it?

[Chuck Bryant]

I do a little, actually. I don't pass it much, but it's over near the dog pound where you can go adopt a dog. And so I think we adopted Nico there. And I drove by the cannery and just like, yeah, I bet it was hot.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you were lucky you weren't five or six and left there to work all day every day, aren't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. For almost no money.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Pennies for a bucket of whatever you shucked or shelled or did. Whatever peeled. Yeah. Working at a cannery would probably not have been very fun. There were also furnace stoking jobs available, whether you wanted them or not. What else, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, kids did work in canneries. They also worked in textile mills. They had bobbin boys and bobbin girls.

[Josh Clark]

This one doesn't sound so bad to me, but I'm sure I'm missing something that makes it atrocious.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, they would climb up on the machine and remove the bobbins, the full bobbins, and replace them with empty ones. So I don't think that was like the worst job in the world. But when you're doing that for 10 or 12 hours a day and you're six, it's probably a bit of a buzzkill.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I have a problem inherently with child labor in general.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

[Josh Clark]

Not like having a job like you or I had. First job, they got no problem with that. But any kind of child labor, even if it is kind of cush, comparatively.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I agree. That one wasn't terrible. It may have been dangerous, though. I don't know how high those bobbins were.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There's no way it wasn't dangerous. It had to have been dangerous. We're talking about the 19th century in industry. It was dangerous in some way.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was no osha, no.

[Josh Clark]

No one. Even if it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you did live in the city and did work around factories, you would do that. But there were also plenty of other jobs you could deliver. Like be. Essentially, they call them telegraph boys, sort of delivering, you know, emails basically by hand to people all over town. You could shine shoes, you could sell newspapers like you did.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't stand on a street corner. I was on a newsie, which. We'll talk a little more about newsies in a second. I was a delivery boy and not. Not a really Great one, either. I frequently overslept and was not good at delivering papers. My mom and my oldest sister would have to do my route once in a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is this a bike deal?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And the thing is, is, like, they also make you shake down the people for their delinquent subscriptions. So I was like a strong arm guy, too, for the Toledo Blade as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

I want my $2, basically.

[Josh Clark]

That's exactly right. And that was right in my wheelhouse, too. I was like, this hits a little too close to home for me to laugh at this kid. I know what he's going through. I've had to put my foot in somebody's door before to get their $2. Didn't ask for a dime.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't seen that in a while. That was a good movie.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Classic.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you lived in the mountains of Appalachia, you might have been a breaker boy or a mule handler. And breaker boys will get. I guess we can go ahead and tell everyone what that is.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

You would sit around and break apart lumps of coal into uniform pieces all day long.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And break dance on your brakes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Breaker boys.

[Josh Clark]

But that was it. And they wouldn't let you wear gloves while you were a breaker boy, too, because they're like, no, no, you can't break these things as uniformly if you wear gloves, you stupid kid. So you have to basically absorb all of this coal dust into your skin, get all sorts of little cuts and calluses and all that by the time you're 6, 7, 8. And just do this. This is your life now. Welcome to Pennsylvania. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Then let's say you managed to escape all forms of formal jobs. Your parents, they didn't make you go to the factory. You did live in the city, so you didn't have to work on a farm. And you might think you just had it made in the shade. Not so. Because there was plenty of jobs that you could do right there from your cruddy little tenement apartment, like weaving baskets or making paper flowers or hand rolling cigars and cigarettes all day long and selling them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It was like, you know, your whole family worked on a farm, or if you lived in a tenement, your whole family worked, you know, in what are called tenement industries. So there was basically not a lot of escape. I get the impression that you basically had to have wealthy parents to not be forced into child labor at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I might have mentioned this once before. My mom did a thing for a little while where we would make money doing, like, stuffing envelopes did you remember that stuff? I do, and I don't even remember what it was for. I guess they were for companies.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I want to say Easter Seals had people do that too, but I'm sure they didn't pay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're notoriously cheap. So this would be like a company that would have like a packet they would send out that had like five things in it.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we would be responsible for getting all that stuff in huge boxes, assembling it all into the envelopes that they could mail. And we would get paid as a family to do that.

[Josh Clark]

That's cute. That's super late 70s, early 80s. Like, I can see your mom talking on the princess phone, making all the arrangements for them to ship that to her and getting the instructions, you know, and then hanging up. And that 50 foot long cord just kind of coils up on its own quietly on the floor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and I didn't mind that so much because I made a little money and that's something I could do while I watch television.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally, totally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is the perfect job, as we all know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Not exactly a high pressure job, it sounds like. I wouldn't even know if that qualifies as a tenement industry, to tell you the truth.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, not in the 1970s, no.

[Josh Clark]

You had a lot of jobs though, as a kid. Good for you, that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I always wanted my own money.

[Josh Clark]

Protestant work ethic shining through like a city upon a hill.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we talk newsies?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we should. And I think also the newsy strike that we're going to mention deserves its own episode, at least shortly, if not its own episode. Okay. So, yeah, let's just not talk about newsies.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, I thought the same thing. And the more I got into the strike, I was like, this is just too much. We gotta do something. But the idea was that little boys would buy a stack of newspapers wholesale for about 50 cents per 100.

[Josh Clark]

Girls too. I saw girls that did it too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, girls did it too. Okay. And they sold them for a penny a piece. So they would make half a penny per paper selling in the big cities, especially New York City, of course. And then eventually in 1899, they did go on strike. And it was a big deal. It kind of ground. I mean, it didn't grind them to a complete halt, but it really disrupted their flow in getting newspapers into the hands of people.

[Josh Clark]

Dude, their sales over this two week strike went down two thirds. Yeah, like they brought Pulitzer, Pulitzer and hearse to their knees, basically. These newsies did and they got some Concessions too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I think the deal was is that morning subscribers were generally subscribers, or the morning paper was generally for subscribers. But it was that afternoon paper, that second edition, that the newsies really raked it in on. Cause most people didn't subscribe to that. And so they really weren't selling any second editions hardly. And the one big concession they got, which was huge, was they got them to agree to full buybacks on unsold papers, which is a really, really big deal.

[Josh Clark]

But it also really kind of goes to show you how much the newspaper barons believed newsies were scrappy enough that they wouldn't just sit around and be like, I don't have to sell these. I don't have to worry about this. They'll be bought back anyway. I don't have to work to sell them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, but buyback just means they give them back the money they paid for them. It's not like they would make any money. They would just, in fact, it incentivized them, I think, to take out more papers and sell more papers because they knew they wouldn't be stuck with them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally. We'll probably edit that part out. So one of the things you mentioned was making cigars, like in your family's one room apartment in say, New York or something like that, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That was apparently really bad in that not only did you work long hours for very little pain, cramped working conditions with your family on top of everything else, you would frequently come down with nicotine poisoning as a little kid because you're rolling cured. Sometimes you're handling uncured tobacco and you're ingesting lots of nicotine through your skin at the time, like, you know, in a single day. And so you might be nauseated, you might be dizzy, you might turn green. It can get worse than that too. You actually can suffer respiratory distress as well. And apparently this is a big problem still with child laborers in Zimbabwe, because I think about 20 years ago, that country doubled down on their tobacco production. And now it's like one of the biggest, the biggest exports of Zimbabwe. But it's also a very poor country. So they use child labor a lot. And so children are still to this day being exposed to tobacco. And they're rolling, they're handling tobacco, they're rolling stuff, they're rolling cigars, they're sorting it. They're just. The kids in tobacco should not be in the same room together, basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, it never occurred to me that that I guess would be a transdermal ingestion, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally.

[Chuck Bryant]

But sure. I mean, you put tobacco on bee stings and all kinds of things, so of course it's going to get into their skin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And having gotten myself sick on tobacco a time or two in my life, I can tell you it is not pleasant. And to do it against your will just because you're handling it for your job that you don't even want is. That sounds torturous, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I love that story. Should you retell it for people who haven't heard it?

[Josh Clark]

Are you talking about eighth grade in the tree fort?

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that when you, like, smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and got sick?

[Josh Clark]

It was more like a pack and a half.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

It was right after I first started smoking, and I was, like, unbelievable. I was like, I really like how this makes me feel. Let's see how, like, 30 of these things make me feel. And I was sitting there reading comic books up in the tree fort in the woods that my friends and I built, and I just went too far. Man, I felt so bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

Like, I felt like I looked green. It was. It was bad news.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's one of those moments where you, like. You really wish you could have, like, video footage kind of what that looked like.

[Josh Clark]

I kind of hope when I die, it's a little bit like defending your life. So they can show. I'll be like, show me that one. We can go over the other stuff, but I really want to see that clip. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rip Torn will be there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The upshot of this, though, is do not ever start smoking. I deeply regret ever having started smoking as a kid. As an adult, it doesn't matter. Like, just don't ever start smoking and do yourself a real favor.

[Chuck Bryant]

You did a great job quitting, though. And you never looked back.

[Josh Clark]

Nope, I didn't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good job.

[Josh Clark]

It was surprisingly easy because I was worried. Hold on. One more thing. I think if there are people out there who are considering smoking right now and are worried about the time they're going to have. One of my big worries was that I was going to spend every day of the rest of my life wishing for a cigarette. And that's just not how it goes. Like, you. You spend a week, two weeks, if it's really bad, maybe three weeks, really longing for a cigarette. And then it starts to get easier and easier, and then eventually you're grossed out by the thought of cigarettes and people smoking cigarettes around you, and you don't ever want to see one again. So if that's what's keeping you from quitting, don't let It. Because that's not how it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like that. Good psa.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, man, Thanks.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think before we break, maybe we'll just go over some of these final stats here at basically the peak and about 1900, by 1890, one out of every five kids under 16 was working. 1.7 million kids under 16 was 6% of the total workforce in the 1900 census. And that's just kids who were registered to work in these factories. Like that does not include these kids rolling cigars in their house or the kids on the family farm. So it was much, much higher than that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because I think 2/3 of kids in general in the country worked in agriculture. So yeah, if they were not counting agriculture, they missed out on a lot of kids in that number. And that's still a staggering number in and of itself. 1.7 million.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And if you're wondering back then what effect this had on education. Just a snapshot from Philadelphia. In 1900, 15% of 13 year old boys had left school to work. And I think half of 15 year old boys were not in school anymore.

[Josh Clark]

Because they were working or like a significant portion because they were naughty.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? Yeah, they just didn't want to do anything.

[Josh Clark]

But get this, this is the staggering one to me. 17 year old boys, only 10% of them were still in school in 1900 in Philadelphia. That does not bode well for the future of an economy. And I think that actually is one reason why public education became so much more compulsory and one reason why people came around to anti child labor laws is the idea that, no, there's a lot more that they could be doing than just working in a factory almost literally their entire lives. Like we can do. We can do better and we can build a better, a better society and a better economy if we invest in their education instead of robbing them of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I guess we'll take a break and talk about when that started in earnest. And it wasn't just then when you mentioned it.

[Josh Clark]

I'm Ira Glass on this American Life.

[Chuck Bryant]

We tell real life stories, really good ones.

[Josh Clark]

My mother said, I'm sorry you weren't here because Father Sager was here visiting and he found a very nice orphanage for you. And I said, but I'm not an orphan, Ma.

[Chuck Bryant]

Surprising stories every week. This American Life.

[Josh Clark]

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, it turns out that there were. So the progressive error is one of my favorite errors, or I should say the people from the progressive era are some of my favorite people, like Frances Perkins, although she was a second or third wave progressive reformer, but she was inspired by some of these earlier ones who were working on things like fair wages, like a minimum wage, minimum or maximum work days or working hours. And then they also train their sights on things like ending child labor, or at the very least, really restricting the amount of work a kid could do, Especially in regards to them being in school, too. The idea was to put school first, and then if the kid had the wherewithal or their parents really needed the money or something like that, they could let them work in addition to school. But the school needed to come first. And this is really radical. I mean, it seems radical. We had kids rolling cigars in their one room apartment in New York their whole lives. And now all of a sudden some people are coming up and be like, no, no, no, kids should be in school. And then maybe working, preferably not working. So how do we make that happen?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was a very big deal. And most of these or a lot of them were women, people like Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop and Lillian Ward, anti poverty measures. And this is stuff that, you know, they would also go on to champion women's rights and women's rights in the workforce and women's rights to vote. So the whole progressive movement was kind of tied up in all these radical ideas about being fair and good, decent human beings.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yeah, radical stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

So here's the problem is you've got these robber barons and these factory owners and these industrialists who are like, wait a minute, we got a good deal going because we don't have to pay these kids much. They're probably not going to unionize. Like, the newsies thing was definitely an anomaly. That didn't happen much. And he said they were like, we got a good thing going and so we're going to lobby against this as hard as we can.

[Josh Clark]

But surely they were unsuccessful, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, they were successful. They did. They blocked a lot of legislation early on for this kind of regulation. Federally. States, you know, it kind of depends on where it was. But states did establish child labor commissions. And some states had some minimum ages, minimum or maximum hours and minimum wages.

[Josh Clark]

It was. They were sparse. I couldn't find what states passed it. But for the most part there was a. Probably for the most part, though, there was a lot of pushback and enough pushback among the states, the residents of the states, that not a lot got passed. So there was a progressive movement that started say in like the 1890s. And it had to. It basically like any progressive movement, it Ran full steam ahead, hit a huge wall of industry, and then had to slowly just keep pushing and pushing and chugging and chugging and keeping at it for a few decades before it was successful. And one of the ways that it became successful, or the way that it kept pushing at it after it hit that wall of industry is a group called the National Child Labor Committee formed, and I think they formed back in 1904. And they were basically, they became a lobbying group to lobby against the lobbying against child labor laws that ended child labor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they had a pretty smart way to get attention, and that was in hiring a photographer named Lewis Hine to go around and sneakily document what was going on with his camera. He worked as a sociologist and a teacher and then later became a photographer. Was also a photographer. And I think he himself was a kid who was working 12, 13 hour days. So he was like, let me start taking pictures of these kids. And maybe that. Because, you know, that's worth a thousand words they say, at least.

[Josh Clark]

And he took 5,000. So that means that he took 50,000 words. No, 5,000.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm just kidding.

[Josh Clark]

500. No, I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was trying to undermine your confidence in your math.

[Josh Clark]

It was totally wrong. It was purposefully wrong, though. Let me just do that real quick.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do, do, do carry the one.

[Josh Clark]

He took 5 million words.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a lot of words. And if you go back, you've probably seen a bunch of these pictures. If you've seen pictures of very unhappy kids outside of a coal mine or standing on mountains of shucked oysters or standing around factory machines like little miniature adults, they were probably Lewis Hines photos.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, 5,000 photos all archived in the Library of Congress from what I understand. And he had like a really great eye to begin with. So like, they're really great photographs in and of themselves. But, you know, you don't have to sit there and like, you know, try to really contemplate it. It just hits you immediately what you're looking at and how sad what you're looking at is. And so he and the National Child Labor Committee got these into newspapers. And like you said, he was very sneaky. He would pose as different things. One of them made sense to me. The industrial machinery photographer. Okay, yeah, got that. But what excuse would a Bible salesman have for taking photographs of the kids at the factory? I could not find that to save my life.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, the only thing I could think is that got him in the door. And then maybe he was like, and I just love kids and can I take Some pictures, but I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

And this is a time before stranger danger, I guess. So they were like. Sure. I mean, they're child laborers. I don't care about them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He also, he wore a special jacket where he had the buttons on the jacket aligned in known measurements. So if he went over and stood, like he would take a kid's picture and he would ask they're documented their names and their ages and stuff as best he could. But he would go stand next to them if he felt like he couldn't outright ask what their age was to kind of tip off that maybe he was not a Bible salesman. And if the kid went up to the second or third button, he would know roughly how tall they were or no, he would know how tall they were then roughly how old they were.

[Josh Clark]

The other thing, they were giants, Right? Right. Yeah. I'm sure, you know, he didn't get them all right, but you know, you can't win them all. But the other thing that made that jacket special, Chuck, was that the lining was made of a T shirt of a ripped chest and abdomen. And it would make him feel really good about himself when he put that jacket on.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's good. Nice callback. When did things finally change, though?

[Josh Clark]

Well, they started to kind of change. Like these pictures shocked the conscience of the nation when they saw them, when they made them into newspapers and they were accompanied by muckraking articles about how bad these conditions were. And shame on you, America for turning a blind eye to this kind of thing. But it wasn't like an instantaneous switch was thrown. It still took decades. I think the first proposal for anti child labor legislation came in 1906. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana was the first to propose. It got taken up in 1916 by the Keating act. That was actually passed, but the Supreme Court shut it down. And then there was some more legislation that there was a constitutional amendment actually that got passed but wasn't ratified by the states. And then it wasn't until the Great Depression and the New Deal that it finally got passed. And I think if it were just the New Deal, it wouldn't have gotten passed. But the Great Depression changed things socially enough that it opened the door for an end to child labor in America.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like ironically, I think, massive unemployment with so many adults out of work they couldn't turn around and just hire kids to do these jobs for lower wages. It was, I mean, even at a time when it. A bad look didn't really matter as much as it does today. They Even knew that that was a really bad look and that they probably couldn't do something like that. So eventually, the Fair Labor Standards act of 1938. Thank you, Francis Perkins, our old buddy.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Among others, this finally set a national minimum wage for the very first time. Maximum number of hours for workers, and then child labor limitations, notably that if you are under 16, you cannot work in manufacturing and you cannot work in coal mining at all because they're just too dangerous. Another couple of things it did. It established overtime time and a half.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if you went over 40 hours a week, you could only work up to 44, but you could work four hours at time and a half. And that very first minimum wage was 25 cents an hour, man. 1939, it went up to 30. 45, it went up to 40. In 1956, it finally reached a dollar.

[Josh Clark]

Ka ching.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it didn't crack six dollars until 2008.

[Josh Clark]

I know, dude. It's just shameful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Isn't that nuts?

[Josh Clark]

We definitely need to do a minimum wage episode too, because it's just not as cut and dried as. Yeah, just raise the minimum wage. Like, there's just, like, there's a lot to it, and I really want to do one on that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I hadn't really kept up with it because I. Before I got salary jobs, I worked as a waiter for 15 or 20 years or something, so. Or as a PA on movie sets and TV sets. And that's not an hourly thing either. So, like, I hadn't had an hourly rate job since college, so I didn't really know kind of how it changed over the years. I did not know it was 2008 when they cracked $6. That's really low.

[Josh Clark]

It really is. That's just not okay. And it's still at seven something right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not even 7.75.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's 7.25. Actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it. Yeah, that's the national minimum wage, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Again, some of the states are raising stuff slowly but surely, but that's the federal ones.

[Chuck Bryant]

Boy, this is. Alabama doesn't have a minimum wage. Is that right? Is that possible?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's possible, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna have to look into that. That's on the fly.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, we'll do a whole one on minimum wage for sure, coming up. But you said that the. The Fair Labor Standards act was passed in 1938, and it still basically governs child labor. And one of the things that it does, Chuck, is it divides child labor into agricultural and non agricultural jobs. And with agriculture or non agricultural jobs, there's like a pretty decent amount of protections. Like kids can't work in hazardous stuff until they're 18. Things like blasting mining, forest firefighting, that kind of stuff. That if you're under 16, you can only work a maximum of three hours a day during the school year. There's some exemptions. Did you see the thing about home based wreath making?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So you cannot. Non agriculturally, you cannot work if you're under 14 at all. Like I could not have worked as a busboy at 13.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Supposedly. But I still did unless that was passed since then. Cause this thing's been ratified a million times. Or not ratified, but amended. But yeah, if you're a child actor, you can work if you're under 14. Obviously if you're a newsie, you can still deliver newspapers if you're under 14. And home based wreath makers.

[Josh Clark]

Dude.

[Chuck Bryant]

So weird.

[Josh Clark]

It is weird. And not only is it home based wreath making is exempted from child labor laws in the United States. It has to be a specific kind of wreath. It has to be mostly evergreen wreaths.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

So if you're making wreaths and it has to be at home, if you're having your kid make wreaths at home and they're not mostly evergreen, that's illegal. And if they're making things out of evergreen that are not wreaths, like say garland, that's illegal. Specifically homemade wreaths that are mostly evergreen.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's really, really interesting.

[Josh Clark]

It's one of the most bizarre facts we've ever talked about on this episode, on this show.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm gonna keep that one in my pocket.

[Josh Clark]

Totally. But agricultural though, they have like very little protection. Like almost shamefully little protection.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. If you're 16 years old and you live on your family farm, they can work you. There's no limit on how many hours they can work you. You can work jobs that the Department of labor considers hazardous. I think 14 year olds also can work unlimited hours if it's outside the school day. And then kids as young as 12, I think actually 12 and younger can work with parental consent.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Basically unlimited hours or at least up to 72 hours. And that's during the school year as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

And as a result of this, 55% of child farm workers graduate from high school here in, you know, the 2020ish.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. In the United States we're talking about. And the 100,000 of them are injured on the job every year. Child farm laborers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. They're trying to get all this changed.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They're basically saying, like, look, just take these things that we apply to non agricultural jobs and apply it to agricultural problem solved. And that would solve a lot of problems. I'm sure it would create a lot of problems that you and I are unaware of, not being farm folk. But it would solve a lot of the child labor problems that child labor activists have issues with. It would do nothing for the much more rampant problems that are endemic around the world with child labor, where a lot of it resembles basically how America was with child labor at the, at the, you know, during the Gilded Age.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. 158 million kids are estimated to be the victims of child labor around the world. The good news is that's down 30% from 20 years ago. But the bad news is, is that's a lot of kids. And I think 71% of those are in agriculture, harvesting, fishing, herding, stuff like that. But there are a lot of kids around the world that still like work in coal mines.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like that's too narrow for an adult. It's too dangerous. You go in there and do it instead. And they'll work with like, they'll work at wildcat gold mines. So they're having to like separate gold with mercury. So they're getting mercury poisoning at a young age, which really messes with your developmentally on tobacco farms in places like Zimbabwe, not only are they having to get nicotine poisoning, they're also being poisoned by toxic pesticides that are used on the crops and stuff too. So these kids are working in deplorable working conditions. And there's just some really basic stuff that needs to change that would just free the children of the world, the world around, from what is essentially like indentured servitude right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there's four kind of basic things that the ILO says we can do around the country. And they, like you said at the very beginning, they're very pragmatic. They all make sense and they would really make a difference. And the first is expand access to education, get kids in school and get rid of fees to be in school and put them, if they're in a school situation, they're way less likely to join the workforce.

[Josh Clark]

That's what our friends at co ed do. They're like helping get kids off of family farms and into schools by removing any barriers between them and in school.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep. It's all through education. It's a great, great organization.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. What else?

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's, by the way, the cooperative. I always say that Word wrong. Cooperative for education. Look them up. We've championed them for years, and we got a little fun thing coming up that we're doing with them that you guys might be interested in. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, let me see, what's the next one? Help families meet basic needs. This could be a universal basic income. It could be monthly stipend, but basically so families don't have to send their kids out to work to provide at the most basic level. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And a way that you can help, that is through Kiva, by lending, making micro loans to people so that they can. They have the capital to grow from initially. There's also, like, if you make sure that adults are getting better wages and pay and their rights are protected, it makes their children less likely to be forced into the workplace to begin with, because it's not. Again, there's not like adults the world around saying, you know, our kids need to be working because they're lazy. Like, their kids need to be working because the adults aren't getting paid enough. And if you make sure that you're, you know, if you're a Western company and you make sure that you're paying everybody a fair wage, there's a good chance that you can eradicate child labor from your supply chain.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And then the last thing is just enforcement. They can put all the laws that they want on the books, but unless someone's gonna actually work on enforcement, then it's really doesn't matter much. So that's really sort of the last step is funding for enforcement.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Germany actually just passed a law recently that. That demands that its companies examine. Do due diligence and examine their supply chains to see if there's child labor involved and to do something about it. It doesn't have, like, as much teeth as Human Rights Watch was saying that they wish it had. But it's a good first step and hopefully the way that progressive nations will start moving.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Two things. Big shout out. I can't remember his name, but the young listener who was mowing the lawn for his dad and wrote in to request this episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

I think he prompted this episode. So hats off to you, young sir. I hope you can kick up your heels for a little while. And then also, this was indeed a Dave Rue's joint. So thanks again to Dave for this one. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Since Chuck said, that's right, everybody, it means it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna call this. I think it's just thanks. Hey guys. Writing in from Louisville, Kentucky to say how much I love the show even though Josh said the KFCM center was in Lexington.

[Josh Clark]

I'll never live that down.

[Chuck Bryant]

Your correction put a smile on my face knowing that there are other stuff you should know Fans near me. I work in long term care and use your podcast in many different ways. I help people with cognitive impairments set up their tablets and such for enrichment, socialization and stimulation and one of the first activities I show them is how to access entertainment. With educational podcast everyone can find something they want to learn about on Stuff you Should Know. I also help people find ways of remembering new information and use your short stuff episodes for those with shorter attention spans. And finally, my own enjoyment is a factor. I listen to many different podcasts during my drive to and from work, but only Stuff youf Should Know has the ability to get me into a different headspace. I attribute that to Josh and Chuck. None of these topics would be nearly as interesting without you guys. I've cried and laughed sometimes both all in all of your episodes, even the really mathy ones. I feel you on that one. Chuck and Josh. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Oh that was a dig.

[Chuck Bryant]

That wasn't a dig.

[Josh Clark]

Are you Masked guy? No, no, but I like to think I am.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, sorry about that. The episode on Snake handling is a personal favorite. I appreciate it and absolutely love the show and everyone that works on it. Thanks for keeping it going. I hope to see y' all in Kentucky. That is from Ellie.

[Josh Clark]

Well, thanks again Ellie and if you want to get in touch with us like Ellie did, you can write us a an email. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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