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People to get here, maybe you know me as mayor in my new podcast, I'll be talking to people from every field whose ideas and actions will shape an era that is about to begin.

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We can take this time and use it in a way to bring people together.

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When people protest in a country that means they still love it enough, but they still believe changes.

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But I have hope that we are actually going to figure out how to allow people to be free hearted, free thinkers.

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Listen to the deciding decade on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What if I told you that UFOs, haunted houses and even inexplicable magic tricks are all caused by the same creature? And what if I told you these powerful and ancient beings are meant to be feared? The hidden gem in a new podcast from My Heart Radio and Aaron Menck is grim and mild, explores the legends of these ancient and terrifying creatures. Join me, Rabia Chaudry, as we step into the world of the hidden gem, listen to the hidden jinn on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of pilot radios HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright cherries over there. And you may already be a winner because you're listening to stuff you should know the podcast. I was going to say a version of the same thing.

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So, hey, that's the that's the spoils of doing the intro. That's right. You may be a winner.

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Yep. Chump sweepstakes. Yeah, man. So I was aware of sweepers before that. There's this group out there. Yeah. The hobbyists, people who enjoy sweepstakes and we'll talk about them later. But as I got more and more into like researching sweepstakes, I'm like, well, this is pretty interesting stuff. There's a lot more to it than even that. Yeah, I have never, I don't think entered. Any contest. Well, you know what, I fully take that back because almost every year I enter the HDTV dream home.

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Do you really? Yeah, well, that's like one of the big sweepstakes in the United States. Yeah, well, I mean, every year that I sort of remember, I haven't had cable TV for a few years, so I'm not reminded as much. But that's one of those like I mean, have you ever heard or have you ever seen those houses?

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Yeah, I ran across a little cool during this research and yeah, they're very beautiful. Not only that, they don't stop with the house, they'll give you like a GMC Yukon and like, here's half a million dollars in cash. Yeah, it's gotten crazy now.

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You know, here's some here's a couple of snakes that are really exotic and expensive. I think they do green home as well now.

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Yeah, I think there are a couple of them and one of them, I think the green home one year was, you know, Serenbe here outside of Atlanta. Yeah, I think one of them was it Serenbe. Yeah.

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There's one that they gave away in the last year or so down in Merritt Island in Florida where I've been. And then there is one in I want to say Miami or something. And I write about the person who won. Actually, it was written in the Miami Herald. I don't remember where the house was, but they couldn't afford it. They won and they were like, I can't afford the taxes on this house.

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Yeah, that's what the you know, growing up, everyone's dad basically. Well, you know, you got to pay taxes on that stuff, right? I was a kid, so I would find a way to work that out. If I want an HGV green home. Yeah, whatever.

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But I mean, if you all of a sudden were like, I don't have fifteen thousand dollars for taxes. No, that's true.

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I mean I think that's the same with game shows and stuff, right. Oh yes. As a matter of fact Chuck, you can read all about that in our chapter on the perfect prices right game, which is in our stuff. You should know Colen an incomplete compendium of most of the interesting things book.

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That's right. And I got to tell you of. I'm trying to think I think of all the chapters in that book that might be the one that I was most jealous of from the podcast standpoint. What do you mean, like putting it on as a podcast? Oh, I see. Rather than being a book chapter, I was like, oh, man, I so want to do that as a podcast. But maybe, you know, maybe one day we can.

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Yeah. I don't think there's anything stopping us from doing that. I think that we wouldn't want to wait a little while. Nope. We're doing it next week. I don't want to undercut the book sales. Well, no, we definitely won't, but. Well, I mean, I think we're totally fine to do any and all that one out of all of them will be the most difficult because it's such a straightforward story. But I'm sure we'll find a way to plump it up.

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I wonder if that would incentivize people to buy the book if we did an episode from one book chapter and said, Do you want one more? Yeah, like how many more? How many chapters are there again for 27. Yeah. You want 26 more stories.

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For your reading, get the book pleasures, especially if you put it all awkward and vaguely hostile like this.

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Yeah, I think that that's that's the old publishing trick, right.

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Hostility, right.

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Or assertiveness of the moved a lot of books that way.

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He did so. Oh yeah. You can order a book now preorder anywhere. You order books including Indie Bound and didn't you come of the Bitly.

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Yeah. OK, well if you want to bitly, if you want to support black owned bookstores, you can get a bit deadly suicide bomb in order from there.

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Yeah. So that's your spiel, which actually was organic. It's not at all scripted. Don't think that if you did then you obviously missed the clumsiness in all of it.

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But we're not talking about our book today. We're talking about sweepstakes, sweepstakes and in fact, sweepstakes. Chuck, the word itself sweepstakes is hundreds of years old. I think they found its origin at least in the 13th century.

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Yeah, because back then they were you had stake in it like you would buy. It was kind of like a lottery. You would get a bunch of people to throw in money for a ticket and it probably wouldn't even a ticket and some person would win. And so they would sweep the stakes. But it's not like that competition in the UK, a contest in Canada, sweepstakes in America. Those are different because they are always no purchase necessary. That's the differentiator, right?

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The one thing that they have in common with those is that the winner takes all. That's the point. There's like a grand prize where this this one person wins the prize. You sweep the stakes. Right.

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But that is totally different from a lottery. And a lottery is self-sustaining. So much so that you fund educational systems with lottery proceeds. That's how self-sustaining it is with a sweepstakes. It's like, well, there's one person putting up the prize, but then somebody else comes along and wins it. What does that person who puts the prize have to stand to gain from it? And that the answer to that question is the heart of sweepstakes, which is basically publicity.

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That's where they came from. Sweepstakes are, like you said, competitions in the UK or contests in Canada. They were born in maybe the 40s, 50s for sure, as a marketing and advertising tool that some companies and salesmen came up with to basically move more stuff or at the very least get people interested in some item or product that would have otherwise just been overlooked in a regular ad.

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Yeah, and sometimes it was and still can be very blatant in that there is like a code on a product and you like well it says no purchase necessary, but sometimes you can actually buy a product that has a code that you can then enter like a UPC symbol of.

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Sure. So sometimes you do have to buy things, but sometimes it is literally just we have and it doesn't even have to be a new thing, but oftentimes is a new product, maybe from an old stable, like a new kind of toothpaste from Pepsodent or something or Colgate. And they are just trying to drum up PR.

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And a good way to do it is to give away fifty grand and get people just in that aisle of the store.

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Right. And so and have them say like, well I need some toothpaste, I normally get Colgate, but oh Pepsodent has a fifty thousand dollar sweepstakes right now. I'm just going to buy the Pepsodent this. I'd be a fool not to. Yeah. How can I lose. And the, the hopefully from that point on they'll keep buying Pepsodent. Right. So that's a way to drum up sales. But you said something that was really important. One of the things that differentiates a sweepstakes on purpose from, say, like a lottery is that there's no purchase necessary to win in the United States.

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No purchase necessary is like just common vernacular. Everybody knows that phrase that came from what's known as sweepstakes law, which is to get around rules and regulations against lotteries in the United States. Yeah, gambling. One of the ways that that they did that was to create this other way to enter. You didn't like. Yes. If you bought this tube of toothpaste, you automatically had your your entry form right there because it came with the package. But if you didn't want to buy the toothpaste but you still wanted to enter the sweepstakes, they had to afford a way for you to get an entry form and enter without any kind of purchase whatsoever.

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And then that entry had to be as valid or eligible to win, have the same chances of winning as somebody who did make the purchase. No purchase necessary to win. Yeah.

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The other thing is sweepstakes will do is give you and this has changed over the years obviously. But give a salesperson a lead. You got to get those. Glengarry leads or you're on the way out the door with no job, basically. Yeah, so in the old days it was let's say it was like a sweepstakes. If you bought a blender, if you didn't buy the blender, but you enter the sweepstakes, at least that would be your information to blender salespeople.

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That would be like, well, they were looking at blenders. I know that much. Or else they wouldn't have even known about this.

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Right. These days, obviously, like with social media, that's a big way that it's done.

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It's all done virtually. So they know that if you just click on something to enter a sweepstakes, then all of your information can be sent to whatever company that is. And that's why you're going to start seeing if you enter some like Oreo sweepstakes or something. Don't be surprised when in your in your social media feed, you start seeing nothing but ads for outdoor gear.

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Right, exactly. But it's so it's kind of updated for the 21st century. But it's the same principle you're saying I'm interested in blenders. Please send me all the advertising you can find on blenders. And that was how it was before when you sent in your info by hand or put it in a box in the store. It's the same thing. Now, when you enter to win an online sweepstakes and you share your contact info like that, it's just now we call it data mining.

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And rather than the blender salesman getting in touch with you to see if you still want a blender that you didn't when it's some third party marketing company that is getting in touch with you because your information was sold to them because you entered into that blender sweepstakes. So it's different. It's updated. But the point is, the same sweepstakes are there to increase brand awareness, to generate buzz or hype around a new product. It's a form of advertising and it's a way to generate leads for sure.

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And the thing is, they were huge in the 50s, in the 60s. And one of the reasons that they took off was because the Reader's Digest actually.

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Yeah, Reader's Digest, the little tiny magazine that everyone's grandmother had and that you would read, you know, laughter is the best medicine. And what was the other one? There was a couple of, like, very kid friendly. Regular things, the joke, one, meth, meth, meth, I think it was meth, met all exclamation points right now. There was another thing that may have been like true stories that were also funny. But I remember reading Reader's Digest a lot as a kid.

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Yeah. Which is hysterical because it's so not kid friendly.

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So the point is, is they they go through and read magazine articles and then condense them down to like abbreviated versions. It's just the broad strokes, right?

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I think so. Like, I never got that back then. But I think it's sort of like a dummies version of the reader. What I can tell, man, is so bizarre.

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Yeah. So they would. Yeah. What a weird concept. Is it still around. Oh yeah.

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Reader's Digest is definitely still around. I guess it's like the antithesis of long form, but they're just like we don't need all that stuff. Here's the main point.

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I'd like to get my hands on a Reader's Digest and see what it's like these days and a shawl, a nice doily, because it gets a little chilly.

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So that was always the joke with with growing up in my church was whenever the teenagers, which is what they call the old folks, it's adorable, would have an outing. The lady this one woman would get up and say it would be like July, and she'd say, and remember to bring a sweater.

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It didn't matter what time of year. That's adorable. Got to bring a sweater. So and of course, that's ageist to make fun of.

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Dude, it's so funny you said that because I was about to say like 10, 15 years from now, we're really going to put our backs against the wall.

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Yeah. When it freezes the thing. Yeah, no, no, that's not what I was thinking. OK, I was saying we're going to get called out for a just offhand remarks. I know.

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And we're going to be cold both because we're going to be old. That's right. Bring a sweater.

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So Reader's Digest had a a form and they were very upfront about their sweepstakes. It was preprinted. It had a number there and you could just fill it out and mail it back. And Reader's Digest was trying to sell subscriptions. And, you know, Publisher's Clearinghouse is obviously the elephant in the room, the big daddy of all sweepstakes, which is another weird, weird company when you think about it very especially today.

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Yeah. I mean, magazine subscription sales.

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But that's where the company started out. It was a magazine subscription salesman who went door to door and said, you know what, nuts to going door to door. I'm just going to draw up a brochure and mail it out to people. And he started getting responses like that. So much so that he put this company, Publisher's Clearinghouse, together. And then when they became like a household word was when they attached sweepstakes to like Reader's Digest to demonstrate it was so effective because like with Reader's Digest or Publisher's Clearinghouse or whatever, ultimately, at the end of the day, they're trying to sell you something.

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Like you said, Reader's Digest is trying to sell you a subscription. They're attaching the sweepstakes to it because they're they're using their age old lever of, hey, everybody, check it out. It's a big deal. We're giving away a million dollars. And also, here's everything you need to order as many subscriptions as you like from us. Do you have any magazine subscriptions?

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Yeah, we've got the well, which is no longer, to my taste, like I don't like current modern design and architecture and decor today, right now. But we also have one from L.A., the core. That one is very much up my alley. There's a lot of color and stuff like that. We have men's health in GQ, I think.

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Oh really? Yeah. Which is not paying off. It's funny because I dress terribly and I'm overweight at the moment. Big time.

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Uh, we Emily gets she gets a few home magazines. I think like like you guys, we both share a love of like. Architecture and stuff like that, so we like looking and fantasizing about, like these amazing places. That's why I enter the the dream home thing every year.

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I know it's the kind of like a little mini vacation to go through one of those. Maybe it is really is. It's also fun to judge and be like, oh, you paid a million dollars for that, you chump, once you get some taste.

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But I say to the magazine, what I'll never be, though, is the person on HDTV House Hunters that walks through and goes, she's I don't know about this place. Look at that ceiling fan. Do they do that on house hunters? Oh, people.

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I mean, it's all set up anyway. House hunters, they already have the house when they go on the show.

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It's it's a big scam. But, yeah, there are people that say like, you know, ceiling fan or this wallpaper, you know, like that's really easy to change, my friend and the producers off camera, they're like, can you actually, like, take your finger down your throat, make yourself vomit?

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It will really, really pay off.

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All right. I think we should take a break and come back and talk a little bit more about sweepstakes. How about that? Let's do it.

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A ravenous pandemic, a ruinous recession, protest, riots, racial strife, police brutality and yes, Donald Trump America in 2020 feels like Apocalypse Now. Again, I'm John Heilemann and in hell and high water.

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I'll explore this moment in a series of raw and real conversations with the people who shape our culture. Hell and High Water is a podcast from the recount.

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Listen to Hell and High Water on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bethany Van Delft, host of a new podcast, The 10 News, 10 Minutes of News and Fun for the new generation of Curious Thinkers.

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We're here to help you make sense of it all, from current events to science, art and pop culture. We'll talk to experts and special guests and hear from young people just like you. Listen to the 10:00 news starting September twenty nine on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts with new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

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I want to learn about a terrorist act or how to dig a hole about fractals and just gone to the hunt, the Lizzie Borden murders and again, of all runs on the plane, everything to your brain just shut and just you should know. Word up, Jerry. OK, Chuck, so we've been talking about that HDTV dream home giveaway, and there's good reason because it is one of the big ones, but it's also one of the easiest to understand.

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If you go and read up on HD TV's Dream Home sweepstakes, you're going to find there's a very clear reason that they give away this huge prize with all of this money and cars and all this stuff, because I guess they build the home over the course of like a season and then they give it away. So part of the TV show wrapped around it. Right.

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So they're generating viewers for the TV show, which is supported by advertising. And the more viewers you have, the more you can charge for ads. So the sweepstakes is just basically being used to generate buzz for the TV show now or vice versa, maybe both. But the point is, is there it's paying off for them, which is why they keep giving this stuff away. But I have a soft spot in my heart for this one because they are one of these few giant sweepstakes that just say, here's how it's done.

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Ask us whatever questions you want. This is all very much on the up and up. Yeah.

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And it's also it just a big advertising bonanza, period. So not only are you getting that GMC SUV, it's like Frigidaire. And like I guarantee you, every single thing in that house has some sort of sponsorship attached to it, like from the siding down to the to the dude who poured the concrete. You know, I'm sure they all donate that stuff for in kind advertising.

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You know, that's a Tommy Thompson brand concrete job. It's double stamped. But, yeah, HDTV is very cute. Like, they they have a I think they actually have a regular drawing, not even a computerized drawing, like they do it the old fashioned way. Right, dude?

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Yes, they should. But I just had a stroke of genius. We should get High TV's Dream Home sweepstakes to sponsor this episode.

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That would be great. That would be full circle. Yeah. And maybe put your thumb on the scale for one of us.

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Yeah. Right. You know, yeah. So with the with the dream home giveaway, the way that they hold the sweepstakes is through what's called a random drawing method, where if you enter you can enter by mail, I believe, which is the old standard, old fashioned standard way. You can also do it online, which you're far and away. The much more common way to do it now. Yeah, that's the way I do it. But either way, you're going to have your entry placed into a bin.

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They have actual physical bins, like I get the impression it's a 55 gallon drum and your entry, your physical paper entry goes into that drum or if it's online, it goes into a virtual bin. And then at the end of the contest, these bins have maybe like 50000 entries in them each. And then they're sealed off in a new bin, started in each bins, numbered. Right.

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And then at the end of the contest, they put the number of ping pong balls as there are bins to put those in a lotto machine, pick one and all of a sudden you have your PIN number and now things are getting for real, are they not? They are.

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And then and I think that's what I like about it, too, is the old school nature of it when, like, you're you're getting selected out of a hat, essentially, and you have just won a house.

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Well, no, not yet. Not yet. Your bin has just been picked. You haven't necessarily been picked yet. You got to tell them how old school and lo fi this is.

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Oh, well, yeah. Once you get to the bin, I mean, don't they just like, dump it on the floor and literally pick it out. Yeah.

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When they seal a bin they give it a good shake in a roll and all that so that like any so, so the, the first entry isn't necessarily any better off than the last entry. They're all mixed together pretty well. But then yeah they dump it onto the floor and they take an HDTV employee, blindfold him or her them and push them toward the pile of envelopes, hopefully without them falling down.

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Although if they do it's on a pile of all those, it's not too bad. And then they just grope and grab one. And that's your winner. If it's a physical one, if it's virtual one, a computer program runs through all the names in that bin. And then the the the employee presses the spacebar and stops it. Either way, it's a random person picked and I love it. You might as well be conducting like a Catholic Church fair drawing at that point when you have somebody blindfolded grabbing at a pile of envelopes, that's the level that you're at.

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Yeah. You know, it would make it even better if if they is if they did that. But instead of choosing the winner, they chose like five different names. And then they had those people come in and they had David Bromstad holding up five matchsticks, put his hand in front of the camera, and each person had to draw a matchstick. And the longest stick wins that. Who's David Bromstad? Is he from stranger things? No, he's he's HDTV.

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Oh, that makes more sense than he's the guy that's like now covered in Tatts that didn't used to be covered in dirt.

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No idea was, let's see, the trainer who recently had a heart attack.

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But now he's on this blood thinner. I don't think so.

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Yeah, he's I mean, now another show he does is is the lottery dream home.

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Like, he gets lottery winners and tries to sell them how or, you know, shows them houses. I've never heard a depressing show, actually.

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Yeah, I don't we don't win on lotteries before, but did we touch upon, like, how tragic most lottery winnings are.

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Yeah, OK. I think so, yeah.

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So I can imagine that shows a bit of a downer if you really think about it. It can be. Yeah. That's all I'm going to say. I might have to start watching that. I'm in the market for a downer TV show, so thanks for that.

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Well you would think a lottery dreamhouse show would be like nothing but awesome and excitement. Oh, no, no, no. I think sometimes just the way you people like to spend their money can be depressing.

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Yeah, I'm with you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't want to judge if that's there. I don't want to yuck their yum their dreamhouse I'm sure.

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Oh I see what you're saying. I thought you meant like I just bought one 17th of a share of the Dallas Cowboys, so it'll be pretty valuable.

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So that random drawing method is pretty, pretty standard. That's kind of from what I can tell, the gold standard of sweepstakes. There's also one that's one of the original ones called the preselected method. And this is the one that was used to great effect for many decades. And it's the one that Publisher's Clearinghouse frequently uses to wear the the winning number is selected first secretly and held in confidence, and then a bunch of numbers that have the same number of digits as that.

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That winner, including that actually winning string of numbers, are put on two mailers for Publisher's Clearinghouse and mailed out everywhere, which is why they can say you may already be a winner because you could conceivably be holding the winning envelope because the winning numbers already preselected.

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Yeah, as a kid in the 70s and 80s, we didn't really fully get that. No, we saw an envelope with Ed McNeill's, Ed McMeel, Ed McMahon. He should have been Ed McMeel with his name and face on it.

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You may already be a winner. Some fake check written out to you. Sadly, a lot of people thought those were real checks. There are stories about that. We'll talk about them.

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So I didn't really fully get that. But I guarantee you that the people that participated in these things knew that it was a pre selected winner.

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And if you are lucky enough, you and you got to pay attention, because what they kind of counted on was that most of these animals get thrown away. Most of these prisons go unclaimed. Right. I think that ten percent of the prizes were ever even awarded for those early Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes.

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Yeah, that was not just no. Not even Publisher's Clearinghouse to think this Modibo all over then. This was like Colgate-Palmolive in OK. And oil companies and soap companies and toothpaste makers were all like using this preselected method and they would get all of the attention and all of the advertising, but they would have to give out none of the money because the chances are that nobody the winner or the person with the winning package didn't go to the trouble of actually taking it back to the store.

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And so they would get all the advertising without any of the having to give up any of the money. And so this actually got a lot of bad press. It led to FTC hearings that later led to congressional hearings that that created some legislation we'll talk about later. But the upshot of it is that it caused companies that have sweepstakes to create what's called a second chance drawing, which is, let's say, you know, you preprint the all of these entries and send them out.

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And one of them has this preselected winning combination that dilutes the chances so tremendously that the the chances are the grand prize is not going to go anywhere. But with a second chance drawing, you have a smaller prize, say, like the grand prize is a ten million dollars second chance drawing grand prize might be one million. And you select the winner from the entries that were returned. So it's guaranteed that somebody is going to win that second chance drawing that seems to have appeased the townfolk with their pitchforks and torches.

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Yeah, because Publisher's Clearinghouse grand prize winner is the odds are astronomical, like the one thousand a day for life is one in six point two billion.

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Like Powerball is a is a great deal when you compare it against something like that. Yeah. And and PCH is pretty, pretty tight lipped. It's hard to get a ton of information about. Exactly. How it works and why it would be six point two billion, because it's not like there's that many people entering, there's there's no way that's happening.

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No. And I genuinely I looked so high and low and in the weirdest little crevasses of the Internet trying to get an answer to this. And I could not find it. The only thing that I can imagine is that it has to do with the number of entries put out there. But they're certainly not printing out and sending six point two billion mailers there.

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Is it the sweepers like doing this? Thousands and thousands of time each. It's possible that it's possible because I did I did see people say, like the chances are so high because they get so many entries. But what you're talking about is that would be almost every single person on earth entering, which isn't that which isn't happening, or every single person in the United States entering 17 times. I guess if you have some sweepers, hardcore sweepers and enough of them, it could drive the chances up that high.

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But it just seems like there must be some other something to do with, like the randomly generated number, something that has to do with driving up the stakes, because, like you said, Powerball seems like easy street Powerball chances are one in two hundred and ninety two million. This Publisher's Clearing House is one in six point two million. And the reason for this huge discrepancy is because they're structured differently. When you play Powerball, you have to pick five numbers from a pool of sixty nine numbers and then one Powerball from a pool of 26 numbers.

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And when you calculate the factorial together, which are words that I which is I think I combine them accurately, but I have no idea what I'm talking about at this point. You have a one any any combination you choose has a one in two hundred and ninety two million chance of being right. Because there's two hundred ninety two million possible combinations. Yeah, it's very black and white. Yeah.

[00:30:20]

It's totally understandable. Even if you don't know if factorial are how they work you can get that. But again, with Publisher's Clearinghouse it's like how, how is this possible at all. One in six point two billion. I cannot find out how.

[00:30:33]

Yeah, well, one thing is for sure, if you do win and this was kind of kind of made me feel a little bit better if you do when they're going to find you. And I thought this is sort of the opposite of how it would be. I thought they would be like, now you've got to come to us and we're really not going to make much of an effort. But they do. They they find you. They will use a private detective to find you and track you down there.

[00:30:55]

Something concrete for a private detective agency.

[00:30:58]

There's a PNG executive who testified during those FTC trials in the late 60s that says they exhaust every resource to find anything, any winner over five hundred dollars and usually the winner comes forward. But I guess it's good to know that they do make an exceptional effort. And you can't you can't have grown up in the 70s and 80s without knowing about Ed McMahon and Dick Clark and the Publisher's Clearinghouse prize patrol coming to people's houses with balloons and confetti and champagne and a giant check and knocking on your door with a camera crew like that was as much as of America is like baseball and apple pie, basically, for sure.

[00:31:43]

And like, you know, people talk about the Mandela effect in the Berenstain Bears effect and all that. A lot of people associate Dick Clark especially, but also, I mean, Ed McMahon especially, but also Dick Clark, too, with Publisher's Clearing House.

[00:31:58]

They never once pitched or worked for publishers in that body.

[00:32:03]

To this day, people even back then, I saw a contemporary article that was like, you know, confuse them with Publisher's Clearinghouse. They worked for American Family Publishers, which was a knockoff, also ran for Publisher's Clearinghouse. They never once pitched for Publishers Clearinghouse. Publishers Clearinghouse has always had that prize patrol that shows up at your house and that's always been Publisher's Clearing House employees. And they apparently are legit. Like if you win, they don't get in touch with you ahead of time.

[00:32:32]

They just show up at your house. Or if you're not home, you're on vacation. They'll show up where you're vacationing. They'll show up at work wherever you are. They're going to show up with these camera crews and give you this grand prize. So that apparently is is legitimate.

[00:32:49]

Yeah. And if you want to be a party buzz kill pet aren't along the order of it's actually the low on the totem pole is the prize place to be. Then just start floating that American family publishers fact to people that you meet. Is that right?

[00:33:05]

Because I love that. Oh man. I need to I'm not going to be able to help myself.

[00:33:10]

I think if I was at a random party, if this had never happened and I was at a random party and said something about I told a great story about Ed McMahon and Dick Clark and Publisher's Clearing.

[00:33:19]

Alison, someone said, well, actually, they worked for American family publishers, right? I don't think there's any way to frame that in a way that makes that person look good or fun.

[00:33:29]

It's all in the delivery. You laugh along and be like, that's crazy. But even get this, it's even crazier. Even worked for Publishers Clearing House and everybody triple laughs on top of the laughing they're already doing.

[00:33:42]

It just goes dead and you're left going. But I but I framed it correctly in an engaging way. I said, well actually with my finger up.

[00:33:53]

And then I would say, yeah, but what about that bloopers and practical joke show?

[00:33:57]

Then everyone will be laughing again and you just slink off in the corner. I would. And, you know, that's that's my typical party behavior.

[00:34:05]

Anyway, you remember that show? Oh, yeah, totally.

[00:34:08]

Like the cats were. This was called bloopers and practical, was it. Yeah, I believe it's all it was. It was it was like the title was the description. That was great.

[00:34:17]

Remember they had the sort of like, you know, Oregonian's cartoon guy would come on and sweep the stage. Oh, totally. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's sort of one fantasy island. You know, they rebooted Fantasy Island. Yeah. I didn't I didn't watch. It was supposed to be super dark.

[00:34:34]

Well, the first one was no wasn't the original fantasy island was super dark.

[00:34:39]

Well, I need to go back and watch that because I don't recall that at all. Yeah.

[00:34:42]

Like almost all the fantasies were ended up being scary and taught the person a lesson I should really, like, fantasize about. I was like four at the time and and pick up on that. It is, by the way, it is TV's bloopers and practical bloopers and practical jokes. Yeah. All right. Let's take a break and we'll talk about the very, very few sweepstakes that are in existence today right after this.

[00:35:14]

Hi, my name is Amena Brown, and I'm a spoken word poet, author and host of new weekly podcast, her with Amena Brown, brought to you by Cynical Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio her with Amena Brown is launching on Tuesday, September 29th, and each week will feature hilarious storytelling and soulful conversation, all centering the stories of black, indigenous, Latino and Asian women.

[00:35:37]

Joining me as we remind each other to access joy, affect change and be inspired, listen to her with Amena Brown on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:35:49]

Hi, I'm Kristen Holmes.

[00:35:51]

I've covered campaigns, Capitol Hill, the White House and everything Washington for CNN. But nothing tops the importance of this upcoming election. And my job is to help you make sense of it all. Welcome to Election 101. For the next 10 weeks, we'll figure out the electoral process together. I'll talk to experts, historians and some of you will address the safety of mail voting, inform you of deadlines and make sure you know all your options.

[00:36:18]

You'll learn why voter registration is different from state to state and even from person to person. I'll help you figure out how to watch the debates a little more closely and how to get a better read on what the candidates really stand for. Yes, this election year is different and this is a different kind of podcast. Election one one was created to help you learn how to make the most of your vote this November. Listen to election one of one every Wednesday on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:36:52]

When I learned about a terrorist act or how to take a Broadway musical about fractalkine, guess gone, that's the hunt, the Lizzie Borden murders so they can have all runs on the plane, everything to your brain exposes just the stuff you should know. Word up, Gerri, by the way, Chuck TV's bloopers and Practical Jokes has a five point three on IMDB, which is wrong, really? Yeah, that was a great show, man.

[00:37:17]

And I bet you that dumb sacket show is got like a nine out of 10.

[00:37:24]

Well, these days it's Alfonso Ribeiro. Is it? Yeah. I've never been a fan of this. There, OK, so ridiculousness. No, I never saw that. That's all it is, but it's much more like painful to watch, like skateboarders getting her act into just really dumb stuff.

[00:37:43]

But it's it's mesmerizing. And somehow they have an infinite, limitless supply of episodes of it because it is on 24 hours a day on MTV.

[00:37:52]

Is it really?

[00:37:53]

Yeah, I think I told this story before, but I like to put it out every five or six years in case the person listening is this person is when I was at UGA one day and a guy, I saw a guy completely busted on a bicycle on the sidewalk and his books went splayed out everywhere.

[00:38:11]

And the very first thing he did was put his and he was laying down on the side of what was put his hand under his chin and act like he was reading a book.

[00:38:20]

Oh, my God. And it's amazing.

[00:38:23]

And like, if you're out there, dude, please, please send us an email. Stuff podcast that I heard, media dotcom, because that was one of the best reactions I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, that's that's a sharp, sharp dude was pretty great.

[00:38:36]

So before we broke, I was being coy about the very, very few sweepstakes that we still have today, because surely these went out of style in the 70s and 80s. Not true. There are about 400 million annual sweepstakes.

[00:38:51]

In this day and age, in that Nutt's, that is, and I'm sure that counts every day, I'm sure iPhone app sweepstakes to win 10 cents, but that's still 400 million.

[00:39:02]

Yeah, that's still a sweepstakes that you can go play. Whereas before, I think at its first heyday in the 60s, the mid 60s, the FTC calculated there was something like 600 national sweepstakes. And yeah, four million is a lot more than 600. What's crazy is, is those FTC hearings actually tried to put a clamp down on everything and it didn't work and they ended up expanding and exploding even beyond that. But one of the things that has kind of driven that I don't know if it's got to be a chicken or the egg kind of thing, like has it been these people who are called sweepers in the U.K., they're called Kompas, who their hobby is engaging in sweepstakes.

[00:39:43]

Did they lead to this proliferation of it? Or do they are they encouraged by the easy access to sweepstakes like never before? What do you think?

[00:39:51]

I don't know, because I didn't know sweepers existed. I didn't know that there were people that would spend, you know, sometimes a couple of hours a day, randomly or not randomly, very pointedly, looking for and registering for all kinds of sweepstakes.

[00:40:12]

Using spreadsheets, using their autofill on their computers just to enter, to win over and over and over again. Yeah, but they're out there and it's a subculture that I I'm surprised there may be a documentary about them.

[00:40:26]

I don't know. I haven't run across any any mention of one. There's a really good Zachary Crocket article. Zachary Crocket, amazing writer who I don't know if he still writes for pricer nomics or not, but just amazing. He, of course, did win on this subculture.

[00:40:40]

But he said that like a good, you know, normal sweeper, somebody who's like a genuine hobbyist is doing this for hours and hours a day and injuring up to hundreds of sweepstakes every day. Hundreds. Yeah, how to win to win a major award like Christmas Story. That's what they call them in the I should say.

[00:41:02]

So there is a Slate article from 2003, and it had a lot of just blatantly factual errors or blatant factual errors and was really arrogant and dismissive toward this group. So it's possible they don't call them major awards, but that's where I got that from. But the lingo was m.a that they're after the M.A big cash payouts, cars, boats, major awards that are not necessarily.

[00:41:33]

Yeah. And it's, it's still the same sort of.

[00:41:39]

Like we said with social media, it's a little bit different how it goes, but it's still the same kind of aim, which is to build brand recognition. You see major brands doing these sort of fun games like hit those tiki torches. And this is sort of like a scavenger hunt. You had to go around and find these torches. There were clues on Facebook. You went a wrangler if you found all the torches, and that's good for Facebook, it's good for Geep.

[00:42:02]

It's probably good for tiki torches. Right. But every you know, every department store on the planet has some sort of even very minor, like here's a fifty dollar gift card kind of thing. If you re tweet this or whatever, like those are just all over the place now.

[00:42:17]

All over, there's a site called Sweepstakes.

[00:42:22]

What is it called Suy Sweepstakes Hub? I think so. I mean, if that's what it's called, it might as well be called that. I can't find it right now. We'll see if we can call it out later. But I went to it today. And I mean, dude, there's a sweepstakes for everything. There's a new podcast out and they're giving away like Amazon, Alexa, just to just to generate interest in awareness of their podcasts.

[00:42:48]

It's like everything has some sort of sweepstakes. Like if you got a new book, give away five books. We should do this. You give away five books and then hopefully everybody's like, well, I didn't win. But that book sounds pretty great. I'm going to go ahead and buy that book. Or at the very least now I'm on a mailing list for this publisher because I've just shown them that I like books enough to enter into the sweepstakes.

[00:43:09]

Is that podcast. Let me ask you this. Can you listen to it on iTunes? I heard media app or wherever you find your podcasts.

[00:43:15]

Probably interesting. They're doing something, right?

[00:43:19]

Yeah, they are. I'm going to find the name of that podcast because we can't. We can't. I know that I mentioned a podcast like that and just just never give the name. So I'm going to do a little researching while you tap dance for us, OK?

[00:43:33]

One and to two. So, yeah, at least four hundred million sweepstakes today. Now, like you said, the FTC got involved, they held hearings and everything is on the up and up. Now you have to and I'm sure this is all very much spelled out as far as like you have to clearly explain the rules and clearly explain your chances of winning.

[00:43:56]

And I'm sure that's very much mandated on what clearly means. They're not just like, yeah, whatever you think is clear is fine with us. Yeah.

[00:44:02]

Congress actually got involved and passed an act. Yeah, and what was that, 1998, 98?

[00:44:10]

OK, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that's what Congress does sometimes, right?

[00:44:16]

But I mean, the reason why is because there were there a few cases that sort of trouble people, to say the least.

[00:44:23]

Yeah, they passed the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act, also known as the Sweepstakes Act. And there was one case in particular that really pushed everything over the edge with this guy. Yeah. This elderly man in his 80s, he lived in California and with his own money, he flew not once but twice to Tampa, to the American Family Publishers headquarters, just to claim his prize money because he had gotten a mailer that said that he was already a winner.

[00:44:54]

Apparently, the actual label said final results are in and they're official. You're our newest eleven million dollar winner. And then if you read the fine print, it was like if you have the winning number, this man flew twice to Calev, to Tampa to collect on two different prizes because of mailers twice. And they finally said, enough's enough.

[00:45:15]

I can just picture him on the plane and like telling his seatmate, like, what's going on and then not knowing what to do, quite frankly.

[00:45:24]

Well, yeah, imagine being the seatmates like see check this letter out. Yeah. And I was like, oh no, this is not going to go well for. Yeah.

[00:45:31]

Like what do you do there. Do you. I would honestly I wouldn't know what to do because that hits me right where it hurts, which is to be kind and empathetic, but also to not let someone go through something like terrible. Right. So I wouldn't that presents a real ethical quandary for me.

[00:45:49]

Well, I think I think at that point you kind of say, I'm going to be late. I have to go to American Family Publishers headquarters before I come to the meeting, because that's what I.

[00:45:59]

Yeah, that coronavirus right now, really I just don't want to take the chance of being next to someone going to pick up their grand prize that doesn't exist.

[00:46:08]

So so they are part of that that nineteen ninety eight congressional act. Is that like you really need to be a lot more clear about the odds of winning. You have to say things like no purchase necessary or another phrase is buying won't help you win. But the whole thing, from what I understand, the whole thing and by the way, American Family Publishers is now defunct. They went under, unfortunately, fortunately for Publishers Clearing House, they got all sorts of free press because people used to just think American Family Publishers was Publishers Clearing House.

[00:46:41]

But they also got all the bad press, too, because people would think that anything American family publishers did, it was actually Publishers Clearinghouse. So it's really weird. I think it is. We're like two alternate universe is kind of came together right there.

[00:46:55]

Now, which one was it that there was one case where they were they had the entry entry entry envelopes.

[00:47:02]

The entree envelopes. Yes. Very packaged in such a way that you could tell the envelopes where people actually did buy a subscription and where they didn't, even though they were both supposed to be entered very easily, allow them to just throw away the ones where they didn't actually buy something was at PCH or the other.

[00:47:20]

That was Publisher's Clearinghouse. And they they were found they had blood on their hands to them, throwing away hundreds of entries that had no no check. Because, again, remember, what they're trying to do is get you to subscribe to a bunch of magazines or now they sell vitamins or housewares or something like that. And if you hadn't sent a check in, apparently some big chunk of entries got just thrown away.

[00:47:42]

Well, and they you know, you talked about sweepstakes law. There was they did have to settle a lot of lawsuits over the years, civil lawsuits from contestants. So, you know, there were people that were wise to it and there were attorneys out there very willing to take those cases, I'm sure. Yeah.

[00:47:58]

And I think over time, part of it was because of that preselected thing where people were like, what do you mean nobody won the grand prize? People really paying attention to that kind of stuff. And they would get sued. And I saw that they they paid tens of millions of dollars to to settle some of these and fight some of them, too. So but they're still in business, which means that they're still making so much money that they it's worth holding these sweepstakes not just to give the prizes away, but also to to to fight off litigation as well.

[00:48:35]

Yeah. And one way that you can really kind of fight off litigation is by hiring what's called sweepstakes administrator.

[00:48:43]

Yeah. Like there are companies that will fully execute the contest from beginning to end. You hire that. It's like hiring a caterer. Yeah. You don't have to worry about the the little stuff mushroom's. Like they're going to do it all. They're going to come in, administer it in a way that's above board and legal. You don't have to worry about the hassle. You got to pay them their vig. And and you're all set. All right.

[00:49:08]

It's hard to believe that there are companies out there that do this, but there are. So as much as like the PCH seems a little hosley, it is a legitimate sweepstakes company. It's not a scam, but there are plenty of scams out there. And in fact, PCH has to warn the public how to look out for scams. One of the biggest ways is that if you are contacted via email, phone, Facebook or something like that, saying that you won a big prize, they're going that like that's automatically wrong because they send their prize patrol out for their biggest prizes.

[00:49:42]

And that's really legitimately how you would find out as they show up at your house. Yeah.

[00:49:47]

And, you know, these are all they seem like no brainers to people like us, but to a lot of people, they fall for this stuff. And it's really sad. You know, if you if you get anything that says you've won something, all you got to do is prepaid this tax. Any anything asking for credit card information, any kind of payment whatsoever. Is one thousand percent a scam. Right? Every time. Any time. A lot of times it's front.

[00:50:14]

It's a front for like malware.

[00:50:17]

They might ask you, like I said, for your Social Security number, your credit cards just don't don't fall for that stuff.

[00:50:25]

Don't give anyone information like that.

[00:50:27]

No. And you will need to give them your Social Security number eventually if you win any prize over six hundred dollars for tax reporting, because remember, taxes are a thing, but they're not going to get you up over Facebook Messenger and tell you you won a prize. So give me your Social Security number right now. The thing is, is a lot of people who play this are elderly and they are preyed upon. And there are a lot of scams out there.

[00:50:49]

I saw some figure in the tens of billions of dollars that is lost to scams sweepstakes every year in the United States. That's insane. It's an insane amount of money that's being lost. And that's just sad.

[00:51:01]

It is Super said. So the name of the podcast is called The Authority with Brian S. Arnold. And what's sad is they're in week eight of their eight week giveaway sweepstakes giveaway. And so this will come out long after the eight weeks is up. So sorry about that. But there was a sweepstakes that the authority project with Brian is Arnold held to win a speaker.

[00:51:29]

And, you know, it's interesting, this is not off topic, but over the years, a couple of times we've had a couple of dumb ideas like, hey, why don't we give away a thing to listeners for, you know, just doing something and every single time, like the legal department of whatever parent company we had was like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to get involved in this kind of thing, because then it's a contest where like, well, it's not really a contest.

[00:51:52]

This is very low fi. They're like, you can't do that. You're right. You have no idea the can of worms you're opening up.

[00:51:57]

Yeah, because there's a whole branch of law called sweepstakes law, and it involves following the letter of the law and also helping people sue people who are suspected of not following the letter of the law.

[00:52:07]

Yeah. So as attorneys, they just kind of always squashed it. Sure.

[00:52:11]

So I just want to give a big shout out. We never said I don't think why people do this. Real quick check. And there's a woman named Sandra Grosskopf, and she is probably the world's leading expert on sweepstakes, at the very least, America's leading experts on sweepstakes. She runs the Balances sweepstakes pages and just legitimately knows what she's talking about. And she just said it's excitement. It's as simple as that. That like the idea of getting a check or getting a prize affidavit in the mail is very exciting.

[00:52:45]

Other people have called it a high. And Krauskopf says, yeah. It turns out, though, if you're if you're thinking about sweepstakes every day and how to play them better and all that stuff, you may want to get evaluated for a gambling addiction because it can kind of easily traipse into that, I'm sure. Yeah. Who knew gambling addiction would make an appearance? So if you want to know more about sweepstakes will go forward and check them out.

[00:53:12]

And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, uh, I'm going to call this how we help somebody out recently.

[00:53:21]

Hey, guys, want to say thanks. Before even telling you why, I honestly cannot thank you enough. My name is James, 21, and I'm from Glasgow, Scotland. Yesterday, while at work, I received a call from my dad telling me that my grandma had passed away suddenly during the night, obviously distraught. I left work, headed home to be with my family. I know that nobody enjoys crying, but I really hate it. And as I end up with these, as I end up with these very intense headaches, well, through the tears on my drive home with your podcast playing through my car, I was able to laugh and to smile.

[00:53:52]

Despite the circumstances, I couldn't, for the life of me tell you which episode I even listen to just said it made me laugh and saved me from the literal headache and the heartache that I was feeling. And for that, I'm so thankful. I must have listened to around two or three hundred of your podcasts in the past month or so. So please keep doing what you're doing. And that is from James erm in Scotland. That's great. Sorry to hear about your grandma James and we could help.

[00:54:16]

Our condolences James, but yeah, it is very nice to hear, you know, that we can help people in times like that in some small way, you know for sure. Makes us feel like real big shots. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast and I heart radio dot com.

[00:54:39]

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart radio, because the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Need people to get here, maybe you know me as mayor. We know that this is the first year of the twenty 20s has been one of chaos and anguish. But I believe now is the beginning of America's deciding decade, a time that will present leaders and all Americans with decisions that will shape life in this country for the rest of this century.

[00:55:15]

In my new podcast, I'll be talking to people from every field whose ideas and actions will shape the era that is about to begin. I look at everything through a racial list.

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Is this going to perpetuate systemic racism or is it going to help dismantle what the rest of the country and elected officials have to start doing that they have to know what systemic racism is.

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When people protest in a country that means they still love it enough, but they still believe change is possible.

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I have hope that we are actually going to figure out how to allow people to be free hearted, free thinkers.

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Listen to the deciding decade on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Brian Husky, I'm bald, and I'm Charlie Sanders, I'm also bald and we want to talk to people about it. Charlie, did you know that the less hair you have, the more interesting you become? Yeah, of course everybody knows that. Oh, right. I mention and well, on our podcast Paltalk, we interview people about being bald.

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Brian, is this show just for Baldy's Charlie? No, Heroes' will enjoy this, too. I mean, the show is about perception, insecurity, vanity, just like human stuff. And you wouldn't believe the things that come up. Listen to bald talk on the radio, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.