CLASSIC: Citizenship and the Census

Every ten years, the United States conducts the census, a crucial survey of the country’s population meant to help Uncle Sam figure out how to plan infrastructure and distribute funding over the coming decade. In recent years, people have argued for and against including a question about citizenship on the census for any number of reasons ... including accusations of conspiracy. Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with an
episode that we discussed a bit off air back in
twenty twenty. As we all recall, there was a bit
of a hubbub, a hulla baloo, a kerfuffle of sorts
regarding the concept of US citizenship and the concept of

(00:22):
a crazy but important thing the country does called the census.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Y'all did when you took like civics, I guess is
what they're typically calling in school. Did they ever call
it citizenship for you? That was what it was called
in my upbringing, in my schooling. I thought that was interesting,
What do you mean class? The class was called citizenship
instead of like civics or Yeah, it was just called
citizenship mm hmmm, which is a little bit politically loaded

(00:48):
if you think about it, right.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
This was Augusta, Georgia. Yeah, it was Augusta, Georgia.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, at a Magnet school. It did do a lot
of their own curriculum that was maybe a little bit
different than what the state required. But I don't know
that I've ever heard of anywhere else that called those
types of classes citizenship that you're usually just like government
or civics it'd be fascinating to learn who was on
the school board at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Now you took that class. We know that the census
is all right, so every so often, the United States,
at least used to be it would put a great
deal of effort into figuring out the demographics of every
person in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Kind of the Nielsen's ratings system of America, like quite
civil population because it's imperfect.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, and a good gig if you can get it
as temporary employment. This became a measure of controversy back
in twenty twenty when we were exploring concerns about like
valid questions a lot of people in the country had

(02:02):
about whether or not agreeing to participate in these censes
would have implications for your legal status down the road.
And to be clear, Matt Noel and yours truly are
not profits. We're not prognosticators. We did not know what

(02:23):
was on the way.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Oh, we had no idea. And just as a fun
bit of trivia, this episode came out during lockdown for
COVID nineteen, so this was like lockdown for COVID nineteen
is March twenty twenty. This came out on March fourth,
twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all remember. I think that moment
walking through the ghost of our office in Ponce de Leyon,
and I vividly remember seeing so many people's calendars that
were left on March nineteenth, which is when the storm
really began to hit. But we always have a census

(03:06):
coming up in the US, and I got to ask you, guys,
do you participate in the census stuff? Are you dodging
those door knocks? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I think now I'm more into it. I certainly in
the past was probably just lazy and maybe just threw
it away. But I think it's a good thing to
be a part of.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
I have no idea how I would have answered that
in March twenty twenty, and I want to find out.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
So let's jump in from UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is not.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
We call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Let's begin today's episode a little bit differently.
We received an email. We receive a lot of email.
Some of the best suggestions for show topics come from

(04:22):
our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners. This
email comes to us from a guy we'll call Jonathan
Be because that is his name. Jonathan Bee says, good evening, gentlemen.
I have two ideas that I have genuine questions about,
and it would honestly like an open minded answer to
I feel you guys give a fair perspective and I'd

(04:44):
like to hear your thoughts on these matters. And Jonathan's
email goes on for a while, but he had one
point that we wanted to investigate today in this episode,
and it is the US citizenship question on the US Census.
Nathan's questions are why is this scene as offensive and
wrong to ask? And what about those who believe the

(05:06):
question should be on there? How were their voices heard?
You know, these are pretty good questions, right. I think
a lot of people who've been paying attention from twenty
eighteen twenty nineteen, as we gear up to the Census,
have heard at least about this debate, and it brings

(05:26):
us to some basic questions for everybody listening. We're mainly
going to be focusing on the United States today. However,
if you live in any country in the world, there
thoughts are there's something like a census in your neck
of the global woods. Like you guys participated in the
last census, which was twenty ten here, right.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
I love that I needed to provide how many people,
including babies live at my current residence.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
I think I did that? Was it like mandatory? Am
I going to get in trouble?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
So?

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Like not doing your taxes?

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Wait, you didn't do your census?

Speaker 2 (06:01):
I don't know, Like no one came to me, No
one brought me one. Was I supposed to like find
it myself?

Speaker 1 (06:05):
I think you get something in the mail.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Okay, I guess I'm not a good citizen.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
That was that from the jump? Well, it's it's tough
because it's a matter of hurting so many cats, where
a species where legitimately more than twelve people can't seem
to get along, right, That's why we cut juries off
at twelve. And now we're asking millions, hundreds of millions
of people to answer questions, and we're trying to get

(06:37):
all our ducks in a row. It's a herculean impossible task.
And the census is a pretty unique experience. Right here
in the States. We've been pretty pro census since all
the way back in seventeen ninety that first census. The
census is mandated by the Constitution. It was instituted by
George Washington, and ever since that point, our country has

(07:02):
conducted one of these things every ten years, every decade.
As a matter of fact, as we record today's episode,
it is twenty twenty and Uncle Sam is once again
gearing up for the census. However, this time around it's
become a little bit different. As you could tell from
Jonathan's earlier email, the census has become a hotbed of controversy,

(07:24):
and at least more so than in the past actually,
and it's become the subject of no small amount of
criticism as well as of course conspiratorial allegations. But to
look at the controversy about the citizenship question on a census,
we have to start at the beginning. What the heck
is a census? Actually, Well, here are the facts.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
Before we hit the facts. Well, maybe this is a fact.
It makes sense that the census is having a really
rough time. It's just going through changes right now.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
It makes census.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
It makes census because it's twenty three. It's twenty three,
it's turning twenty three. It's like early twenties, you know, really,
I mean it can.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Rent a car now or no, not quite five, right,
it can't be president yet.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Yeah, but you know, it's it's learning a lot about itself.
I would say, yeah, and we're in it really is
interesting this episode. I'm really happy that we're doing this.
I just want to put that out there. This is
the kind of thing it is tough to talk about.
As was said by our you know, our listener who
wrote to us, there, we're gonna we're gonna talk about
some things that make us and you and everyone in

(08:32):
the world a little uncomfortable. But it's important.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Well we didn't make you a little uncomfortable, we wouldn't
be doing our job right A little just a little uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
There you go. So let's let's get to the fact.
Just do it.

Speaker 5 (08:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
The concept of a census is in fact ancient. At
least nine separate censuses UH censuses as it says, yeah,
are mentioned in the Bible. Historians don't quite agree on
when the first North America and census occurred. Some argue
that the first one was in fifteen seventy six, two
hundred years before America gained independence from the British Spanish

(09:08):
king Philip is Icond, who wanted information on some of
his colonies and what taxes they paid. Reasonable sent American
Indians through what is now Mexico with a list of
one hundred questions. Slightly less reasonable. The Indians spoke no Spanish,
of course, so they recorded the answers in hieroglyphs and
made maps the same exact way. Very interesting process here.

(09:31):
Others claim it occurred in Canada, then known as New France,
was conducted by Jean tellann On, behalf of the French King.
Tellan apparently himself went door to door during the winter
of sixteen sixty five through sixty six and counted three
two hundred and fifteen people of European descent.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
There's an important point here because you'll notice when we
talk about the disagreement over the first census in North America,
both of those possible predecessors to the US census are
also European in nature, so it's quite possible say that
the population of Cohoka or something had their own version

(10:11):
of a census, or one of the empires in Mesoamerica.
These are the ones we know about because we have documentation.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
Can I jump back to the Bible? Really fascinating? I
feel like we just hit it. And then because we're
about to talk about why in the United States the
census exists and what it's about, right, the reasoning behind
having one in the Bible, at least, it appears from
a lot of the verses and the stories in which
those verses are contained, that the census was used to

(10:38):
keep track of certain populations, right, I mean all populations,
but very specifically, certain tribes of Israelites are in there.
And it's the way it's spoken about in those verses.
It seems like attempting to make sure that those numbers
don't get too high, or or at times make sure
those numbers are rising.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Or make sure that those people are located in the
right region or not moving into a neighborhood where they're
not desired. Yeah, it's it's weird. And also, did you
I know you like Mitchell and Webb the Mitchell Web. Look,
do you remember that sketch about this the Good Samaritan?

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Oh, yes, yes I do.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
It's so ridiculous. We see a little bit of the
prevalent and widespread discrimination of racism in the Bible, just
based on that sketch, which was written by atheists, but
is still pretty hilarious.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
But yeah, I just want to put that off there
before we jump into in the US, how well, at
least on paper or in you know, in actionable terms.
The reasoning behind the census, for sure.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yet, make no mistake the first census in the US,
as innocuous as it may seem now, the first Census
was entirely meant to figure out how many dudes were
eligible to join the army. How many people can we
put on the ground with guns in the trenches, how

(12:06):
many people can we send to die?

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Well, yeah, and where they are within the territory, so like,
how many men could be deployed from this area right right?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
And this was a big project. Six hundred and fifty
US marshals took eighteen months to figure this out. And
they were flying by the seat of their pants or
their horses were running by the seat of their hoofs
because they had. They were literally taking you, guys, quill
pins and whatever scrap of paper they could find. That

(12:36):
was the process, and going house to house and asking
asking like six questions which were all did not age well.
They aged like milk, as Reddit would say, from questions
like how many people in your household are white freemen
under over sixteen? How many are white freemen in general?
How many are white free women? Okay, your free people?

(13:01):
And then how many are slaves? It was like that
kind of stuff y, no household income question, No, none
of the more nuanced questions that exist today. This whole
project took more than a year, eighteen months. It costs
forty five thousand dollars. That's about one point two five

(13:22):
so one point twenty six million in today's cash. And
it sounds expensive until you compare it with the twenty
twenty census, the one happening this year next month. In fact,
it is projected to cost fifteen point six billion dollars.
Oh yeah, yeah, bubba ba billion, uh huh ba ba
ba ba billion. It works out to a little bit

(13:43):
less than one hundred dollars per household.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
That's insane, I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
I don't want to poopoo on the census party or anything,
but is it really that valuable?

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Are there not better ways to do it? To like
do Nielsen's like the way you do for television ratings.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Nielsen's are a horrible man, I know, but it's lazy.
You don't have to go door to door.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
I mean you could get to like is it does
it have to be like really precise? Like what will
be using this information for?

Speaker 4 (14:08):
You're talking about sample size, like as in Nielsen versus
the entire thing? Yeah, I mean, how do you blanket everything?

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Right?

Speaker 4 (14:16):
If you're because we're talking about a little bit later maybe,
but if right now, if you're going to propose to
do it electronically, you'd have to guarantee that at least
one person from each household has access to the internet.
A machine that can access that Internet has the understanding,
like the full understanding of who all lives in that house,

(14:38):
you know, the income, the all the questions that are
included in the census. I mean, it's obviously going to
go there, and it's going to have to go there
at some point, I think, But right now, if you
tried to do that, you would get a sample size.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's true. It's a good point, man.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
It's it's also a good point that the technology is outdated.
There is, in theory an opportunity to get a better answer.
But it sounds like the I want to address the
first question you asked there, noel, which is is this
worth it? That's a great question. The answer is yes,
but maybe not in the way people think. So. Now

(15:15):
the census is less concerned with figuring out who they
can take from a house and put on a battlefield
and more concerned with political power. In the United States,
the main purpose of the census is to figure out
how many seats each state receives in the US House
of Representatives. Since nineteen eleven, there have been four hundred

(15:39):
and thirty five seats in the House. Each state gets
at least one, Even if you're a really small state
like Delaware in terms of population, you get one. But wait,
you might be saying, aren't there big differences between how
many representatives are in each state? And isn't that a
little screwy? Yes, you're correct on both both counts, folks.

(15:59):
Yes there's a big difference, and yes it is screwy
because these extra representational seats are apportioned by population or
assigned by population. The most populous states get the most seats.
That's why you have a huge state like California with
fifty three seats in the House representatives. And then you know,
like Delaware, Sorry not picking on you, Delaware, Alaska, and

(16:22):
South Dakota only have one representative. That's the legal purpose,
and that's where a lot of the conspiracy actually hinges today.
And the Constitution describing the census just list it as
a quote enumeration of inhabitants, but it's evolved into something
else along the way as our methodologies and our metrics

(16:45):
get more and more sophisticated. Now, this gives us a
window into the habits of people living in the United States,
and it tells us a whole lot about them.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
I mean, it does do kind of the same thing
in theory that a Nielsen pole does in terms of
getting a demographic snapshot.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
It's a little bit more of a looking for trends
kind of situation. Right, So we might be trying to
see where the population is growing whereas declining, are people moving,
how many people live in the big cities, how many
children are there in average households. And then there's some
controversial ones that potentially are a little bit of a
divisive how these might be used, what is the racial

(17:29):
and ethnic breakdown in particular regions? And overall and all
this is important for a few reasons.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
Right, It's great for quiz shows like Jeopardy. These stats
are handy and what the podcast industry a few years
ago used to call snackable. Go ahead and cringe with
us to that. One second reason it's important is that
federal and state governments heavily rely on census data to
budget for social welfare programs.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
Isn't it crazy to get an update every ten year?

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Every ten years, sorry.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
For ten years, we're going to use these statistics.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
We'll get back to you, right.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, we'll get some updates here and there.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
So if you're born the year after the census, you
just got out in the wild for a decade. But
this is important too, because I want to hit on
that term. For some reason, the term social and the
term welfare have both become seen as like bad words. Right, sure,

(18:31):
but social welfare is part of the duty of a
state in one degree or another. Some states in the
past have approached it differently, like theocracies award certain rights
to people who follow the state religion while punishing others.
There have been more nationalistic states, you know that only

(18:54):
grant certain rights to certain ethnicities. But if you look
at every state, every state in history, they have some
form of what we would call social welfare. It's sort
of like if you are in a country club, think
of a country like a country club. Yes, you paid
dues and a set schedule. Those are your taxes, and

(19:17):
in return for that, you get certain things like protection
from say another country club that for some reason has
an army, or you know what I mean, Or you
get to use the golf course, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, there are perks to being a member of it.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right, it's a club. You pay dues, so.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
It's mostly so you can get into a darkened room
with other people of your social strata. They're in a
different industry maybe.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
And steeple your fingers right. Yes, So it is true
that cities and private industry alike, they use these figures
to do things like planning hospital expansions. Where we've seen
a lot of kids being born, let's put some money
into like you know, New York is exploding, we need
more maternity wards or something like that. That and that's

(20:01):
just an example we're making up. But that pretty much
tracks where do we need to prepare for new housing developments?
Where do we need to build more schools?

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Yeah, and that's a huge deal. And it has nothing
to do in this way. It has nothing to do
with performance necessarily, of like how a school is doing,
how a group of teachers are doing, or students are
doing on standardized testing. That's a whole other thing. In
this case, it's just how many people are in this
area and how many schools are there?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Butts and seats, right, that's it. And this is a
huge amount of cash. So we said we named a
pretty crazy number for the cost of the census in
twenty twenty. It's going to be over fifteen billion or
as you said, no, but a billion dollars.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
Yeah, how could that be worth it?

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Well, yeah, we have to consider it's investing almost sixteen
billion dollars to figure out what to do with the
more than six hundred and seventy five billion dollars that
federal and state government and put toward public service and infrastructure.
So this data is crucial. It is so profoundly important.

(21:08):
And that's why everybody who lives in the US right now,
everybody who lives here, regardless of your immigration status, regardless
of your citizenship status, everyone is technically required by law
not only to fill out the census form, but to
not lie on it. Basically, I must have done it.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
I must have just blanked it out because it was
such a benign activity.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
I should have looked at it as like doing my
you know, social duty though, like in the same way
that you know Jerry duty.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Right, But twenty ten was a weird year. It just
kind of happened and then it was over, and I
don't remember much of it, honestly.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, you distinctly remember both of you doing the census.
Was did you someone come to your door, she gets
something in the mail? What was the process like for
you guys?

Speaker 4 (21:53):
It was a mailer for me?

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Okay, Well, I remember because I have I have certain
there's no gotcha answers on the census, or there weren't,
so that might be part of why you don't remember it.
But I remember any government form like that because there
are answers. There are things I have to like legally
put in that are different enough that I remember when

(22:18):
I write them down, just because just because it's you know,
it's one of those things where you have to like
check other and then like you have to explain yourself.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Dude.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
I have those these days.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I fill out things by hand, so and frequently that
alone would be like a memory jogger.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
You know. I just have to say, remember, we are
you know, ostensibly three white males, you know, mostly in
this room, who are like doing okay financially and all
these things. Like it's a different experience for us than
it is for a lot of other people. Sure right, Yeah,
I mean just making sure put out there just if

(22:54):
you're talking about my wife who's Cuban, it becomes a
very strange thing and what you're talking about having to
kind of clarify some things, you know that yeah, there,
it's not just a standard mark a box.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
And it's always a weird it's always a weird feeling
when you get a form from a government or a
large institution that says, explain yourself, Yeah, wait, what's your
whole deal? Are you? Are you? Are you white? Are
you Latin X? What kind would you know? What I mean?

(23:26):
Like those questions, uh, those questions can seem really off putting,
especially the stuff about race or ethnicity, you know, and
there are a lot of people who would legally put
other especially you know, in the day, Like we have
to consider now in twenty twenty, many more people have
DNA test results. There are many more people who would

(23:48):
have normally checked just one one thing.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Oh, it's gonna be so interesting.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
And then they and now they're like, well, I am
definitely not just one thing, because race is such a
social construct to begin with.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
So oh, that's great, Ben, I haven't thought about that
as like as the census approaches, so wow, this.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Is the thing though, this is the law everybody who
lives here, regardless of whether or not you have your citizenship,
you're supposed to fill this out. The idea being that
this is a team effort and this helps us figure
out where to put our collect where best to put
our collective dues that we've been paying all the time,

(24:32):
aside from hospitals, aside from schools and all that other stuff.
There is a sinister side to the census, but we'll
get to that in a moment. First, let's look at
the census today. After a quick word from our sponsor,

(24:54):
and we're back. So the census today this year, at
least twenty twenty, it's already started. If you were worried
about the Census for one reason or another, put your
worries in present tense, because it's happening now. On January
twenty first, the US Census Bureaus started counting populations, and
they actually started in the remote wilderness of Alaska, specifically

(25:18):
a rural Alaskan village called Tuksuk Bay or Toksok Bay.
And this won't hit the majority of Americans until mid
March twenty twenty. Next month, that's when households across the nation,
including yours if you live here, quite possibly, we'll start
receiving invitations to complete the census. You can respond a

(25:42):
couple of different ways. You can respond online, you can
respond in the mail. They want to give you multiple
avenues to let them know who you are and what
your deal is.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
Yeah, it really is a fun season that we're in.
You guys, We get to fill out the census and
then immediately, if you haven't yet, scrambled to get your
taxes filed.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Oh yeah, that's right. I uh, you know what I
wish they would do on the census is make it
just I know this sounds irresponsible. Make it just a
little more fun. Have some randomly distributed wild card questions,
like hypothetical like if you were an animal, what animal
would you be?

Speaker 3 (26:23):
You know, an intervi a section or a mad lib
right right?

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah? And then maybe because it's the census, don't let
people just ride in the animal. Just give them a
choice of like seven animals that are not particularly popular choices.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
You know, if the next Batman movie could contain any villain,
what would it be and why?

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Calendar man? That would be appropriate for the census and
tax season? God, calend Do you guys remember are you
familiar with DC comics calendar Man? Yeah, there's a real
calendar man. Look aboup. He has no superpowers, see like.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
An accountant by day?

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Like, No, he has a costume, it's just calendars.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
What's a super power can he?

Speaker 4 (27:02):
Like?

Speaker 3 (27:02):
He doesn't have manipulate time?

Speaker 4 (27:04):
No, he knows exactly what happened every day of every
year at any moment.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
He's an inventor. He's a calendar themed inventor. So many
DC villains have no powers. They just have weird costumes
and then they have a thing They love like. I
was so surprised that Captain Boomerang made it into suicide squad. Dude,
his whole thing is that he is he is a
bogan stereotype. You know what a bogan is.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
It's an Australian. I forget the.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Redneck yes exactly, yeah, or a chav that that that has
nothing to do with the census. Uh, Captain Boomery, let
us know your your weirdest DC villain. Let us know
who you think would be in a Batman movie. And
let us know what you think about the idea of
some mad libs or some hypothetical some fun questions on
the Census. What happens next? So we're at mid March,

(27:53):
people are starting to get the letters, and now the
Census Bureau has to deal with one of the biggest
problems they will deal with in the course of their investigation,
which is finding people who have slipped through the system
or live on the edges of it. So that's why
they'll spend three days projected March thirtieth April first attempting

(28:18):
to count the number of people who are currently experiencing homelessness.
Only three days. Isn't that crazy? Only three days?

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (28:27):
The number of people involved must be staggering.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
So they'll go to shelters, They'll go to soup kitchens,
mobile food vans, they'll go to places on the streets.
You know, every city or town does have a place
where you see people who have to sleep rough. They
tend to congregate there, maybe for shelter or something.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I wonder if they employ any kind of social services assistance.
I mean, I know a lot of those organizations are
so strapped for you know, resources already.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
I kind of think not.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
But I also do think that just your average census
worker going into situations like that, that could be some
potential for some you know, tricky situations, I would.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Think, right, Like, imagine, imagine you are a census worker.
You're a college student who just found a cool temporary job,
and you're in LA and you're not from LA for
some reason, you're you're unfamiliar with the territory, and you
have to go to skid row, right, you know what
I mean, you probably want someone who has on the

(29:24):
ground experience and familiarity. I think that's a very good point.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Or just approaching a rural home somewhere in Iowa or something,
you know.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Or in Georgia. You know, Georgia has a lot of
separatist groups. The sovereign state of the Sovereign Nation of
Georgia is one of my favorites. So you know what
they got in trouble for, actually, out of all their stuff,
they got in trouble for printing their own license plates
and their own IDs.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
Yeah. Oh, man, but but but really, you know, walking
on to someone's property where there are laws in states
that say you can fire a weapon at someone and
your property. It's yeah, that's a terrifying thought.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Sticking a dog on you, Yeah, for instance.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
Or maybe even accidentally.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I had a you know, I had an old associate
who took a job in twenty ten working for the
census because he liked the hourly pay and he had
some war stories.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Man.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
He had to drive out into the Boonies and met
a few people who were convinced that the census was
a sign of the end times government overreach, that there
were things in the Book of Revelations in their version
of the Bible that we're tracking with what was happening now,
specifically with the census, and how social security numbers are,

(30:43):
the number of the beasts, and things like that you know,
barcodes Man exactly. Yeah, like the UPC thing. So so
here we go. These people are trying their best, and
then people working for the Census Bureau are not. They
are not participating in some sort of vast, overarching conspiracy,

(31:06):
or at least not consciously.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yeah, the person at your door right right.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
It's just like, if you have a problem with what's
the most hated company in the world right now or
in the US, it's Comcast, right every year, really is
a survey show. Every year Comcast has been the number
one most hated company.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
It's so funny, is it.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
You think it's the customer service or just like perceptions
of greed.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
No, it's customer search.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
I've never had a problem with Comcasts.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
I would agree with you, I think ninety five percent
of the time. But it is one of the only
companies where I've had a terrible experience one time.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
There's even a thing, not not to be like a
Comcast apologist, but like my internet went down the other day,
there's even a thing where you can look for outages
in your area and actually use your phone to restart
your modem and it fixed it instantly. So as far
as I'm concerning Comcast is a okay.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, well they did change their name to Exfinity because
the heat got too dead.

Speaker 6 (32:04):
Remember that they after they I can't remember which year
it was that set them over the threshold, but they
won worst Company in the US like after some amount
of years.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
So maybe it's just that when people have problems with them,
they're very bad. But yeah, So the reason I bring
up Comcast is, you know, even if you have a
problem with your telecom company, you have to be a
human being or an impersonate one for a minute and
realize that the person you're talking to on the phone

(32:35):
has nothing to do with your problem exactly. You know,
they're being paid there to keep the people who are
causing your problem from having to deal with you directly.
That's what they are. They're infantry being thrown into the
front lines.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
So I feel like there's some kind of thing matching
up there with the census and allocating how many fighters
there are.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Oh gosh, yeah, I know. Well that's a.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
Look.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
I'm not saying anything about my personal opinion of Comcast.
I'm just saying the results of of what has happened, right. Yeah,
So it's true you have to be human. The people
asking these questions are not out to get you. They
don't want to ruin your life. By April first, April
Fool's Day, the census day, is observed nationwide.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
How crazy is that? Yeah, on April Fool's Day is
when the census is observed.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well, this is the This is like the milestone date
where every home should have received an invitation to participate
in the census. And like every census before it, to
the points we made earlier, the twenty twenty census is
not going to be perfect.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
You know, Ben, when you call it an invitation, it
does sound a little more fun. It's like getting invited
to a party or something. The census invitation makes you
feel special. Yeah, no, it's true. And this one in
particular has got some kind.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Of sticky, sticky wickets wrapped up in it. Then it's true.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
We know already going in that like every other census,
not everyone's going to be counted for one reason or another.
In the US, there's a very large population in people
who live pretty much off the grid, you know, folks
who go from and I'm just pulling examples here, I'm
not stereotyping win but like folks who go from one
rainbow gathering to another, or one burning Man kind of

(34:29):
event to another, and live maybe in a vehicle, yeah,
or live in a campsite. They're probably they have a
very high chance of being missed by the census.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Someone who's living in a hotel for an extended period
of time. We're moving around in hotels.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I don't know if you've ever been to a fish concert,
but there's a lot of people that go to those,
So assuming many of those have not been counted.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
A ton of people could just be at fish concerts
perpetually while the census arrives at their place of residence wherever.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Maybe here's my here's my pitch for a for a
new Netflix mini series. It's it's the crack team of
Census Bureau specialists who have to find those people at
fish concerts.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
Tracking them down following fish trying to get the census questions.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, we'll do it kind of like the wire with
this gritty noir thing and we'll but we'll invent our
own slang for it.

Speaker 4 (35:23):
Oh that's great.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
So it's like, you know, people like you have to
be in n squad if you're either a problematic brilliant veteran,
or you've been busted down in the organization because of
some slight and they're like, oh, we're gonna send you
off to count fishheads.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
That's really great. Iris Elba is running the office there.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Cool, Yeah, I can let them keep the British accent
too for some reason.

Speaker 4 (35:50):
Oh, then it becomes really sinister. Then it's like it's
somehow great Britain infiltrating and trying to gather intel, like.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
You're always a step ahead, mat I love that.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
And then we could have what was that monarchical couple
who moved Megan mark Arkle?

Speaker 4 (36:08):
Yeah, and the Prince one of those guys.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, yeah, Harry or William got a fifty to fifty chance.
I get the I think it was Harry. Yeah. Maybe
they could have a cameo, you know, we could. We
could go a couple of different directions.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
It's like a door opens at some point and Idrisilva
is like what and it's the Prince and he's like, do.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
You have the data?

Speaker 1 (36:36):
We need to know how many free white males are sixteen? Okay,
and then he says, your Highness, your Princeness, we don't
use those questions anymore.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Oh my gosh, and all goes back to Brexit. They're
trying to gather as many people of British descent back
to the island.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
It's Brexit. But but yeah, I mean jokes aside. The
census does sound like a great idea, not for nothing.
Have thousands of other civilizations and states used this in
the past. It makes sense. But like you said earlier, guys,
it's becoming increasingly controversial. As a matter of fact, people

(37:16):
on both sides of the political divide in this country
allege there is something rotten about the entire thing, especially
this year. Why we'll tell you afterword from our sponsor.

(37:37):
Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
So the census has been the subject of not one,
but several conspiracies over its time in the United States,
but twenty twenty in particular.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Has really been a doozy.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's seen the rise of a new phenomenon competing allegations.
So here's what it boils down to. Much of these
allegations hinge on the so called citizenship question, which is
just what it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's as simple as that. It's are you a citizen
of the United States?

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, which seems on its face, like such an easy question.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yes, no, but it's there's a lot wrapped up in
that question. There's a lot of nuance.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
There, certainly is, especially when you take into account current
events over the past well, let's say five six years.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Sure, you know, for a lot of people who maybe
were just born in this country had citizenship, because the
way citizenship works in the US is not the way
it works everywhere in the world, correct, right, you, if
you are born on this soil in this country, then
you are automatically a citizen, no other concerns. Right. In

(38:50):
some other countries, that is not the case at all.
So in the US, for many people, it seems like yeah, okay, fine, yeah,
I'm a citizen. I mean, don't ask me to tell
you where my Social Security card is because who keeps
track of that thing? But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here.
But for many other people, you know, we have a
lot of students, right, we have a lot of people

(39:12):
who are in the course of getting their citizenship right
and are definitely here as legal residents. We also have
a lot of people who were maybe brought over into
this country to young age when they did not have
the ability to consent. But this is the only home
they've ever known. So even if they're not technically a citizen,

(39:33):
they are very much a resident. Where are they supposed
to go? You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (39:38):
Yeah, And it's difficult to differentiate. If you looked if
you took one person who was brought to the United
States when they were let's say two years old, one
year old, and then somebody who was born in the
United States, if you'd look at those two people and
just sit them in a room together, I have a
feeling it would be very, very difficul to figure out

(40:02):
which person was born in the United States unless you
directly ask them.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, that's the thing. So much of what binds people
historically are going to be things like family ties, not
that I mean maybe this sycom, but also just the
actual family ties of blood and sure relationship or religion
and things like that. What is one of the bold
things about the United States as a geopolitical proposition is

(40:30):
this concept of people being able to say we're American, US.
We're very different, but we're united by this one thing.
And it's interesting because we can see that evolved throughout history.
It used to be called instead of the United States,
these United States. It used to be more plural, and

(40:53):
people would be much more likely to describe themselves as
say a Virginian or a Floridian than they would to
say they were an American. Right, Yeah, and so this,
this concept of an idea means that people are bound
by culture. Now, so to your example of taking you know,
person name, person B, sing down and talking with them,

(41:14):
you know, they probably they they probably are very much
aware of the same things. They probably like a lot
of the same stuff, and they definitely participate in the
collective memory of big events, right, Like they're aware of
the moon landing even if they don't think it happened,
or they're aware of you know, nine to eleven, or
who won the Super Bowl last year? You know what

(41:36):
I mean?

Speaker 4 (41:37):
Absolutely absolutely. So let's get to like why why the
political left and right are having such a hard time
and squabbling over all this stuff?

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, okay, So in the months leading up to this year,
the census year, politicians I'm both left and the right
were fighting over the concept of adding any question pertaining
to citizenship because remember, you know, all that all that's
legally required when the census is that all people living

(42:10):
in the country answer to it, even if they aren't citizens,
your citizenship should not affect you when it comes to
the census.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Also, right, Like you could be a non citizen but
also be working under a visa or a temporary worker
a visa or something like that, and then you would
have to answer no. It's a very vague question that
without giving the proper context, could be very misleading and
perhaps used in a divisive manner.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
I guess so, yeah, because what if you accidentally answer
inaccurately depending on we know what Framing is a huge
part of how questions are answered. But we also know
this country has a lot of silly requirements in general.
Like consider the fact that, as far as the I r.
S Is concerned, it doesn't matter if you sell illegal drugs,
just supposed to report it on your taxes.

Speaker 4 (43:03):
Which is that weird? Yeah, it's very weird.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
They're like, look, guys, it's just it's the banality of bureaucracy, right,
The idea that that one department of the federal government
would say, look, man, move all the heroin you want.
We're the accountant people, just tell us, tell us what
the profit is, because we want thirty to forty percent
of it.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
Yeah. No, you're right, and you know, hopefully the IRS
doesn't come around and say, mister Decan, this is an
awful lot of one hundred dollars venmo charges or what
is ho what are you doing with this.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Applebee's.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
It is Applebee's. I knew it.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
It's all Appleby's gift cards.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Specifically, that is, Paul's life is just literally run by
Applebee's gut card.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
I have to I know where to do an episode.
I'm so sorry listening what's up? In honor of Paul Decan,
My wife and son and I tried to go to
an Applebee's where we thought there was one, and we did.
We made the mistake of not checking Google Maps or anything.
We were like, Okay, we're gonna go to this particular
area that's kind of close to where we are. It
turned out it was a chilies and we had to

(44:12):
eat at the chilies.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
You guys, I gotta tell you the man I was
picturing an even sadder result because I actually preferred chilies
over Applebee's.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
I'm gonna put that out there. Paul's giving me the
stink guy.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
But what if it had been like an abandoned, sad,
derelict Applebee's with tumble weeds rolling through just littered with
chicken wing bones and skeletons of small children.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
I mean that would be I mean great, dope. I
would probably just start rolling And like when I say that,
I mean a camera.

Speaker 6 (44:42):
Rolling around children bones, You mean turn on a camera.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Yeah, sure, no, it'd be cool. You're an urban explorer,
you'd be into that.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
Yeah, man, I mean candy flipping at an Applebee's has
always been a dream of mine. No, no, but no,
but seriously, we turned out it wasn't Applebee's and it
got turned it had.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Uh yes, see shifting demographics right and trends.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
So maybe Applebee's are proliferating somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Oh man, well we fulfilled our Applebee's mentioned. Thanks again
to Corporate for sponsoring the show.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
And Global Illumination Unlimited, of course, the only, the only
force with the power and the pull to make endless
apps affordable for the common man. So true.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
And kids eat free like way more than you'd think.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
So so yes, the census. It is weird because ostensibly
this seems like we can understand how people might think
this would be a small thing to fight over. But
then we can also understand why people might think it's
a there's something else at play well, and for.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
The individual it could be dying. There could be dire.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Right exactly, And there is a ton of misinformation and
disinformation floating around this issue in general. Here's the gist,
the lay of the land. The forces on what we
would call the political right of the US generally want

(46:21):
a citizenship question, and the forces on the political left
generally don't. This went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court agreed. I don't know if you'd say
they agreed with the left or the right. They agreed
with the Constitution and they ruled against the citizenship question
in June of twenty nineteen. At the time, the presidential

(46:45):
administration balked at this ruling and sought to keep it in.
They were kicking around the idea of doing an executive
order for this, but ultimately did not. Here's the idea.
The political left say that this is a cynical, ilicit
move by the political right and that it's not on

(47:05):
the up and up. They say, the whole reason this
is happening is because the right is conspiring to gain
more congressional power. We have a quote from Reuter's that
breaks it down pretty well.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
States with high numbers of immigrant and Latino residents, led
by New York State, sued to block the citizenship question.
They said it would cause an undercount of their populations
and disproportionately hurt their regions by costing them US House
of Representative seats and millions of dollars in federal funding.
Immigrant advocacy groups said the government's plan aimed to discriminate

(47:38):
against non white immigrants.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
So we'll dig into that in a second. Let's go
to the other side of the argument. This comes from
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and it goes something like this.
Wilbert Ross argues that reinstating a citizenship question, which had
existed on smaller questionnaires sent to smaller subsets of the

(48:00):
population in the past, would produce better data on enforcement
of the Federal Voting Rights Act protecting the electoral power
of minorities. So on that side, they're saying, this will
give a better understanding of the of the population of
the US, and this will allow us to do a

(48:22):
better job with the Federal Voting Rights Act. And then
Ross also has what I would say is a fairly
weak argument, which is every that everybody else is doing
an argument and says, you know, plenty of other countries
ask this question on their census, which is true, but
it doesn't it doesn't necessity. The problem is it doesn't necessitate.

(48:42):
What one country does does not mandate the actions of
another country.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
It's like when your mom always asked you, just because
your friends put a citizenship question on their census, are
you going to do it too?

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Well.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
It is an interesting point there, and it's causing me
a bit of a having an issue with this internally.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
As we're talking about I could see what you're saying
and get what you're getting at.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
I think, well, just where depending on where you're lying
and what you're arguing. It does feel like if you
did have better data on the voters and people who
are being affected by voter suppression, then you could help
to fix that problem, but you could also identify people
to suppress votes simultaneously. It's that weird thing of by

(49:29):
observing right, you're going to change the whole thing by
taking the census alone.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
It's also it's technology. It's dual purpose technology. It's a
question of trust and good faith. You know you're building
the same kind of centrifuges you use to create nuclear
power can create nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Let's be real, though, I mean, the backlash and the
controversial reality controversiality of this is largely because of the
state of politics right now. It seems divisive because people
are interpreting it as a direct, I think request from
our current president, who has made some pretty divisive statements

(50:13):
about how he feels about immigration and how he feels,
you know, the quality of human that he considers to
be coming over to our country.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Right. Yeah, I'm no judgment either way.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
I'm just saying he has made these comments, and I
think a lot of people on the left especially are
associating this question with let's figure out how to root
out illegals.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Absolutely, I mean that's absolutely one of the concerns, right
because we know that the immigration policies have been a
hot button topic for this administration since day one. Now
want to point out that there were people who didn't
agree with Secretary Ross. One group that did not agree

(50:56):
with him was the actual Census Bureau. They found that
a question about citizenship would lead to less accurate rather
the more accurate reporting, because their estimates found that something
like six point five million people would not respond to
the census if they knew this question was on there,
massively skewing data for the same reason because they're thinking,

(51:18):
given the activity of ICE and other law enforcement agencies,
am I just raising my hand to say, discriminate against
me or kick me out of the country, or you know,
like what happens? What happens if you're here on a
student visa, which is completely above the board and legal
by all the laws in the land, and you say, okay,

(51:40):
I am not a citizen, I'm a student here on
a visa. I'm studying neuroscience or sports medicine or art
history or something like that, right, or computer engineering, whatever
you and then later shortly thereafter, the administration changes some
law which means your student visa is null and void,

(52:01):
and you were planning to be here to finish school,
but now you're being deported, you know what I mean?
That's like, that's completely hypothetical. There are a lot of
ifs involved there. There's a lot of ifs then, but
you can understand where people are coming from.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
The other thing here, I'm still going down a mildly
conspiratorial route. Is that Let's say you did have something
like six point five million people not responding to the
census because of the citizen ship question. If you did
get it on there, you could just take that six
point five million people or households, you know, because you

(52:37):
would know the address where the census was sent to
and you knew you would know that it was not
responded to. You could use that as identifying potentially either
you know, people who are staining in protest, sure, people
who are actually perhaps have an issue.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
That's right, And I mean, you know, if you think about,
like we talked about, the sort of antiquate nature of
the let's not even call it technology. It's basically just
human beings and paper and the mail. It's barely I mean,
you know, there's obviously a web portal that you could
use to register, but it's such blunt instruments technology. It
doesn't seem like it's very precision targeted that you know,

(53:15):
you could be hard to glean that much specifics about
what you're talking about, but I guess you could. You
could to turn the screw a little bit and you know,
and and consider targeting people who did not participate and say, oh, instantly,
that means that they're here illegally, and then we can
send ICE to their.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Door to say, Homeland Security and ICE need to always
have a bigger budget the next year.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Right, Well, every that's the thing. Every government organization needs
a bigger budget every year. I think we've talked about
this in the past, right, just to reiterate the weird
thing about at least the US government and the way
budgets work. So regardless of budget cuts or where you're
whatever group you're naming, most US departments, from what we understand,

(54:03):
have to spend the entirety of their budget by the
end of the fiscal year because if they don't, then
their budget gets cut cut to like take the gap
away for the next year.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
You can't roll it over like rollover minutes on AC
and C.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
No, No, you can't.

Speaker 4 (54:18):
Really, it's the whole point. If you didn't need that
much money, you're not gonna get it next year. If
you tough world, if you needed more money and you
had to spend every single time you had and we
really could have used another to twenty million, two billion.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you guys a secret.
I don't know if I ever mentioned this on there,
This is. This is an open secret. This is not
anything that's going to get anybody black bagger killed. This
is just kind of Joseph Heller Kurt Vonnegut level hilarious.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
Public schools are are ultimately getting destroyed on purpose by
private industry.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Mom. Sorry, oh say mean that's true, Okay, but no, no, no.
There is a day, a single day in the year
where people in the military industry clamor to spend the
last of the budget they're in charge of. And the

(55:11):
day ends on at like midnight Pacific coast time, and
so this day is this day is famous in the industry.
It make no mistake, it very much is an industry.
Stay is famous in the industry such that people, very important,

(55:31):
high level people will just put aside a few hours
when it gets around like ten pm because they know
they're going to get calls and it's going to be
from their peers, and they see how they can move
the money around because no one wants to get caught out.
It's like a weird game of musical chairs.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah, you know what I mean, very expensive game of
musical chairs, or a cake walk with a billion dollar cake.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Very expensive chairs for sure. Yeah, So let's go back
to this. So we already know that the financial situation's
a little bit absurd. But back to the Supreme Court,
we know that these this idea, the Census Bureau essentially
says this could mean six point five million people go
missing from the census. The courts also disagree with Ross's reasoning.

(56:23):
Interestingly enough, for anybody who finds themselves being overly partisan,
this was a ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, who
himself is a conservative judge. He's not going to be
overly biased, at least not ostensibly so, just because an
idea is coming from the conservative side. He ruled against

(56:44):
this citizenship question, for liberal judges joined him. Justice has
joined him. And then he also noted this is interesting
in their decision. They know, you know what's weird, Wilbur,
is that you have seemed determined to specifically add the
citizenship question, like that has been your main thing since

(57:05):
your first day at the Commerce Department. Implication being don't
you have other stuff to do? Why is it just
this one issue? Right? So it's common for maybe a
local politician to run on one issue, let's fix the
pothole on Fourth Street. But it's not common for a
secretary of an entire or it shouldn't be common for
a secretary of an entire department to do this, to

(57:27):
biopically focus on this one thing. And that's when that's
when a guy, that's when a guy named Thomas Hoefeller
or Hoffler comes into play. He died in twenty eighteen.
He was a Republican strategist and redistricting expert, a jerry
manderer extraordinaire, and he was one of the biggest cheerleaders

(57:49):
of adding the citizenship question to the census. He was
instrumental in it even way back in twenty fifteen where
he did a study and concluded that this would add
this question would be quote and we're quoting him. We're
not spending this. This is what this man said. He said,
we need a citizenship question because it would be quote

(58:11):
advantageous to Republicans and non Hispanic whites in redrawing electoral
districts based on census data. So it appears that at
least in one case, what the political left was saying
when they said it was a grab for power and
the House of Representatives, it appears backed up by at
least one guy. The guy who was in charge of

(58:34):
so many plans for dict for district design. The current
administration dismissed this as a conspiracy theory, and the court,
we should note while shooting down the citizenship question, they
did not address the idea of the ultimate argument is
minimizing the influence of non white residents or voters.

Speaker 4 (58:56):
Or maximizing of the white residents.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Right, that's the argument. And it got cloudy because there
was a ton of misinformation. There were radio pundits who
were alleging that the preceding presidential administration, the Obama administration,
had removed the question from the census in twenty ten.
That's at best misleading, right, Wait, but why was this.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Such a big news item for this census but not
then if it was removed as well? Like, how do
we even find out about a question before it comes
out if someone doesn't kind of want you to know about.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
It, right, Because there's a lot of people want it
to be on there, and there's a lot of people
who don't want it to be on there, and they're
both alleging that the other party is conspiring to do stuff.
So it's strange because again, to be clear, there have
been citizenship questions before I think from eighteen ninety through

(59:59):
nineteen fifty, according to the Census Bureau, there were questions
or forms that ask citizenship information. And then there are
other forms that are not the quote unquote big Census,
but they're smaller versions of it, and they've asked questions too.
But this thing hasn't really been around for a long time.

(01:00:21):
At this point, the Trump administration has decided not to
not to fight the decision any further. The census question
has been confirmed, it's officially removed, but social media would
have you believed differently. You'll see a ton of things

(01:00:41):
coming from what seems to be both sides saying that
the citizenship question is still on the census. That is
just not true. It's not true. Is it the age
of weaponized information? I would argue yes, it's also you know,
a clear lack of critical thinking. But we have people

(01:01:02):
like Tim Olson, the Associate director for Field Operations at
the Census Bureau, on record multiple times saying, yeah, it's
not happening, stop stop freaking out, guys. He didn't say
stop freaking out. No, it's not happening.

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
Yeah, exactly. If you if you are skeptical of what
we're saying here. You know that because you've read it
on social media, you think, oh, the sense the question
is either definitely going to be there or whatever social
post you happen to see. You can always go to
Census ce N s U S dot gov. Through there
you can find essentially what is a sample census survey

(01:01:42):
that's going to come to your door if it hasn't already,
if you're in Alaska or whenever you're hearing this, perhaps
has come to your door already, but you could you
can go online and find what it's going to look like.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, one thing is for sure,
citizenship question shin aside, this decade census is going to
have a huge number of problems. We barely talked about
the apocalyptic conspiracy. Oh I know, right here are just
a few other things. Politicians are very worried that the
bureau is underprepared and very worried that the technology being

(01:02:16):
implemented won't work. And after you see the way that
different electronic voting systems and strategies have gone to put
over the years, when you see all the problems that
happen with things like having an app for a primary
and so on, Yeah, It's pretty easy to understand why

(01:02:38):
there would be a lot of people saying this is
a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Are we going to do one on the Caucus de Bacas?
That would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Yeah. I wonder how it's going to shake out.

Speaker 4 (01:02:49):
You know, it's crazy. Honestly, what's happening? I haven't heard anything.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Well, they are deciding South Carolina based on oiled up
arm wrestling. Yeah, whoa?

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
You really need to check my news app?

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
More often it was it was Joe snake bite, Biden's idea.
He goes by snake bite.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Do you use the one that the Clinton Foundation designed,
because that's that's the one you should be using.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
The Clinton Foundation news? Is it really?

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
No? I don't know. Did I make this up? Wasn't
there there was a connection with the Clinton's and the
app that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
I used, the Clinton Foundation email server? Yeah, that's an
email app.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I miss?

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
You know what I missed some one with a self
destruct button built?

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I miss? Uh. My primary news source for US News
used to always be called a Swede when they were
still open. They were just so much more well informed
than I was. You know, you would just call a random,
sweetish person. They would break stuff down.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
They're also good at saying it very gently, you know,
in a way that doesn't like get your stress levels
up right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
M hmm, Yeah, I mean it's like, yeah, wow, I
just heard about all these natural disasters that are happening
in our country. Dear sweetish stranger, could you tell me more?
And they, you know, they gently said, they were like,
you also see.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
Thee Hey, hey, what we're talking about this?

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Can we briefly just mention something that some people have
written to us, and we've seen some reviews on the
old Apple podcasts app about what was it political ads
showing up in this show?

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Oh yeah, we did not have a say and that
when we found out about those, we went and got
them pulled post haste.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
Yes, we did this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
This show is not This show is not a show
for political advertisements. We think stupidity tends to be distributed unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Yeah, but as we also not, tis the season and
a certain former New York mayor has really been pumping
some some pony bones into the old ad machine, and
you may have heard one or two from him by accident,
but we we've taken care of that, and we, you know,
to our boss's credits or our company's credits. We are

(01:05:04):
almost always able to vet those. These just kind of
snuck through. It was no one's fault.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
In particular, it's Bloomberg's fault. I'll say that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
Well that's true. Yeah, that wasn't gonna name names, but
it's all on the table.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
So I don't under Okay, I don't understand. Now I'm
coming in hot because we just learned about this, and Paul,
please just give us the second. I do not yield
my time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
I don't understand. How would you spend that much money
on these ads when you have no chance being president? Like, statistically,
there's not a model where it works out unless multiple
other candidates, including the person who's currently in office, all
somehow die. That's the only way for a cabinet position.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Maybe better?

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Yeah, yeah, we talked off air. I said, you know,
the only calculus that makes sense is if he's able
to do a backroom sale of any votes he gets
to broker that as a trade off for a cabinet
position of some sort.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
Wait of votes. I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
So like if you so, if he grew, for instance,
a voting population and people who were pro Bloomberg voters.
And then he you know, he definitely didn't have a
shot at getting a DEM nomination or didn't run as
an independent or anything.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
And then he.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Said, I'm going to you know, I'm gonna throw all
my votes to you know, insert here, the Richard Simmons,
Harvey Kaitel, Fran Drescher who has a new show by
the way, Frank Dresser. Uh huh, I've carried it towards
for the longest time for the Nanny you know, rewatched
it did not age well, did not age well.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
I can only imagine.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
But but you know, then he would say, then Bloomberg
would say, hey, I've got you know, celebrity endorsements like
Fran Dresher. I've got you know, like three or five
percent of the vote or ten percent of the vote
or whatever. I'll throw them to you if you make
me secretary of Bloombergery or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
But again throw you mean, just endorse this candidate.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Right, but then also take his massive war chest from
his campaign and maybe start donating.

Speaker 4 (01:07:09):
Got it, you know, the email the email listen you've
generated in the phone numbers on it's just all it's
all monetizable. You just send it all out there. You know,
I just really quickly, selfishly, and for no reason other
than for my own delight, I very much want Bernie
Sanders to become the next president of the United States

(01:07:32):
because I want to watch SNL.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
I knew you were going to.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
For the for the foreseeable future in the next four
years or however long it is with Larry David just
on the screen all the time. So because it's like
a whole New Curb season, which is out right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah, yeah, you think he'd carry that torch the way
that that Alec Baldwin has.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's probably a contractual thing too. Also,
you know they are actually related. They are.

Speaker 7 (01:08:01):
I didn't know I found that out.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
I didn't, but it's JR. Cousins.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
Oh, you're blowing my mind right now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Well, I mean, that great impression didn't come out of nowhere, man.
But this so this we're putting a light spent at
the end because this is a serious issue. You know,
we we tend to be pretty mindful when we report
on things that are ongoing. This is beyond ongoing. This
hasn't happened yet. Really, this is happening next month. Uh,

(01:08:32):
the we can confirm officially that the Census Bureau says
there will not be a citizenship question on the census. Uh.
Your social media of choice. And this is just my
opinion needs to do a much better job of fact
checking and uh and stopping some of this kind of
copy pasta that proliferates because it's misinforming people. And the

(01:08:57):
only way that a crazy experiment like the United States works,
and sorry, my patriotism is showing here is when the
people are informed. And in a world of information warfare,
which make no mistake, is in full swing and has been,
then one of the most powerful resources of any republic

(01:09:19):
is being crippled. And one of the most powerful resources
of any republic historically has been an informed public. And
how long will we have that?

Speaker 4 (01:09:31):
I didn't want to add anything to that. That was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
I don't know. I mean, it's not a rhetorical question.
How long somebody in Vegas has taken bets on this?
Right now? I guarantee it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
We're due, right, I mean, just historically we're due.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
Oh yeah, we're in that two hundred deer mark. Yeah.
Oh man, oh gosh, we're past it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
Nineteen seventy six right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
Yep, yep, we're overdue.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Oh well, so before.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
It all burns down, we would like to hear from you.
We want to know yours. We spent a lot of
time on the citizenship question, but we also want to
hear your favorite census conspiracies. Maybe not even necessarily in
this country, but or in this time, but in other
times and in other parts of the world.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Let us know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter. We love
to recommend our Facebook group page. Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
You can also find us as individual human people of
the Internet. I am at how Now Noel Brown exclusively
on Instagram.

Speaker 4 (01:10:31):
Yeah, I am at Frederick Underscore, iHeart and you can
find me on Instagram where I am at Ben Bollen.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
You can see some of my latest misadventures in other countries.
I got successfully in and out of Japan again.

Speaker 4 (01:10:46):
That was.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Someone unexpected but cool.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
Can you remember when we said we couldn't tell you
about where it ben?

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, Well it's on Instagram if you want
to find it at Ben bullying as.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
It does, and on your grid. I thought it was
only on your story.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
It is, Yeah, yeah. It was my up, my first
on stage appearance in Japan, which was not on a
jumbo tron. I was on stage.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
Wait no, but I saw a video though, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was on the video and then
I was on the you were actually on stage. There
was this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
This was that Pearland the Sanrio Paradise Amusement Park.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Yeah, it's a long story. It's if if you've ever
been to Rock City and thought, you know this, whoever
made this needed to do more acid than Semo, pearl
Land is for you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Hey wait, I'm were you chosen like out of the audience.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Or were you have a history of that? Yeah? Wow,
well it's it's a story for another day.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
You're also a quintessentially American looking dude. I'm just gonna
point that out.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah, there's that, you know. I think that had a
fact that part to play. You can also if you
don't like the social medis for one reason or another,
you can also call us, or let's be honest, you
can call Matt directly directly to which By the way,
by the way, man, how many time time do nol

(01:12:01):
and I have to volunteer to be on the voicemail ring.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
I send it to you guys. Se you all the
log in, Yeah, I'll send it again.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
No, no, we're already done your piece, Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
No, No, okay, I'll dig back and find it. Because you
shouldn't be you should not be shouldering that cross alone.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
It's all good. I we okay putting this out there.
Nolan and I while you were in Japan, did a
listener voicemail episode. I only went through about fifty sixty
voicemails to get the batch that we ended up using.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
Matt, that's still kind of a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
Well, and we didn't use all of them. We certainly
didn't use all fifty. We boiled down to like ten
maybe in that time that day until right now, we've
received another forty voicemails.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
So wow, I'm like, uh man, I wanted to say
to it, and we typically do these when someone's out
of town or something. But we had a really good
time doing it and and found that it was a
pretty great organic way to just like talk about a
bunch of different stuff. And I personally had had a
blast doing it, and I think I would put forth
maybe we should do them a little more often, make

(01:13:12):
them a little more regular to cut into that backlog,
because there's a lot of good.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Actually, I mean I'm on the research side because I
think that I think that it's good to have some
more substance stuff. But I see what you're saying about
the listener mail, and I'm totally doubt.

Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
Yeah, yeah, I would love to do more, just because
everyone who is calling in just has wonderful, really interesting
things to say. Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Our number
is one eight three three std WYTK. Give us a
call three minutes. You got You can leave more than
one if you wish, or you know, just leave one

(01:13:46):
nice and short one. Those are the best because they
work really well in an episode for us. All right, here,
here we go. If you don't want to do that stuff,
you can always send us a good old fashioned email.

Speaker 7 (01:13:55):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:14:16):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.