Pod Insights Civics 101 April Fools: Politicians, the press, and more About this episode Pranks are a staple of April Fools' Day - even when it comes to politics and the press.
On this special edition of Civics 101, Senior Producer Christina Phillips tests our April Fools knowledge with some surprising trivia, and a whole lot more!
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Speaker 00 This is Civics 101, April Fools trivia special. I am Christina Phillips, the senior producer, and I am here today with-- do you want to introduce yourselves? We'll start with Hannah.
0:21 Hannah McCarthy? Yes, I am Hannah McCarthy, co-host of Civics 101.
0:24 Nick Capodice? I'm Nick Capodice, also co-host of Civics 101.
0:27 Speaker 03 I'm Rebecca Lavoy, and I work with this team at NHPR.
0:30 Speaker 00 Okay, so this is the day, April Fools, where people come together and play pranks on each other. And by that I mean, there are the people who are good at a poker face, and they thrive on this day. And then there are the rest of us, like me, who feel constantly on edge. Which one are you?
0:46 Speaker 03 On edge.
0:47 Nick Capodice? I love this day. I have a great many pranks that I've played in the years. Not as many as NHPR, because it's kind of like, I get nervous, I'm going to get in trouble. But I used to, at my old workplace, I would do an April Fools prank every single year, a big one.
1:01 Speaker 00 Wow. Give us your best, your most successful.
1:03 Nick Capodice? Oh, god. Well, the thing is, they're all contextual, Christina. It was always about, like, fake tour content for this museum I worked at. And I'd always say, there's this massive discovery, this huge mystery was solved. And I would Photoshop very strange photos of people who currently worked at the museum onto old photographs to make them think I had discovered it. Another classic is the cheddar cheese in the shower. Never gets old. Just carve a piece of cheddar cheese, like a bar of soap, and carve dial into it. It's a joy.
1:30 Speaker 00 Nice.
1:31 Nick Capodice? Oh, the other one, my other favorite one is the saying that the photocopier is voice-controlled now. You write, like, a thing on the photocopier, and it's like, "They copy," and say the number of copies you want. Completely voice-controlled. And you pull the next one, and you're like, "Copy! Seven! Copy!"
1:47 Speaker 00 I've never heard that. I love that.
1:49 Hannah McCarthy? You are quite the pranker.
1:50 Nick Capodice? I'm a little bit of a Mary prankster.
1:52 Hannah McCarthy? As someone who chronically forgets what day it is, I don't do April Fools. I have a lot of disdain for it, which is not earned.
2:01 Speaker 03 Back in the day, public radio itself used to do pranks. There was a famous NPR story about an inland whale nursery.
2:08 Speaker 04 Hundreds of acres of wide pools, as far as the eye can see, spread over the landscape. It is here that the nation's first farm-raised whales are being grown and harvested.
2:23 Hannah McCarthy? That's so funny.
2:24 Nick Capodice? Fantastic.
2:25 Speaker 00 Yep. Well, I'm so glad you mentioned that, Rebecca, because we have a whole section dedicated to media hoaxes. Perhaps you will do really well in that section.
2:39 Speaker 00 Today, I have gathered you here and compiled some political April Fools jokes. They are from politicians, they are from government agencies, and some from the media. Is everybody ready? Yes. For our first set of questions?
2:52 Nick Capodice? Absolutely ready.
2:53 Speaker 00 Okay, so this is called "Come Visit the Walmart Supercenter Statue of Liberty." Corporations doing business with the federal government is a grand tradition in the United States. But there's something different about a company claiming they've bought an iconic historic monument to help with the national debt. I'm going to read you this question. You get two points if you're right. One point if you're wrong, but you make a good argument for your choice. Oh. Okay? So, here's your question. In 1996, this company took out a full-page ad in major newspapers that said the following: "In an effort to help the national debt,
3:34 Speaker 00 [blank] is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures." We will start with Hannah. What is your guess for the company that pretended to buy the Liberty Bell?
3:50 Hannah McCarthy? Mutual Liberty.
3:51 Speaker 00 So, give us your argument.
3:53 Hannah McCarthy? Because liberty is in the name.
3:55 Speaker 00 Okay. So, the Mutual Liberty Bell, if you will.
3:57 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. And it's a mutual helping, right? They get something, the country gets something, help them out of debt. They're all about helping people.
4:04 Speaker 00 All right, I like it. I'm not going to tell you guys the answer until I've heard everyone. So, Nick, go ahead and give me your guess.
4:11 Nick Capodice? I guess Taco Bell.
4:13 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, that's good.
4:15 Speaker 00 That's a good guess. And give us your argument for Taco Bell.
4:18 Nick Capodice? The bell ringing is like their copyright, the dong.
4:21 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah.
4:21 Nick Capodice? And they're also, they're always kind of jokesters at Taco Bell. They have like a pretty, a pretty fire-like Twitter account, stuff like that. So, I think that's the sort of thing they would do in the 90s. That's around the time of the Gordita and the Chalupes. Like, it was like, there was like their shining moment.
4:35 Speaker 00 Okay, so, so the Liberty Taco Bell, or the Taco Liberty Bell, if you will?
4:39 Nick Capodice? Mm-hmm.
4:40 Hannah McCarthy? There's a bell in their logo.
4:41 Nick Capodice? That's right. It's the Taco Bell.
4:43 Hannah McCarthy? But don't count that toward Nick's argument. I, I give.
4:46 Speaker 03 That's mean.
4:47 Speaker 00 Got it.
4:48 Nick Capodice? It's also because the bell's ringing for dinner. It's like the dinner bell. It's just that, the whole thing.
4:52 Speaker 03 We got it. We think you're right. Go ahead.
4:55 Speaker 00 Okay, Rebecca, what is your guess?
4:57 Speaker 03 I guessed Velveeta because Velveeta is the iconic topping for the street side Philly cheesesteak. And I, and this is like what you put on a Philly cheesesteak. Everyone says a properly made Philly cheesesteak is made with Velveeta. And it is sort of an iconic cheese-like condiment in, uh, in Philadelphia.
5:16 Nick Capodice? I would say Rebecca, you didn't just make a strong case, you made a strong queso.
5:20 Speaker 03 Oh.
5:21 Speaker 00 Rebecca, I do have to fact check you. In fact, the Philly cheesesteak is Cheez Whiz.
5:27 Speaker 03 Oh. Sorry.
5:31 Speaker 00 But I really liked your argument, so you got a point. Yes. Hannah, I really liked your argument, so you got a point. Yay. Nick, you got two points because you were correct.
5:42 Speaker 03 You knew it instantly.
5:43 Speaker 00 Also, that's additional free marketing for them on top of the estimated $25 million in free publicity they got for this stunt. But they spent about $300,000 to run the ad and they estimated it earned about 25 million in free publicity. One other thing I just wanted to point out, so in 1996, the entire budget for the National Park Service was around 1.1 billion. And that's money that's divided among over 400 parks and monuments. And the national debt in 1996 was over $5 trillion. So, you know, really digging into that national debt by buying the Liberty Bell. And there were a lot of people who were very upset about it, understandably, imagining a company buying a monument.
6:24 Speaker 00 They did change their logo that day for that ad, so it had the little crack in the bell.
6:33 Speaker 00 So continuing with this theme, the rest of this round is questions about corporate food partnerships with the US military.
6:40 Nick Capodice? Ooh.
6:41 Speaker 00 So I have questions for each of you, starting with Rebecca.
6:43 Speaker 03 Oh, no.
6:45 Speaker 00 During World War II, Hormel Foods shipped 133 million cans of what meat product to US troops overseas? Ingredients include chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added.
6:58 Speaker 03 It's Spam.
7:00 Speaker 00 It is Spam.
7:01 Speaker 03 I don't want to hear any more of the ingredients of Spam, okay?
7:04 Speaker 00 Oh, they're not so bad.
7:05 Nick Capodice? Doesn't one of them have mechanically separated chicken? I always thought about the pork.
7:13 Nick Capodice? Mechanically separated.
7:14 Speaker 00 Well, the meat does not, there's no chicken meat. There's pork shoulder meat, ham meat, salt, sugar, sodium, nitrate, water, and flavoring.
7:22 Hannah McCarthy? Flavoring.
7:23 Speaker 00 At least in the 40s.
7:24 Nick Capodice? It's a fun little side note, but do you guys know why spam, we say spam email? Or like, I'm getting spammed on my phone, text messages? It's all from the Monty Python sketch where the waiter is going spam, spam, spam, spam, and baked beans and more spam. Egg, sausage, and bacon? Egg and spam? Egg, bacon, and spam? Egg, bacon, sausage, and spam? So it's like, they're like, something that you get all the time, even though you don't want it.
7:48 Speaker 00 It's extremely popular in Hawaii, which was not a state at the time. It was still a territory, but it continues to be a staple of Hawaiian culinary history and cuisine.
8:07 Speaker 00 Hannah. Also during World War II, this food company created something known as Field Ration D, which was described as being 600 calories, virtually indestructible, and deliberately bad tasting. So it wouldn't have a high value as currency to trade for non-food items like cigarettes because it was supposed to be used in emergencies or nutrition. Name the company.
8:37 Hannah McCarthy? Name the company?
8:38 Nick Capodice? Yeah, who makes really bad food?
8:40 Hannah McCarthy? 600 calories, it's a single item.
8:43 Speaker 00 Do you want a hint?
8:44 Hannah McCarthy? I do, I didn't know that was allowed, yeah.
8:46 Speaker 00 So the headquarters of this company are in Pennsylvania.
8:49 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, Hershey.
8:50 Speaker 00 Yes.
8:52 Hannah McCarthy? You would know that if you watched The Foods That Built America on the History Channel, by the way.
8:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, so they, they really wanted it to not be traded for anything else. And so they made it taste really, really bad. And it was also so dense that soldiers would sometimes chip their teeth trying to eat it, and they would shave, like, use their knives, which I just imagine the, the hygiene of that doesn't matter, World War II, they would have to shave it down. And then they created, when they were really, like, heavy military presence in the Pacific, they created an alternative that I think is called, like, Tropical Ration D, which was like, extra unmelty, so that it wouldn't melt in the hot weather.
9:32 Speaker 00 All right, so you got a point for that, Hannah.
9:33 Hannah McCarthy? Yay.
9:34 Speaker 00 Nick, this last question is for you, but I've got a little bit of an open. It's a kind of bleak. So after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' subsequent entry into World War II, Germany lost access to the ingredients that make Coca-Cola, even though the company was still operating in Germany through the war. So in order to make up for the fact that they couldn't actually make Coca-Cola, what beverage did Germany start producing that was flavored with apple pulp, whey byproduct from cheese, and beet sugar?
10:13 Speaker 00 It still exists today in a different form.
10:17 Nick Capodice? Oh, I need the brand name or the kind of drink?
10:20 Speaker 00 So it's a Coca-Cola soda.
10:22 Nick Capodice? Okay, and it's made with apple pulp?
10:25 Speaker 00 It was made with apple pulp, whey byproduct from cheese, and beet sugar.
10:29 Nick Capodice? You know, when you go to a restaurant and you're like, what do you have? And they're like, we have Pepsi products. I'm like, I don't know what that means. Oh, man.
10:35 Speaker 00 Think of commercials, like old school commercials for a certain kind of drink.
10:39 Nick Capodice? It's like I'm trying to decide if it's gonna be like Sprite or 7-Up or like Fanta. I'm gonna say 7-Up.
10:45 Speaker 00 It's Fanta.
10:47 Speaker 03 I think the fact that he even thought Fanta gets him a point.
10:50 Speaker 00 Okay, all right, fair enough.
10:52 Nick Capodice? That's very fantastic of you. Thank you.
10:54 Speaker 00 So it's actually a shortening of the word fantastisch. Germans, correct me, which it is the German word for fantastic, in case you didn't know. And the color originally was murky brown and slightly cheese-flavored. And it became a global smash anyway, so they still make Fanta. But it started as a drink for the Germans during World War II. All righty, the scores are as follows. Nick, you have three points. Hannah, you have two points. Rebecca, you have two points. Ready?
11:27 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
11:34 Speaker 00 Next category is media pranks. As we've already heard, NPR, the BBC and other publications tend to have fun with April Fool's Day by releasing faux stories that are supposed to be obvious enough to be pranks, but believable enough to make you stop and think. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don't. For example, the BBC once ran a story in 1957 about a family in Switzerland that was harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti trees. And they said that the reason it was so populous was because the spaghetti weevil had been eradicated. And it became really popular. A lot of people called in asking if they could get spaghetti trees because spaghetti was still considered a delicacy in Britain at that time.
12:15 Speaker 03 There's an incredible video for that story, by the way. I recommend looking it up.
12:22 Speaker 05 After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to dry in the warm Alpine sun. Many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform length. But this is the result of many years of patient endeavor by plant breeders who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti.
12:41 Speaker 03 You can see trees covered with spaghetti and these women are up in the trees like taking the spaghetti gently down from the tree.
12:49 Speaker 00 Is it cooked or is it raw?
12:50 Speaker 03 Cooked.
13:01 Speaker 00 Nick.
13:01 Nick Capodice? Hello.
13:02 Speaker 00 One NPR April Fool's story announced the creation of a surgical procedure that would allow people to more deeply enjoy a new kind of media technology. I'm not telling you the year because I would probably give it away. Was it? A, a Bluetooth chip installed behind the ear that allowed you to have your own portable Bluetooth that could connect to devices around you? B, finger extensions to give your fingers more reach on a computer keyboard? C, 3D eye surgery to allow you to enjoy 3D movies without the glasses? Or D, under the skin battery magnets that use your own energy to charge your electronic devices?
13:47 Nick Capodice? All right, this is really tricky. You said it's NPR.
13:50 Speaker 00 Yes, and none of these are real, for what it's worth. But one of them was a real fake story.
13:54 Nick Capodice? Well, I know people do get magnets put under their skin a lot of times. It's a thing. It's like a whole movement of people who get technology implanted in there.
14:02 Speaker 00 But does it charge your phone with your own metabolism?
14:05 Nick Capodice? It doesn't charge your phone, but there probably is somebody out there with a phone-charging magnet.
14:09 Speaker 03 Is that transhumanism that you're referring to? I believe that's what it's called.
14:12 Nick Capodice? It's gently tied to the transhumanists. Yeah. Oh, man. If it was like the third, like a finger extension so you can type easier. Sounds so NPR. I'm gonna go with the Bluetooth chip in your ear.
14:26 Speaker 00 No, unfortunately, it was 3D eye surgery to allow you to enjoy 3D movies without the glasses. But thank you for believing the three other ones I made up.
14:35 Speaker 03 Nicely done.
14:36 Speaker 00 Yes, okay. Hannah.
14:38 Hannah McCarthy? Yes.
14:39 Speaker 00 In 2008, the IRS sent tax rebate checks to the American people for anywhere from $600 to $1,200 to help stimulate the economy. That was real. However, according to an April Fool's Marketplace story, the IRS was worried that people wouldn't actually spend that money. So they decided to do what instead? The IRS decided to do what instead? Send people Visa gift cards that expired in two months to make sure they spent them? Send people all of their rebate in $1 bills to help encourage people to spend them in small-dollar amounts that would spread the stimulus more widely? Send people their rebate checks worth of National Park visitor passes
15:22 Speaker 00 so they could trade like currency to get to the parks they wanted? Or D, send people toasters, air conditioners, and snow blowers that equaled the amount of their checks based on their regions and what the IRS thought they might want?
15:34 Hannah McCarthy? These are all good.
15:35 Speaker 00 Well, thank you.
15:36 Hannah McCarthy? So the Visa gift card is not as funny as the dollar bills. And then, of course, like the appliances is very funny. I'm gonna go with A, just because of how much people get weird about gift cards.
15:51 Speaker 00 Unfortunately, no, it was not the Visa gift cards. So the story said that the IRS was going to send people toasters, air conditioners, and snow blowers, and they would decide based on where they lived and what they thought they might like. And they had like fake interviews with people who were like, I mean, I didn't really need a toaster, I kind of wanted a snow blower.
16:10 Speaker 03 Hmm.
16:11 Speaker 00 Rebecca.
16:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
16:13 Speaker 00 In 2016, National Geographic announced on April Fools that they would no longer publish photographs of what? A, naked animals? B, domesticated animals? C, cars, trains, planes, or any modern transportation equipment? Or D, anything indoors?
16:36 Speaker 03 Okay, so when I was a kid, National Geographic was sort of like known for publishing pictures of naked people, like that was a whole thing. Yeah. And like, you know, let's just say kids were stealing their parents' National Geographic sometimes. So for that reason, I'm going to pick A, naked animals.
16:57 Speaker 00 You are correct. This is the hardest one for me to come up with alternatives because it was just really good. So this is a quote from them. "The media group says it will no longer degrade animals by showing photos of them without clothes." And so they actually published a series of photos with animals that have like clothes on to demonstrate how they would do this.
17:15 Speaker 03 A zebra in a bikini.
17:24 Speaker 00 We'll be right back after a quick break.
17:28 Nick Capodice? There is nothing quite like having stuff in your closet that you love and you know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that feeling. And this holiday season, Quince is where I'm finding those pieces. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and it is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories that cut out the middleman, so you get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. As this lovely fall is winding to a close and we slouch into winter. I wish more than anything, someone had gifted me a yak wool hoodie.
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18:48 Nick Capodice? Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data is out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over. So your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once and they keep working in the background.
19:33 Nick Capodice? You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
19:59 Speaker 00 Our next set of questions are about the ZIP code because NPR once aired a story on All Things Considered that announced that the US Postal Service was starting a program called Portable ZIP Codes, which allowed people to keep their current ZIP code even if they moved into a new one.
20:17 Speaker 00 I'm pleased to announce this afternoon, a new feature.
20:20 Speaker 06 Of our Go Postal Campaign. Starting next month, the National Portable Zip Codes Program will commence. With it, American citizens can keep their present zip codes wherever they choose to live, across the country or across town.
20:37 Speaker 00 Crandall said that while the plan would at first- So the next couple of questions are about zip codes, but first, does anyone know what Z I P stands for?
20:44 Nick Capodice? Oh.
20:45 Hannah McCarthy? Zone.
20:46 Speaker 00 So zone is correct. It's Zone Improvement Plan. Hmm. That's what zip stands for. And of course, it's also like helpful because zip, zippy, you know, makes the mail zippier, essentially. So here are a couple of facts about zip codes before we start. The first number of the standard five-number code determines a large region, so mail sorting systems look at that first. From east to west, east coast New England starts at zero. And then as you move south and west to California, Washington and Oregon, those all start with nine, and Alaska, and Hawaii. And some states have just one, like, set of first couple of numbers, like Utah is only 84, and then the three after. The remaining numbers further break down by county or region.
21:27 Speaker 00 And then in 1983, they introduced the zip plus four, which is four extra numbers that further divide mail locally. So I have a question for each of you. Hannah, there are three individuals who have their own zip codes.
21:40 Speaker 03 Hey Christina, I know the President and the First Lady are the first two, but I have no idea who else has their own zip code.
21:47 Speaker 00 The third is an animal mascot created in 1944 and is part of the longest-running public service campaign in US history to date.
21:55 Hannah McCarthy? Smokey the Bear.
21:57 Speaker 00 It is Smokey the Bear.
21:59 Speaker 03 It's actually just Smokey Bear, guys.
22:01 Nick Capodice? I'm glad you did ever back out, because if I did it, it would have been a disaster. Vote that I still get the point. Oh, you do. It's just the most, but actually, I've ever heard from everybody, like, it's actually Smokey Bear. Smokey Bear was my father.
22:19 Speaker 05 Don't let forest fires be your fault. Make sure your fire is dead out. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.
22:30 Speaker 00 So his zip code is 20252. Santa Claus, many people think he should have his own zip code or would. He doesn't, but he does have his own Canadian postal code, which is H0H0H0.
22:53 Speaker 00 Nick, this question is for you.
22:55 Nick Capodice? Hello, okay.
22:56 Speaker 00 Before Smokey Bear, the US Forest Service partnered with Disney, who agreed to let them use animated creatures from what 1942 movie for just a year as mascots for forest fire prevention?
23:10 Nick Capodice? Huh, well, you know, maybe Bambi.
23:13 Speaker 00 Bambi is correct.
23:14 Nick Capodice? Oh, hooray. Never seen Bambi.
23:16 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
23:16 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
23:16 Speaker 03 Don't. It's so sad.
23:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's absolutely devastating. But also Disney only let them do it for a year. And then they were like, we're taking Bambi and all of his friends back. And so they were like, we must create a new mascot. So they came up with Smokey Bear. And there's various origin stories as to Smokey Bear, whether it was named after a bear or named after a man. You know, there's a whole Wikipedia page on it. Rebecca, the next question is for you. Several corporate headquarters also have their own individual zip codes, including the headquarters for Walmart and General Electric. And for two weeks a year, Black Rock City, Nevada, gets its own zip code in order to accommodate which festival, which began as a summer solstice festival in the 1980s and in 2023 was the site of major flooding?
24:01 Speaker 03 Well, I believe what you're talking about is the biggest gathering annually of like jerks in the United States. And that would be Burning Man.
24:12 Speaker 00 Hot take from Rebecca, you are correct.
24:15 Nick Capodice? So canceled.
24:15 Speaker 03 People say it's just all jerks now, right? That's why I was here. It's like tech bro kind of situation, right?
24:20 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
24:21 Hannah McCarthy? I could see that.
24:21 Nick Capodice? It used to be like a really kind of holistic, beautiful artist thing. And now it's like Fire Festival, basically. So all felt good when the flesh eating crabs crawled out of the ground.
24:30 Speaker 00 That was 2023. That was, I think, one of those, yeah, it did make it obvious which celebrities who were not smart enough to stream on their phones getting rescued by helicopters and then everyone else is just stuck in the mud. Burning Man, you are correct. Okay, we've reached the end of this round. Currently, the scores stand at Nick, four points. Hannah, three points. Rebecca, four points.
25:00 Speaker 00 The next category is called bogus policy. So elected and appointed officials love to introduce fake policies or bills on April Fools. For example, in 1985, Congressman Thomas Downey put forth a proposal to lower the minimum age you could be elected to Congress to 15 to get, quote, "new blood in Congress." For what it's worth, the median age in the House in 1985 was 49 and the median age in the Senate was 53.7. Do you want to guess the median ages in 2023?
25:30 Speaker 03 The median, not the average, right?
25:32 Speaker 00 Median.
25:32 Speaker 03 For the Senate, I'm going to say 60.
25:34 Speaker 00 Higher.
25:35 Hannah McCarthy? What?
25:37 Speaker 03 65.
25:38 Speaker 00 65 is right. You're right on that.
25:40 Nick Capodice? But the House is maybe lower. So I'm going to guess the House is 46.
25:44 Speaker 00 It hasn't gone down. It's gone up.
25:46 Nick Capodice? Oh, it's gone up?
25:47 Speaker 00 Yes.
25:47 Hannah McCarthy? Nick, they don't leave.
25:49 Speaker 03 55.
25:50 Speaker 00 Up.
25:51 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh.
25:52 Speaker 00 Just a little bit higher than 55.
25:53 Speaker 03 57?
25:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, 57.8. So technically 58, almost 58. I also am fairly certain that a lot of the people who were in the House in 1985 are still in the House today, so they probably remember that bill. I want to use another joke policy as our jumping off point for this round, which is about font, also known as typeface, okay? In 2015, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, announced that there was an agency-wide ban on which font?
26:22 Speaker 03 My guess is Comic Sans.
26:25 Speaker 00 Okay, what's your guess, Nick?
26:27 Nick Capodice? My guess is Comic Sans.
26:30 Speaker 00 Okay. Hannah, what's your guess?
26:32 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, I have a reason. Can I tell my reason?
26:36 Speaker 00 Yes.
26:36 Hannah McCarthy? We're talking about a political family and like a, what do you call it? A dynasty, right? Family, like known to be God-fearing Christians, right? Appealing to other God-fearing Christians, I think. So I picked Helvetica.
26:52 Speaker 03 Oh.
26:53 Speaker 00 Okay, so the answer is Comic Sans, Hannah.
26:58 Speaker 00 Do we give Hannah a point for effort?
27:01 Speaker 03 Heck, yeah.
27:02 Nick Capodice? Really fast Comic Sans story. It was my first week at NHPR. I wrote a funny thing for the newsletter, extra credit for our show, and I made a joke about how I hated Comic Sans. And I got a scathing email from a listener saying that I was being ableist because Comic Sans, she said it was quite useful for people who have dyslexia. And she was like, so you should never make fun of Comic Sans and you should be ashamed of yourself. And I was like heartbroken for a month. And then I found out a month later that that's actually been disproven.
27:35 Speaker 00 Yes. Dear listener, I'm actually...
27:38 Nick Capodice? I'm actually, you're wrong.
27:40 Speaker 00 You're totally right that there have been studies that have shown that Comic Sans is actually harder to read. And so sometimes in school, it'll be used to increase retention because you have to work harder to understand the words. But there are still plenty of people who say that it is easier to read.
27:54 Speaker 03 I thought it was just ugly and that's why we don't like it.
27:56 Speaker 00 I mean, that's why I don't like it.
28:03 Speaker 00 These questions are all going to be about fonts.
28:05 Nick Capodice? I love fonts.
28:06 Speaker 03 I'm ready.
28:07 Speaker 00 All right. In 2023, the State Department announced it was moving away from using Times New Roman as its default font on websites, on publications, et cetera, and would instead use this Sans Serif font with a name that derives from a word for instrument of measurement.
28:27 Speaker 03 I know this isn't right, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It's the only sans font I could think of right now, and that's Arial.
28:32 Speaker 00 No, it's Calibri.
28:34 Nick Capodice? For calibrate.
28:35 Speaker 00 Yes.
28:36 Speaker 03 Oh.
28:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, caliber, caliber.
28:37 Nick Capodice? This is also an access issue. So serif fonts are more difficult for people with various learning disabilities to read than sans serif. So they're like, we can't have Times New Roman as our default anymore. So that's why schools suddenly are like, no more Times New Roman. And for your term paper, it's gotta be Calibri.
28:56 Speaker 00 Do you wanna explain what a serif is?
28:57 Nick Capodice? So interestingly, they're called serifs, I believe, and I could be wrong. Because serifs in cherubim were often used to, the angels in illuminations were used to decorate words in old medieval manuscripts. So I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard that before. But so serifs are the sort of chunky lines at the ends of all the lines of a letter. So the R has two serifs on its bottom feet. So sans serif eliminates those entirely, and it's a little bit easier to read.
29:26 Speaker 03 The I is just a stick.
29:28 Nick Capodice? Yeah. An I is a stick instead of an I, which I love the serif. I.
29:42 Speaker 00 Nick, this question is for you.
29:44 Nick Capodice? Hello.
29:45 Speaker 00 So the US Web Design System, which is part of the US Digital Service, which is a thing I learned about. They create standards for designing and maintaining government websites, recommends several typefaces for digital publications, including this font, which shares its name with the first name of one of our famous Western expansionists.
30:06 Nick Capodice? Oh, my God. And by a famous westward expansionist?
30:09 Speaker 00 The first name of a westward expansionist, a famous westward expansionist.
30:13 Nick Capodice? The first name. So who's the guy who said, let me give me a second. The guy who said, go west, young man, was that guy?
30:19 Speaker 00 I think you're a little niche here. I don't know who this is.
30:22 Nick Capodice? Go West, young man. It's probably not even him.
30:26 Speaker 03 Can I give you a clue?
30:27 Nick Capodice? Yes.
30:27 Speaker 03 This is a pair of westward expansionists that we talked a lot about in grade school.
30:32 Nick Capodice? Good. Thank you, Rebecca.
30:34 Hannah McCarthy? I would not.
30:34 Nick Capodice? Merryweather.
30:35 Hannah McCarthy? It is Merryweather.
30:37 Nick Capodice? Thank you for the clue. Did you know that Lewis and Clark, they had to, because they had such horrible constipation from being on the trail, they did not eat the food, they were eating bad rations, that they had to take this mercury pill as a laxative, which they called thunderclappers? Give me a couple more thunderclapper?
30:56 Hannah McCarthy? Good.
30:56 Nick Capodice? Yeah, and you can track their trail because of mercury in the ground.
31:01 Speaker 03 Wow.
31:03 Nick Capodice? How much do you not believe? The second part? All of it.
31:06 Hannah McCarthy? I don't believe that their excrement, first of all, I don't believe that we know exactly where they poop. And I don't believe that it then leached into the soil. Also, it would be about this big, right?
31:19 Nick Capodice? Yeah. Not from a thunderclapper.
31:21 Hannah McCarthy? It's not real.
31:21 Nick Capodice? Well, we're gonna look it up after this. Listeners out there, you decide if the thunderclappers are real.
31:26 Speaker 03 I'm just gonna say, the historical significance of thunderclappers is the high mercury content has been used by archaeologists to help verify locations.
31:34 Speaker 00 Oh. Hannah.
31:37 Speaker 03 Thunderclappers.
31:38 Nick Capodice? Notice I'm not in anybody's graces any better after being right about the thunderclapper. I'm in more trouble.
31:46 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, 97% of the time when I ask you to please fact check that, you're like, oh, it's not true.
31:53 Speaker 03 Gotta give me that. But actually.
31:56 Speaker 00 Hannah, this question is for you.
31:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:59 Speaker 00 Times New Roman was created for which newspaper in 1931?
32:04 Speaker 03 I'm gonna guess the New York Times.
32:06 Speaker 00 No.
32:09 Speaker 00 Times New Roman was used by the New York Times, for sure.
32:11 Speaker 03 But who was it created for?
32:12 Speaker 00 It was created for the Times of Britain.
32:14 Speaker 03 Oh.
32:16 Hannah McCarthy? Okay.
32:16 Speaker 00 But the New York Times used it until 2007, when they switched to a little font called Georgia.
32:23 Speaker 03 The fat one.
32:24 Speaker 00 Yeah. Okay, so at the end of this round, Nick, you have six, Hannah, you've got four, Rebecca, you've got five.
32:31 Speaker 03 Yay, not last.
32:42 Nick Capodice? Have any of you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.
33:27 Nick Capodice? You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics, or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
33:55 Speaker 00 This last and final round is called What's in a Name? Oh, What's in a Name? In 2015, Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat from California, introduced a fake bill for April Fools. He did not actually introduce it into Congress, but he wrote a press release about it. And that bill was against verbose legislation names. It was called the Accountability and Congressional Responsibility on Naming Your Motions Act, aka the Acronyms Act. Here's a quote from his press release, which again, was fake. "The last straw was the pension and social security measuring equivalence, permanent linking of everyone's actual savings environment, Please Pass Me Act,
34:37 Speaker 00 which only corrected a typo on page 346 of the tax code."
34:43 Speaker 00 So the reason I said so many times that this was fake was because so many news sources referenced this as if it were a real bill that was introduced. The Hill, The Atlantic, votsmart.org, The New Republic, they all refer to it as though it's a real piece of legislation and use it as a jumping off point to talk about ridiculous acronym legislation. I just want to say, this is like when a teacher gives out a quiz that it says at the top, "Read every question before you begin this quiz," and at the bottom it says, "Just write your name and turn it in." The bottom of the HuffPost article that covered this piece of legislation says, "This is an April Fool's joke. This is not real." It's literally right there.
35:23 Speaker 00 So, anyway, I thought that this would be a good excuse to create trivia questions about times legislators really did try their hardest to create an acronym out of the title of their legislation. So I'm going to give you actual pieces of legislation that were introduced. I will tell you how many letters there are in the acronym, and then I will start reading the title of the bill. When you think you have a guess, say, "Stop." If you get it right, you get a point, and then you get to answer a couple of follow-up questions about the legislation. Oh, also, I feel like I should say, just because it's an acronym doesn't mean they follow the rules of acronyms.
36:05 Speaker 00 So sometimes the actual title is like 12 letters long, but the acronym is only seven. So, first question. This piece of legislation was proposed by Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado. The acronym is one word, and it is six letters long. Zeroing Out Money For...
36:28 Nick Capodice? Zombie.
36:30 Speaker 00 Yes.
36:31 Speaker 03 Nice.
36:32 Speaker 00 Zeroing Out Money For Buying Influence After Elections Act.
36:35 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
36:36 Speaker 00 Zombie. So, Nick, follow-up question. What was this act for?
36:41 Nick Capodice? Zeroing Money For Buying Influence After Elections?
36:43 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
36:44 Nick Capodice? Was it a bill to like overturn Citizens United?
36:46 Speaker 00 No, not quite.
36:47 Speaker 03 Is it a bill to keep people from donating to campaigns of other people who are running for... Office after they are running for office?
36:54 Speaker 00 I think that's close. It required candidates to disperse unused funds after the election.
36:59 Speaker 03 Oh, they had to disperse them. Okay.
37:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, so basically you had to give up your money and it set away to do it. So Nick, you get the first go at this. What year was this introduced?
37:08 Nick Capodice? Oh, the Zombie Act? I'm gonna say the old Zombie Act. I'm gonna say 2016.
37:13 Speaker 00 No, it's 2021. Now, the next piece of legislation. The following legislation was introduced by Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois. The acronym is one word and it is seven letters long. Communications over various feeds electronically.
37:35 Nick Capodice? Kofeve.
37:41 Nick Capodice? That's so funny. That's hilarious.
37:44 Speaker 00 So the whole title is Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act, or the Kofeve Act. I cannot look at this tweet from President Trump that inspired this without laughing. It's like Donald Trump, who was president at the time, tweeted something at 12:06 a.m. on a Wednesday that said, "Despite the constant negative press, Kofeve." End tweet.
38:09 Speaker 00 It was like the next six hours overnight, people just lost it. And then six hours later, to his credit, he had a really good follow-up. "Who can figure out the true meaning of Kofeve? Enjoy." And it's still up there. So, Nick, what was this act for? What did it purport to do?
38:29 Nick Capodice? Can you read to the bill one last time, the name, and then I'll get it?
38:32 Speaker 00 Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act.
38:37 Nick Capodice? This is monitoring the usage of politicians on social media.
38:41 Speaker 00 Uh, I'm gonna go ahead and say close enough. Rebecca, do you have a guess?
38:45 Speaker 03 It codified that the president's tweets are actually like archival material.
38:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's exactly it. So you are gonna get the point for that, yeah.
38:54 Nick Capodice? Well done.
38:54 Speaker 00 So it basically, some of the language in here is that the bill amends provisions governing presidential records to revise the definition of presidential records. Records to include any personal and official social media account. Nick, what year was this bill introduced? Do you have a guess?
39:09 Nick Capodice? Uh, 2020.
39:12 Speaker 00 No, someone else have a guess.
39:14 Speaker 03 2018.
39:15 Speaker 00 No, it was 2017.
39:16 Speaker 03 Ah.
39:17 Speaker 00 This was like three months into his new administration when this happened. Did it pass?
39:21 Nick Capodice? I'm gonna say no, because it's an acronym.
39:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, you're correct. It did not, it did not pass. But it's worth pointing out that in 2014, so before this bill was introduced, there was an amendment to the Presidential Records Act that specified that electronic content was considered presidential records and must be preserved. So, a lot of legal experts already assumed that included social media. But President Trump did come under fire for deleting tweets during his presidency. Nick, I believe you got two points for that one. Are you ready?
39:49 Speaker 03 Yes.
39:51 Speaker 00 This piece of legislation was introduced by Democrat Gary Ackerman from New York. The acronym is one word. It is eight letters long, but the word is not spelled correctly.
40:02 Speaker 03 Oh.
40:03 Speaker 00 The Health Insurance Protects America Can't
40:09 Speaker 03 HIPAA.
40:11 Speaker 00 Can't Repeal It Act.
40:14 Speaker 03 Hypocrite.
40:15 Speaker 00 Yes.
40:15 Speaker 03 Ah.
40:17 Speaker 00 Well done. Yes, so yeah, it is spelled HIPAA, like H I P A, and then Can't Repeal It-rite. Okay, so Hannah, you got a point for that. I'm gonna ask you what you think it was for.
40:29 Hannah McCarthy? Can you say it again?
40:30 Speaker 00 The Health Insurance Protects America Can't Repeal It Act.
40:35 Hannah McCarthy? So, I think it was to stop the repealing of the Affordable Care Act? Stop going after Obamacare, like something like that.
40:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I'm gonna give you points, because that is the intention of the act. It was kind of like a dare. So Democrat Gary Ackerman from New York introduced a series of bills that would repeal some of the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act, including the one that said that companies couldn't deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and another that said that insurance companies couldn't just end your coverage. And here's what he said. "These are great safeguards to improve coverage for all Americans. Republicans wouldn't dare vote to do away with them despite their campaign pledge to do so. But I'm calling them out on it and dare the GOP to vote for these bills." So basically saying that like you keep claiming you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Well, if you really want to do that-
41:30 Speaker 03 Do it!
41:31 Speaker 00 Do it on these specific provisions that everybody really likes.
41:34 Speaker 03 What about the death panels, though? Do they, do they put those in the list?
41:37 Speaker 00 Death panels? What's that?
41:39 Speaker 03 You don't remember when the Affordable Care Act was being sold to the people? That was the opposition to it, was that it would create so-called death panels, where a panel of people would get to decide if you lived or died. That was the Sarah Palin talking point around the ACA.
41:53 Speaker 05 President Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and said, "There is no such thing as a death panel." Is he a liar?
42:04 Speaker 07 He's not lying in that those two words will not be found in any of those thousands of pages of different variations of the healthcare bill. No, death panel isn't there.
42:15 Speaker 00 Okay, so Hannah, you get first guess. What year do you think that this was introduced?
42:20 Speaker 03 2017?
42:21 Speaker 00 Nope.
42:22 Nick Capodice? 2012.
42:23 Speaker 00 Nope. Um, so it was 2010. Did it pass, Hannah?
42:29 Speaker 03 No.
42:30 Speaker 00 No. That is all of the trivia that I have for you today.
42:43 Speaker 03 Oh.
42:44 Speaker 00 So I'm going to reveal our final scores. Nick, you received 10 points. Hannah, you have 7 points.
42:53 Speaker 03 How's that?
42:54 Speaker 00 And Rebecca, you have 6 points.
42:56 Speaker 03 See, I don't always win.
42:57 Speaker 00 Your winning streak is over.
42:59 Speaker 03 That's right, that's right.
43:00 Speaker 00 Congratulations, Nick.
43:01 Nick Capodice? Well, thank you. It's, I haven't won one in a good, long while. It feels pretty good.
43:06 Speaker 03 Is that true?
43:07 Nick Capodice? Yeah, yeah. There was no categories about like Twilight this time. Baker says.
43:12 Speaker 03 That was our favorite category of all time.
43:15 Speaker 00 I'm glad, I'm glad.
43:17 Nick Capodice? This was so fun, Christina. Thank you. It was so fun, Christina. It was so fun.
43:21 Speaker 00 Yes, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody.
43:23 Speaker 03 Thanks for having us.
43:32 Speaker 00 This episode was produced by me, Christina Phillips, with a lot of wonderful help from our hosts Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice and our executive producer Rebecca Lavoy, who also edited this episode. Our team includes producer Marina Henke. Music from this episode is from Epidemic Sound and The Taco Bell. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
44:11 Speaker 05 This is Phil Bretisson, former Democratic governor of the state of Tennessee. If you love digging into how history shapes US policy, check out the new season of You Might Be Right.
44:20 Speaker 06 And this is Bill Haslam, former Republican governor. This season, we're asking the questions that have defined every pivotal moment in American political history. Is democracy really under threat? Or is that just a story as old as the republic itself? We're tackling the biggest questions shaping the 2026 midterms, so join us.
44:37 Speaker 05 Follow You Might Be Right wherever you get your podcasts.
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