I Don't Know About That - Prohibition

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

In this episode, the team discusses prohibition with assistant professor of Global Affairs at Trinity Washington University and award-winning public speaker, Allen Pietrobon. For more information on Allen, go to AllenPietrobon.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's wild. Get smarter CBD from NextEvo Naturals and get up to 25% off subscription orders of $40 or more at nextevo.com slash podcast. Promo code IDK. That's N-E-X-T-E-V-O dot com slash podcast promo code IDK. shoes. How many different types of heel can you have on a shoe? I can think of the regular heel, the stiletto heel, but I'm sure there's others.

You might find out, and I don't know about that, but Jim Jefferies. I reckon that's, I was looking at Jack's shoe. He's got a regular heel what are those called? just a regular regular heel regular heel standard

a what? kitten heel kitten which is just like a short heel ooh and then you got like the stiletto

then you got like the clump what's the clump? the clump oh Hercules Hercules okay what is it?

the wedge the wedge the clump? The clump? Oh, Hercules, Hercules. What is it? The wedge. The wedge. The clump. We call them clumps in Australia. Don't they have a cumps wedge or something? Just wedges? Cum? Cumps or something?

I got to do a little business at the top of the show. I stupidly said that I was going to be performing with Bert Kreischer at Red Rock. It turns out that the advertising never went out. There's no tickets being sold yet. I'm sure Bert's getting another comedian or maybe he's doing it by himself. But I can't do it because my baby's due date's the same day as the show, so I had to move it.

So I really, really wanted to do the gig, but, you know, they reckon it's a fucking, you only fucking have a child. It's supposed to be an important day. Yeah, it's supposed to be, and my wife wants me there. Which is annoying. Oh, she's needy. She's needy. Just ring me up.

It's like, what am I supposed to do that day? Ring me up and FaceTime me the child. I'll go, oh, it's beautiful, and then I'll go out drinking with Bird or whatever I get up to. Celebrate with my family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like even sadder than that, the day after that concert was Jimmy Buffett. And I'll get to miss out on that. So this kid's already fucking my life up left, right and center. Name him Jimmy in honor. No. I don't care telling honor. No. We already have.

I don't care telling you the name. We're going to call the kid Charlie. We're not one of these dumb people who think, we'll wait until we see the child. When we see the child, we'll know what to name them, and we'll go, that looks like a Gary. No, it fucking doesn't. Looks like a lump.

Yeah, yeah. We're going to call this one Hemorrhoid because it's all pink and puffy and it's all screaming. You know what I mean? Prune is going to be a good name for it. Twin sister placenta. Hercules! I don't subscribe to that. Also, I really dislike people who

don't find out the sex of their child until it's born. I have a friend who went, there's so few surprises in this world. You still get the surprise when the doctor tells you. You have that surprise, plus you have the surprise of meeting the child. You get two surprises. What do you want all your surprises on one day? Try to space your surprises out.

If any new parents, that's what I suggest. Also. Yeah, Ian, you make a good point. When your baby's born, if you already know the sex, you're not like, who cares? I already know. You're very excited the baby's born. The sex isn't even the biggest thing. You're like, wow, there's a living thing here right now.

Yeah, and you get to see what its little face is like. If it resembles your wife or you or whatever. You know what I mean? You get to do it. Yeah, I'm with you. Those people are idiots. I'm on the train. Those people are idiots.

My brother and sister-in-law did that with my nephews. Oh, yeah. That's Scott all day. Brother-in-law? Oh, brother-in-law. No, no, no. Scott and my sister-in-law. Oh, I thought you said your brother-in-law.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Scott all day. Will wait. And also, like, because they had two boys. So maybe the second one, they wanted to be a girl. Maybe. Maybe. Just so they have a

bit of everything. And then like it comes out and I've told this story many times. I came out, my mother wanted a girl, wouldn't fucking hold me. Right. That's not a good way to enter the world. If that lady was more prepped up for to have a boy, she would have come to terms with it before I came out instead of having a hissy fit after she gave birth. Yeah. I think generally people that wait don't have a preference on boy or girl. If you, if you're like really strongly wanting one thing, you should definitely find out. My wife wanted a daughter. She was a little disappointed, but now she's, she's getting into the whole idea of having

a boy. Yeah. Oh, I don't know if I meant to have said all these things. I could get in trouble with my wife. I don't know if she wants. That's a good point. What you just said about your mom and and your wife is it now you're prepped instead of being like well what the hell but also just you get to know what color to paint the paint the nursery

you know and I painted it pink because color has no gender well pink used to be the color for baby boys oh yeah I don't know about that back in the beginning of time back, pink used to be the color for baby boys. Oh, did it? Oh, here we go. I don't know about that. Back in the beginning of time. Back when they used to wear wigs and powder their noses and all that type of stuff. Back when, oh, here he is, a dandy pink. Yeah, it was a masculine color back then. Yeah, yeah.

Get him in a cravat. He's a baby boy. No, we didn't. We just kept the nursery the same color. White. Yeah. Nice and neutral. Yeah, we didn't. We just kept the nursery the same color. White. Nice and neutral. Yeah, white's neutral. Throughout history, the color white has never caused any offense

to Emma or done anything wrong. I can't think of anything. Yeah, so that's good. It's true. What do you got for us, Jack? Comment world. Alright. All right. Have we heard that one? Yeah. Yeah.

That's like the blanking one. It is a good one though. It's a good one. Fernando Macias. Very good. Fernando put a lot of production into that. Yeah.

Sounds good. It's a legit song. Take it on the road. All right. We got a review. Five star review. All right. Wow.

That's the rule to get on Comet Web. It's not that exciting. Yeah. We saw one star. You're not coming on Comet Web. You know that too. You can write it down. You have to give us five stars if you want to get on Comet World, so it's not that exciting. Yeah, we saw a one star. You're not coming on Comet World. You're not allowed to. You can write an ask if you have to give us five stars if you want to get a mention.

That's right. I've watched every episode from beginning to end and look forward to Tuesday every week. Love when Jim reads commercials. I've warmed up to Jack, who I didn't think I liked in the beginning. Cool. Love Kelly and Forrest is a good balance, but is always way too serious. Loosen up, Forrest. Oh.

Loosen up. Please go five more years doing these. Did you hear Forrest say the fun thing about the clumps? He did a different character. I'm loose. He's very jovial sort of fellow. Oh, by the way, I didn't know that they could write a five-star review and a bad comment. I don't think you just released that.

I don't think people knew that. I get that all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. The rule is you only get read on Commonwealth think you just released that. I don't think people knew that. I get that all the time. The rule is you only get read on Commonwealth if you get five stars. We're not encouraging, but if you hate us and you want us to know, give us a five-star review and you may get on Commonwealth.

We got another five-star review. They said it's both informative and misinformative. Yes, correct. A lot of people were angry about World War II. It turns out it's both informative and misinformative. Yes, correct. Yes, yes, yes. A lot of people were angry about World War II. It turns out it's complicated. Yeah.

And a lot of different things happened. A lot of different viewpoints. World War. What are people angry about? On World War II. What beaches were on D-Day and what the three Reichs were because we were unsure. I only saw one comment. It was like, there were five beaches. That guy said fucking four. What a fucking moron.

And you're like, okay, just calm down. Maybe the fifth one sucked. Maybe it was a bad beach. It was a nude beach. No one wants to know about that. Some of the worst stuff happened in the war there on the nude beach. Some Nazis wrote in. It's like, no, we did win. Morally.

Another five-star review, as usual. And they said, no Jack, no show. Is it just realized the show when Jack was away was more disjointed than usual? He is back and it's slightly smooth. So top notch. Pay the Korean Jesus one. Sign Jack's mom.

No Jack, no show. That's what used to happen on Happy Days. Like Fonzie's mother used to write in like in the first few episodes like this is back before people could comment and she was like i like to watch that happy days as they're jewish i'm doing that was my voice i like to watch that happy days i tell you who is good the boy who plays the fonz that was the thing kept on writing in and she wrote so many letters that people went, oh, wow, he's really popular. We should put him at the front.

She was writing like 10 letters a day. Oh, really? Yeah, and then eventually they're like, this guy's got a bit of momentum. We'll put him in more storylines. And then Fonzie took off. I like that his mom sounds vaguely like Al Pacino. Yeah.

Hey, who I? Who I? Hey, I like that Fonzie. Sit on it. Say hello to my little friend. Kelly got a message from a guy named Robert. The message was... Nothing to do with the show.

Nope. He says, your podcast sucks. And then Kelly responds, wait, I'm sorry. I'm a little starstruck. Is this the Robert? Like the one we all hear about? And then he responds, what, I'm sorry. I'm a little starstruck. Is this the Robert? Like the one we all hear about? And then he responds, what are you talking about? And then Kelly goes, no need to be modest.

You're the Robert who tells us if things are good or bad. The only man whose opinions matter. This is huge. And then Robert goes, go to hell. And then Kelly goes, we're already here, Robert. It's this DM. And then he goes, you're a bitch. And Kelly goes, well, that makes two of us.

Now, doesn't it, Robert? This is the thing you posted publicly as your DM. Robert didn't give us a five-star review, so I can't sleep through. If there's no stars or rating system, the negatives will still come through. If you DM us something bad, we'll read it. Especially if we have a good comeback, we'll read it. If we don't, it will never be read. You got some momentum with that, huh?

People were like. Yeah, there was a page that shared it that had like 100,000 followers. And it's mostly like a bodybuilding page. So we got a ton of new followers from that. I got like 700 new followers that day. They should go back and listen to Martin Leach's, our strongman competition. He follows that page too, so he liked the post and all that.

Oh, yeah. Robert, I can't believe you get to talk to him. I know. What was he like? He was really nice. And curt. Yeah. And he had some very good constructive criticism, like going to hell. Go to hell. Also, his first thing was like, your podcast sucks.

I was like, I wasn't even mean to him. It doesn't even hurt you. You're just like, there's nothing. Like, if you want to hurt someone, put in some details, everyone out there. You got to put like, you know, you know, something. You look like Dave Grohiff. Yeah, that's nice. We like that.

Those ones hurt. They hurt after a while, of course. We got the hashtag trending to get you on America's Got Talent. Australia's Got Talent. No, I want to fuck Australia's Got Talent. Okay, well, it doesn't matter. Stay here. Stay here as it is.

It's hard to tell. Yeah, I'm up to America's Got Talent now. I'm coming for your spot, Simon Cowell. I'm sure they're giving him. Hi, Mandel. You can get him out of there. I'm doing How your spot, Simon Cowell. I'm sure they're giving him his. Hi, Mandel. You can get him out of there. I'm doing Howie's podcast soon. So what I'll do is I'll just slip him something in his coffee.

If it's not over Zoom, I don't know. Excellent idea. You'll have to get somebody to do it for the inside. I'll give his computer a virus. I don't know how you do that. We'll figure it out. I think if anyone's Zooming my computer, their computer's stuffed. Are you going to bring that up when you talk to them?

That Australian's got something? Oh, maybe. I brought, I was, I do the Mick Molloy show in Australia every week and that's where it sort of hit. And then we'd already recorded our one. So we weren't doubling down on some stuff. Anyway, so I did it again, the Mick Molloy show last night. And it's becoming quite the news story in Australia,

me upsetting Manu, the chef. And so I've doubled down. I don't care. I'm just going for it now. You should go on a full podcast tour just talking about that. I'd be like, he's really upset about this. He might be the nicest bloke. I'm sure he is.

I have nothing against the guy. This has just gotten out of hand. And I can't steady the ship, so I've got to stick to it. So what are you going to judge, Manu? Some puppetry? Like those old mannequins, the wooden ones that are on the fucking cross thing with the strings? Marionettes. Yeah, people think that's shit, except for the French who enjoy it.

And Team America. Yeah, yeah. Team America. But Team America was taking the piss then. I did not know you were talking about marionettes. This is mannequins and strings. I did not know you were talking about marionettes. He said mannequins on strings.

That's what a marionette is, a mannequin on a string. It's true. I wonder if you get a big thing and you get a crane, whether you could do it to a full-size mannequin. Of course. This is Weekend at Bernie's, basically. Someone says Adelaide sounds like a failed attempt to yodel. Adelaide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what Adelaide did? I don't know if they did it, but Adelaide sounds like a failed attempt to yodel. Adelaide. Yeah, yeah. You know what Adelaide did? I don't know if they did it, but Adelaide's a pretty, it's an okay place, but it's a pretty standard sort of city. And they tried to spruce the place up a bit by doing the word Adelaide in the hills with the same font and spacing as the Hollywood sign. Oh. What hills?

They've got like a hill at the back. I've been there several times. They've got like one hill. It's not very prominent. They've got one hill and they were going to go Adelaide and the letters all spaced and people were like am I in Hollywood?

Or am I in Adelaide? This must be the other place where the movie stars hang out. Probably is now in Australia. Yeah. As we talk in Australia, they bloody shut down Melbourne again because there's 30-something more cases.

And so they shut down the whole state again. And, yeah, so Australia's got to start getting the vaccine. Yeah. The whole country's just like, well, why do we need it? We're all blocked off. No one can get in because eventually you'll want to go somewhere. And whether you like it or not, and I'm speaking to my dad here, tourists have to return.

You have to let people into the country to have a look. You can't just go, oh, we've got the Great Barrier Reef and this big rock in the middle and we've got koalas and kangaroos and no one's allowed to see them that's not nice it's just for us um I thought I'd get some more support on that

edit that out there that lol right there put in a huge Ozians laughter someone asked why do you guys always disregard hockey When you talk about sports I mean when you talk about US major sports

Hockey never makes the cut I'm Canadian by the way When do we talk about sports We've done basketball episodes I love hockey We did baseball juicing early on But you know Sure we could talk about hockey.

I've watched all the Mighty Duck movies, if that helps. I'm watching Mighty Duck's game changes like every week as it comes out. Is it good? Yeah, it is good, yeah. There's a kid in that TV show who's so funny who he's going to have a real career if he doesn't just fucking blow it with drugs or someone puts him in the wrong movie franchise and he fucks up, you know.

Yeah, but we haven't talked about all the animals either. We'll get to it. You haven't talked about palm trees. Oh, a bit hockey. I got to tell you, when Wayne Gretzky was going down the ice,

no one quite held the puck as good as he could. He could do things that no one else could do. And now all the players can do it. But back then, it was revolutionary. Jack and I went to a

Blackhawks-Kings game a couple years ago. I was drinking double vodka sodas and you had ice cream sandwiches. That sounds right. He really knows how to party at a hockey game. I was driving. Made you crazy. Everyone else was black out.

Be great. Maybe Uber next blackout. Me crazy. Maybe Uber next time. Get a drink. Nah. We'll do a hockey episode at some point, I'm sure. We'll have JJ Whitehead on. They were a plucky ragtag team. Our friend Jason Whitehead, he loves hockey,

and he once took me out to the Las Vegas Knights, and they were making the Stanley Cup, and he goes, it's their first year in, so they're the eighth player from each league. So they are a plucky ragtag team of players who will all have to prove themselves. No one thought they'd do anything.

And I was like, he still didn't get me interested. He didn't sell it to me. Plucky. What's funny is you sound nothing like JJ Whitehead when you're doing that. Oh, no, no, no. My impersonation of all Canadians are exactly the same.

Stoners. Yeah, I used to think that they were all stoned and then they're just Canadians. I like Canadians, though. I tell you what, I feel akin to Canadians in the same way. I feel like they're close to being Australian Canadians. They're like snow Australians. How so?

They're just, you know, they dress a bit basic. They've got like their outfit that they want that's a bit lumberjack-y. They're, you know, Australians are a bit like that and they're also a bit more outdoorsy than Americans. Yeah, there's like a few, like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, very cosmopolitan and the rest of it, like Australia is just, you're in the outback basically. Yeah, it's a big country with only a few populated areas

and the rest is just sort of desolate or ice or snow or whatever. I just feel it's got a lot of similarities to Australia. Last comment for today. Someone said, I'm still PTSD from the episode Jim and Jack took their shirts off. Jim, too bright white to see clearly. Jack with the upper body definition of a drop scone. Yeah. I don't know what a drop scone is.

It's a drop scone. You know scones like a little tiny. Pastry. It's like a mini biscuit in American terms. They drop them on the ground. I think they're saying your upper body looks bad. Yeah. I got that part.

I came through. The scone, they're trying to be a bit fancy. I always say he's got a face like a dropped pie. Yeah. And also I got that part. And also the scone they're trying to be a bit fancy. I always say he's got a face like a dropped pie. Yeah. Yeah. Like a meat.

Just a little messed up. Or you got a face like a bucket of smashed crabs. And then there's an emoji of pancakes. Or Jack looks like he fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch

on the way down. That was a big tree. Whoever hit Jack with the ugly stick took a run up. These are all fun things to say Yeah Jack's ugly Did he say that

He was talking about your body Oh I don't know Any body ones I just wanted to vent Yeah I've got to say Jack now You're not ugly

You're good looking You look like Dave Grohl If he was a bucket Of smashed crabs You're a butter face And a butter body Alright cool let's go to some ads it's the season to be grilling it's grilling seasons here baby get ready for that summer cookout luckily today's sponsor butcher box believes everyone deserves high quality humanely

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That's free bacon for life. Unless you stop your subscription. As long as you got the subscription. Okay, well, that was ButcherBox. Now I go in. I'm not even going to. You got a computer. Jack gave this to me.

I think it's mine now. I've never seen you on a computer before. That's actually true. That's where most people watch me. What does your personal care routine say about you? Whether keep it simple or have a 10-step plan, premium grooming products make all the difference in how you look and feel. With Hawthorne, you can get the most out of your personal care routine

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so I already know. I use their face cream a lot and the sunscreen stuff, but I just got the box of some stuff. The body wash smells so good. It's good stuff. Just so you know how good that stuff is. Forest is 67. Yeah.

It's a good degree. It really does. Yeah. Sandalwood shaving cream, all made without sulfates, parabens. Is that it? Is that it? Parabens? Parabens.

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No, they actually listed them. I just rounded it off in there. Laura fucker fucker pan. First, take their quiz. It's all about like, who do you think Brad Pitt was better off with? Jennifer or that other bird he had the kids with? No, no, it's about your skin types. Oh, it's a about like who do you think Brad Pitt was better off with Jennifer or that other bird he had the kids with no no it's about your skin types

oh it's a different quiz yeah take their personal quiz they you there's this typo here they tell you about they tell you about the products they're important

for your personal care like so the quiz will be like do you have oily skin do you think do people walk past you and go oi pizza pizza face? One of the glasses, yeah.

It's actually really nice not to have to think about what products I need. The quiz recommend them based on my answers. Yeah. You're a Jennifer fan. Wait, Jack, did you do the quiz for Jim? Yeah. Okay.

I've got this stuff. He knows his skin ultimately yeah Jack knows my skin I got you safe ones I got like cologne and like hand stuff

oh I get terrible hands I get psoriasis on my hands I'll report back and see if that works cologne I like my manly musk but let's mix things up at the end

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Please welcome our guest this week, Professor Alan Pietribon. G'day, Alan. Now it's time to play. Yes, though. Yes, though. Yes, Professor Alan Pietrobon. G'day, Alan. Now it's time to play Yes, No. Yes, No. Yes, No. Yes, No. Judging a book by its cover. Alright. So Alan is

I told you he's a professor. Yeah, Alan's a professor. He's got a typewriter behind him. I am a slight typewriter enthusiast. Are you? A slight enthusiast. No, no, no. I've got an app on my phone that can send texts that look like they're typed, which is actually the app is owned by Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks has this typewriter thing.

He's obsessed with typewriters, Tom Hanks. When I got my house, I bought a typewriter. I've got a real old school typewriter. It only cost me a couple hundred bucks. And sometimes I might send my wife a message or something on a printed typewriter and stuff like that, and she does well. Yeah, so he has a typewriter and a typewriter. And a typewriter poster.

And he's got a dial-up phone. Fucking, what's behind you, the Enigma machine? So I'm going to say that, oh, he's a hipster. But are you a professor of old technology, historical technology? Yes, that's a thing. We're going to need – Professor of old technology. I can use him for my TV pitch.

It's a history thing, like old inventions. Like, you know when you did history at school and you could do, like, regular history or ancient history? Modern history was like Hitler, and then ancient history was like, and that's – we found a spoon under Mount Vesius you know those type of things right um or rudimentary toys okay so so does what you're talking about have anything to do with typewriters no okay well i wasted a lot of time in the time period you're in the right time period okay so you're a professor of history i am a professor of history by

training. I'm officially a professor of global affairs, which includes history and foreign policy. Okay, so he's going to be talking about spies and espionage. Now, I'll tell you what, you have probably watched a documentary on this because you've watched, I think. And we talked about it a little

in our gun lab. The podcast we recorded yesterday. The gun lab comes out next week, but we recorded it yesterday. She started talking about an event that happened that is related exactly to our topic. When she was doing it, I was like, well, it's weird. Oh, the Kennedy assassination.

No, no. Now, there's a documentary about this probably by the same person that you watched the Vietnam War documentary. Oh, it's Ken Burns. You're a historian of baseball. No, no, no. I wish I knew a bit about that. You probably know about this indirectly, too.

Oh, the Civil War. Nah, think about something that you've enjoyed doing throughout your life. But you stopped doing. Yeah. I stopped doing this, but I used to do it. Yeah, a lot. Drugs. Close. A lot. Drugs. Close.

Taking drugs. Drinking. Prohibition. Maybe he hasn't stopped taking drugs. Dr. Alan Biotramon is here to talk about prohibition in the United States. He's an assistant professor of global affairs at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C. He specializes in modern American history and U.S. foreign policy. He's also an award-winning public speaker and has given some fascinating public lectures about topics like looking at the history of road trips in American culture or the history of food and dining in the United States.

His talks are available to watch on his website, alanpietrobone.com. We'll put that there so no one can see it, but it's A-L-L-E-N-P-I-E-T-R-O-B-O-N. Thanks for being here. I'm excited. Yeah, so. I don't know much about prohibition. I know what it is.

Yeah. But I'll give it a go. Yeah, yeah. And is there anything else you want to say? I know we introduced you properly, but sometimes our guests talk about what, how you came to be an quote unquote expert on this. So, you know, yeah, kind of in a roundabout way, my, my actual research is in nuclear weapons and the cold war policies,

but I'm a historian of modern America, which includes the 1920s. And I became fascinated with this era mainly because I don't know if you've ever played that game of like, if I could go back in time and live through a different era, for me, it was probably the 1920s. So this is more out of interest. I got really into this. So to answer your question first, the 1920s was when Prohibition happened. I got a point. I got a point.

I got a point. I didn't even have that question on there of course you were gonna ask yeah yeah okay so we're gonna ask Jim what he knows about prohibition

in the United States I'll ask you a couple questions about other countries too maybe and then when we're done seeing what his knowledge is professor

you're gonna grade him zero through ten ten being the best on accuracy Kelly's gonna grade him on confidence I'm gonna grade him on etc if you'm going to grade them on et cetera. If you score 21 through 30, you'll be untouchable

because you know the untouchables. Right. Untouchable. The movie. Kimmy Smith. Have you ever seen the Untouchables movie? Yes, I have seen the Untouchables movie. Okay.

11 through 20, touchable. 0 through 10, touchable. But why would you want to? I can't remember. All I remember is a pram going down a staircase and people shooting and stuff. You don't even know who was in the movie? There's no questions about the movie.

I know it was Kevin Costner. I've always thought that Kevin Costner was a very overrated actor. Sean Connery was in it? Sean Connery. Andy Garcia. Kevin Costner does an emote. He just picks good films.

I like all Kevin Costner movies. I just don't like him. He's just, you have to get off my land. I'm Wyatt Earp. Well, shut up, Kevin. There's going to be an article about the scathing Kevin Costner movies, I just don't like him. He's just, you have to get off my land. I'm Wyatt Earp. Well, shut up, Kevin. There's going to be an article about the scathing Kevin Costner review coming out soon. Kevin Costner and the French chef are going to team up on you.

Jeffrey slams Kevin Costner. Get off my lawn. That was a clean switch. He does the thing with Wyatt Earp where he's just like, you know, he's not good. All right, let's start. Dancing with wolves is only three hours because you talk so fucking slowly. You could have bashed that film out in an hour and a half. What is prohibition as it relates to alcohol?

Pro ambitions are when a prostitute wants to actually become something more. Pro ambition? Pro ambition? Pro ambition. No, prohibition is making alcohol illegal is the simple answer. And that was something that happened in America where you weren't allowed to drink. Okay. Not that alcohol is illegal.

I'm sure you could still use alcohol in things like medical things, but the consumption of alcohol was made illegal. Okay, so you said that was in the 20s. I don't even know how you knew that. But what's the first example in history of the world of prohibition? what's the first example in history of like the world of prohibition? Oh, um,

uh, uh, Korag, the caveman told his wife, you're drinking too much. And she said, I stay at home all day where you have all our fun hunting saber tooth tigers. What else am I meant to do? And she had some juniper berries and made some gin and off she drank.

Um, how many countries like in the world is alcohol currently abandoned or can you, or can you name five of them Saudi Arabia yeah it's banned in you know

you could Saudi Arabia so it's all Arab it's all I'm just going to write that down East Arabia East Arabia it's Muslim places

it's Muslim places so I want to say I'll give it but I've drunk in all these places I've drunk in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan. But I've always done it on army bases. But I'm going to say Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia,

and then there'll be something like maybe parts of Indonesia, but not all of Indonesia because you can drink in Bali and all that type of stuff. But I want to say Indonesia. So do you know what years Prohibition was in the United States? From 1922 till 1927. Okay, very confident. And then what events led up to Prohibition? Like why did it come about?

People were coming back from the first world war and they, they were getting a bit of PTSD and they really didn't know how to sort of handle the PTSD. So they were turning to the bottle and domestic abuse was actually going through the roof. And, and, and they started to say it was the devil's work. And so it was a lot of women's groups that actually started up sort of the don't drink anymore because they were sick of being slapped around by their husbands. And then I'm sure religion got involved and then they weren't allowed to drink. And then that pushed it underground.

And then people like Al Capone were making shit loads of money actually trying to sell moonshine and liquor to different people. And actually it made the mafia, the rise of the mafia. Do you know what the temperance movement was? The temperance. It would have something. There would have been a group of women who weren't happy with drunk men. That's all women.

Yeah. Look, in my experience, that's the only way you can stop drinking. What do you mean? Some woman goes, you've had enough. Okay. drinking what do you mean just some woman goes you've had enough okay what amendment in the u.s constitution banned alcohol and which one repealed it yeah that's all that's one of the things because there's two amendments uh for prohibition right it's like isn't it like 27 you should just have erased it right

i think it's like i don't well probably it's the second and the first. No, I want to say it's, I'll say it's like the 16th and the 21st. Okay. What president was in power at the start of Prohibition and what was his stance on it? Prohibition. President. and what was his stance on it? Prohibition? President? George Washington?

Yeah. Okay, so, no, it wouldn't have been Roosevelt. It would have been before Roosevelt. Eisenhower was after. Okay, so, yeah, I'm'm gonna say it was um yeah i don't know and for against it if whichever president the president was against it against it for it for it for it bro okay yeah pro prohibition pro pro okay um why was the amendment eventually repealed like what because you can't stop people from drinking booze. And so they just went, all right.

Because with so much illegal activity, it's the same reason that now people are thinking about legalizing drugs, because it takes more crime away by legalizing them. And we get tax money. People are going to do it anyway. So why don't we get the revenue from it? And is there any parts of the US where alcohol is still banned? Utah. Utah still is a dry state, we drank there it's it's banned but it's not banned it's like you can't see an alcoholic beverage being poured but they can go

around a little corner and pour it for you but uh but you can't actually it's allegedly a dry state of utah okay um did did it work or no what was it No, I'm sorry. Did people drink less? Were they healthier? Did it decrease? No, it did not work in any way. It did not work in any way. It just put parties underground. What percentage of the U.S. obeyed the laws, do you think?

70%, but it's 30%. 70% obeyed the laws. It's still the same now, I guess. Like underage drinking. I'm sure 50% of kids don't underage drink, but the other 50% are fucking going for it. So 50% obeyed. Yes, it's 50.

Okay. What is medical liquor? Medical liquor is things like rubbing alcohol and stuff like that that you can actually put on a wound. But in relation to prohibition, what would medical liquor be? Oh. Give me a hint. Okay.

So if somebody was had the DTs and they were shaking too much they'd go we'd have a couple of beers down at the doctor's office you'll be right what does thunder road refer to thunder road um thunder road would be a place where they the bootleggers would uh do do their little trip to get the alcohol maybe down from, I'm going to say from Canada into America. Well, I was going to ask you, where did the alcohol come during Prohibition? Like, how did they get it? Well, they made a lot of like the hillbillies. I always watch that show Moonshiners and think, what the fuck are these dumb rednecks doing in the hills still making fucking alcohol?

Alcohol's super legal and really, really easy to get. And they're just like, I've got this still in the woods that could kill a lot of people if this thing explodes. You know what I mean? Yeah, but it's a high alcohol content. Yeah, because you can't get alcohol into you quick enough. They haven't made it. You can buy 80% proof fucking rum and you're like,

well, I've got to get that moonshine. One sip and I'm done. Yeah, so moonshine is where people who made it in stills privately like that. And then other alcohol would be shipped through. If the Simpsons, it was in a bowling ball up an alleyway into Moe's bar. You talked a little bit about organized crime. You said Al Capone. Anybody else?

Do you know who Lucky Luciano was? Lucky Luciano. He was friends with Sinatra, and he actually gave Sinatra a lighter, and then Sinatra was sort of wrapped up with doing private gigs for Lucky Luciano. So when we do the Sinatra podcast, I'm all over that. What about Arnold Rothstein? Arnold Rothstein, he worked for the authorities,

and he was the one who was trying to get them all. See, in the end, they couldn't get Al Capone, so they got him on tax problems. Good confidence, but that's wrong. They did. They got him on tax things, tax fraud. Not Arnold Rothstein. What is a blind pig or a blind tiger?

It's when a couple of Argos get married. Okay. What was the Cullen Harrison Act last question the what? Cullen Harrison the Cullen Harrison Act was Cullen Harrison he was actually killed by a drink driver

and that was to make it so that you can't be drinking intoxicated I think the cars only went 10 miles an hour then yeah fucking that's how drunk these people were okay Professor Alan Pietrabone How did Jim do? 0-10, 10 being the best on his knowledge of the Prohibition era Well, I'm very impressed

I will say That's surprisingly impressive But, that being said I don't know, 7? Yeah, I'll be generous. Korak the caveman was one of his answers. There's a couple answers that were just dead wrong. Jim likes to go through and always say he should get a higher score as we're answering.

I'm going to show you all the ones you got wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think I get ripped off by these professors. But this one I've done all right. Kelly, how are you doing confidence? I think I'm going to by these professors. But this one I've done all right. Kelly, how are you doing confidence? I think I'm going to give you a four on confidence. Oh, I thought it was pretty confident. What if I pointed my finger like this? What are the answers?

Yeah, it felt forced. Yeah, I'll give you a 10 on et cetera. You're untouchable. You haven't upset me. Is there something interfering with your happiness? Yep. There is. There's a few things.

There's a few things. There's a few things. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I've put out some hits. Or is preventing you from achieving your goals? Look, during COVID and all that sort of stuff, everyone's gone through depression. Depression's a terrible thing.

I've spoken very openly about my depression, and I've found therapy to actually be something that has very much helped me. I used to be a very anti-therapist person. I was one of these fucking wanker comedians that goes, my therapy, I just get on stage. Oh, shit. Yeah, that's where I get all my stuff out. I just get on stage.

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What have you got to lose? So I asked Jim, what is prohibition? He said making the consumption of alcohol legal. Is it that simple, basically? Technically, yes, but also it's like a lot more complicated like everything um but there are these two laws and this sort of uh ties into one of the questions about what's the volstead act so you have a constitutional amendment this is one of the things you got wrong it is the 18th amendment not the 16th but you did get the 21st Amendment right

that repeals prohibition in 1933. Good guess. I knew they were in that bracket. I knew they were way down. I have actually read the Constitution. And I forgot to ask about the Volstead Act, but yeah, you were saying. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. So it's, to put it

like, to boil down all this complex politics into simplicity here, the U.S. Congress takes a vote. Do you's to put it like to boil down all this complex politics and simplicity here. The U.S. Congress takes a vote. Do you want to ban alcohol? Yes or no. And they vote overwhelmingly yes. And then it goes out to the states to be ratified. And they quickly also say yes. But then it has to come back to say, well, what does it actually mean then? We now need to write the law of how do we enforce this? What's going to be banned? What are the punishments? And that's the Volstead Act, which is separate from the actual yes or no vote. And when it comes back, the confusing and sort of

hair pulling out part of it is when Congress voted yes on prohibition, many of them never actually thought it would A, pass, B, get ratified by the states, and C, actually be as harsh as it was. Many thought that it would ban hard liquor, but beer and wine, that would still be allowed. And when it came back to actually write the law, they gave it over to Andrew Volstead, who was a hardliner, who interpreted this to say, no, everything is banned. You can't drink anything, not even wine or cider or beer, which is sort of the threshold that they thought would happen. Could you cook with it? You couldn't even cook with it. Well, in restaurants, you couldn't cook with it.

At your private home, you could because the law, interestingly, does not ban the consumption of alcohol. It just bans its manufacture, transport, import, export, and a couple of other things. So in your private home, you can use it if you had bought it before prohibition was enacted. It's still illegal to buy. But one of the hilarious things is they give a one year grace period um the law passes and they say okay alcohol is gonna be banned in one year so of course everyone rushes out and buys up as much as they can and you know fills their basements and their attics with alcohol because it doesn't ban you drinking private right Right. Oh, my God. Costco would have crushed that year.

I always think it's like with weed. Weed for a while was illegal. You couldn't be arrested for taking weed or owning weed, but you could be arrested for selling weed or growing weed. But if you take it or own it, someone had to grow it and someone had to sell it. So they're accepting something that's illegal after all these illegal things have happened before that got to there. Yeah.

And so with the alcohol, so you could have it in your home after the thing, but you could only drink it within your house. You couldn't go to a park. You couldn't take it to a party. Could you have friends over to drink it with you? So you are allowed to serve alcohol to bonafide guests. So like invited official guests of your home, you could serve them alcohol. What about someone like Forrest who just shows up at me house?

He's not proper invited. Would he be allowed? Does there need to be a card involved? Right. And that's sort of like the legal trickery here. The whole thing of like, we can't ban you from drinking it because, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but the idea that you can't get in trouble for doing something if when you did it, it was legal to do it.

So if I bought alcohol when it was legal to buy it, it's my property now. And the government can seize it, but they have to pay it, like pay a fair price to buy that back. So they tried to get around that. But also, you've got bourbon distilleries that age their product for years. And they've got millions of dollars just sitting in these warehouses that they can't, you know, that would be unwarranted seizure of my property if you're just going to ban me. So with this one year grace period it gives them like aha you got to sell all your product right if you own a wine store you got us you've got one year to sell

everything and then you can't sell it anymore so they couldn't sell outside like so like i assume like say jack daniels existed back then right okay so the jack daniels the syrian lynchburg tennessee or whatever so that that was there Now they couldn't sell their stuff to Canada. They couldn't sell it to Australia. They couldn't sell it anywhere. Because like for a while, their pinball machines were made in America, but pinball was banned up until the seventies. And, but they were all made here and sold overseas. They couldn't even sell to other countries.

Yeah. Illegal to import or export throughout prohibition. Why didn't they move down to Mexico or up to Canada to put their distilleries or did they? I actually don't know if, yeah, I don't have any info on if a company is like, all right, I'm out of the US, I'm moving across the border to Canada. I do know one of the largest distilleries in the world in Toronto, Canada, did booming business, sort of illegally importing it into the U.S. during this time. So some distillers in the U.S. chose to sell off all their products. Many said, well, we'll just lock the door to the warehouse and keep aging it. You know,

we think this is eventually going to end. And so we'll have some really good, really old whiskey and bourbon when this finally ends. What was the reasoning for making it illegal? Well, yeah, there's a question we were about to get to. I said it's because wives were getting slapped up. Yeah, we can get to that. We can jump around. First of all, it was from when to when? We'll just get to that. What year?

Yeah, January 17th, 1920 until December 5th, 1933. Okay, Jim got that wrong. 12 years. I told you the real juicy bit of it. 22 to 27. 22 to 27 was when it really was like everyone's home alcohol had run out.

Yeah. And they were just like, fuck. So 1920 is when it went into effect or that was the year first where they said you have a year? It goes into effect about midnight, January 1920. Oh, so New Year's Eve, people are partying, and then at midnight, they're like, everyone put it away.

January 20th. All right, so that was like the last night, and everyone must have got real fucked up, eh? Yeah, huge parties, and then after midnight, you can raise your glass of water to toast, I guess. Yeah. Although the funny thing is, the first violation of the Bolstead Act

was recorded just 57 minutes later. So it was 57 minutes at work and then it was all downhill. Because there was a short period in time when I was living in Britain where magic mushrooms were legal in the UK because someone found a loophole in the law. And then they decided to make them illegal. And the last weekend they gave us was Glastonbury, which is the Coachella of Britain, right? The big thing, right? And so there was people just like trying to sell their stock out, right?

They just like people had stores, just mountains of mushrooms, just like 50 cents for a hit. Everyone was tripping balls on that fucking weekend. So, yeah, I can only imagine how it would have been with alcohol. That must've been a shitty time to be a policeman that fucking night. And, uh, as Jack was asking,

he's off camera. You can't say what events led up to prohibition. Jim said, people will come back from the first world war. They turned. Yeah, it wasn't, I mean,

that's a good educated guess, but it wasn't the first world war. In fact, technically prohibition starts before world war or before it actually starts, but during world war one, because In fact, technically, prohibition starts before World War or before it actually starts. But during World War One, because there is during the war after the US enters in 1917, there's a temporary prohibition put into place because we need the grains to feed the troops. Let's not waste them making alcohol. And at the time, the American people were OK with that. It's patriotic. We're doing our duty. I can temporarily stop drinking, but also because the major breweries in the U S were owned by Germans.

So like, yeah, stick it to the German enemy. I tell you what, I reckon a few American soldiers who were living in America when prohibition happened, go, look, I'm going to go fight in Germany. It's just the easiest way to still get drunk. Yeah. Yeah. it's just the easiest way to still get drunk yeah yeah so it's technically starts a little bit before 1920 but then it's you know it ends and then they started again they decided to make it permanent but it's the the complicated part is it's not one event um just partly or sort of jim was partly right about um it was domestic abuse was a major problem through the 1800s americans drank an enormous amount compared to today um about at my sort of back of the envelope calculations about

88 liters of whiskey per year compared to about 13 liters today each each 88 liters yeah yeah on average? Each? 88 litres? Yeah. Yeah. What? What the fuck? Oh my God. No wonder you look at old pictures of people in the old time and go, oh, their diets weren't as good. They were fucking alcoholics. They died so young. They're 23.

They look 67. 33 litres. Even at the peak of my drinking, and that was the average person, the peak of my drinking, not even close. That's a fucking, that's a lit that's a way a

liter a week and then you have like oh i didn't have a leader that week and stuff like that like it's 88 liters a year so it's more than a liter yeah it's almost like two liters a week it's just under two liters a week that's non-stop maybe i get it why they're trying to get rid of it. Oh, my God. Two liters. And that's the average person. Then there's some kind of, oh, you don't want to go near Dennis. He drinks too much. And Dennis is on four liters a week.

Yeah, because there's people that don't drink, so Dennis is like, I'll drink your liters. And Long John Daly was only doing fucking half a liter a day, and he was a full-blown shaking fucking alcoholic, and that was just a normal person back then. Also, I want to change the answer. Woodrow Wilson, give him a go. That's it.

Woodrow Wilson. That was the answer, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I got it. Because then when he said the war and the thing, I remembered Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Woodrow Wilson. We'll get there.

I'm up to eight points now. I would have gotten 85 if I said Woodrow Wilson. So we're still talking about the events that led up to it. Yeah. I mean, so that alone, our reaction to that, obviously. This wasn't just, oh, people drank. No, people were drunks constantly in America. This was a real problem.

And was that just their whiskey intake? That wasn't just including the beers on top? And also, once I'm done with whiskey, I have a bit of vodka. That was just whiskey. Yeah, yeah. So the stat, if I'm done with whiskey, I have a bit of vodka. Yeah. That was just whiskey. Yeah, yeah. So the stat, if I recall, is just whiskey. Now, they didn't really drink as much beer or as much wine. You know, vodka wasn't really a thing.

So it's like whiskeys and bourbons are the primary drinking vehicle. And then cider, people drink a lot of cider. But, like, wine doesn't really take off until much, much later. It shows how much of a fat bastard we are in the modern era because if I drink too much, I gain a lot of weight, but it's really more that got to do with our fucking diets because you look at pictures of people back then, they're like slim and they're smoking a cigarette like,

hey, we're going to beat those Nazis when they come along. Well, they also walked everywhere too. Yeah, but they were drinking 88 litres of whiskey. But when you walk a mile with a litre of whiskey. It must be the chemicals in our fucking food because if I drank 88 litres of whiskey. But when you walk a mile with a litre of whiskey. It must be the chemicals in our fucking food. Because if I drank 88 litres of whiskey, I'd have diabetes like fucking that. There's a lot of sugar in whiskey. Yep.

Was there a diabetes? Was that prevalent? I'm not even sure they could test for it then. I'm not a medical doctor, but yeah. We do have health problems. Ulcers were huge. Liver disease clearly was huge at the time. Gout must have been a big one.

Gout. Everyone must have had fucking gout. Does the sugar make it through on whiskey, though? Doesn't it get distilled out? Because whiskey is zero carbs. Yeah. Yeah, it's still filled with sugars. Good for your health.

Yeah, it's still filled. How, though? Who told you that? That's the same person. Whiskey is zero carbs. You can't get pregnant. Look it up. Google it.

We have sex in a hot tub. Google it. I think we're still talking about the origins though. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a number of things. It's, it is a massive social problem that leads to domestic abuse.

It leads to health problems. It leads to, there's a huge problem with absenteeism at work, especially the day after payday. No one's showing up to work because everyone's hung over in bed after you get paid and go to the bar. It didn't help that in many smaller cities

and towns, the bar would also be your local bank. You could go and cash your check there. You get your money and of course you can have a few drinks before going home. They were so fucking efficient. I love it. I'd like to cash my payday check there. You get your money and of course you're going to have a few drinks before going home. They were so fucking efficient. I love it. I'd like to cash my payday check in. Give me five ones and the

other 200 in whiskey. Do you have any idea at the time how much was a whiskey at a bar or a beer? Do you have any idea? Good question. Often whiskey was free. Okay.

Things are starting to come together for me now. Back then they didn't have water fountains. They just had whiskey fountains for the kids. Well, like on two reasons, partly, yes. Up until like the 1860s, it was safer to drink alcohol than it was to drink the water. So these were just health nuts. Oh, right.

I didn't know about that. Well, I forget what W.C. Fields is a lie, but he has that famous quote. He goes, I don't drink water because fish fucking it. That's what it is. Yeah, so whiskey is partly, not always, but one of the promotions bars would run, especially bars near big factories,

was come in, buy lunch lunch and you'll get a free glass of whiskey. And so on their lunch break, people go and get a nice buzz and go back to work and end up getting their arm chopped off by a machine, like industrial accidents. I'm a blacksmith and I'm drunk as shit. I heard that McDonald's used to give out whiskey as a children's toy with the

happy meal. Um, well, we'll go back to the other countries thing maybe, but what was the temperance movement? Yeah. So this, she was partly right on this. It is largely led by women, but not exclusively. It's women who often bear the brunt of the problems of alcohol, start fighting back and start these movements to

not just get rid of alcohol, like we're going to solve these problems by banning the drink, but to counsel like moderation. Look, if you're going to drink, don't be crazy about it. So it was kind of like, in some ways, early rehab before that existed. You'd have groups that were against alcohol and groups that were often, you know, in Maryland, there were groups that were heavy drinkers and wanted to like stop. And so they formed these, um, you know, support groups. Um, but religion was involved. Churches often really pushed for this. Um, but even big industrialists like Henry Ford pushed for,

for prohibition and temperanceance because you don't have drunk workers on your assembly line. You can build better cars and not have them getting hurt all the time. No, no. And they still haven't fixed that in America. But yeah, the women were the nagging women with the original AA movement. It's true. Every time you had to drink, I put it down. Oh, first example in history. I think we skipped over that. He said, Korg, the caveman. I don't think that's right.

Boom. Check it like that. Yeah, not quite. I mean, who knows? Maybe you have a caveman trying to do temperance. But the first, at least from what I've seen, like recorded instance is three thousand seven hundred years ago when the Babylonians passed a law that you couldn't sell beer. So we can go back almost 4,000 years. There's probably cases even further back because one of the fascinating pieces of evidence is that no matter what time period, no matter what culture,

no matter what region of the world, no matter what dominant grain is cultivated in that region, there is evidence across history of alcohol being produced. All human societies at some point have figured out how to make alcohol no matter if you're growing rice or corn or wheat or whatever else. Yeah, a lot of it's got to be by accident as well. They've left something in it fermented and then... Yeah, in the heat or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like, okay, so they're trying to stop people 3,000 years ago, so why wouldn't they learn from that to modern day that this doesn't seem to work?

Also, Jesus was an alcohol drinker. He seemed to be a pretty straight-up sort of fella, him and his 12 mates drinking wine. They could never find the right girl, could they? They'd go out to all the different bars drinking their wine well it's water that he turned in the wine oh yeah he was a manufacturer i've turned wine into water urine yeah yeah but like we see it there too like alcohol is so important that it's used in religious rituals right the sacraments involve alcohol. So we can see it throughout all of these societies. Yeah.

We're born to drink. That's why when people like give me shit for giving homeless people money, they're like, they're just going to buy alcohol and drugs with that. I'm like, I have a house and I want to buy alcohol and drugs with this money. Like I don't get the argument. We all want to drink. Yeah. Except for sober people.

We went over the amendments 18th and 21st. And then the president that was in power to start a prohibition Woodrow Wilson that's a good name Woodrow Wilson he should have been a folk singer Woody Wilson I want to listen to Woody Wilson all the time

tell me about the changing times and his stance you said he was for it he was for prohibition that was my guess said he was for it though. He was for prohibition. That's what I was, I guess I picked. Yep. Uh, no,

he was against prohibition. Well, initially, but if you read the books, he was songs. He says otherwise he, uh, he vetoed it.

I thought of a veto. Yeah. Yeah. So he vetoed it. Um, and then it was overridden cause it can go back to the Senate and the Senate can override a veto if they get enough votes. And they did that like almost immediately. Was he a big drinker? He drank. I wouldn't say that he's a big drinker, but he enjoyed alcohol like many of the presidents.

Just 66 liters a year. Very sensible. When I was looking up, when I was trying to find questions for this i did read that i guess when they passed it he stored a bunch of barrels in a white house or something which i guess is legal and i thought that was illegal until we just started talking to you today that's that's why i was like oh the president was just like fuck it you know yeah so you could also there you know all these loopholes so if you owned you know alcohol in your home and it's illegal to transport alcohol but you're like moving to a different house, what do you do? So you can get a special permit to transport that alcohol to your new house, which is what the incoming president, Warren Harding, had to do in 1921.

He brought like today's equivalent of I think it was like twenty thousand dollars worth of alcohol into the White House and got a permit to transport it in. And Wilson, I think it was before Prohibition took effect because his private home was also in Washington, D.C. He moved his alcohol out of the White House knowing that his term was coming to an end the next year and brought it back to his private home. So he drank. He was against this.

Now, with all the permits and all that type of stuff, did the cops really go over to people's houses and we hear you have alcohol? Or was it just something they tried to raid bars? Like, because I remember when weed was illegal here and no one gave a fuck. No cop was going to bother you about a bit of weed. Were the cops heavy-handed about the whole thing?

Or was it a don't look, don't tell type of thing? Yeah, in the private homes, I don't have any examples of them, like, raiding someone's private home if they got a tip that's, you know, there's a couple of cases of wine in the basement. And the thing is, at first, there was almost no enforcement of this law because one of the other loopholes that Congress wrote into this was, look, law enforcement, you now have this new massive nationwide mandate to police all alcohol, but we're going to give you like 300 agents nationwide to do that with and very little money compared to there were by some estimates, 30,000 illegal bars in New York city alone. And about 300 agents across the country dedicated to police. Wait a minute. And that was in Manhattan or the five boroughs or whatever,

but 30,000, I don't feel like there's 30,000 bars in New York now. Well, this was more than there were legal bars before prohibition. More sprouted up. And so how, did they, were they just doors or did they have signs like,

like Jim's comic book hut? A bit of a winking neon that was one of the other questions what a blind tiger or a blind pig is but because it's kind of like speakeasy i didn't want to say speakeasy my pet hate is when you see a bar and they go yeah we're a cool little speakeasy and you're like you're a bar you're not a speakeasy i didn't have to say anything it's not like we're drinking past the regular you close at a regular time just because your bar's a little dingy does not make a speakeasy yeah you know what's crazy when you said to saint augustine is i guess considered the oldest city

in the united states in florida it's like really and when you walk in the old part of it there's a like a replica of a bar you can drink in and they said that there was a bar for every seven people in this. And it was a smaller town. But you just realize how much people drank back then. There was nothing. There was no TV. I had no idea. I thought we drank more now than we'd ever drank.

So we're actually the healthiest fucking. That has blown my mind more than any other fact I've ever had. 88 liters. I'd be dead by now. It's exactly why when you see pictures of people, and then they didn't live as long and stuff, too. They didn't have the health care, but also they were drinking or doing smoking. I was drinking a lot.

At one stage, I was drinking. Not enough. Not even near that. Yeah. And it's like I was hangovers. Every fucking day. It's like also I was showing up drunk to work and drunk on stage. Like you must have gone into a bank and the person's just like,

how much money do you want? His fucking bus pulls up. Get on. And then you were drunk as well. How you doing? There's constant fights like why isn't all the literature just fucking written in crayon from that period on the back of a napkin um uh why was the amendment repealed jim said because you can't stop people from drinking booze yeah basically i mean like that's if

there's one reason, this whole thing was one of the most spectacular policy failures in U.S. history that it didn't work. There was a brief period of time after 1920. It's enacted. And most people, I think, Jim, you mentioned like most people are law abiding. Like, oh, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't have a federal crime on my record. And so many people didn't drink or, you know, drank at home. But A, it very quickly people figured out like, no one's really enforcing this at first. In fact, real harsh enforcement doesn't start until the late 1920s. And also, it's a matter of people who still wanted to drink needed a little bit of time to figure out like, where theakeasy is who's who's going to be my dealer right like where can i get the stuff and um often it was borrowed like what were once legal bars would sort of take the sign down put the clothes signed out

but just like kept operating i mean if you knew that they were the clothes sign actually meant they were still open um you knew who to ask you can get it so um did the first oh go ahead sorry did the prices soar did they go did they go up because you said the bars actually increased so that means there's many people are going out so the prices sort of stayed about the same but did they they go up dramatically it depends where um the price does increase a little bit um mainly the drinking rate actually for those who did drink, they ended up drinking more during prohibition than before, because you're going to go all out when you're going to go. And because there was a lot of homemade alcohol with some of the brands like this is,

yeah, try some of Dave's bathtub. Yeah. So like, that's what it depends where some of it's just cheap swill a lot, not a lot, but some of it is like industrial alcohol because even today it was true back then even today about 50 of the alcohol produced in the u.s is not drink you don't drink it it's for like well we know hand sanitizers and like you know degreasers and hospital solvents and stuff so companies that produced that would just sort of mix it with other things and sell it on the side if it wasn't like the poisonous stuff, you had a lot of homemade stuff. You had a lot of just really bad, quickly aged, you know, swill whiskey because they want to make it sell it before they get caught.

So yeah, there's a lot of junk out there, but there's also a lot of like good imported stuff smuggled across from Canada, smuggled from Ireland or Scotland and dropped at Atlantic City off the coast. So yeah, alcohol still, the country's still awash in alcohol even after prohibition. What was the number one way of smuggling it in? So two ways. There's a huge pipeline coming across the Great Lakes from Canada, which had a brief prohibition also during World War I and then mostly gave it up after that. So there's lots of people smuggling it across Canada.

And there's a huge pipeline from Europe. Ships would sail over, dock, well, not dock, I guess, anchor about five, I think it's five miles off the coast of the US. And then either have gangsters and rum runners from America row out or use or use their power boats to come out in the middle of the night and unload the booze, or they'd take it in and land it right around Atlantic city. So these are two major pipelines, but it's also just, there's lots being produced in the U S still too.

Yeah. There's a place up in big, in big Sur in California here, and there's a little hike you can do. And at the bottom, there's this cave that was dug out and it comes out in a little cove on the other side. And they said bootleggers used to come in there. So there's, and that's just a little area. So I'm sure there's tons of those like everywhere. sales go up because they come up with this genius thing where they take their grapes, they dry them, they compress them into this little brick, and they sell that through mail order catalogs. Because unlike beer and hard liquor, which you need special equipment and a bunch of ingredients, wine, you mix it with water. If you've got this dried grapes, you put it in the barrel and you let it ferment. you could mail order these like grape bricks that on the package it's like this is for grape juice for kids like mix it with water

serve it to your kids and on the package they'd have this little helpful hint that says warning do not mix it with water and put it in a cupboard for 20 days because then it'll turn into wine. Very bad. Yeah, I'd like that on a cocaine packet. Whatever you do, don't roll up a note. Don't put these into lines. Yeah, that's funny. Is alcohol banned anywhere in the US still? Jim said, yeah, Utah. I think it's more than that, right? Yeah, there's a couple states that technically

alcohol is still banned. What's it? Kansas, Tennessee, and I think Kentucky and Utah has got that gray area, as you mentioned. You can kind of get it, but also not. I've gotten super fucked up in Kansas. Yeah, me too. And Tennessee and Kentucky. Yeah.

Kentucky bourbon tennessee whiskey jack daniels is in tennessee right so it's like technically still at the state level band but then they allow local counties to allow alcohol so like you can have in the state some like kansas i've been in dry counties in kansas where you can't get alcohol and then like half a mile down the road it's free game so, like technically it still exists. There's a dry County in Florida, only one, but my aunt lived in it where she lives in Live Oak, Florida.

And there would be so many drunk driving accidents because people couldn't drink in that County. They drive to the next County, get fucked up. They'd try to drive home fast and crash into a tree or something. It's like, I mean, Utah's the case. This is just the personal anecdote. So I was there a couple of years ago. I was at a bar with a British citizen who had come over to the U S

and never been to Utah or at a bar drinking. It's a busy. So he stands up with his beer to go talk to someone else. And the waitress comes over and go, I'm sorry, sir, you're not allowed to stand while holding a beer. He's like, are you kidding me god state law we've got these restrictive alcohol laws you can't stand up while holding a beer and he looks around he says but that guy's got a gun like on his head you're saying he's allowed to bring a gun into the bar but i can't stand up while holding my beer well gun laws and conservative alcohol in her defense she doesn't make the law. There's no point arguing with her. She's not going to change it.

She's just like, when we were in Utah, we were in Moab or where the Arches National Park, Moab. Yeah. And me and Jim and I was a tour manager. Yeah.

We went to have a drink and they had to pour behind a wall. They went behind a wall and they're like, and then they came back and they were like, what does that even do? Yeah. They can't show it. They went behind a wall and they're like, ooh. And then they came back and they were like, what does that even do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't show it

and they just brought it out like, don't tell anyone. They just think people are like babies. They have no object permanence. You go behind the wall, they're like, what happened? So I ask you sort of answer this. People, did they drink less? Were they healthier? Did it decrease crime? You said initially, sort of?

Yeah. So they were healthier. For the first couple of years the rate of hospital admissions for liver disease plummets like obviously people do drink less at first um what's interesting is child malnutrition falls and the the argument was that like men who would have wasted the family's money on alcohol now have all this extra money. So they feed their kids better. Plus the children are drinking 12 liters of whiskey, which most children were drinking. Or they just remembered to feed him. Like, oh shit, I got a kid. I'm going to feed this thing.

Did childbirth go down in the population drop because not as many people were fucking? I have not seen statistics on that. I don't think so. I reckon that's pretty clear that would happen. I feel like men probably just forced their wives to have sex back then. They didn't need to get them drunk first. No, it's not about getting them drunk. You're a bit hornier when you're drunk as well.

What do you think? No, I'm just saying now it's like, oh, everybody drinks and there's a hookup culture, whereas then I think if they wanted sex, they would just have sex. No, but they'd make less mistakes. They'd be more rational because they weren't drunk. Oh. What percentage of the U.S. obeyed the laws? You thought that everyone was just raping all day?

Okay. It's probably true. It could be true. It could be true. I don't know if there's statistics on this, but what percentage of the U.S. obeyed the laws? Like 50% is what Jim said. Yeah, I haven't seen, and they probably do have stats. I don't know what they are off the percentage of the u.s obey the laws like 50 is what jim said yeah i haven't seen and they probably do have stats i don't know what they are off the top of my head um there were

millions who who completely just disobeyed this law either because i thought it was ridiculous or they realized well no one's actually you know if my chances of getting caught are almost zero um at first until the late 20s then who cares We do have stats on even if you were caught, even if you broke the law, you were caught. In New York State, there were about 4,000 arrests of just citizens who were caught drinking. Of that, there were six convictions and nobody got any jail time. And what they found was that juries wouldn't convict people over this so they basically stopped bringing this to trial now was there a lot of

protests in the street because whenever we have draconian laws happen now we march and we have our Facebook accounts were there people marching the street like oh no we won't go home or whatever was there something or they just say closing time oh, we won't go home or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, was there something? That was the chant.

Yeah, or they just say, closing time. Like, were there protests on the street? Yeah, so there were a lot of pro-prohibition protests leading up to it. Like, we want prohibition. And there weren't a lot at first, you know, pushing back. And that's because even if you disagreed with the law, even if you drank and wanted to keep drinking, you know, for all the reasons we've been talking about, you looked around American society. It's like, yeah, there's a bunch of drunks out here.

Like something needs to be done about this. So like, I'm okay with it. I can still drink. I'll just buy a bunch and keep it in my basement. So people were, even if you were against the law, as President Wilson, he was against the law, not because he wanted to keep drinking, but because he thought this was going to be unenforceable, which it proved to be the case. So the protests don't start coming up until basically a decade later, and it's protests for reopening. There's these famous pictures of people marching through the streets that say, we want beer um so people by the late 20s good protests yeah we want beer and uh when it was clear that this had failed and it wasn't working and crime was going up and you've got all these mobsters murdering people um we got to get rid of

this so that came later that would be that would be a good protest every now and again that to slow down because someone was pissing behind a tree it just made me think of the people who were protesting like early on when quarantine started and they're holding signs that say we want haircuts. It's just like this asinine thing. Drunk lives matter. Medical liquor. Jim said if someone

was really sick, they could have a couple beers at the doctor. No, it's sanitizers and ointments and stuff. He's partly right. In the 1920s and before, this is before modern medicine, alcohol was prescribed as a medicine. You could get

a liquor prescription. And the funny part is, that was normal. Often it was to treat anxiety and social anxiety and things like that, which, yeah, that works. They were onto something there. Doctor, I can't talk to women. Hey, doctor, my hands are shaking.

Drink this whiskey and stop shaking. Oh, the whiskey cures it. How much did I have? 88 liters a year. Yeah, I've been drinking 60 liters. Well, we're going to up your dosage to a normal person's range. Ooh, you're under drinking. And now my dick doesn't work.

Yeah, so you could get a prescription and you know of course after 1921 doctors must have found that alcohol was like a miraculous cure because the prescription rate skyrocketed but if you got a prescription you could go and legally buy alcohol at like walgreens or cvs at pharmacies they could sell it over the counter with your prescription and that was one of the ways people have still got legal alcohol like the medical marijuana cards and so you would go in you just go i'm having a bit of anxiety it's amazing oh yeah i'm i'm not a very good driver i have trouble sleeping i think back like the doctors back then so they're're going, oh, we'll give medical fucking alcohol

to people. And then also cigarettes weren't bad for you back then. They were doing no good, doctors. They weren't helping you in any way. They were just like, have a cigarette, have some more alcohol, come and see me in the morning

if you can wake up. I'd love to do an episode on old timey doctors. I have to go up to the leech market. What does Thunder Road refer to? I think Jim got this right where the bootleggers took the moonshine through. That was like a main road or. Yeah, basically. And it's like there was a movie about this and there's like a lot of myth and legend

mixed up but there was a road coming out of i think it's like from kentucky to tennessee where bootleggers would bring uh you know the bourbon and stuff and race down this road to outrun the cops because you know law enforcement to put everything in the right timeline like cars are basically brand new um Um, still, uh, police, not even all police departments use this like new fangled automobile and they're policing. And so the departments that did,

if they're using a model T Ford, which tops out at like, I don't know, 30 miles an hour. Um, if you bought just a faster car in this era before police had radios and could radio ahead, like if you could literally outrun the police, you got

away. And so these run-runners would just race their cars down the road and outrun the cops. Like the Duke boys. Isn't that how NASCAR started? It is how NASCAR started. Oh, really? That's very good, Jack.

Yeah, you've got that one, right? I forget that Jack's from Atlanta and he's got a little bit of hillbilly aim. But that has a moonshot machine. Yeah, NASCAR starts after Prohibition is repealed because you've got all these young men who have bought or usually buy stock cars and then modify them to be really fast. And now their services are no longer required, running illegal alcohol. So they start racing the cars for money. And that's sort of the origin story of NASCAR. And did they right away put sponsors on the cars?

I feel like Jack Daniels should have been right on that. He was like, thanks for the business, boys. Slap this on your bonnet. Bootlegger, Jim, talked about that. How was alcohol made or imported we talked about that um and also the speakeasies oh role of organized crime so jim mentioned al capone and then we asked him who lucky luciano was and arnold rothstein but you know obviously we have to talk about organized crime when you talk about prohibition right that's right and so it is

prohibition one of the like really unintended and destructive consequences is it creates the first modern organized crime syndicates in the United States. start, you know, get into this business. He claimed to be a used furniture dealer when really he's making by my back of the envelope calculations $1.2 million a week selling illegal alcohol. Holy shit. 27 years old making $1.2 million

a week. $1.2 million in today's money. Yeah, sorry, in today's money. That's still a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was still doing well. At one point, to me, I'm weak. Man, he could have like a house. He'd have a real big house for you.

Yeah, just a big house. And so Lucky Luciano was awesome. He was earning good money. Lucky Luciano, also, same thing, right? Yeah, him, Rothstein. You know, George Remus is another huge guy who makes, in four years, $250 million in today's money, just bootlegging. And so not just like they're making tons of money, they're doing two other things.

They're murdering lots of people, wiping out their rivals in their competition. lots of people, wiping out their rivals and their competition. It's estimated, we still don't know, but they estimate that Al Capone himself killed over 50 people, just like personally. And so the murder, the crime rate spikes, it basically creates this 12-year-long gang war in Chicago and New York. And the longer-term thing is they're paying enormous amounts of bribes to police officers to just look the other way, which is one of the problems. So this becomes a hugely corrupting

influence among police departments. I think one of the stats was Al Capone had paid like, I don't remember if it was 60 or 80% of the Chicago cops to just leave him alone and look the other way wow it's problematic to say the least and so we all know that chicago was the hotbed for al capone and all type of stuff and prohibition was that because it was the major city near canada i i don't know i i couldn't say for sure if it's like because it's right on the border um or if it's because it's like near the mid where you've got this source of bourbon, you know, just sort of next door. Yeah. I, I don't know why this becomes the hotbed,

but even like New York is also a huge hotbed Atlantic city, you know, any real major city. Yeah. But they were major cities because you're saying the boats came in. I'm going to say it's because they were near Canada. Fact children. All right. Yeah. You know, know, because we recorded an episode yesterday. It actually doesn't come out until after this episode, but she mentioned the St. Valentine's Day massacre because we were talking about gun laws.

And spoiler alert for all the people listening. I mean, you already know. But that was the end of Prohibition, right? The St. Valentine's Day massacre? Or is that the... I mean, it didn't end prohibition, but like it is this culmination of, um, one of the things that, that starts turning the tide of like the public against prohibition is it's like, there's blood in the streets. Um,

the link back to world war one is, you know, you've got the war, you've got these new machine guns that, you know, the infamous Tommy gun, which comes out as of the war. So the U.S. has hundreds of thousands of these surplus guns that they just sell off after the war. And so these gangsters are using like high power military weaponry when cops often aren't even carrying guns in some cities yet. And if they are, it's like Colt revolvers. aren't even carrying guns in some cities yet. And if they are, it's like Colt revolvers. And so this sparks not just a push towards gun regulations, which they do, I think. I mean, the other person, the other podcast can talk about like the machine gun regulations that come out of this. But it sparks this massive wave of violence that people link back to prohibition and turn

against it. All right. And then the last question question i ask and i guess maybe this is the end of prohibition maybe i'm wrong what was the cullen harrison act also was the what other countries are dry oh yeah i'm sorry yeah i didn't i didn't and is there any new ones that are coming on or yeah what how many countries in alcohol is it currently banned jim said saudi arabia muslim places like iraq afghanistan parts of indonesia, basically right. Like a lot of Middle Eastern countries, I think, yeah, parts of Indonesia, provinces in Indonesia. It's a good question of like, what countries have gone dry since the 1920s?

You'd think that they've looked at the example of the United States, this colossal failure, and like, wow, we're not doing that. But there are parts of Canada that are dry, often up in the northern regions that are like alcohol is banned in. But yeah. Australia, do we know that? Cause we all, since Jim's Australian, did Australia ever have a prohibition? I don't know. Do you know, Jim? I reckon there would have been something racist that happened where they said the

Aboriginals couldn't or something like that. But I don't believe there was ever a nationwide thing, but I reckon there would have been something put in once upon a time once, but maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe not, but we were never fucking drinking 88 liters of fucking whiskey. We didn't have a real problem. No, you guys are good.

Yeah. So the Colin Harrison act, Jim said he was killed by drunk drivers and made it legal to drive drunk. I mean, good guess. Not at all. The case. So this comes at the end of Prohibition.

This is Franklin Roosevelt is now elected in 1933, and he runs on an anti, partly, on an anti-Prohibition platform to gain that support. And at first, because it's hard to pass legislation, he starts chipping away at Prohibition. So he passes an act that says you can sell alcohol up to 3.2 percent. So you can have like the low alcohol beers, which is what for decades up until recently cements the United States having this reputation of having a just terrible beer. You know, it's so low alcohol coming out of that. And now with the breweries. Yeah, now it's like 8% and whatever.

You're like, oh, yeah. But, yeah, it is true, 3.5%. Yeah. I'll tell a funny little story. So in America, light beer means low carb, right? And in Australia, light beer means half alcohol. So a light beer in Australia is about 2%, 1.8% or something like that. It's what my dad drinks now. He's older. He just has light beer means half alcohol. So a light beer in Australia is about 2%, 1.8% or something like that. It's what my dad drinks now.

He's older. He just has light beer, you know. It's not alcohol-free, but you only get the smallest buzz off it. You can't get super wasted. It's too much drinking. Anyway, so when I first moved to America, I bought myself a car, and I was driving off to the gigs. And, you know, you can have like five light beers

and still be able to drive, right? So I was going in and having five light beers at every venue going, and I'm good to drive. Because I didn't know. It was just I don't think that would have held up in court. What? I was wondering why I was staying so thin. Is there any regulations?

What regulations do we have on alcohol now there's got to be something like you can't have something that's 90 or something like that what do we have now there must be still be be uh alcohol control for a lack of a better term absence in stores yeah like there is still like these vestiges of prohibition that there are and it's often in a state or local level that there are restrictions on how many breweries can operate and what they can make how it can be sold so like i live just outside dc in a county that still has the government-run liquor stores so like you can't sell it in grocery stores it can only be sold by the maryland state liquor stores i I think Delaware has that too. So yeah, I mean, more specific than that,

you'd have to ask a brewer, but there are still a lot of laws about what you can do with alcohol and what's allowed and what's not allowed. Yeah, on South Beach in Miami, which is all the clubs are up until 5 a.m., then the bars will close and then something will open at 8 a.m. It's lots of drugs.

Everyone's fucked up, but they can't sell alcohol in like stores or bodega or something. I think it's after 10 p.m. I want to say or something, something dumb like that. So if you went at like one in the morning to get beer, you'd have to know the right places to go. And the guy would be like,

I think what you're looking for is this 12 pack of ginger ale. And you're like, yeah, that is what it is. And he would put all the beers in this like ginger ale thing. You'd be like, thank you. This ginger ale is $40.

I'm like, okay, thanks. What's a bodega? Bodega. Bodega. It's like a corner store. It's like a corner store. You call it bodega? Bodega.

Bodega. Bodega. New Yorkers always call them bodegas. Oh, it sounds like a racist slur to me. You know, when the fucking bodegas came over, I wasn't happy. And this bodega sold me $40 ginger ale from a scam artist.

This is a part of the show called Dinner Party Facts. We ask our guests to give us a fact, something interesting or obscure that our listeners might not know

that they can use to impress people about this subject of ProVision. I'm glad I had prepared three because someone took mine already of the NASCAR fact. Jack, you're fired.

Jack, you suck. You're fired. Jack says one thing the whole podcast that if fucking this guy will never do a podcast again. You look like a Dave Grohl ruined our dinner party fact. God damn it. Jack's never been to a dinner party so he hasn't even ever been able to use it. Damn.

That might have been the most hurtful. Yeah. So like, like NASCAR, there's a, this might be mythical, but UPS, the United Parcel Service

that deliver your Amazon boxes also may have got its start out of prohibition that like NASCAR, when it ends, you've got all these guys who had bought trucks to transport like the kegs that don't fit in, you know, small, fast cars. And now that their services aren't required, they start just delivering packages to, for businesses in cities. So that's interesting. But I think the more interesting part is, uh, as a dinner party, is that kind of like dinner parties become popular.

Like if the only place you can legally drink is to invite a bunch of people into your house and have a house party that's fueled by alcohol, and that's totally fine. So house parties and cocktail parties become really popular during Prohibition. prohibition and the cocktail itself. Mixing drinks with sodas and everything because you often are using these really garbage alcohols that just taste awful because they're bathtub distilled. So let's mix it with some Coca-Cola. Now you got a rum and coke and it actually tastes pretty good. That makes sense.

And it saves the alcohol too. The alcohol lasts longer that way. It made the drink better. And the dinner party, dinner party effect. Yes. I have an idea for a movie where I dated a CIA agent and then I break up with her and she keeps on fucking stalking me. And the movie's called FedEx. Well, it was a good podcast.

We'll workshop it. I'm in. Professor Alan Pietrabon, thank you for being here. Anyone that wants to see some more of his talks can go to his website, alanpietrobon.com. Anything else you'd like to say before leaving? No, that was great. Thank you so much.

I learned a lot. Looks like you did too. Thank you. Thanks for being on the show, mate. Really appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're ever at a party and someone walks up to you and goes, Jim Jefferies doesn't know that Woodrow Wilson was the president that was in charge during the prohibition, go, well, I don't know about that,

and you walk away. Good night, Australia.