Episodes

  • After Nine, Keep It Short: Who Paid for the Call Home

    After Nine, Keep It Short: Who Paid for the Call Home
    Oct 26 2026
    Wait till after nine. Keep it short, this is long distance. From the mid-1950s to 1984, calling home across the country had its own rulebook: station-to-station or person-to-person, the three-minute minimum, the operator premium and the night-and-Sunday rate clock. June and Nate rebuild that rulebook and the prices on it, using a 1963 newspaper rate notice and a secondhand 1980 rate table, and they're honest about the numbers the archive doesn't have. Then they open up the formula underneath. It started with a 1930 Supreme Court case, got steeper with the 1970 Ozark Plan, and loaded a growing share of local phone line costs onto long-distance calls. When the Bell System broke up, the prices flipped. Was it a fair bargain that kept the dial tone cheap for everyone, or a hidden tax on the families split by distance? People still argue about it. The episode ends with Ask Them This: three questions to take to someone who was twenty then. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_assistance https://ask.metafilter.com/211826/Long-Distance-Rates-For-the-Late-Seventies-and-Early-Eighties https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-phone.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/631/1059/86728/ https://www.justice.gov/osg/brief/national-association-state-utility-v-fcc-opposition https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/787/1421/197770/ https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dc-circuit/2190543.html https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/mci-communications-corporation https://www.tlp.law/2024/06/13/fcc-announces-proposed-q3-2024-usf-contribution-factor/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/12/10/Local-phone-bills-up-35-percent-since-1983/1039503038800/ https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2012/what-happens-when-local-phone-service-deregulated https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-01-07-fi-1725-story.html https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/usf_50_anniversary/37/ https://classic.esquire.com/article/1971/10/1/secrets-of-the-blue-box
    Show More Show Less
    22 mins
  • The Night Your Birthday Became a Number

    The Night Your Birthday Became a Number
    Oct 19 2026
    On a Monday night in December 1969, a congressman reached into a container of birthday capsules on live television. Within a few hours every man born from 1944 to 1950 knew his place in the draft order. June and Nate go back to that night: the fraternity houses watching together, the second drawing of the alphabet, and the number, 195, that turned out to be the line. Then they look at how the box was actually loaded, month by month, and why December birthdays kept drawing low numbers. The courts said the drawing was fair. The statisticians showed the risk wasn't equal. And research on who actually served suggests a young man's options could matter as much as his birth month. With automatic Selective Service registration due to start in December 2026, June and Nate ask what changed, what didn't, and which three questions to take to someone who was twenty that night. Sources: https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?RIN=3240-AA09&pubId=202510 https://www.military.com/automatic-military-draft-registration-questions-arise-following-federal-rule-withdrawal https://historynet.com/live-from-dc-its-lottery-night-1969/ https://vietnamwardraftlottery.com/lottery-facts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120915232321/http:/www.sss.gov/LOTTER8.HTM https://sites.oxy.edu/lengyel/M150/draftLottery/NYT.htm https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/465/976/290268/ https://conallboyle.com/lottery/05USmil_draft1970.pdf https://jhanley.biostat.mcgill.ca/Reprints/LestWeForgetUSSelectiveServiceLotteries1917-2019.pdf https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpv015 https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/united-states-v-kotrlik-893925626 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.171.3968.306 https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2013/11/26/vietnam-animal-house https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/workshop/leo/document/Kuziemko.pdf https://econ.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2013/05/pdf_paper_thomas-lemieux-draft-avoidance-college.pdf https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/pubfiles/5798/vietnam.pdf https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Angrist%201990%20-%20Lifetime%20Earnings%20and%20the%20Vietname%20.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15105/w15105.pdf https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10691898.1997.11910534
    Show More Show Less
    21 mins