Pranks are a staple of April Fools' Day - even when it comes to politics and the press.
On this special edition of Civics 101, Senior Producer Christina Phillips tests our April Fools knowledge with some surprising trivia, and a whole lot more!
Transcript
Note: this transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors
Civics 101 April Fools
Music: We've only just begun. Doo dee doo dee doo. Doo doo doo doo doo.
Christina Phillips: This is civics 101. April Fools trivia special. I am Christina Phillips, a senior producer, and I am here today with. Do you want to introduce yourselves? We'll start with Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes. I am Hannah McCarthy, co-host of Civics 101.
Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice, also co-host of Civics 101.
Rebecca Lavoie: I'm Rebecca Lavoie and I work with this team at Nhpr.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so this is the day April Fools, where people come together and play pranks on each other. And by that I mean there are the people who are good at a poker face and they thrive on this day. And then there are the rest of us, like me, who feel constantly on edge. Which one are you on edge?
Nick Capodice: I love this day. I have a great many, uh, pranks that I've played in the years. Not as many as Nhpr, because it's kind of like I get nervous, I'm going to get in trouble. But I used to. At my old workplace, I would do an April Fool's prank every single year. A big one.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Christina Phillips: Give us your best. Your most successful.
Nick Capodice: Oh, God. Well, the thing is, they're all contextual. Christina. It was always about, like, fake tour content for this museum I worked at. And I always say there's this massive discovery, this huge mystery was solved, and I would photoshop very strange photos of people who currently worked at the museum onto old photographs and make them think I had discovered it. Another classic is the cheddar cheese in the shower. Never gets old. Just carve a piece of cheddar cheese like a bar of soap and carve into it. It's a joy.
Rebecca Lavoie: Nice.
Nick Capodice: Oh, the other one. My other favorite one is the, um, saying that the photocopier is voice control. Now, you write like a thing on the photocopier, and it's like they copy and say the number of copies you want completely voice controlled, and you hold the next and be like, copy seven.
Nick Capodice: Copy.
Christina Phillips: I've never heard that. I love that.
Hannah McCarthy: You are quite the pranker.
Nick Capodice: I'm a little bit of a merry prankster.
Hannah McCarthy: As someone who chronically forgets what day it is, I don't do April Fools. I have a lot of disdain for it, which is not earned.
Rebecca Lavoie: Back in the day, public radio itself used to do pranks. There was a famous NPR story about an inland whale, a nursery.
Archive: Hundreds of acres of wide pools as far as the eye can see, spread over the landscape. It is here that the nation's first farm raised whales are being grown and harvested.
Hannah McCarthy: That's so funny.
Nick Capodice: Fantastic.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, well, I'm so glad you mentioned that, Rebecca, because we have a whole section dedicated to media hoaxes. Perhaps you will do really well in that section. Today I have gathered you here and compiled some political April Fools jokes. They are from politicians, they are from government agencies and some from the media. Is everybody ready? Yes. For our first set of questions.
Nick Capodice: Absolutely ready.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so this is called come visit the Walmart Supercenter Statue of Liberty. Corporations doing business with the federal government is a grand tradition in the United States. But there's something different about a company claiming they've bought an iconic historic monument to help with the national debt. I'm going to read you this question. You get two points if you're right. One point if you're wrong, but you make a good argument for your choice.
Rebecca Lavoie: Okay.
Christina Phillips: So here's your question. In 1996, this company took out a full page ad in major newspapers that said the following in an effort to help the national debt. Blank is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. We will start with Hannah. What is your guess for the company that pretended to buy the Liberty Bell Mutual Liberty? So give us your argument.
Hannah McCarthy: Because liberty is in the name.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so the mutual Liberty Bell, if you will.
Hannah McCarthy: And it's a mutual helping, right? They get something. The country gets something. Help them out of debt. They're all about helping people.
Christina Phillips: All right, I like it. I'm not going to tell you guys the answer until I've heard everyone. So, Nick, go ahead and give me your guess.
Nick Capodice: I guess, uh, Taco Bell.
Christina Phillips: Oh, okay.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh. That's good.
Rebecca Lavoie: That's a good guess.
Christina Phillips: And give us your argument for Taco Bell.
Nick Capodice: The bell ringing is, like their copyright. The dong.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.
Nick Capodice: And they're also they're always kind of jokesters at Taco Bell. They have like a pretty, a pretty fire like, Twitter account and stuff like that. So I think that's the sort of thing they would do in the 90s. That's around the time of the gordita and the chalupa. Like there was like there was like their shining moment.
Christina Phillips: Okay. So, so the, uh, Liberty Taco Bell or the Taco Liberty Bell, if you will.
Hannah McCarthy: There's a bell in their logo.
Speaker8: That's right. It's the Taco Bell.
Hannah McCarthy: But don't count that toward Nick's argument I gave it. That's me.
Christina Phillips: Got it.
Nick Capodice: It's also because the bells ringing for dinner. It's like the dinner bell. It's just that the whole thing.
Rebecca Lavoie: We got it. We think you're right. Go ahead.
Christina Phillips: Okay. Rebecca, what is your guess?
Rebecca Lavoie: I guessed Velveeta because Velveeta is the iconic topping for the streetside Philly cheesesteak. And I. And this is like what you put on a Philly cheesesteak. Everyone says a properly made Philly cheesesteak is made with Velveeta. And it is sort of an iconic cheese like condiment in in Philadelphia.
Nick Capodice: I would say, Rebecca, you didn't just make a strong case, you made a strong case.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, oh.
Christina Phillips: Rebecca, I do have to fact check you. In fact, the Philly cheesesteak is cheese whiz.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, sorry.
Christina Phillips: But I really liked your argument. So you got a point. Yes. Hannah, I really liked your argument. So you got a point. Hey, Nick, you got two points because you were correct.
Hannah McCarthy: And you knew it instantly.
Christina Phillips: Also, that's additional free marketing for them. On top of the estimated $25 million in free publicity they got for this stunt, but they spent about $300,000 to run the ad, and they estimated it earned about $25 million in free publicity. One other thing I just wanted to point out. So in 1996, the entire budget for the National Park Service was around 1.1 billion. And that's money that's divided among over 400 parks and monuments. And the national debt in 1996 was over $5 trillion. So, you know, really digging into that national debt by buying the Liberty Bell. And there were a lot of people who were very upset about it, understandably imagining a company buying a monument. They did change their logo that day for that ad. So it had the little crack in the bell. So continuing with this theme, the rest of this round is questions about corporate food partnerships with the US military. So I have questions for each of you, starting with Rebecca.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, no.
Christina Phillips: During World War Two, Hormel Foods shipped 133 million cans of what meat product to U.S. troops overseas. Ingredients include chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added.
Rebecca Lavoie: It's spam.
Christina Phillips: It is spam.
Rebecca Lavoie: I don't want to hear any more of the ingredients of spam. Okay.
Christina Phillips: Oh, they're not so bad.
Nick Capodice: A lot of them have mechanically separated chicken. I always thought about the pork mechanically separated.
Christina Phillips: Well, the meat does not. There's no chicken meat. There's pork shoulder meat, ham meat, salt, sugar, sodium nitrate, water and flavoring.
Rebecca Lavoie: Flavoring.
Christina Phillips: At least in the 40s.
Nick Capodice: It's a fun little side note, but do you guys know why? Spam. We say spam email or like I'm getting spammed on my phone text messages. It's all from the Monty Python sketch where the waiter is going.
Nick Capodice: Spam, spam, spam, spam and baked beans and more. Spam.
Archive: Egg, sausage and bacon. Egg and spam. Egg, bacon and spam. Egg, bacon, sausage and spam.
Nick Capodice: So it's like they're like something that you get all the time, even though you don't want it.
Christina Phillips: It's extremely popular in Hawaii, which was not a state at the time. It was still a territory, but it continues to be a staple of Hawaiian culinary history and cuisine. Hannah. Also during World War two, this food company created something known as Field Ration D, which was described as being 600 calories, virtually indestructible and deliberately bad tasting so it wouldn't have a high value as currency to trade for non-food items like cigarettes, because it was supposed to be used in emergencies for nutrition. Name the company.
Hannah McCarthy: Name the company.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Who makes really bad food?
Hannah McCarthy: 600 calories. It's a single item.
Christina Phillips: Do you want a hint?
Hannah McCarthy: I do, I didn't know that was allowed. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: So the headquarters of this company are in Pennsylvania.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, Hershey.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Rebecca Lavoie: You would know that if you watched The Foods That Built America on the History Channel. By the way.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So they they really wanted it to not be traded for anything else. And so they made it taste really, really bad. And it was also so dense that soldiers would sometimes chip their teeth trying to eat it, and they would shave like use their knives, which I just imagine the, the hygiene of that doesn't matter. World War two, they would have to shave it down. And then they created when they were really like heavy military presence in the Pacific. They created an alternative that I think is called like Tropical Ration D, which was like extra unmelted so that it wouldn't melt in the hot weather. All right. So you got a point for that. Hanna.
Hannah McCarthy: Yay.
Christina Phillips: Nick, this last question is for you, but I've got a little bit of an open. It's, uh, kind of bleak. So after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States subsequent entry into World War Two, Germany lost access to the ingredients that make Coca Cola, even though the company was still operating in Germany through the war. So in order to make up for the fact that they couldn't actually make Coca Cola, what beverage did Germany start producing that was flavored with apple pulp, whey byproduct from cheese and beet sugar? It still exists today in a different form.
Nick Capodice: Oh, I need the brand name or the kind of drink.
Christina Phillips: So it's a Coca Cola soda.
Nick Capodice: Okay. And it's made with apple pulp.
Christina Phillips: It was made with apple pulp, whey byproduct from cheese and beet sugar.
Nick Capodice: You know, when you go to a restaurant and you're like, what do you have? And they're like, we have Pepsi products. I'm like, I don't know what that means. Oh, man.
Christina Phillips: Think of commercials like old school commercials for a certain kind of drink.
Nick Capodice: It's like I'm trying to decide if it's going to be like sprite or 7Up or like Fanta. I'm going to say 7Up.
Christina Phillips: It's Fanta.
Rebecca Lavoie: I think the fact that he even thought Fanta gets him a point.
Christina Phillips: Okay. All right. Fair enough.
Nick Capodice: That's very fantastic of you. Thank you.
Christina Phillips: So it's actually a shortening of the word fantastic Germans, correct me. Which it is. Um, the German word for fantastic, in case you didn't know. And the color originally was murky brown and slightly cheese flavored, and it became a global smash anyway, so they still make Fanta. But it started as a drink for the Germans during World War two. Alrighty. The scores are as follows. Nick, you have three points. Hannah. You have two points. Rebecca you have two points. Ready? Um.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Next category is media pranks. As we've already heard, NPR, the BBC and other publications tend to have fun with April Fool's Day by releasing faux stories that are supposed to be obvious enough to be pranks, but believable enough to make you stop and think. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they don't. For example, the BBC once ran a story in 1957 about a family in Switzerland that was harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti trees, and they said that the reason it was so populous was because the spaghetti weevil had been eradicated, and it became really popular. A lot of people called in asking if they could get spaghetti trees, because spaghetti was still considered a delicacy in Britain at that time.
Rebecca Lavoie: There's an incredible video for that story, by the way. I recommend looking it up after picking.
Archive: The spaghetti is laid out to dry in the warm alpine sun. Many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform length, but this is the result of many years of patient endeavor by plant breeders who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti.
Rebecca Lavoie: You can see trees covered with spaghetti, and these women are up in the trees, like taking the spaghetti gently down from the tree.
Christina Phillips: Is it cooked or is it raw?
Rebecca Lavoie: Cooked?
Christina Phillips: Nick.
Nick Capodice: Hello.
Christina Phillips: One NPR, April Fool's story announced the creation of a surgical procedure that would allow people to more deeply enjoy a new kind of media technology. I'm not telling you the year because I would probably give it away. Was it a a Bluetooth chip installed behind the ear that allowed you to have your own portable Bluetooth that could connect to devices around you? B finger extensions to give your fingers more reach on a computer keyboard. See 3D eye surgery to allow you to enjoy 3D movies without the glasses or D under the skin. Battery magnets that use your own energy to charge your electronic devices.
Nick Capodice: All right, this is really tricky. You said it's NPR.
Christina Phillips: None of these are real, for what it's worth. But one of them was a real fake story.
Nick Capodice: I know people do get magnets put under their skin. A lot of times it's a thing. It's like a whole movement of people who get technology implanted in there.
Christina Phillips: But does it charge your phone with your own metabolism?
Nick Capodice: It doesn't charge your phone, but there probably is somebody out there with a phone charging magnet.
Rebecca Lavoie: Is that transhumanism that you're referring to? I believe that's what it's called.
Nick Capodice: It's gently tied to the transhumanists. Yeah. Oh, man. If it was like the, like the finger extensions. So you can type easier sounds. So NPR I'm going to go with the Bluetooth chip in your ear.
Christina Phillips: No, unfortunately it was 3D eye surgery to allow you to enjoy 3D movies without the glasses, but thank you for believing the three other ones I made up.
Rebecca Lavoie: Nicely done.
Christina Phillips: Yes. Okay. Hannah?
Hannah McCarthy: Yes.
Christina Phillips: In 2008, the IRS sent tax rebate checks to the American people for anywhere from 600 to $1200 to help stimulate the economy. That was real. However, according to an April Fool's marketplace story, the IRS was worried that people wouldn't actually spend that money, so they decided to do what? Instead, the IRS decided to do what? Instead, send people visa gift cards that expired in two months to make sure they spent them. Send people all of their rebate in $1 bills to help encourage people to spend them in small dollar amounts that would spread the stimulus more widely. Send people their rebate checks worth of national park visitor passes so they could trade like currency to get to the parks they wanted. Or d send people toasters, air conditioners and snow blowers that equaled the amount of their checks based on their regions and what the IRS thought they might want.
Hannah McCarthy: These are all good.
Christina Phillips: Well thank you.
Hannah McCarthy: So the visa gift card is not as funny as the dollar bills. And then of course, like the appliances is very funny. I'm gonna go with a just because of how much people get weird about gift cards.
Christina Phillips: Unfortunately, no, it was not the visa gift cards. So the story said that the IRS was going to send people toasters, air conditioners and snow blowers and they would decide based on where they lived and what they thought they might like. And they had, like fake interviews with people who were like, I mean, I didn't really need a toaster. I kind of wanted a snow blower.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hmm.
Christina Phillips: Rebecca.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yes.
Christina Phillips: In 2016, National Geographic announced on April Fools that they would no longer publish photographs of what a naked animals. B domesticated animals. C cars, trains, planes, or any modern transportation equipment or d anything indoors.
Rebecca Lavoie: Okay, so when I was a kid, National Geographic was sort of like known for publishing pictures of naked people. Like, that was a whole thing. Yeah. And like, you know, let's just say kids were stealing their parents National Geographic sometimes. So for that reason, I'm going to pick a naked animals.
Christina Phillips: You are correct. This is the hardest one for me to come up with alternatives because it was just really good. So this is a quote from them. The media group says it will no longer degrade animals by showing photos of them without clothes. And so they actually published a series of photos with animals that have like clothes on to to demonstrate how they would do this.
Rebecca Lavoie: A zebra in a bikini.
Christina Phillips: We'll be right back after a quick break. Our next set of questions are about the zip code. Because NPR once aired a story on All Things Considered that announced that the US Postal Service was starting a program called Portable ZIP Codes, which allowed people to keep their current ZIP code even if they moved into a new one.
Archive: I'm pleased to announce this afternoon a new feature of our Go Postal campaign. Starting next month, the National Portable ZIP Codes Program will commence with it. American citizens can keep their present ZIP codes wherever they choose to live across the country or across town.
Archive: Crandall said that while the plan would at first.
Christina Phillips: So the next couple of questions are about zip codes. But first, does anyone know what Z stands for?
Hannah McCarthy: O zone?
Christina Phillips: So zone is correct. It's zone improvement plan. That's what ZIP stands for. And of course, it's also helpful because ZIP zippy, you know, makes the mail zipper essentially. So here are a couple of facts about zip codes before we start. The first number of the standard five number code determines a large region. So mail sorting systems look at that first from east to west east coast. New England starts at zero. And then as you move south and west to California, Washington and Oregon, those all start with nine and Alaska and Hawaii and some states have just one set of first couple of numbers, like Utah is only 84, and then the three after the remaining numbers further break down by county or region. And then in 1983 they introduced the ZIP plus four, which is four extra numbers that further divide mail locally. So I have a question for each of you. Hanna. There are three individuals who have their own zip codes.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hey, Christina, I know the president and the first lady are the first two, but I have no idea who else has their own zip code.
Christina Phillips: The third is an animal mascot created in 1944, and is part of the longest running public service campaign in US history to date.
Hannah McCarthy: Smokey the bear.
Christina Phillips: It is Smokey the Bear.
Rebecca Lavoie: It's actually just Smokey Bear.
Hannah McCarthy: Guys, I'm glad you.
Nick Capodice: Did it, Rebecca. Because if I did it, it would have been a disaster.
Hannah McCarthy: Did I still get the point? Oh, I'm giving you the point.
Nick Capodice: It's just the most butt, actually, I've ever heard from everybody. Like, it's actually Smokey Bear. Smokey the bear was my father.
Archive: Don't let forest fires be your fault. Make sure your fire is dead out. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.
Christina Phillips: So his zip code is 20252. Santa Claus. Many people think he should have his own zip code. Or would. He doesn't. But he does have his own Canadian postal code, which is H0 zero zero. Nick, this question is for you.
Nick Capodice: Hello. Okay.
Christina Phillips: Before Smokey Bear, the US Forest Service partnered with Disney, who agreed to let them use animated creatures from, what, 1942 movie for just a year as mascots for forest fire prevention?
Nick Capodice: Huh? Well, you know, maybe Bambi.
Christina Phillips: Bambi is correct.
Nick Capodice: Oh, hooray! Never seen Bambi. Really?
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. Don't. It's so sad. It's.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, it's absolutely devastating. But also, Disney only let them do it for a year. And then they were like, we're taking Bambi and all of his friends back. And so they were like, we must create a new mascot. So they came up with Smokey Bear. And there's various origin stories as to Smokey Bear, whether it was named after a bear or named after a man. You know, there's a whole Wikipedia page on it. Rebecca, the next question is for you. Several corporate headquarters also have their own individual ZIP codes, including the headquarters for Walmart and General Electric, and for two weeks a year, Blackrock city, Nevada gets its own ZIP code in order to accommodate which festival, which began as a summer solstice festival in the 1980s and in 2023 was the site of major flooding.
Rebecca Lavoie: Well, I believe what you're talking about is the biggest gathering annually of like, jerks in the United States. And that would be Burning Man.
Christina Phillips: Hot take from Rebecca. You are correct.
Rebecca Lavoie: People say it's just all jerks now, right? That's why I was here. It's like tech bro kind of situation, right?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I used to be that.
Nick Capodice: It used to be like a really kind of holistic, beautiful artist thing. And now it's like Fyre Festival. Yeah. So we all felt good when the flesh eating crabs crawled out of the ground.
Christina Phillips: That was 20, 23. That was, I think, one of those. Yeah, it did make it obvious which celebrities who were not smart enough to stream on their phones, getting rescued by helicopters, and then everyone else is just stuck in the mud. Burning man, you are correct. Okay. We've reached the end of this round. Currently, the scores stand at Nick. Four points, Hannah three points. Rebecca four points. The next category is called Bogus policy. So elected and appointed officials love to introduce fake policies or bills on April Fools. For example, in 1985, Congressman Thomas Downey put forth a proposal to lower the minimum age you could be elected to Congress to 15 to get, quote, new blood in Congress. For what it's worth, the median age in the House in 1985 was 49, and the median age in the Senate was 53.7. Do you want to guess the median ages in 2023?
Rebecca Lavoie: The median, not the average. Right. Median for the Senate I'm going to say 60.
Christina Phillips: Higher.
Rebecca Lavoie: What?
Hannah McCarthy: 65.
Christina Phillips: 65 is right. You're right on that.
Nick Capodice: But the house is maybe lower. So I guess the house is 46.
Christina Phillips: It hasn't gone down. It's gone up.
Nick Capodice: Oh, it's gone up.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Hannah McCarthy: Nick, they don't leave 55 up.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh my gosh.
Christina Phillips: This is a little bit higher than 55.
Rebecca Lavoie: 57.
Christina Phillips: Yeah 57.8. So technically 58. Almost 58. I also am fairly certain that a lot of the people who were in the house in 1985 are still in the House today, so they probably remember that bill. I want to use another joke policy as our jumping off point for this round, which is about font, also known as typeface. Okay. In 2015, Texas Land Commissioner George P Bush, son of Jeb Bush, announced that there was an agency wide ban on which font.
Rebecca Lavoie: My guess is Comic Sans.
Christina Phillips: Okay, what's your guess, Nick?
Nick Capodice: My guess is Comic Sans.
Rebecca Lavoie: Okay.
Christina Phillips: Hannah, what's your guess?
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, I have a reason. Can I tell my reason? Yes. We're talking about a political family and like a, what do you call it, a dynasty, right? Family like, known to be God fearing Christians. Right. Appealing to other God fearing Christians, I think so I picked Helvetica.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh.
Christina Phillips: Okay. So the answer is Comic Sans. Hannah, do we give Hannah a point for effort? Heck yeah. Okay.
Nick Capodice: Really fast Comic Sans story. It was my first week at NPR. I wrote a funny Thing for the newsletter. Extra credit for our show. And I made a joke about how I hated Comic Sans. And I got a scathing email from a listener saying that I was being ableist because Comic Sans. She said it was quite useful for people who have dyslexia, and she was like, so you should never make fun of Comic Sans and you should be ashamed of yourself. And I was like, heartbroken for a month. And then I found out a month later that that's actually been disproven.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yes.
Christina Phillips: Dear listener, I'm actually I'm actually.
Christina Phillips: You're wrong.
Christina Phillips: You're totally right that there have been studies that have shown that Comic Sans is actually harder to read. And so sometimes in school, it'll be used to increase retention because you have to work harder to understand the words. But there are still plenty of people who say that it is easier to read.
Rebecca Lavoie: I thought it was just ugly and that's why we don't like it.
Christina Phillips: I mean, that's why I don't like it. These questions are all going to be about fonts.
Nick Capodice: I love fonts, I'm ready.
Christina Phillips: All right. In 2023, the State Department announced it was moving away from using Times New Roman as its default font on websites, on publications, etc., and would instead use this sans serif font with a name that derives from a word for instrument of measurement.
Rebecca Lavoie: I know this isn't right, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because it's the only sans font I could think of right now. And that's Ariel.
Christina Phillips: No, it's Calibri for Calibri. Yes.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Caliber. Caliber.
Nick Capodice: So this is also an access issue. So serif fonts are more difficult for people with various learning disabilities to read than sans serif. So they're like, we can't have Times New Roman as our default anymore. So that's why schools suddenly are like, no more Times New Roman. And for your term paper, it's got to be Calibri.
Christina Phillips: Do you want to explain what a serif is?
Nick Capodice: So interestingly, they're called serifs, I believe. And I could be wrong because serifs and cherubim were often used to the angels, and illuminations were used to decorate words in old medieval manuscripts. So I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard that before. But so serifs are the sort of chunky lines at the ends of all the lines of a letter. So the R has two serifs on its bottom feet, so sans serif eliminates those entirely. And it's a little bit easier to read.
Rebecca Lavoie: The eye is just a stick.
Nick Capodice: Yeah.
Nick Capodice: An eye is.
Nick Capodice: Stick instead of uh, an eye, which I love. The serif tie.
Christina Phillips: Nick. This question is for you.
Nick Capodice: Hello.
Christina Phillips: So the US Web Design system, which is part of the US Digital Service, which is a thing I learned about. They create standards for designing and maintaining government websites, recommends several typefaces for digital publications, including this font, which shares its name with the first name of one of our famous Western Expansionists.
Nick Capodice: Oh my God. And by a famous westward expansionist.
Christina Phillips: The first name of a westward expansionist, a famous westward expansionist.
Hannah McCarthy: The.
Nick Capodice: First name. So who's the guy who said, let me give me a second. The guy who said, Go West, young man, was that guy.
Christina Phillips: I think you're a little niche here. I don't know who this is.
Nick Capodice: Go west, young man. It's probably not even him. Um.
Rebecca Lavoie: Can I give you a clue?
Hannah McCarthy: Yes.
Rebecca Lavoie: This is a pair of westward Expansionists that we talked a lot about in grade school.
Nick Capodice: Good. Thank you. Rebecca.
Hannah McCarthy: I would not.
Nick Capodice: Meriwether.
Hannah McCarthy: Meriwether.
Nick Capodice: Thank you for the clue. Did you know that Lewis and Clark. They had to because they had such horrible constipation from being on the trail. They, like, didn't know how to eat the food. They were eating bad rations that they had to take this mercury pill for as a laxative, which they called thunder clappers. Give me a couple more thunder clappers. Good. Yeah. And you can track their trail because of mercury in the ground.
Rebecca Lavoie: Wow.
Nick Capodice: How much do you not believe the second part? All of it.
Hannah McCarthy: I don't believe that. Their excrement. First of all, I don't believe that we know exactly where they poop. And I don't believe that it then leached into the soil. Also, it would be about this big, right?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Not from a thunderclap or. Well, we're gonna look it up after this listeners out there. You decide if the thunder clappers are real.
Rebecca Lavoie: I'm just gonna say the historical significance of Thunder clappers is the high mercury content has been used by archeologists to help verify locations.
Christina Phillips: Oh.
Rebecca Lavoie: And thunder clapping.
Nick Capodice: I'm not in anybody's graces any better after being right.
Nick Capodice: About the thunder clap. I'm in more trouble.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. 97% of the time when I ask you to please fact check that you're like, oh, it's not true. You gotta give me that.
Rebecca Lavoie: But actually.
Christina Phillips: Hannah, this question is for you.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Times New Roman was created. For which newspaper? In 1931.
Hannah McCarthy: I mean, I guess the New York Times.
Christina Phillips: No.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay.
Christina Phillips: Times New Roman was used by the New York Times, for sure.
Rebecca Lavoie: But who was it created for?
Christina Phillips: It was created for the Times of Britain. Oh.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay.
Christina Phillips: But the New York Times used it until 2007, when they switched to a little font called Georgia.
Hannah McCarthy: Mhm.
Rebecca Lavoie: The fat one.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Okay. So at the end of this round, Nick, you have six. Hannah you've got four. Rebecca you've got five.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yay! Not last.
Christina Phillips: This last and final round is called what's in a name?
Nick Capodice: Oh, what's in a name?
Christina Phillips: In 2015, representative Mike Honda, a Democrat from California, introduced a fake bill for April Fools. He did not actually introduce it into Congress, but he wrote a press release about it. And that bill was against verbose legislation names. It was called the Accountability and Congressional Responsibility on Naming Your Motions Act, aka the Acronyms Act. Here's a quote from his press release which again was fake. The last straw was the pension and Social Security measuring equivalence. Permanent linking of everyone's actual savings environment. Please pass me Act, which only corrected a typo on page 346 of the tax code. So the reason I said so many times that this was fake was because so many news sources referenced this as if it were a real bill that was introduced. The Hill, the Atlantic, Votesmart.org, The New Republic. They all refer to it as though it's a real piece of legislation, and use it as a jumping off point to talk about ridiculous acronym legislation. I just want to say this is like when a teacher gives out a quiz that it says at the top, read every question before you begin this quiz. And at the bottom it says, just write your name and turn it in. The bottom of the HuffPost article that covered this piece of legislation says, this is an April Fools joke.
Christina Phillips: This is not real. It's literally right there. So anyway, I thought that this would be a good excuse To create trivia questions about times. Legislators really did try their hardest to create an acronym out of the title of their legislation. So I'm going to give you actual pieces of legislation that were introduced. I will tell you how many letters there are in the acronym, and then I will start reading the title of the bill. When you think you have a guess, say stop. If you get it right, you get a point, and then you get to answer a couple of follow up questions about the legislation. Oh, also, I feel like I should say just because it's an acronym doesn't mean they follow the rules of acronyms. So sometimes the actual title is like 12 letters long, but the acronym is only seven. So first question. This piece of legislation was proposed by Senator Michael Bennett, a Democrat from Colorado. The acronym is one word and it is six letters long. Zeroing out money for zombie. Yes. Zeroing out money for buying influence after elections act. Oh, zombie. So, Nick, follow up question. What was this act for?
Nick Capodice: Zero. Money for buying influence after elections. Was it a bill to, like, overturn Citizens United?
Christina Phillips: No. Not quite.
Rebecca Lavoie: Is it a bill to keep people from donating to campaigns of other people who are running for office after they are running for office?
Christina Phillips: I think that's close. It required candidates to disperse unused funds after the election.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, they had to disperse them. Okay.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So basically you had to give up your money and it set a way to do it. So, Nick, you get the first go at this. What year was this introduced?
Nick Capodice: Oh, the zombie act. I'm going to say the old zombie act. I'm going to say 2016.
Christina Phillips: No, it's 2021 now. The next piece of legislation, the following legislation, was introduced by Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois. The acronym is one word and it is seven letters long. Communications over various feeds electronically.
Nick Capodice: Coffee.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh. That's so funny.
Nick Capodice: That's hilarious.
Christina Phillips: So the whole title is communications over various Feeds electronically for Engagement Act or the Coffee Act. I cannot look at this tweet from President Trump that inspired this without laughing. It's like Donald Trump was president at the time, tweeted something at 12:06 a.m. on a Wednesday that said, despite the constant negative press, coffee and tweet.
Rebecca Lavoie: And.
Christina Phillips: It was like the next six hours overnight, people just lost it. And then six hours later, to his credit, he had a really good follow up. Who can figure out the true meaning of coffee and enjoy. And it's still up there. So, Nick, what was this act for? What did it purport to do?
Nick Capodice: Can you read the bill one last time? The name. And then I'll get it.
Christina Phillips: Communications over various feeds electronically for Engagement act.
Nick Capodice: This is monitoring the usage of politicians on social media.
Christina Phillips: Ah. I'm going to go ahead and say close enough. Rebecca, do you have a guess?
Rebecca Lavoie: It codified that the president's tweets are actually, like archivable material.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, that's exactly it. So you are going to get the point for that. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: Well done.
Christina Phillips: So it basically some of the language in here is that the bill amends provisions governing presidential records to revise the definition of presidential records to include any personal and official social media account. Nick, what year was this bill introduced? Do you have a guess?
Nick Capodice: Uh. 2020.
Christina Phillips: No. Someone else have a guess?
Rebecca Lavoie: 2018?
Christina Phillips: No, it was 2017.
Rebecca Lavoie: Ah.
Christina Phillips: This was like three months into his new administration when this happened, did it pass?
Nick Capodice: I'm going to say no because it's an acronym.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. You're correct. It did not. It did not pass. But it's worth pointing out that in 2014. So before this bill was introduced, there was an amendment to the Presidential Records Act that specified that electronic content was considered presidential records and must be preserved. So a lot of legal experts already assumed that included social media. But President Trump did come under fire for deleting tweets during his presidency. Nick, I believe you got two points for that one. Are you ready?
Rebecca Lavoie: Yes.
Christina Phillips: This piece of legislation was introduced by Democrat Gary Ackerman from New York. The acronym is one word. It is eight letters long, but the word is not spelled correctly.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh.
Christina Phillips: The health insurance protects America. Can't HIPAA can't repeal it. Act.
Hannah McCarthy: Hypocrite.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Nick Capodice: Oh well done.
Christina Phillips: Yes. So yeah it is spelled HIPAA like HIPAA. And then can't repeal it crit. Okay. So Hannah you got a point for that. I'm going to ask you what you think it was for.
Hannah McCarthy: Can you say it again.
Christina Phillips: The health insurance protects America can't repeal it. Act.
Hannah McCarthy: So I think it was to stop the repealing of the Affordable Care Act, stop going after Obamacare, like something like that.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So I'm going to give you points because that is the intention of the act. It was kind of like a dare. So Democrat Gary Ackerman from New York introduced a series of bills that would repeal some of the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act, including the one that said that companies couldn't deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, and another that said that insurance companies couldn't just end your coverage. And here's what he said, quote, these are great safeguards to improve coverage for all Americans. Republicans wouldn't dare vote to do away with them, despite their campaign pledge to do so. But I'm calling them out on it and dare the GOP to vote for these bills. So basically saying that, like you keep claiming you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, well, if you really want to do that, do it. Do it on these specific provisions that everybody really likes.
Rebecca Lavoie: What about the death panels, though? Do they do they put those in the list.
Christina Phillips: Death panels. What's that?
Rebecca Lavoie: You don't remember when the Affordable Care Act was being sold to the people? That was the opposition to it was that it would create so-called death panels, where a panel of people would get to decide if you lived or died. That was the Sarah Palin talking point around the ACA.
Archive: President Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and said, there is no such thing as a death panel. Is he a liar?
Archive: He's not lying in that. Those two words will not be found in any of those thousands of pages of different variations of the health care bill. No death panel isn't there.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so, Hannah, you get first guess. What year do you think that this was introduced?
Hannah McCarthy: 2017?
Nick Capodice: Nope. 2012?
Christina Phillips: Nope.
Christina Phillips: Um, so it was 2010. Did it pass? Hannah? No, no. That is all of the trivia that I have for you today.
Nick Capodice: Oh.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Christina Phillips: So I'm going to reveal our final scores. Um, Nick, you received ten points. Hannah, you have seven points.
Hannah McCarthy: Huzzah!
Christina Phillips: And, Rebecca, you have six points.
Rebecca Lavoie: See, I don't always win.
Christina Phillips: Your winning streak is over.
Rebecca Lavoie: That's right, that's right.
Christina Phillips: Congratulations, Nick.
Nick Capodice: Well. Thank you. It's. I haven't won one in a good long while. It feels.
Hannah McCarthy: Pretty.
Nick Capodice: True. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was no categories about, like, Twilight this time.
Rebecca Lavoie: That was our favorite category of all time.
Christina Phillips: I'm glad.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm glad this was so fun. It was so fun, Christina.
Nick Capodice: It was so fun.
Christina Phillips: Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody.
Rebecca Lavoie: Thanks for having us.
Christina Phillips: This episode was produced by me, Christina Phillips, with a lot of wonderful help from our hosts, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice and our executive producer, Rebecca Lavoie, who also edited this episode. Our team includes producer Marina Henke. Music from this episode is from Epidemic Sound and the Taco Bell. Civics 101 is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.