# Short Stuff: Phone Books

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 5 Aug 2026, 15 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/d49c073a-20c1-490c-804f-b49c0145e6c1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Once upon a time there were these things called phone books. Inside you could find the phone number and address of just about everyone in your town. Can you imagine? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh, Chuck, cherit, Dave,
[0:07] Speaker 1: let's go nostalgic.
[0:10] Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, there's a slew of websites you
[0:13] Speaker 2: used to research this, but I mean, honestly, we could
[0:15] Speaker 2: just say from our own brains because there wasn't a
[0:18] Speaker 2: lot in here that like, we just didn't know as
[0:21] Speaker 2: growing up in the time that we grow up again
[0:23] Speaker 2: because it is about phone books, and if you're of
[0:26] Speaker 2: a certain age, you know exactly what we're talking about.
[0:29] Speaker 2: If you're not of a certain age yet, you might
[0:32] Speaker 2: be surprised to know that. At a certain point in time,
[0:36] Speaker 2: if you wanted to, I don't know, take your car
[0:39] Speaker 2: to the shop or find a florist or a dry cleaner,
[0:43] Speaker 2: you couldn't just go on the internet to do that
[0:45] Speaker 2: or whip out your phone. You would bring out a
[0:48] Speaker 2: seventeen pound book that was eight inches thick, drop it
[0:52] Speaker 2: on your kitchen table and wake up your entire family
[0:55] Speaker 2: on a Saturday morning, and you would start letting your oh,
[0:59] Speaker 2: I'm not going to say it. You would start thumbing
[1:01] Speaker 2: through that thing, looking under the florists section or the
[1:05] Speaker 2: laundromat section to find a business to give your money
[1:09] Speaker 2: to Yeah, it's very cute.
[1:11] Speaker 1: That is how you found businesses. It's how you found
[1:14] Speaker 1: people too, because the business part was in the second
[1:18] Speaker 1: half of the phone book. It was all in yellow pages.
[1:20] Speaker 1: The first part was white pages, and those were residential listings.
[1:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, or they were two different books entirely.
[1:26] Speaker 1: It could be if you lived in a fancy pants area,
[1:29] Speaker 1: you know, like Atlanta, like Westchester or something like that. Yeah,
[1:36] Speaker 1: the white pages. This is another thing. The reason I
[1:39] Speaker 1: love doing this one, Chuck, is because this is to
[1:41] Speaker 1: me the first time we can be like you have
[1:45] Speaker 1: grown up in a world where you can't really understand
[1:50] Speaker 1: the world that this thing existed in in Shakesure. This
[1:54] Speaker 1: is a great example of it. And one of the
[1:56] Speaker 1: things that stuck out to me was explaining the white pages,
[1:59] Speaker 1: where you you could go and say, I'm looking for
[2:02] Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. So I'm going to go to
[2:04] Speaker 1: the B's of the white pages and start looking through
[2:07] Speaker 1: the Bryan's until I find all the Charles. And I
[2:09] Speaker 1: know Chuck lives in Atlanta, so I'm going to find
[2:12] Speaker 1: Chuck's address in Atlanta, and then at the end of
[2:15] Speaker 1: that is Chuck's phone number and I'm going to pick
[2:18] Speaker 1: up my phone and dial the numbers that is in
[2:20] Speaker 1: this publicly available book. Maybe even I'll get tired of
[2:23] Speaker 1: waiting the for him to answer, I'll hang up and
[2:26] Speaker 1: just drive to his house, which I now know exactly
[2:29] Speaker 1: where it is, because his address is listed under his
[2:32] Speaker 1: full name with his phone number in the phone book,
[2:35] Speaker 1: along with everybody else in town.
[2:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, and you would just knock on my door if
[2:39] Speaker 2: you wanted to speak to me. And I know that
[2:41] Speaker 2: we were sending a large number of our listeners into
[2:43] Speaker 2: a complete and utter panic. Yeah, at the thought of
[2:46] Speaker 2: someone knocking on their door just to pop in and
[2:49] Speaker 2: say hello or whatever.
[2:50] Speaker 1: But just think about how much the world has changed
[2:52] Speaker 1: in that respect.
[2:55] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you don't even call someone anymore without texting
[2:57] Speaker 2: him to say, can I call right now? No, it's
[3:00] Speaker 2: very strange.
[3:00] Speaker 1: It is. This is a different world.
[3:03] Speaker 2: It was a totally different world. The uh well, you know,
[3:08] Speaker 2: another funny tangent to that is, I also remember a
[3:11] Speaker 2: day where if you were like, let's say, you knew
[3:15] Speaker 2: someone's name, but you didn't really know where they lived,
[3:17] Speaker 2: and you didn't know them that well, so you needed
[3:19] Speaker 2: their phone number, so you looked it up and they
[3:21] Speaker 2: were like six Josh Clark's and you would start calling
[3:25] Speaker 2: random Josh Clark's and say, are you the Josh Clark
[3:27] Speaker 2: that I met at camp summer camp this summer or
[3:32] Speaker 2: the parents of so like you would go like, you know,
[3:35] Speaker 2: that's the whole plot of the Initial Terminators. He's killing
[3:37] Speaker 2: random Sarah Connors. Oh yeah, because he looks up Sarah
[3:41] Speaker 2: Connor in the phone book.
[3:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, but you would totally do that. I did that too.
[3:45] Speaker 1: I mean like you would do something like that and
[3:47] Speaker 1: it was and.
[3:48] Speaker 2: People understood would be like, oh, that's a different guy.
[3:51] Speaker 1: Sorry, good luck, good luck.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Oh man, so quaint and this is not like three
[3:56] Speaker 2: hundred years ago. The other thing I did not know.
[3:59] Speaker 2: Actually when I said, I knew all this in my
[4:01] Speaker 2: brain and it totally makes sense now all this. You know,
[4:04] Speaker 2: the businesses themselves were advertised within the floral section or
[4:08] Speaker 2: the laundromat section. And that's why you would see like
[4:12] Speaker 2: a one plumber or a one florist is because they
[4:14] Speaker 2: would be listed first. I never knew that, and I
[4:16] Speaker 2: feel like a dummy because it's so obvious.
[4:18] Speaker 1: Oh no, I mean like that's but yeah, that's what
[4:21] Speaker 1: I would call my business we should have called this
[4:23] Speaker 1: a one stuff you Should Know.
[4:24] Speaker 2: Podcast, right, A one podcast?
[4:28] Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. It was called
[4:31] Speaker 1: gaming the system. I think that's right. So for about
[4:36] Speaker 1: one hundred years, like this is how you made contact
[4:39] Speaker 1: with the outside world. This is how you searched for
[4:42] Speaker 1: things in the outside world. It's really hard to wrap
[4:44] Speaker 1: your head around now, but you just pull a book
[4:46] Speaker 1: out and I say, we take a little break, come
[4:49] Speaker 1: back and talk a little more about the history of
[4:51] Speaker 1: the phone book after well this break, let's do it. Well,
[4:56] Speaker 1: now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
[5:00] Speaker 2: I want to learn a thing or two from Josh
[5:03] Speaker 2: pm Chuck.
[5:03] Speaker 1: It's stuff you should.
[5:05] Speaker 2: Know, all right, All right, we're back. We're talking phone books.
[5:25] Speaker 2: The first phone directory we talked a little bit about
[5:27] Speaker 2: in our Telephone episode. I think it was published in
[5:30] Speaker 2: eighteen seventy eight New Haven, Connecticut and had about fifty
[5:33] Speaker 2: subscribers that's what they were called at the time, on
[5:36] Speaker 2: a single piece of paper, listed as phones, you know,
[5:39] Speaker 2: spread around. Obviously, the phone book got bigger and bigger,
[5:42] Speaker 2: to the point where, like I mentioned, we had a
[5:44] Speaker 2: full white pages and a full yellow pages, and they
[5:47] Speaker 2: were very big books. I think the last editions of
[5:51] Speaker 2: the New York City. Well maybe not the last, because
[5:53] Speaker 2: there are still phone books if you have a landline,
[5:54] Speaker 2: believe it or not, But the New York City phone
[5:58] Speaker 2: books came in multiple volumes at the last quarter of
[6:01] Speaker 2: the twentieth century, and they were so thick that like,
[6:04] Speaker 2: if you were a kid in high school, you might
[6:07] Speaker 2: have a strong person team come around to do a
[6:10] Speaker 2: little show for you at an afternoon assembly, and inevitably
[6:14] Speaker 2: they would blow up a hot water bottle and burst
[6:18] Speaker 2: it and till it burst, and they would somebody would
[6:21] Speaker 2: rip a phone book in half, which was seemingly really
[6:24] Speaker 2: hard to do.
[6:25] Speaker 1: Okay, I do I have no recollection of seeing an
[6:28] Speaker 1: assembly like that, Like did you see that? It sounds like,
[6:31] Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's a first hand to count.
[6:33] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we had a strong strong man team come
[6:36] Speaker 2: around and do like feats of strength for the high
[6:38] Speaker 2: school afternoon.
[6:39] Speaker 1: Did they like legitimize it by just saying like, also
[6:42] Speaker 1: don't do drugs at the end? Oh?
[6:44] Speaker 2: Probably?
[6:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, Wow, that's really something. Yeah, I don't remember we
[6:49] Speaker 1: I don't remember anything like that.
[6:52] Speaker 2: Where'd you think they ripped up phone books? Just like
[6:55] Speaker 2: that's incredible or whatever?
[6:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
[6:57] Speaker 2: I got to see it live. Buddy.
[6:59] Speaker 1: Wow, go Redan hs. That's right, the Redan Redheads.
[7:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, the Raiders.
[7:06] Speaker 1: That was close. Yeah. So one of the things like
[7:10] Speaker 1: if you were if you had a phone, like you
[7:13] Speaker 1: just got a phone book, it was free, like they
[7:15] Speaker 1: were disposable, Like you just thought nothing of the phone book.
[7:18] Speaker 1: But it turns out they were like big, big business
[7:22] Speaker 1: for AT and T and then later on for a
[7:24] Speaker 1: bunch of other companies, but AT and T, according to
[7:27] Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty six article. The article said that eighteen
[7:31] Speaker 1: T made seven billion dollars just off of the money
[7:35] Speaker 1: it charged businesses across the country to be listed in
[7:38] Speaker 1: the Yellow Pages. And that's like thirteen billion dollars today.
[7:42] Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's like lunch at Apple.
[7:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a ton of money. And I
[7:49] Speaker 2: even looked up. I was like, I wonder if there
[7:51] Speaker 2: was a sort of a weird little hidden search charge
[7:55] Speaker 2: for like the customer to be listed. And apparently not.
[7:59] Speaker 2: Apparently you were never ever charged to be listed in
[8:01] Speaker 2: the phone book. You did have to pay to get unlisted,
[8:05] Speaker 2: which a lot of states eventually like introduced like house
[8:08] Speaker 2: bills and stuff. They're like this is a scam. You
[8:10] Speaker 2: can't just list somebody's name and address and say you
[8:13] Speaker 2: got to pay us to not do that extortion. Yeah,
[8:16] Speaker 2: so I think a lot of those ended up being successful.
[8:18] Speaker 2: But you know, AT and T was selling those not
[8:23] Speaker 2: only just a spot in the Yellow Pages, but you
[8:25] Speaker 2: could pay a lot more money to get like larger
[8:27] Speaker 2: ads and stuff in the Yellow Pages to get more notice,
[8:30] Speaker 2: and they would market that stuff. And you know almost
[8:33] Speaker 2: said it earlier, but I didn't want to let it slip.
[8:34] Speaker 2: But a very famous one it was in nineteen sixty two.
[8:37] Speaker 2: I could have sworn it was the seventies, because it
[8:39] Speaker 2: clearly went through the seventies was let your Fingers do
[8:42] Speaker 2: the Walking ad campaign, the idea of, hey, let your
[8:47] Speaker 2: fingers do the walking instead of your body, Like, don't
[8:49] Speaker 2: walk around downtown looking for your florist, just let your
[8:53] Speaker 2: fingers do that and then give them a call instead, exactly.
[8:55] Speaker 1: And I mean that was kind of revolutionary as far
[8:59] Speaker 1: as things went, at least in the mid century. And
[9:03] Speaker 1: I said that AT and T made a bunch of
[9:04] Speaker 1: money off of the Yellow Pages. The reason why it
[9:07] Speaker 1: was just them is because they had a monopoly on
[9:09] Speaker 1: the phone system in the US, which I'm sure we
[9:11] Speaker 1: covered as well in that phone exchange up. So, but
[9:15] Speaker 1: it was finally broken up. The government granted monopoly. They're like,
[9:20] Speaker 1: you guys are too big. We're going to break you
[9:22] Speaker 1: up into regional providers like Northwestern Bell, Southern Bell, that
[9:25] Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And so all of those companies, these
[9:28] Speaker 1: subcompanies now were printing Yellow Pages and they were making money.
[9:32] Speaker 1: But because Bell no longer had a monopoly, that also
[9:37] Speaker 1: opened the door for private companies to start making their
[9:40] Speaker 1: own Yellow Pages. There was just a lot of money
[9:42] Speaker 1: and walking around because this is how people found businesses.
[9:46] Speaker 1: It was either driving past and seeing a business that
[9:48] Speaker 1: had their phone number on the sign, or you went
[9:52] Speaker 1: to the Yellow Pages. It was as simple as that.
[9:54] Speaker 1: So you had a lot of incentive to advertise in
[9:58] Speaker 1: the yellow Pages, and so companies had a lot of
[10:01] Speaker 1: incentive to publish Yellow Pages. And so the number of
[10:04] Speaker 1: phone books that came to one person's house started to boom.
[10:09] Speaker 1: I think in the nineteen nineties in some parts of California,
[10:12] Speaker 1: you might get ten different phone books delivered to your
[10:15] Speaker 1: house every night. Year. Yeah.
[10:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, obviously, especially in a place like California,
[10:21] Speaker 2: or you know, Washington State, Seattle, Washington. People would be like, hey,
[10:25] Speaker 2: wait a minute, this is like a pretty awful thing
[10:27] Speaker 2: to do, like the amount of waste that's happening here.
[10:32] Speaker 2: I remember early I mean this is a long time
[10:34] Speaker 2: ago now, but not that long ago. But the Internet
[10:38] Speaker 2: was around, and there were still phone books being delivered,
[10:40] Speaker 2: and I remember seeing a comedian joke about I think
[10:43] Speaker 2: the joke was something up printing a small portion of
[10:45] Speaker 2: the Internet and throwing it on my porch once a year.
[10:48] Speaker 2: I thought that was pretty funny. But everyone, you know,
[10:51] Speaker 2: it's pretty clear, like what a wasteful thing. I think
[10:54] Speaker 2: half a billion phone books were being delivered six hundred
[10:57] Speaker 2: and fifty thousand tons of paper every year by nineteen
[10:59] Speaker 2: ninety one, enough to fill up two million cubic yards
[11:02] Speaker 2: of landfill space, even though you could probably recycle that stuff.
[11:07] Speaker 2: So they initially started doing like recycled paper and stuff
[11:10] Speaker 2: like that. Seattle, like I mentioned, I think was one
[11:14] Speaker 2: of the first ones to say, like, you know, we're
[11:16] Speaker 2: gonna start charging phone book makers fourteen since per phone
[11:19] Speaker 2: book delivered within the city. And if people elect to
[11:23] Speaker 2: not have a phone book, but they still throw one
[11:25] Speaker 2: on your porch, like that's a one hundred and fifty
[11:27] Speaker 2: dollars five Yeah.
[11:28] Speaker 1: Knowing me, justice police, I would have been I would
[11:31] Speaker 1: have immediately gone to the trouble of filling out like
[11:33] Speaker 1: the five page form to complain, to make sure that
[11:35] Speaker 1: that company got fined out.
[11:37] Speaker 2: I totally would. Yeah, I opted out.
[11:41] Speaker 1: You've got a touch of the justice police in Youtuo
[11:43] Speaker 1: for youah for sure?
[11:44] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah neither. Yeah. We don't like bad guys getting
[11:47] Speaker 2: away with stuff justice. Yeah.
[11:50] Speaker 1: So despite the environmental thing, I think basically converting to
[11:55] Speaker 1: recycled paper helped a lot of people in training. People
[11:58] Speaker 1: like you said, like these things can actually be easily recycled.
[12:01] Speaker 1: That kind of simmered people down about the environmental part.
[12:05] Speaker 1: So that's not what did away with phone books. There
[12:08] Speaker 1: were like three things in pretty quick secession that really
[12:11] Speaker 1: started to take the Yellow Pages down at least so
[12:15] Speaker 1: four on one that was information all of a sudden,
[12:18] Speaker 1: you could dial that for free starting in the eighties,
[12:21] Speaker 1: and now you didn't even have to look in the
[12:23] Speaker 1: phone book. You could just call up and be like,
[12:25] Speaker 1: just start reading some plumbers' names off to me in
[12:27] Speaker 1: their phone numbers.
[12:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, you would call someone to read you the phone exactly,
[12:31] Speaker 2: that's right. And then, of course, you know, the Internet
[12:36] Speaker 2: coming along had everything to do with it. And also
[12:40] Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, Congress passed a law that
[12:42] Speaker 2: said you can't put cell phone numbers in phone books,
[12:46] Speaker 2: so they were on the way to doing that. So
[12:48] Speaker 2: it basically was whittled down to just landlines. And then
[12:52] Speaker 2: once the Internet came around, as far as businesses go,
[12:55] Speaker 2: the Yellow Pages wasn't as necessary. But you know they're
[12:58] Speaker 2: all still around because there are still landlines. And you
[13:02] Speaker 2: know who advertises in the Yellow Pages? Still who ricks
[13:06] Speaker 2: in a bogan? Emily's dad and Seneco Glass, his auto
[13:10] Speaker 2: glass repair shop in Cayuga Falls, Ohio. Unless it's changed.
[13:16] Speaker 2: We were talking one day and he was like, yeah,
[13:18] Speaker 2: I still advertise in the Yellow Pages. A lot of
[13:20] Speaker 2: people around here still use landlines, still look stuff up
[13:23] Speaker 2: in the Yellow Pages.
[13:23] Speaker 1: Yeah. There was a poll that found, I think in
[13:25] Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, more than fifty million homes in the
[13:29] Speaker 1: US still have a landline. So that means that unless
[13:31] Speaker 1: they go to the trouble of opting out, they still
[13:33] Speaker 1: get a phone book delivered to them every year, and
[13:36] Speaker 1: that ten percent of all Americans still use Yellow Pages
[13:41] Speaker 1: If you just zero in on fifty five and older,
[13:44] Speaker 1: almost three quarters of them use the Yellow Pages to
[13:47] Speaker 1: find business like old habits die hard. So like your
[13:51] Speaker 1: father in laws, like, he has an incentive to still
[13:54] Speaker 1: sure advertising the Yellow Pages, which means there's an incentive
[13:58] Speaker 1: for Yellow Pages to still exist as long as people
[14:01] Speaker 1: use them. You know.
[14:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm What I'm really mad about is I'm now
[14:04] Speaker 2: in the age group where they're like, but this is
[14:06] Speaker 2: what the olds are doing, right, freaking yellow Pages. Come on, nobody.
[14:13] Speaker 2: I know my age looks in the Yellow Pages, So
[14:15] Speaker 2: I take issue with that number.
[14:16] Speaker 1: You're a twenty six percenter.
[14:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so. But I have to say, if
[14:22] Speaker 2: you're looking for autoglass repair in the Cayuga Falls, Ohio region,
[14:25] Speaker 2: and you want to avoid big Auto glass, go with
[14:29] Speaker 2: the mom and popper in this case, the pop and
[14:31] Speaker 2: go check out Seneco Glass. Tell Rick we sent you.
[14:34] Speaker 1: Very nice man.
[14:35] Speaker 2: They do great work.
[14:36] Speaker 1: I can't think of any better way for short stuff
[14:38] Speaker 1: to be out.
[14:40] Speaker 2: That's right, We're out. Stuff you Should Know is a
[14:45] Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
[14:49] Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
[14:51] Speaker 1: Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

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