Hey everyone Jody here over the next week or so we're bringing you a few of our favorite episodes from the archives

Some people might call them reruns but we like to call them favorite episodes from the archives

But in the run-up to Memorial Day, we thought we'd bring you some stories about war and

the cost of war.

We'll be back with new episodes soon, including some conversations about Kelly's brand new book, some more election-related coverage and of course a bunch of stories

that we are excited to talk about. In the meantime enjoy these episodes and

don't forget to sign up for the newsletter at this day pod.com for lots more.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day January 1970, an article appears in the New York Times with the headline,

Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery was not random.

The article laid out how an analysis of the Vietnam War draft lottery,

which was intended to be a random drawing according to birth date,

while that drawing disproportionately picked, for instance, men born in January over men born in December.

Obviously the consequences of this, the implications of this were huge, it tapped into a big

conversation about the draft itself, those who were in the sample to be drawn in that lottery

and those who had avoided it and also in interesting ways this was a big moment for

statisticians we got an email from a listener Thomas about this and Thomas wrote

us I'm quoting here I'm not sure if you've done something on the Vietnam draft

but this is a rather minor

nerdy and esoteric event that could provide a hook into the fairness of the

draft and Thomas I'll just say you get the show with an email like that.

...