For soon to the executive order, the Director Selective Service is going to establish tonight

a random selection sequence for induction for 1970.

I will ask Congressman Pernie to come forward.

Picture a hall with a bulletin board at the front.

An American flag stands on the left and next to it a woman is opening capsules containing small folded pieces of paper.

She's handing them to a man to read out their dates.

September 14.

Each slip of paper had the power to alter lives forever.

September 14.

Zero.

Zero.

One.

It was December 1, 1969, and Representative Alexander Pernie of New York was revealing to millions of Americans watching and listening at home,

the randomly selected birth dates that determined which tranches of young men would be drafted for military service in the Vietnam War.

December 30.

Whatever you think of this draft lottery, it represented one of the most significant accidental experiments in American history.

A side effect of this process was that it created a population of healthy young men who were fundamentally no different from one another, except that by luck, some had dramatically worse lottery numbers than others.

The men with bad lottery numbers had higher chances of being sent to Vietnam to fight, and that led them to make many different life decisions, essentially by chance.

More than 50 years later, scientists across a multitude of disciplines continue to analyze the data that resulted from this accidental experiment with men's lives.

The Vietnam draft lottery yielded useful insights about the returns to additional schooling, what alters political engagement, and much, much more.

In this episode, you'll hear about how certain geopolitical events, natural disasters, and even simple mistakes can accidentally generate important insights if you think to look.

I'm Dr. Katie Milkman, and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions.

...