WEBVTT - The Wild History of Tetris 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:05.640 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:15.040 Das Vidania and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:20.080 Jerry's here too, man, this is stuff you should know. Comrade. 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:27.720 Yeah, the Tetris edition. How much Tetris have you played? 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:28.760 What's your background there? 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.159 I was a very casual Tetris player. I mean I 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:34.919 didn't even realize there were as many levels as there are. 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:39.840 I tend to flip out when things start to really 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.120 go fast, So I wasn't very good at Tetris, but 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:44.879 I did enjoy it when I played it. 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:46.519 And where'd you play it? 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:46.800 Like? 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:47.640 What system? 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:52.519 The classic nees? Okay, how about you, Chuck, what is 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:54.320 your relationship to Tetris? 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:56.240 Well, the only way I ever played it was on 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.600 a game Boy. I don't know if I had a 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:01.920 game Boy. If it was Scott's. 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:03.560 I know he had one. 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:05.560 But at any rate, I played it on the game 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.960 Boy only and really really loved it and got into 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.920 that for a while. I wasn't like obsessed with it 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.120 or anything, but I did have the Tetris streams. I 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.720 did walk around seeing things as Tetris on the landscape, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.640 so it definitely invaded my consciousness for a while. But 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.640 I never played it on anything but the game Boy, 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:26.319 so I don't know how to play it with a 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:27.840 regular controller or whatever. 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:32.400 Yeah, I couldn't. Like I tried playing it on computer. 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:34.480 In it, I was like, I don't I can't get this. 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.959 I'm just used to the NYS controller for it. 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:40.840 Yeah. I was gonna try and play it today, just 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:41.319 like whatever. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.320 I'm sure there's some free online version you can play 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:46.760 on your desktop, but I was afraid I was a 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:47.280 little behind. 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:47.520 Today. 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:48.960 I was like, I'm not going to do it because 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.200 I'll be thirty minutes later I will still been playing 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.320 Tetris because it's a very addictive game, and part of 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.560 why it was successful is because it seems like every 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:05.600 body that ever tried Tetris early on at least loved 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:07.920 and became pretty addicted to Tetris. 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:09.920 Yeah. I was asking you and me. I was like, 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:11.840 did you ever play Tetris? And she just kind of 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:13.480 gave me this. She didn't even look over at me. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:14.959 She just looked at them at me out of the 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.519 corner of her eyes and was like, I was pretty 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:18.160 good at Tetra. 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:19.960 Yeah I could see that. 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.160 Yeah, come on, I never I didn't ask her if 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:25.400 she had the dreams, but I could see her having 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.320 the dreams. Apparently that's a really common phenomenon, right, I 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:30.200 think it's actually called the Tetris effect. 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:32.200 Uh, yeah, for sure. 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.480 When it starts invading your dreams or you start you know, 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:36.359 if you're walking around a city and you start looking 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:38.480 at an alleyway that you could drop a long I 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.040 beam into, then it's in your bones. 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:43.920 Yeah for sure. So yeah, we'll talk a little bit 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.320 about why it's so addictive. People have come up with 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.480 theories for it, like it's a video game that's so addictive. 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.959 Psychologists have actually come up with theories to explain why 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.160 Tetris in particular, not video games, Tetris in particular has 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:01.920 that Tetris effect and it's so addictive, which kind of 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.360 give you an idea of why. I think we talked 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.880 about this in our Minecraft episode that where I got 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.800 everything right that Tetris is actually the best selling game 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.880 of all time. Yeah, closing in on five hundred and 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.560 fifty million copies. Wow. 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.239 Yeah, that is a stackering number of people, man, right. 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.640 And this video game hasn't been around since like the 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.800 eighteen hundred. It's like it's from nineteen eighty four. 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.840 It's not Oregon Trail right right exactly. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.040 You can't catch dysentery playing it. 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.240 No, and big thanks to Olivia for this one. 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:41.480 I had this idea when I recently remembered that I 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.480 had not watched the Tetris Cold. 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:44.680 War thriller movie. 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.560 That is a very loose sort of story about how 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:53.360 this game was developed, because it's a very interesting story 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.040 set against the backdrop of the Cold War. They really 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.680 it's a fictionalized version, so it sort of loosely follows 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.000 some of it. But it looked like a really fun 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.760 movie that I'd kind of forgot about. So I asked 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.080 Lvia to put this together, and I'm gonna watch the 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:10.400 movie sometime this week, I think. 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:10.920 So. 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.520 Is that huge chase scene where Alexi Pajetnov is chasing 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:18.240 the CIA agents across rooftops in Istanbul and catches up 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.280 with them and kills them with the garrot is made up? 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:24.960 I think it is. And he was throwing Tetris pieces 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:28.440 at them and building Tetris walls. That's what the movie 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:29.080 they should have done. 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:30.839 Yeah, for sure, that would have been pretty cool. He 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.200 just like holds his hand out and instead of a 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.839 web coming out, it's Tetris pieces right in your face. 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:37.160 All right. 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:38.880 So you mentioned a guy that's very key to this. 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.799 In fact, he's the most key because he is the creator, 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:47.080 Alexi Pagetnov. The year's nineteen eighty four, very big key 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.040 year in American history in a lot of ways. And 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:56.000 he was working at a place called the Jerrod Nitsen 0:04:56.240 --> 0:05:01.040 Computer Center CenTra, which is a part of the Soviet 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.800 Academy of Sciences, and he came up with this game 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:11.280 that he originally called Genetic Engineering. Great name eventually would 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.000 land on Tetris, but it was a copy initially of 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:19.680 his favorite puzzle game when he was a kid, called Pentomeno. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:22.920 I'm glad, yes you said it. It took me a 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:24.880 little while and I was like, oh, like Domino, but 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:26.000 with five. 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.320 Yeah, exactly. And it was like any other puzzle. It 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.200 was a wooden box and you had these pieces, twelve 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.400 wooden tiles, each represented a different shape that can be 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.760 made with five squares, and it was just a physical thing. 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.120 It was in a rectangular, horizontal box and you would 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.080 just you know, it was one of those puzzles where 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.000 you would put the things in there and it wouldn't 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.479 make like an Elton John album cover. It would just 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:51.440 fit and you would be like, hey, I won I 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:53.279 fed all the pieces in here, right. 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:58.120 So yeah, he basically took that and adapted it into 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.040 He's like, well, I'm going to totally evolutionized this. I'm 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.320 going to change the shapes from five boxes to four. 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.919 And so you can't call it pentomeno anymore because pent 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.520 is what five in Greek or Latin something. 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.520 Like that, right, yeah, five squares. 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.640 Yeah, So he called it Tetris, named after Tetra. Yeah, 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:25.040 the Greek prefix meaning four, And apparently he also liked 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.240 tennis and wanted to give tennis a little shout out. 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:33.159 So that's what the iss is from Tetra Tennis Tetris. 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:33.960 Yeah. 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:34.560 Yeah. 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:36.200 In this initial version, like I said, it was called 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.880 genetic engineering, and at first it was just a horizontal 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:43.600 but he just basically did the exact same thing digitally 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.400 that he had in his physical I guess sitting in 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:52.160 his closet somewhere with pentomeno. It was a horizontal square 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.000 with these pieces that you would you know, click, I 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:56.479 don't know if you dragged at that point or not. 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:58.600 Did they even have the mouse at that point, I 0:06:58.760 --> 0:06:59.560 don't know. 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.080 Anyway you could get it over into that box and 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.800 fit it that the pieces didn't fly down and they 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.800 didn't disappear when you would complete a line like the 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.840 classic Tetris. That would come later when he would make 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:14.960 it a big And that was sort of the key 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.000 basically was he found that that first version of genetic 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.080 engineering was boring, and if he made it vertical, he 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.560 made the piece of small, and if he made those 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.880 lines disappear as you went, that created this addictive quality 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:29.160 that made Tetris tetris. 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:31.960 That's it. Did you say that there weren't any graphics, 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.320 that they were like characters and punctuation marks instead. 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.480 Of ground, So, yeah, that was the first version. 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.320 The whole thing was made up of brackets, Like each 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.800 line was brackets, and like the pieces were like exclamation 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:48.960 points or periods or greater than symbols. It was pretty primitive, 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.640 rough first version, but yeah, it had had kind of 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.040 the bones to it, but it wasn't until you start 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:58.320 clearing lines that that's what tetris is all about. So 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:00.640 around the same time he had a colleague called Dmitri 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.360 Pavlovsky was also working on games, and there was a 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.680 sixteen year old involved, young lad named Vottom Garashimov who 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:10.720 was a summer intern and just happened to be at 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.640 the right place at the right time, And the three 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.880 of them got together with another guy, a psychologist named 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.600 Vladimir Pokilko, and you put the four of them together 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:24.160 and you have the earliest developers of tetris. 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.240 Yeah, he was interested in doing puzzles in relation to 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:33.760 his psychological experiments. Gerasimov and the other guy at Pavlovsky 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.199 were poorting games over to ibmpcs, which a lot of 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.280 people in the Soviet Union or not a lot of people, 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:41.920 but that was sort of one of the main computers 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.800 that they could have access to at the time, and 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.760 they had this idea like, hey, we might be able 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.520 to like profit from this one day, but that's going 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:52.719 to be a tricky thing because you know, this is 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:53.640 a Soviet. 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.559 Union and everything that we do belongs to state. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.079 That was a great Yakov Smirnov, by the way, I 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.840 appreciate that. Yeah, so as we'll see the developers. Pajetanov 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.319 apparently was like, hey, you know, I think it'd be 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:12.120 a great idea if the USSR owned the rights to 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.680 this game that we developed for the first ten years. 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.280 What do you think? He had said that it was 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.839 basically an impossible choice, like if he didn't do that, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:23.080 they would cheat him out of it and he would 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:26.640 probably be investigated by the KGB anyway, So he just 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:31.280 went along with that. But before that ever happened, there 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:37.160 was the game started to spread. We mentioned Pokylko, he 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.520 was a psychologist, and he took it to a copy 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.080 to the Moscow Medical Institute where he worked and was like, Hey, 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.000 why don't you guys try playing to see what you think? 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.440 And apparently the workers played so often that they had 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:53.720 to delete it from their computers because they just couldn't 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.319 be trusted with Tetris on their computers to get their 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:56.800 work done. 0:09:57.640 --> 0:09:59.760 Yeah, that became kind of a common refrain in this 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.240 as it goes along, as more and more people are like, 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.440 why are all my employees crowded around the computer monitor 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:07.960 and they would go in and find them playing Tetris. 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:12.120 It spread to like I said, IBMPC users in the 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:17.079 Soviet Union, was copied onto floppy disks, transported across borders, 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.200 and eventually got named Robert Stein, who owned a UK 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:27.000 based company called Andromeda Software Ltd. He saw this in Hungary. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.160 He was like, hey, Hungary gave us the Rubik's Cube, 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.280 here's another puzzle game. This is pretty interesting to me. 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:37.160 So in nineteen eighty six he realized that he had 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:39.160 a I guess. He got a hold of a telex 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:44.880 number that could reach paget Nov and he sent him 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.720 telex and they started telexing back and forth saying like, hey, 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.920 I'm interested in this. He ultimately got a reply that said, yes, 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.520 we are interested, we would like to have this deal. 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.240 And Stein didn't realize in broken Russian that just meant yeah, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:01.080 let's keep talking. 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.239 He thought that meant, hey, sounds like we have a deal. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:09.120 Right, So he actually started creating copies of it, right, 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:11.839 and getting ready to sell it in the West. Is 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:12.360 that correct? 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:12.800 Yeah. 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:15.640 Here's where it gets a little confusing, because this whole 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:18.480 story about who has the rights gets really in the weeds. 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:23.000 And what happened was Stein started he thought they had 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.839 a deal, so he started developing the launch of this 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.400 thing because he thought he had a deal when he 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.640 did not even have these rights. Like they literally made 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:37.080 a deal with a guy named Robert Maxwell. British newspaper mogul. 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.200 There's a lot more to this guy than you know. 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.640 We could probably do a whole episode on him. But 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.160 he had a couple of companies, one called spectrum Holobite 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:50.640 in the United States and one called Mirrorsoft in the UK, 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.840 and he made licensing deals for PC and console rights 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:57.840 with Mirrorsoft for the UK and Europe for three thousand 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:03.080 pounds plus royalties, and then for spectrum Holobite for North 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.360 America and Japan for eleven thousand plus royalties when he 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:08.800 didn't even own the rights to do so at this point. 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.560 Yeah, So apparently they were out there selling units and 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.079 then the Russians got word of this. Something called l 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:21.200 ORG electron or Technica, which was the Soviet organization for 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:25.120 developing things like games like Tetris and then owning the 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.880 rights to it, got in touch with Stein and were like, hey, 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:31.920 you can't do this anymore, like we own that this 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:34.760 is even Cold war stuff says that this is wrong, 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:35.040 you know. 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.400 Yeah, So in January twenty nine to eighty eight, spectrum 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.640 Holobite released it in the US and he didn't get 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.240 his deal signed with l ORG because they weren't like, hey, 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:47.920 shut this down. 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:49.480 You can't do it. They said, hey, let's talk. 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.559 He didn't get his actual deal signed with them until 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:54.760 the end of February, so he was selling these things 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.360 for a month in the United States before he even 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.480 had a deal with l Org l Org And at 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.120 that point he got to think like a ten year 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.280 licensing deal from them, so it was all that part 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:07.480 of it was legit by this point. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:09.760 Yeah, and at the time, it was almost one hundred 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.360 dollars for a copy of Tetris for IBM and sixty 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.760 eight dollars. These are in today's dollars, I should say, Yeah, 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.280 for the Commodore sixty four that's not cheap, No, for 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.360 sure not, but people were buying it because people liked it. 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:28.480 And apparently also Mirosof made deals with Atari and Sega 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:34.400 too to basically start producing Tetris cartridges for those consoles. 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.120 And again I think this was within that window where 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:40.839 he didn't officially own any of the rights at the time. 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.000 Yeah, he didn't have those rights, so you could have 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.120 it gets a little confusing, but you can have like 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.959 PC rights, but not rights to do it on like 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.520 a handheld game or like a stand up console arcade 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:54.760 game or something like that, or what would to come, 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:56.880 which was, well, they already had Atari and stuff like that, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.079 and Sega like you mentioned, but you know, all these 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:01.839 are different licenses, and this guy Stein was just kind 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.920 of going full steam ahead without even owning these licenses, 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.200 basically saying like, hey, I'll get these, don't worry. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.120 So yeah, So at the time, there was another guy 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:13.640 that we've got to introduce and then we'll take a 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:17.920 break after well after that. His name was Hank Rogers 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.040 h N. K. Rogers. He was Dutch born but grew 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.000 up in America, and at the time he was working 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.560 for a company called Bulletproof Software, a Japanese company, and 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.240 his job was to find games to basically develop for 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:34.000 the Japanese market. And one day in nineteen eighty eight, 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:39.400 he was at Cees in Las Vegas looking for ideas, 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.640 and one of the ideas that he came across Chuck. 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:44.440 Was Tetris. 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:46.160 What a pro. 0:14:46.280 --> 0:15:13.440 We'll be right back, Okay. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.920 So when we last saw Hank Rogers, he was wandering 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:20.760 around Cees with a pennant that said Bulletproof's number one, 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:25.840 eating some popcorn, and he had just stopped in front 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.560 of this booth that was playing Tetris. And he dropped 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:31.880 his popcorn and his pennant at the same time as 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.760 mouth agog and he was like, I have to own 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.520 this game, Like, we have to buy this game. And 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.800 he wanted it himself so much so that he talked 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:44.239 his in laws into putting up their house for collateral 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.800 so that he could have seed money to buy the 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:52.560 rights to this game. And he actually traveled to Moscow, 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.720 and this guy is where the Cold War stuff really 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:58.440 starts to kind of come alive, because he showed up 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.000 in Moscow and was like, let's make a deal and 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:02.920 they're like, that's not how it works, spy. 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:05.840 Yeah, pretty much. 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:07.640 I mean at this point he did make a deal 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:14.680 with Spectrum Hollabite for the Nintendo Famicom console, right, and 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:16.320 you know this is all early days, so the game 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.920 Boy had not quite debuted. That launched in eighty nine, 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:21.920 So it was the timing of it was really really 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.200 key because as we'll see the game Boys where it 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.240 really really took off. But he made a deal, sort 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.360 of a handshake deal with the president of Nintendo of 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:34.600 America to put Tetris in game boys. And he was like, hey, listen, 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:37.600 you know you sell on these game boys. You're including Mario, 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.200 which the boys love, but if you want to appel 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:42.880 to everyone and sell more of those include Tetris and 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.840 I think that led to like thirty five million units 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:48.760 of Tetris game Boy being sold. 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.480 Yeah, it was essentially the same thing. When Apple loaded 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.640 that YouTube album onto their iPhones, it was one of 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.800 the greatest commercial successes of all time. This is basically 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:00.840 the predecessor of that. 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:04.800 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you said he was sort of bumbling. 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:06.960 You can't leave that that was a joke, Like that 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.399 was a huge fo oh. Everybody hated that just being 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:11.919 like loaded on their phone and apparently you couldn't get 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:12.520 it off either. 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.240 Oh no, no, no, I remember that. I think I was 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:16.800 one of the few people it was like, oh nice, 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:17.800 I like you too, Thanks for the. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.480 Song, Thanks suckers for the free album that I paid 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:22.600 one thousand dollars for. 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:23.800 Goodness me. 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.720 So, you mentioned that he was sort of bumbling around 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.800 Moscow and they were like, hey, no, thanks spy. He 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.120 eventually did get that meeting with l ORG because he's 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.240 still trying to secure all these different you know, license rights, 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:39.600 and he they weren't too pleased with him. But luckily 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.199 for him, Pagetnoff was in that meeting and he liked 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.520 Rogers and they became buddies, and that helped them secure 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:46.520 the rights on the Game Boy. 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:48.960 Yeah, because at the time, all of a sudden, there 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.600 was a huge competition in Moscow forgetting these rights because 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.680 it became clear Stein didn't known the rights. Therefore Maxwell 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.320 didn't known all of the rights, Nintendo didn't known all 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.879 the rights yet. So Stott Rogers was there like making 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.639 these deals and it is questionable whether he would have 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:06.840 come out on top had paget nonof not taken a 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.840 sign shine to him, but he did, and like you said, 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.000 he talked the head of Nintendo America in installing the 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.760 game on every unit. And yeah, when you sell thirty 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:19.360 five million units of something, it's suddenly popular. That's when 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.680 it finally blew up in the United States because again 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.440 it had been around for a few years by then, 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:26.560 but when the Game Boy came out with it, that 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.680 was it for Tetris. And also Nintendo is like, we're 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.000 the Tetris platform now from that one. 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.760 Yeah for sure. And by the way, I did go 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:37.280 to eBay. 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:40.919 I haven't picked the one out yet, but are there 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.720 are plenty of game Boys with the Tetris cartridges. They're 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.280 supposedly in good shape, so that's awesome. I'm definitely looking 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:49.879 forward to that, although Emily says I still have mine somewhere. 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:51.840 It's like, all right, I'll just get it on eBay. 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:53.119 Like how hard can you look for that? 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:54.320 Yeah? 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.399 And they range in price, I think, you know, some 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.040 of the more dubious ones are like thirty to forty bucks, 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:03.680 and I just wonder about the stickiness of buttons and 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.520 pads and things. But the one that's like one hundred 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:09.840 and ten, I feel like it's probably a safer bet, 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:11.000 but who knows. 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:13.320 Yeah, you got to look out for that forty year 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:15.399 old caramel sauce. 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.480 Oh god, yeah, and cotton candy and stuff like that. 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.160 But the Game Boy when though, The reason I bring 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:25.840 that up again is because that's the one with that 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:33.400 classic type a theme songh yeah from sound engineer hiro 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:37.159 Kozu Tanaka, which is hard to believe, but it's an 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:42.560 actually a Russian folk song called koro b a niki 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.120 which means pedlars, and you can hear like a symphony 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:47.959 doing that in a Russian symphony and you're like, oh, 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:48.240 wait a. 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:50.280 Minute, I know that song, that's the Tetris song. 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:51.920 Yeah, it's pretty cool. 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:53.680 It is, and it's if you haven't heard it in 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:56.280 a while ago, just look up Tetris type a theme 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:58.520 on utube and it'll take you back for sure. 0:19:59.240 --> 0:19:59.640 Yeah. 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.920 So there was one more challenge for the rights to Tetris, 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.840 and that ended up being between Nintendo and Atari. Like 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.840 I said, Nintendo was like, we're the platform for Tetris, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.240 just try it, and Natari was like, We're going to 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.000 try you so much. We're so confident that we're going 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.240 to produce hundreds of thousands of copies of this game, 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.000 and a judge was like, nope, it's Nintendo's and Natari 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:26.840 had to eat the cost of all those. 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:27.800 Yeah. 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.480 The judge was like, don't you have a burial site 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:32.000 for the game? 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:34.040 Exactly right? Can you repurpose that? 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:37.600 So they've sold a lot of these. But marketing of 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.560 the game initially was a challenge. It didn't have like 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.080 cutting edge graphics or anything. You really had to play 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.879 it really to kind of understand how addictive it was. 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:49.520 So just looking at the game and selling the game 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.680 was tough. So they sort of, weirdly at the time, 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.399 really leaned into the Cold War and the Soviet stuff. 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:00.399 They re skinned it to have Saint Basil's Adril and 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.560 Moscow on the title screen. They had all sorts of 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.640 little Russian Easter eggs in there. At trade shows, they 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:11.000 had Reagan and gorbache Off impersonators, like playing against each 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:13.640 other and stuff like that, and that actually helped sell 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.320 the game as this like this weird import from behind 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:19.399 the Iron Curtain, Like what are they doing over there? 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:20.400 Right? 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.919 Yeah, that was funny. There was a New York Times 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.120 article on it from oh, I don't know, I think 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:31.800 the like eighty six maybe, and they were they threw 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:34.080 a little bit of shade. They're like, it's kind of impressive. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.360 This is the first software from the Soviet Union being 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.320 sold in the US, which indicates that their computers are 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.480 finally catching up to American. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:44.040 These ibmbcs. 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:48.800 Right, So Tetris indisputably ended the Cold War, brought down 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.800 the Soviet Union single handedly. There were no other factors 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:57.520 involved whatsoever. And like we said, the rights for the 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.359 game stayed with the US are for the first ten years, 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.919 and then finally when they came back around to or 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.040 for the first time. I guess ta pajet noov he 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.600 just started lighting ten cigars at once with one hundred 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:15.159 dollar bills because this is already just a worldwide smash 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.159 hit and now all of the royalties were going to 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:18.560 start to come to him. 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:21.119 Yeah, I mean, he didn't try to fight this early on, 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:23.040 Like you know, if it was in the United States, 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:26.879 somebody would have taken him to court, probably over the 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:28.680 fact that like, yeah, I was your employee at the time, 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:30.040 but blah blah. 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:31.480 Blah, Like he knew that was a lost cause. 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:33.560 So he never even tried to fight back, and I 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.320 think wanted to get in line as a good Russian 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.159 state employer and was like, okay, ten years, you've got it. 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.359 And you know, it turns out patience is a virtues 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:45.520 because he made you know, he did pretty well on 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:46.600 the thing in the long run. 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:50.160 Right, So these guys started drifting over to the United States. 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.439 And there's a really sad like kind of appendix to 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:59.919 this whole thing. In nineteen ninety eight, Pokyoko, who was 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.800 psychologist who is involved in developing it, found that he 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.280 had he was being looped out now that the rights 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.800 were coming to Paget and off Anne Rogers, who made 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:13.240 a separate deal without him. He was running a relatively 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:18.480 unsuccessful software company and apparently killed his wife and son 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:22.400 with a knife and then killed himself with a knife, 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:25.760 which is a weird enough thing that there's still today 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:28.480 conspiracy theories that he was killed by Russian mobsters or 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:31.840 the government or something like that, but a couple of 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:35.680 autopsies confirmed, like, no, this was suicide. It's really really 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:39.159 sad and just a weird, little bizarre kind of side 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.720 thing to be tacked on to, you know, what's just 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:46.000 widely considered such a fun pastime around the world. 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:51.199 Yeah, there's a documentary or docuseries rather called The Tetris 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:53.760 Murderers about this, and I did not watch it, but 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:56.919 I looked more into this, and I'm not conspiracy minded 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.920 at all, but this seems very very pinky. There were 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:05.159 three murder weapons to kill his wife and kid and himself. 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:09.280 There were two different hammers and a hunting knife. Multiple 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:11.879 murder weapons is just strange. There were documents burned on 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:15.280 a grill. Everybody to a person, they talked to her 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:19.720 like this guy was a super good dude, loving father 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:22.440 and husband, Like, there's no way he could have done 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.560 something this brutal. Apparently the blood spatter analysis made no 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:29.200 sense at all, and there were other people that were 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:31.000 asked to sign off that were like, I'm not going 0:24:31.080 --> 0:24:33.320 to sign off on this, Like, there's no way this 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:36.200 guy slit his own throat, look at the blood. And 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.320 they also found a note that they initially said was 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:43.159 not a suicide note, but they would eventually say it was, 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:48.080 and it said I've been eaten alive, Vladimir. Just remember 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:52.960 that I am exist the devil. It's very strange, it is, 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:55.440 so I don't know, a lot of this stuff doesn't 0:24:55.440 --> 0:24:55.800 add up. 0:24:55.800 --> 0:24:57.240 So I'm not really sure what the deal is. 0:24:57.359 --> 0:24:59.520 No, for sure. I think the one criticism is that 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:03.680 the docu series doesn't actually say why anybody would have 0:25:03.760 --> 0:25:05.640 wanted to kill him and his family. 0:25:06.800 --> 0:25:08.960 But yes, everything I say, Russian mobs, that's all you 0:25:09.000 --> 0:25:10.359 need to say. 0:25:10.440 --> 0:25:13.960 Yeah, yeah, it does kind of explain a lot. So, 0:25:14.119 --> 0:25:15.919 like you said, there's a movie I think it's on 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:19.879 Apple TV that came out last year about this that 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:23.440 you can see. I can't remember what it's called, Tetris something, right, 0:25:23.600 --> 0:25:24.560 I think it's just Tetris. 0:25:24.680 --> 0:25:29.720 Oh, okay, what's his name? The Kingsman, Tarin Jaron Edgerton. 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:31.879 Yet I think of a more resultant John. 0:25:32.600 --> 0:25:34.320 I do too. I like that guy. I think he's 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:35.600 a very talented actor. 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:38.320 Oh god, I hope he's not a monstrous scumbag. 0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:39.480 I do too. 0:25:40.000 --> 0:25:42.800 We walked that fine line of like saying something nice 0:25:42.800 --> 0:25:45.880 about someone, are they a monstrous scumbag? Or say something 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:50.280 bad about someone and we'll just get back to them, right. 0:25:50.600 --> 0:25:53.359 Yeah, you have a good track record of calling it though. 0:25:53.760 --> 0:25:56.320 Well I got one. I got Jared back in the day. 0:25:56.320 --> 0:25:58.919 That's about it, because that was a mega one. That 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:02.000 was a huge way to nobody was thinking that about 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:02.440 that guy. 0:26:04.160 --> 0:26:06.119 Speaking of that guy, should we take another break or 0:26:06.119 --> 0:26:07.440 should we talk about gameplay first? 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:09.400 We'll take another break. 0:26:09.400 --> 0:26:11.439 It feels like, all right, let's break and we'll talk 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:40.000 about how you actually play this thing right after this. Okay, 0:26:40.160 --> 0:26:42.960 So if you want to play, if you've never played Tetris, 0:26:43.200 --> 0:26:44.720 you know, a lot of this kind of assumes with 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:50.160 that many hundreds of millions of games sold, plus many 0:26:50.160 --> 0:26:52.600 more people that played that didn't actually buy it, that 0:26:52.720 --> 0:26:55.960 most people have probably played this game. But the idea 0:26:56.160 --> 0:26:59.919 is that you know, you have this horizontal screen and 0:27:00.080 --> 0:27:02.800 these different shape blocks are coming down, and when you 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:07.359 do a complete horizontal line across with these different shape blocks, 0:27:07.400 --> 0:27:11.080 that line will disappear, and all this time more blocks 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:13.639 are falling and falling and falling. And the key is 0:27:13.680 --> 0:27:17.800 to get to different levels by you know, completing more 0:27:17.840 --> 0:27:20.119 and more lines, and they start going faster and faster, 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:22.880 and you can you can spin them to get them 0:27:22.880 --> 0:27:25.840 into position and into place, and in different versions of 0:27:25.840 --> 0:27:28.080 the game, you can see what's coming. Sometimes just one, 0:27:28.160 --> 0:27:31.080 sometimes a few, and there are other variations along the years, 0:27:31.080 --> 0:27:33.720 But that's the basic gameplay of Tetris is very very 0:27:33.720 --> 0:27:34.320 simple game. 0:27:34.720 --> 0:27:39.600 That was the best, basic, most succinct explanation of Tetras 0:27:39.600 --> 0:27:40.280 I have ever heard. 0:27:40.480 --> 0:27:40.720 Really. 0:27:40.840 --> 0:27:41.400 Was it good though? 0:27:41.680 --> 0:27:43.480 For sure? Yeah, okay, that's what I'm saying. 0:27:43.480 --> 0:27:44.080 It was the best. 0:27:44.440 --> 0:27:47.080 I just thought you meant that was short and that'll suffice. 0:27:47.320 --> 0:27:49.840 No, No, I thought it was great. Okay, thanks, because 0:27:49.880 --> 0:27:51.720 you could have gone on longer. But why you said 0:27:51.720 --> 0:27:55.400 it all just precisely so. It was very economical and efficient, 0:27:55.440 --> 0:27:56.639 and I appreciate that. 0:27:56.600 --> 0:27:57.520 Thank you, friend. 0:27:58.240 --> 0:28:00.960 There's also multiplayer versions with which means that there's a 0:28:01.000 --> 0:28:05.879 lot of competitive Tetris championships. There's one in particular, and 0:28:05.960 --> 0:28:09.040 the Classic Tetris World Championship, I believe is the biggest 0:28:09.040 --> 0:28:12.240 of them all, but some of the things that they've 0:28:12.240 --> 0:28:14.640 come up with. So Tetris was just basically the same 0:28:14.680 --> 0:28:16.359 for a very long time, and then when the rights 0:28:16.400 --> 0:28:20.840 reverted to paget Nov, they started experimenting with it making 0:28:20.840 --> 0:28:23.160 it a little different some of what you included in there. 0:28:23.359 --> 0:28:26.760 But one of the things that is pretty cool about 0:28:26.880 --> 0:28:30.000 multiplayer play is that when you start doing things like 0:28:30.200 --> 0:28:33.000 if you clear multiple lines at once, it's a Tetris combo, 0:28:33.720 --> 0:28:37.480 you can be rewarded by garbage being thrown to your 0:28:37.520 --> 0:28:40.680 player's screen and that'll be you know, a few lines, 0:28:40.720 --> 0:28:44.280 sometimes a bunch of lines that have like a really 0:28:44.320 --> 0:28:48.040 inconvenient break in the line which makes it really hard 0:28:48.080 --> 0:28:51.160 to clear. And also it just pushed their regular screen 0:28:51.280 --> 0:28:53.120 up that much closer to the top, which is where 0:28:53.160 --> 0:28:55.800 you die if you can die in Tetris. So there's 0:28:55.840 --> 0:28:57.480 like a lot of like kind of interesting things that 0:28:57.480 --> 0:29:00.280 they did with this really basic game that it didn't 0:29:00.320 --> 0:29:02.880 seem like it could be improved upon without really just 0:29:02.920 --> 0:29:05.480 being unnecessary. They seem to have come up with some 0:29:05.520 --> 0:29:06.760 really good ideas for it. 0:29:07.440 --> 0:29:10.800 Yeah, and I think did you mention that a true 0:29:10.880 --> 0:29:15.280 Tetris is when you get what is it, I guess 0:29:15.280 --> 0:29:16.160 four levels at once. 0:29:16.640 --> 0:29:21.200 Yeah, when you throw down that coveted eye piece and 0:29:21.280 --> 0:29:24.720 you're satisfying and yeah, exactly, that is a Tetris. 0:29:25.160 --> 0:29:27.720 Oh boy, that's satisfying. I remember that feeling. I can't 0:29:27.760 --> 0:29:29.720 wait to get that game boy. Should we talk about 0:29:29.720 --> 0:29:31.560 the pieces because you found some kind of cool stuff, 0:29:32.120 --> 0:29:34.640 as did Libya. That I never knew is that these 0:29:34.640 --> 0:29:35.680 pieces have names. 0:29:36.560 --> 0:29:39.280 Yeah, there's a bunch of slang names. There's a Tetris 0:29:39.360 --> 0:29:41.640 wiki that has a bunch of slang names. But somebody 0:29:41.680 --> 0:29:45.360 posted on Reddit a few years ago and the original 0:29:45.480 --> 0:29:49.040 Nintendo manual for it, and it has like the official 0:29:49.120 --> 0:29:51.480 Nintendo name. So we'll give you all of them or 0:29:51.520 --> 0:29:52.280 some of them. 0:29:52.560 --> 0:29:55.800 All right, the J and the shape also refers to 0:29:56.280 --> 0:29:58.000 or the letter refers to sort of the shape of 0:29:58.040 --> 0:30:00.720 the piece, right, yes, okay, So the J is the 0:30:00.720 --> 0:30:03.840 blue one. I never knew that there were colors because 0:30:03.840 --> 0:30:06.760 on Game Boy obviously it was not colored. The initial ones, 0:30:07.560 --> 0:30:10.080 but the blue one can also be called the gamma 0:30:10.280 --> 0:30:13.720 or the the gee or ge or I think the 0:30:13.840 --> 0:30:16.320 is official, the blue Ricky, the blue Ricky. 0:30:16.400 --> 0:30:19.880 Yeah, that's the official one. There's an orange Ricky. That's 0:30:19.920 --> 0:30:22.120 the L piece, which is basically the mirror of the 0:30:22.200 --> 0:30:27.920 J It's also called jed or right elbow orange Ricky. 0:30:28.120 --> 0:30:30.400 You don't really, you can't improve on that. It sounds 0:30:30.440 --> 0:30:34.720 like a disgusting drink. Yeah, you know, like a creamsicle 0:30:35.120 --> 0:30:36.520 cruise ship drink gin Ricky. 0:30:36.880 --> 0:30:40.400 Yeah, oh boy, you might be onto something. 0:30:40.840 --> 0:30:42.360 What is a gin Ricky? 0:30:43.360 --> 0:30:47.440 It's gin lime and I think a little sweetener. Maybe 0:30:47.480 --> 0:30:50.440 it's really simple, and I think club soda. It's a 0:30:50.440 --> 0:30:51.960 pretty old drink, so. 0:30:51.960 --> 0:30:53.640 Kind of like a Gin and Tonic without but with 0:30:53.680 --> 0:30:55.680 soda instead of tonic and a little sweet. 0:30:55.760 --> 0:30:58.360 Yeah, yes, I believe so. I think that's a pretty 0:30:58.360 --> 0:31:01.240 good disc. Man, you're just killing it with the descriptions today. 0:31:03.160 --> 0:31:06.000 How about this the yellow cube. It's a square, Oh 0:31:06.120 --> 0:31:10.480 my god, genius. That's known. You can call it square 0:31:10.600 --> 0:31:12.680 or the zero or the smash Boy. 0:31:13.400 --> 0:31:16.560 Yeah, that's the official name of smash Boy. Can't improve 0:31:16.560 --> 0:31:18.960 on that one either. The S is the green piece. 0:31:19.000 --> 0:31:22.280 It's the right facing zigzag piece. 0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:23.040 Huh. 0:31:23.080 --> 0:31:25.600 Some people call it the right zigzag er right squiggly. 0:31:25.880 --> 0:31:28.680 But the official Nintendo name was the Rhode island Z. 0:31:29.400 --> 0:31:31.280 That sounds like a sex position. 0:31:31.520 --> 0:31:36.320 It does for sure. Wow, that's great. Z. 0:31:36.840 --> 0:31:39.719 There is a Z is the mirror, the red mirror 0:31:40.000 --> 0:31:41.760 of the Z, and that is you can call a 0:31:41.840 --> 0:31:43.680 lightning bolt or the left dog or the left snake 0:31:43.960 --> 0:31:46.680 or the Cleveland Z also, but I said. 0:31:46.440 --> 0:31:56.680 Before, yeah, it's just more disappointing than the road. Oh 0:31:56.720 --> 0:32:00.280 there's the T, the T piece that actually is used 0:32:00.280 --> 0:32:04.040 in the Tetris logo. And the tea is called the 0:32:04.080 --> 0:32:04.560 te wei. 0:32:05.560 --> 0:32:06.000 The tee wee. 0:32:06.200 --> 0:32:06.640 Okay. 0:32:06.760 --> 0:32:10.360 And then that god that I called it the I beam, 0:32:10.880 --> 0:32:16.040 But that's the Cyan four line clearer. That's also the 0:32:16.080 --> 0:32:17.440 one that if you if you put it in the 0:32:17.440 --> 0:32:19.160 wrong place, it can really screw you. 0:32:20.280 --> 0:32:23.240 But that can produce that full Tetris. You call it 0:32:23.240 --> 0:32:26.880 the stick, the line, the slim gym, the long skinny one. 0:32:27.400 --> 0:32:29.360 The hero is the official name for it though. 0:32:29.800 --> 0:32:31.320 Oh okay, that makes sense. 0:32:31.400 --> 0:32:34.920 Mm hmm. That's where that song, that Enrique Iglesias song 0:32:35.000 --> 0:32:38.000 comes from. It's about Tetris. A little known fact. 0:32:38.960 --> 0:32:40.959 So did you mention the championship? 0:32:42.640 --> 0:32:45.920 No, yes, I did. The classic Tetris World Championship. That's 0:32:45.960 --> 0:32:48.920 the big one. And they still use the original n 0:32:49.000 --> 0:32:50.800 Ees version, the one that I played, and you and 0:32:50.880 --> 0:32:52.280 me played, and everybody but you played. 0:32:52.280 --> 0:32:56.120 Apparently that's right, which is a key distinction when it 0:32:56.120 --> 0:32:58.440 comes to competing. I guess because that would have been 0:32:58.920 --> 0:33:01.080 I would have been pretty lost, although there's no way 0:33:01.080 --> 0:33:03.240 I could. I wasn't like competition level. I was just 0:33:03.320 --> 0:33:03.880 okay at it. 0:33:03.960 --> 0:33:08.160 But dude, competition level is inc when it comes to Tetris. 0:33:08.440 --> 0:33:11.360 No, when you watch like real time speeds of what 0:33:11.400 --> 0:33:15.280 these people are doing, it's crazy. Like that's when I'm like, 0:33:15.680 --> 0:33:17.320 I mean, I'm way done by that by the time 0:33:17.360 --> 0:33:18.360 they start going that fast. 0:33:18.600 --> 0:33:22.680 Yeah. Because the Nintendo controller, the original one, the rectangle 0:33:22.760 --> 0:33:25.440 with two buttons like two red buttons, and then a 0:33:25.520 --> 0:33:30.600 dpad the directional pad like it's it works for certain 0:33:30.680 --> 0:33:33.040 kinds of games and certain kind of movements, usually with 0:33:33.120 --> 0:33:35.960 two thumbs. But with Tetris, the big part is to 0:33:36.720 --> 0:33:39.840 move the piece around, and you want to move a 0:33:39.880 --> 0:33:42.160 lot of pieces really fast and move on to the 0:33:42.200 --> 0:33:42.920 next one. 0:33:42.920 --> 0:33:44.880 Which you're sending them. 0:33:44.600 --> 0:33:48.320 Yes, which means that you have to you have to 0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:51.960 press the d pad really fast, and the deep pad 0:33:52.120 --> 0:33:54.440 was not made for being pressed fast. So, like you said, 0:33:54.480 --> 0:33:58.160 people have come up with some amazing techniques for competitive play. 0:33:58.800 --> 0:34:02.080 Yeah, if you're trying to get something going down that's 0:34:02.120 --> 0:34:04.880 coming down very very fast all the way over and 0:34:04.880 --> 0:34:06.520 fitted one on the left side of the screen, it's 0:34:06.560 --> 0:34:08.839 dropped on the right. You got to hit that deep 0:34:08.840 --> 0:34:10.680 aad like go go, go, go go, And you can 0:34:10.680 --> 0:34:13.520 only do that, like you know, there's humans can only 0:34:13.560 --> 0:34:17.840 go so fast until they invented hyper tapping, which is 0:34:17.880 --> 0:34:21.600 about twenty eleven. According to Libya's research, which I found 0:34:21.640 --> 0:34:25.400 that to be pretty much true for early twenty tens. 0:34:25.560 --> 0:34:28.440 It checks out. That means you're like. 0:34:30.440 --> 0:34:33.600 You're sort of vibrating your thumb actually instead of pressing it, 0:34:33.960 --> 0:34:36.680 you're sort of vibrating your you're like flexing your bicep, 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:39.560 so you're not fully releasing and pressing. 0:34:39.600 --> 0:34:42.200 It's just like a hyper press, a hypertap. 0:34:42.080 --> 0:34:44.279 Right, So if you if you're trying that right now, 0:34:44.320 --> 0:34:46.080 and you're like, I don't see how that works. Apparently 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:50.760 a very very few gifted individuals can actually yah hyper tap, 0:34:51.480 --> 0:34:55.279 which means that hyper tapers dominated competition for a good 0:34:55.719 --> 0:34:59.160 ten or so years. About ten years there was a 0:34:59.239 --> 0:35:04.080 kid named Joe Seeley or Saley I'm sorry, Joseph, and 0:35:04.280 --> 0:35:07.480 he was sixteen at the time. Back in twenty eighteen, 0:35:07.840 --> 0:35:10.720 he reached level thirty one. I don't think we said 0:35:11.200 --> 0:35:16.279 just using like normal movements on the Nees controller, no 0:35:16.320 --> 0:35:19.360 one makes it past level twenty nine. Yeah, you just don't. 0:35:19.840 --> 0:35:22.480 This kid made it to level thirty one using hyper tapping. 0:35:22.480 --> 0:35:25.040 In twenty eighteen he made it to level thirty five 0:35:25.120 --> 0:35:27.839 and twenty twenty so at the time, that makes him 0:35:28.239 --> 0:35:31.000 the greatest Tetris player of all time to that point. 0:35:31.200 --> 0:35:31.600 Yeah. 0:35:31.640 --> 0:35:34.719 So then in twenty twenty comes along a guy named 0:35:34.760 --> 0:35:39.000 Christopher Martinez, also known as Cheese capital Z capital Z. 0:35:39.560 --> 0:35:41.840 Yeah, I think the capital Z makes it cheese Z. 0:35:43.120 --> 0:35:45.800 Oh that you're probably right, that's my take on it. No, 0:35:45.920 --> 0:35:46.879 I think you're totally right. 0:35:47.160 --> 0:35:51.840 Okay, well we should say Christopher Martinez aka Cheese aka Cheesez, 0:35:52.400 --> 0:35:53.960 and we'll get it in there somewhere. 0:35:54.880 --> 0:35:59.040 So he introduced a technique called rolling. It's also called 0:35:59.160 --> 0:36:04.319 fly hecking HCCI after a guy named Hector Fly Rodriguez 0:36:04.320 --> 0:36:08.719 who developed this technique on arcade game consoles, not even 0:36:08.760 --> 0:36:12.400 for Tetris, just on arcade game console. Like, you know 0:36:12.480 --> 0:36:15.600 how to press the buttons faster, and I'm gonna do 0:36:15.640 --> 0:36:18.840 a little audio, Josh, if you'll allow, because did you 0:36:18.880 --> 0:36:22.400 see how this was done? Did you see Hector's fingers? 0:36:22.920 --> 0:36:23.360 I did. 0:36:24.080 --> 0:36:27.839 It's amazing. This guy has like they look like break 0:36:27.920 --> 0:36:31.040 dancing fingers. They're just so fluid. But it's if you 0:36:31.080 --> 0:36:33.160 imagine like a stand up arcade game and those big 0:36:33.239 --> 0:36:35.760 round buttons. If you want to press that really fast, 0:36:35.760 --> 0:36:39.040 you can go tap tap tap tap tap tap with 0:36:39.080 --> 0:36:42.520 one finger, or you can do this with your fore fingers. 0:36:44.640 --> 0:36:45.120 Very nice. 0:36:45.320 --> 0:36:48.839 Did that come through you? So that's what he's doing. 0:36:48.880 --> 0:36:52.319 He's using all four fingers to you know, kind of 0:36:52.320 --> 0:36:54.000 like the on board thing when you do that on 0:36:54.080 --> 0:36:56.839 a table. He did that on a button and found like, boy, 0:36:56.920 --> 0:37:01.120 that's even faster than the fastest hyper tapping and cheesy 0:37:01.239 --> 0:37:04.759 geez uh No, I don't know stole that, but he 0:37:04.800 --> 0:37:07.040 got that from him. So what you do in the 0:37:07.080 --> 0:37:09.400 case of a Nintendo, because they have tiny little buttons, 0:37:09.440 --> 0:37:11.839 you can't do that with your poor fingies. No, you 0:37:12.120 --> 0:37:16.280 hold the dpad down just enough for it to engage, 0:37:16.960 --> 0:37:19.279 and then you do that to the back of the thing, 0:37:20.000 --> 0:37:23.800 and it essentially is making your dpad move that fast 0:37:24.160 --> 0:37:28.719 because it's already engaged and you're going really fast. 0:37:28.560 --> 0:37:30.560 Right to the back of the controller. 0:37:30.160 --> 0:37:32.160 Right to the back of the controller, making the back 0:37:32.200 --> 0:37:34.320 of the controller essentially one large button. 0:37:34.480 --> 0:37:36.640 Yeah, and it's just kind of jumping up and hitting 0:37:36.640 --> 0:37:40.799 your thumb. That was another great explanation, Chuck Man. 0:37:41.120 --> 0:37:42.680 That's a tough one because you really got to see 0:37:42.680 --> 0:37:43.360 it in action. 0:37:44.080 --> 0:37:47.920 But you still you did it great hyper tapping. The 0:37:47.960 --> 0:37:51.400 best hyper tappers can hit the button about seven times 0:37:51.400 --> 0:37:56.160 a second, boggling. What about roller with rolling People like 0:37:56.239 --> 0:38:00.840 Cheesy can hit it twenty times a second? What times 0:38:00.920 --> 0:38:04.880 a second? And Cheesy obviously was starting to reach new 0:38:04.920 --> 0:38:06.960 heights as well a least I believe, still one of 0:38:07.000 --> 0:38:09.920 the premier Tetris players in the world, and it started 0:38:09.920 --> 0:38:12.719 to get people like between Joseph Saley and Christopher or 0:38:12.840 --> 0:38:16.839 Cheesy like they were like, okay, people can get past 0:38:16.920 --> 0:38:19.080 level twenty nine. How many levels do you think there 0:38:19.120 --> 0:38:21.800 are in Tetris? And of course there's not like some 0:38:22.480 --> 0:38:25.319 point where the Nintendo developers were like, Okay, that's it. 0:38:25.440 --> 0:38:28.680 You won the game at level of hundred. Just like 0:38:28.920 --> 0:38:31.279 many other games, they just let it go and go 0:38:31.360 --> 0:38:35.120 and go, and then eventually the game just stops functioning. 0:38:35.239 --> 0:38:38.240 There's some zero that doesn't get carried, or some number 0:38:38.239 --> 0:38:41.759 of resets, you reach some crazy bit configuration and the 0:38:41.800 --> 0:38:46.120 thing just crashes. But that's just never been done with 0:38:46.200 --> 0:38:49.680 Tetris because they figured out using bots that it was 0:38:49.760 --> 0:38:53.319 somewhere between level one hundred and fifty five and the 0:38:53.400 --> 0:38:57.760 mid two hundreds. Right twenty nine is where the best 0:38:57.800 --> 0:39:02.760 normal players max out. In the thirties is where Joseph 0:39:02.840 --> 0:39:05.680 Saley was maxing out. This is like up to like 0:39:05.719 --> 0:39:09.040 two hundred and fifty. And there was a kid. 0:39:08.680 --> 0:39:10.560 Who, oh man beat the game. 0:39:11.239 --> 0:39:12.360 A human, not a bot. 0:39:12.480 --> 0:39:13.040 A kid. 0:39:13.080 --> 0:39:15.040 I've seen him with my own eyes on the TV 0:39:15.560 --> 0:39:17.080 and he was not a bot. 0:39:17.600 --> 0:39:19.359 How old was he? What's his name? Give this kid 0:39:19.360 --> 0:39:19.840 his due? 0:39:19.920 --> 0:39:22.000 He was thirteen years old at the time. This was 0:39:22.560 --> 0:39:25.120 December of twenty twenty three, so about a year ago. 0:39:25.560 --> 0:39:29.200 He was in Oklahoma. His name was Willis Gibson. Blue 0:39:29.200 --> 0:39:31.239 Scootie was his player name. 0:39:31.760 --> 0:39:35.359 Yeah, are you going to drop the level? I think 0:39:35.440 --> 0:39:38.759 you should, all right. This guy, after playing for thirty 0:39:38.800 --> 0:39:44.000 eight minutes, hit level one fifty seven and crashed five 0:39:44.080 --> 0:39:45.840 times as much as the best players in the world 0:39:46.320 --> 0:39:50.040 and crashed the system and every that's a system. 0:39:50.520 --> 0:39:51.560 That's how excited you are. 0:39:51.640 --> 0:39:52.520 That's very weird. 0:39:52.600 --> 0:39:56.000 I was, and everybody was going crazy over this kid, 0:39:56.360 --> 0:40:00.799 except for paget no Nov who said, yeah, well, you 0:40:00.840 --> 0:40:02.920 know you beat the forty year old version of game. 0:40:03.600 --> 0:40:09.080 Nice accomplishment, right, Yeah, he said, the Tetris itself, the 0:40:09.280 --> 0:40:11.560 pure like the theoretical version of the game, you could 0:40:11.560 --> 0:40:12.160 never beat it. 0:40:12.480 --> 0:40:15.040 Yeah, I get it, I guess, But come on, man. 0:40:14.960 --> 0:40:17.360 I know I thought that too, Like it's a thirteen 0:40:17.440 --> 0:40:19.279 year old you're talking to buddy. 0:40:19.520 --> 0:40:21.359 All right, So we talked a little we'll finish with 0:40:21.719 --> 0:40:23.960 Tetris on the brain, because we started the show talking 0:40:23.960 --> 0:40:27.759 about Tetris getting into your dreams, getting into your when 0:40:27.800 --> 0:40:30.080 you're packing your car. I still call that tetrising, as 0:40:30.120 --> 0:40:32.320 do a lot of people when you're packing stuff, packing 0:40:32.680 --> 0:40:36.400 moving trucks. It's kind of the vernacular now, but it 0:40:36.440 --> 0:40:40.319 does have very distinct impacts on your brain, right, and 0:40:40.719 --> 0:40:41.600 usually in a good way. 0:40:42.280 --> 0:40:44.560 Yeah, again, we said it was called the Tetris effect. 0:40:44.840 --> 0:40:47.359 There's a guy named Jeffrey Goldsmith who's a writer who 0:40:47.440 --> 0:40:50.600 is known for coining I don't know if he coined 0:40:50.640 --> 0:40:52.640 a term or it just was the first to apply 0:40:52.680 --> 0:40:56.399 it to Tetris, but he called Tetris a pharmatronic, which 0:40:56.480 --> 0:40:59.880 is like an addictive drug but in software form. Yeah, 0:41:00.000 --> 0:41:02.800 I'm peasant and off. Ever, the contrarian said, like, no, 0:41:02.920 --> 0:41:04.719 it's more like an earworm. 0:41:04.520 --> 0:41:07.600 Right, is it with this guy? 0:41:07.800 --> 0:41:09.919 I don't know. He likes to be right, I think, 0:41:11.040 --> 0:41:15.239 but so yeah, So people have taken wide note of 0:41:15.280 --> 0:41:18.680 the fact that Tetris seems to be way more addictive 0:41:18.719 --> 0:41:21.640 on way more people than just about any other game, 0:41:22.120 --> 0:41:24.520 and so people have kind of investigated what the what 0:41:24.560 --> 0:41:26.879 the deal is behind that. I know at least one 0:41:26.920 --> 0:41:32.160 writer chalked it up to what's called the zigger Nick effect, that. 0:41:32.200 --> 0:41:37.200 Is super cool that was coined by a psychologist in Russia. Bluma, well, 0:41:37.760 --> 0:41:39.960 biggerin I'm sorry, Ziggernick. 0:41:41.480 --> 0:41:42.560 What a great first name. 0:41:42.880 --> 0:41:43.800 I think it's Zigernick. 0:41:44.360 --> 0:41:48.480 Okay, well, you know me and eis and European pronunciations. 0:41:48.600 --> 0:41:48.880 I know. 0:41:49.520 --> 0:41:52.920 This is in the nineteen thirties, and she noticed that 0:41:53.480 --> 0:41:56.480 at restaurants, when a server had a large table of like, 0:41:56.560 --> 0:41:59.839 let's say, twelve people, they could remember their orders, which 0:41:59.920 --> 0:42:02.520 was remarkable, but then when it came time to deliver 0:42:02.560 --> 0:42:05.319 food to the table, they had forgotten them. So the 0:42:05.400 --> 0:42:08.880 idea here is that the you know, with the Zygernic effect, 0:42:08.960 --> 0:42:11.840 is that the brain really really wants to store information 0:42:11.960 --> 0:42:15.240 about a task that isn't complete yet, right like taking 0:42:15.239 --> 0:42:17.680 an order for twelve or in the case of Tetris, 0:42:17.719 --> 0:42:22.520 they're exploiting it by like constantly creating a little unfinished 0:42:22.600 --> 0:42:25.680 mission to create a line of blocks that you get 0:42:25.719 --> 0:42:28.400 fulfilled and then they drop another one. So it's just 0:42:28.440 --> 0:42:33.479 triggering this constant feeling of satisfaction because you're completing these 0:42:33.520 --> 0:42:36.239 tasks by completing these lines over and over and. 0:42:36.200 --> 0:42:38.960 Over, and then after you complete one, you have another 0:42:39.000 --> 0:42:43.040 task to do, so your brain is activated again, like 0:42:43.080 --> 0:42:45.640 you said, moment by moment, over and over and over again. 0:42:45.840 --> 0:42:46.399 Pretty cool. 0:42:46.600 --> 0:42:49.680 It is super cool. There is another guy named Richard 0:42:49.760 --> 0:42:54.040 Higher or I'm sure in your pronunciation, Heyer, who in 0:42:54.120 --> 0:42:57.839 nineteen ninety one back in yeah, in ninety one, at 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:03.239 uc Irvine, he actually the brains of Tetris players and 0:43:03.280 --> 0:43:07.000 he found that the brain is much more engaged when 0:43:07.120 --> 0:43:10.040 you're new to Tetris, which is probably a reason why 0:43:10.120 --> 0:43:12.360 it became such a popular game. It just sucks in 0:43:12.480 --> 0:43:16.640 new players and that you start using way more energy 0:43:16.640 --> 0:43:18.560 in your brain when you start playing Tetris and then 0:43:18.600 --> 0:43:21.680 it kind of goes down over time as you get better, 0:43:21.880 --> 0:43:24.720 and that apparently is when most people stop playing tetris 0:43:24.719 --> 0:43:26.600 after a while, when they get really good at it, 0:43:26.680 --> 0:43:29.120 because the brain's no longer being challenged like it was 0:43:29.160 --> 0:43:31.880 originally thanks to the Zygernick effect. 0:43:32.400 --> 0:43:32.600 Yeah. 0:43:32.680 --> 0:43:36.040 Yeah, there have been other studies, of course. There was 0:43:36.080 --> 0:43:39.840 one that found that tetris may reduce the strength of cravings. 0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:43.800 This is in twenty fifteen by the British and Australian psychologists. 0:43:45.760 --> 0:43:49.800 Oh the British Indus is that a band? 0:43:50.440 --> 0:43:53.839 I thought that was the name of me. Yeah, it's 0:43:53.880 --> 0:43:56.200 like a British seapower. One of my favorite bits, right. 0:43:57.160 --> 0:44:00.320 Yeah, so just by psychologists in Britain and all Tralia, 0:44:00.360 --> 0:44:04.359 I think basically where they used iPods to check in 0:44:04.440 --> 0:44:07.520 with undergraduates seven times a day to see if they 0:44:07.520 --> 0:44:10.000 are craving drugs, food, sex and other things. 0:44:10.160 --> 0:44:12.720 They just said, yeah, that you might create. 0:44:13.040 --> 0:44:16.960 Yeah, They're like, we're undergrads, duh h and playing Tetris 0:44:17.000 --> 0:44:22.279 for three minutes lessen the cravings. I am curious if 0:44:22.280 --> 0:44:25.560 that's just because they're preoccupied with it. They argued that 0:44:25.640 --> 0:44:29.480 it was effective because it involved because cravings involve working 0:44:29.520 --> 0:44:32.520 memory and visualizing the object of desire. 0:44:32.640 --> 0:44:33.480 So maybe that is it. 0:44:33.520 --> 0:44:36.719 You're occupied with another cognitive task so much that you're 0:44:36.760 --> 0:44:39.200 not thinking about the heroin you want to do, and 0:44:39.280 --> 0:44:40.560 you're destroyer. 0:44:40.400 --> 0:44:42.200 Right, And one of the great things about cravings is 0:44:42.200 --> 0:44:44.040 if you can write it out or distract yourself or 0:44:44.040 --> 0:44:46.320 something like that, when you come back from that task, 0:44:46.400 --> 0:44:50.319 your brain very rarely goes right back to the craving. Yeah, 0:44:50.360 --> 0:44:53.360 that's amazing. They also figured out, for probably the exact 0:44:53.480 --> 0:44:59.040 same reasons or similar reasons, they believe that it can 0:44:59.120 --> 0:45:02.560 prevent pts from forming, which is a little weird. It's like, 0:45:02.960 --> 0:45:05.960 you just had a traumatic experience. Quick play tetris, right, 0:45:06.160 --> 0:45:11.879 More likely it will help you get treat PTSD. Very 0:45:11.880 --> 0:45:14.360 similar to EMDR where you watch like a pen or 0:45:14.360 --> 0:45:16.680 a ball on a screen or something like that. This 0:45:16.719 --> 0:45:21.080 is playing tetris while you're recounting your traumatic experience. Your 0:45:21.239 --> 0:45:27.200 memory recatalogs into something far less traumatic thanks to your 0:45:27.239 --> 0:45:30.520 working memory being occupied while you're doing this other thing too. 0:45:30.640 --> 0:45:33.640 It's we should do an episode on em d R someday. 0:45:33.680 --> 0:45:35.759 It's just insane how effective it can be. 0:45:36.719 --> 0:45:39.640 Yeah, for sure, I'd be a way into that. They 0:45:39.680 --> 0:45:43.920 also found that potentially your brain might physically change, and 0:45:43.960 --> 0:45:46.319 then if you play Tetris enough, you might have a 0:45:46.360 --> 0:45:51.600 thicker cerebral cortices and more flexible cortical corticoll matter. So 0:45:51.760 --> 0:45:55.480 maybe your cognitive functioning and memory could improve. Although there 0:45:55.480 --> 0:45:57.960 have been other studies Weirdly, this is very strange to 0:45:58.000 --> 0:46:01.600 me that found that playing Tetris does not improve things 0:46:01.719 --> 0:46:05.520 like a spatial cognition, and you would think that's the 0:46:05.600 --> 0:46:06.600 one thing it would help with. 0:46:06.960 --> 0:46:10.960 Yeah, I think it still helps with visio spatial arrangement, 0:46:11.000 --> 0:46:13.720 like you said, packing a car. Oh okay, but it doesn't. 0:46:14.040 --> 0:46:16.239 You can't see something and be like, how what's right 0:46:16.280 --> 0:46:18.000 side up? For this shape that I'm showing you a 0:46:18.040 --> 0:46:20.239 picture of. You can't just immediately say like, oh, it 0:46:20.280 --> 0:46:22.040 should be to the left or something like that, like 0:46:23.160 --> 0:46:26.279 just that specific thing. I think it still does help, 0:46:26.320 --> 0:46:29.439 although I didn't see any studies. It's just how could 0:46:29.480 --> 0:46:30.200 it not? You know? 0:46:30.960 --> 0:46:32.040 I agree? 0:46:32.719 --> 0:46:33.160 Studies? 0:46:33.160 --> 0:46:35.719 Be damned you got anything else on tetris? 0:46:36.440 --> 0:46:38.439 I have nothing else. I can't wait for that game boy. 0:46:38.480 --> 0:46:41.920 I'll report back with pictures at Chuck the podcast or Instagram. 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:44.719 Oh nice, I gotta put this Kutsu pictures up. Hadn't 0:46:44.719 --> 0:46:45.000 done it? 0:46:45.600 --> 0:46:49.680 Oh yeah, you need to, man, Yeah, yeah, you got to. 0:46:49.800 --> 0:46:52.440 You put it on the podcast. You got to deliver, Chuck. 0:46:52.800 --> 0:46:54.880 I have to deliver, Josh. 0:46:54.880 --> 0:46:57.040 Well, since Chuck says he has to deliver, and that 0:46:57.160 --> 0:47:00.480 was an agreement to me saying he has to deliver, obviously, 0:47:00.880 --> 0:47:02.560 we've unlocked listener mail. 0:47:05.400 --> 0:47:08.359 This is a timely one because our bet date has 0:47:08.440 --> 0:47:10.640 passed and we got a few of these from people. 0:47:10.680 --> 0:47:14.120 Hey guys, I'm from Brazil and I started listening to 0:47:14.600 --> 0:47:17.040 your show during the pandemic. But I love those older 0:47:17.080 --> 0:47:20.239 episodes and I was recently listening to one from November 0:47:20.280 --> 0:47:24.719 twenty nineteen, Augmented Reality Coming Soon. At the beginning of 0:47:24.719 --> 0:47:28.120 the episode, Josh and Clark, we get that a lot. 0:47:29.280 --> 0:47:29.800 That's okay. 0:47:29.960 --> 0:47:33.480 I'm sure my tombstone's a Charles w Chuck Clark Bryant. 0:47:35.160 --> 0:47:36.439 I will see to it that it does. 0:47:36.480 --> 0:47:39.960 If I outlook you, well, I'm gonna be between you 0:47:40.000 --> 0:47:42.360 and you me so you can constantly just be talking over. 0:47:42.280 --> 0:47:45.319 Me, Okay, kid, that's what we should do. 0:47:45.320 --> 0:47:47.560 It should do you me, me, you Emily. 0:47:47.760 --> 0:47:50.120 Okay, and then we're not going to talk about pets 0:47:50.160 --> 0:47:51.319 or children, because that's too sad. 0:47:51.520 --> 0:47:53.680 What if we just did like a mass burial together 0:47:53.719 --> 0:47:54.560 and save some money? 0:47:55.200 --> 0:47:57.400 Oh yeah, just or skybarell plow us all up in 0:47:57.440 --> 0:47:59.520 the mountain and then let the crozyatus or whatever vultures. 0:47:59.719 --> 0:48:02.319 Yeah, but I'm sure shipping our cadavers would be kind 0:48:02.320 --> 0:48:03.000 of expensive. 0:48:03.520 --> 0:48:07.080 That's true. All right, Well, we'll work this out anyway. 0:48:07.160 --> 0:48:09.640 Josh and Clark made a bet that in five years, 0:48:09.760 --> 0:48:14.000 augmented reality glasses would be all the rage, because Josh 0:48:14.120 --> 0:48:18.240 said that he thought they would be commonplace by Halloween 0:48:18.280 --> 0:48:19.040 twenty twenty four. 0:48:19.360 --> 0:48:20.960 Here we are, Josh, what do you. 0:48:20.880 --> 0:48:25.040 Think that doesn't sound like something I'd say in retrospect? 0:48:25.600 --> 0:48:29.040 Well, Elisa says, I think Chuck won this one. It 0:48:29.120 --> 0:48:34.480 is funny though. Recently, as someone I know saw me 0:48:35.320 --> 0:48:36.840 had my camera because it was an event. I was 0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:39.440 taking pictures and I said, can I take your picture? 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:41.239 And he said sure, and I took his picture. Then 0:48:41.280 --> 0:48:43.520 he went, now can I take yours? And he touched 0:48:43.520 --> 0:48:45.920 his glasses and looked at me and walked away. And 0:48:45.920 --> 0:48:49.920 I was like, that dude's wearing photography glasses. 0:48:51.840 --> 0:48:52.839 No, I knew the guy. 0:48:52.960 --> 0:48:56.040 Those meta ray bands that you can like whatever, interact 0:48:56.080 --> 0:48:59.759 online through your glasses basically what there's Yeah, that's what 0:48:59.760 --> 0:49:00.920 you would be commonplace. 0:49:00.960 --> 0:49:03.160 I think you didn't chase after him and say like, hey, 0:49:03.200 --> 0:49:04.320 I never said yes. 0:49:05.719 --> 0:49:08.959 No I didn't. Well, I just thought i'd expose it. Here. 0:49:09.560 --> 0:49:11.920 There you go. Now we know you want to say 0:49:11.960 --> 0:49:15.320 his name in street address, I do not. All right, Well, 0:49:15.640 --> 0:49:19.279 since Chuck told an anecdote about an anonymous friend using 0:49:19.280 --> 0:49:23.640 Google glasses and I lost a bet, then we have 0:49:23.719 --> 0:49:26.000 to sign off by thanking whoever wrote this email? Who 0:49:26.120 --> 0:49:26.600 was it again? 0:49:27.560 --> 0:49:28.680 Alisa from Brazil. 0:49:29.360 --> 0:49:32.120 Oh that's right, Thanks a lot, Alisa from Brazil. We 0:49:32.200 --> 0:49:34.880 appreciate it big time. Thank you for pointing out that 0:49:34.960 --> 0:49:37.800 I lost to Betsy Chuck. Hopefully there was no money 0:49:37.840 --> 0:49:38.520 on it, was there? 0:49:38.560 --> 0:49:38.920 Do you know? 0:49:40.040 --> 0:49:41.720 No money as far as I'm concerned. 0:49:41.800 --> 0:49:43.600 And if you want to be like Alsa from Brazil, 0:49:43.640 --> 0:49:46.360 you can email us as well at stuff podcast at 0:49:46.400 --> 0:49:50.520 iHeartRadio dot com. 0:49:50.680 --> 0:49:53.560 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For 0:49:53.640 --> 0:49:57.839 more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:49:57.920 --> 0:50:04.280 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.