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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the

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Speaker 1: show that brings you the secret histories and little alone

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Speaker 1: details behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows.

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Speaker 2: And more.

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Speaker 1: And today we are taking an adventure into the and

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Speaker 1: more category. We are your boardwalk barons of boredom, your

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Speaker 1: park place princes of pointless facts, your utilities of useless knowledge,

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Speaker 1: your luxury tax of trivia, your dice rollers of digressions,

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Speaker 1: your bankrupt buddies of banter.

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Speaker 2: My name is Jordan runtalg.

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Speaker 3: You shirk it a little too close with the bankrupt thing, man,

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Speaker 3: So just remember that it's America, and I'm a writer,

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Speaker 3: so that's you dial that one back. But I'm Alex Heigel.

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Speaker 1: And today we are talking about one of the most

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Speaker 1: popular and also kind of most loath board games Street

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Speaker 1: that's right. Today we're diving into that jubilant celebration of

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Speaker 1: capitalism that has ruined holidays all over the world.

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Speaker 2: Monopoly. Monopoly. It's monopoly.

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Speaker 3: It's a fun, fun family activity that you you yeah, yay,

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Speaker 3: Monopoly monomena. It's phenomenas. Uh yeah, what do you gotta

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Speaker 3: say about? What do you gotta say about this, you

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Speaker 3: son of a bitch.

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Speaker 1: This classic toy turns ninety years old in the spring,

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Speaker 1: and it has been enjoyed slash tolerated by upwards of

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Speaker 1: more than a billion people, and phrases like Monopoly money,

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Speaker 1: get a jail free card, and do not pass, go,

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Speaker 1: do not collect two hundred dollars have passed into popular lexicon.

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Speaker 1: Despite its global appeal, it's that most American of games.

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Speaker 1: The object, of course, is to bankrupt all of your

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Speaker 1: fellow players until you are king of the mountain. Much

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Speaker 1: like life, it changes on the role of a die.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes you're on top and sometimes you're on the bottom.

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Speaker 1: And also like life, it occasionally brings out the worst

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Speaker 1: than people. But it also teaches valuable skills like money management,

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Speaker 1: language skills, negotiation, and strategic thinking. And it's also a

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Speaker 1: platform for discussing free market concepts like supply and demand

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Speaker 1: and the consequences of monopolistic practices. For many kids, this

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Speaker 1: game is the first time they ever handled paper money.

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Speaker 2: That's wild. I know, how do you feel about all this?

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Speaker 3: You know, pretty bog standard Monopoly life For me, just

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Speaker 3: did it like a couple of times and then stopped.

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Speaker 3: I mean when I was a kid, I was about

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Speaker 3: and no, I'll just say when I still am, I'm

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Speaker 3: a pretty sore loser. Yeah, so you know, we didn't

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Speaker 3: have any like blowouts with it. But also it was

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Speaker 3: so long and forever taking. I think that's what led

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Speaker 3: us to abandon it more than me being strappy about it.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, so long, so forever taking, and you know.

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Speaker 2: Really more of a clue family. Oh wow, okay, there

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Speaker 2: was a dead body. Yeah, Clue was a big one.

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Speaker 3: Charades scategories that all kind of like took over as

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Speaker 3: we became adults because it was just easier at Trivia

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Speaker 3: pursuit was actually a huge We would go ham on

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Speaker 3: some trivia pursuit. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's

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Speaker 3: one side of my family that's more inclined to view

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Speaker 3: capitalism positively than the other, So.

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Speaker 2: I'll just leave that there.

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Speaker 1: My family was more of a family that played board

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Speaker 1: games that took forever to set up.

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Speaker 2: Like in the mouse Trap vein there was.

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Speaker 3: Love mouse Trap, How could you Yacht?

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Speaker 2: Come on? Do you remember? Do you remember thirteen Dead

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Speaker 2: End Drive?

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Speaker 1: It was it almost looks like the Munster's House whether

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Speaker 1: all these It was kind of like a clue or

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Speaker 1: three D. There was like a chandelier that would fall

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Speaker 1: on people. There was Yeah, there was like a haunted

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Speaker 1: house kind of thing that you maneuvered through or walk

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Speaker 1: through and stuff happened to you. There was Forbidden Bridge,

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Speaker 1: which was almost like the legend of the Hidden Temple Olmec.

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Speaker 1: It was this like big Aztec face with a bridge

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Speaker 1: that you would walk across the bridge and you'd press

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Speaker 1: a button in the bridge would shake and if he

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Speaker 1: fell off, he lost. And then we also played a

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Speaker 1: game called pig pong. This was hours of fun. Do

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Speaker 1: you ever heard of pig pong?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 3: I cannot say that I have. Does it involve hitting pigs?

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Speaker 1: It does what it says on the tin. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like basically like ping pong. It's got a net and

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Speaker 1: then you have these rubber pigs that shoot air through

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Speaker 1: the nose when you squeeze them, and have a little

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Speaker 1: like shuttlecock made out of some kind of really thin,

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Speaker 1: almost like tissue substance, and you just use these pigs

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Speaker 1: to spray air to knock the shuttle cock.

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Speaker 2: Over the Uh. It's really fine. Yeah, it's really fun.

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Speaker 2: It sounds fine.

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Speaker 3: We never had like a ping pong. We never had

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Speaker 3: like a table tennis situation.

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Speaker 2: But oh small, it was very small. Yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 2: kind of it. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we're kind of over that generation

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Speaker 3: that like video games quickly began usurping board games.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: And my dad.

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Speaker 3: Part of the reason I have such a competitive thing

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Speaker 3: around games is that my dad was a button masher.

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Speaker 3: That that's like sort of a derisive term for people

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Speaker 3: who don't put in any effort or strategy into playing

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Speaker 3: video games and just kind of literally what it sounds like,

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Speaker 3: what it sounds like on the tin, smash things randomly.

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Speaker 3: And I was like the person who like would engage

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Speaker 3: practice mode and like learn all the move sets and

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Speaker 3: then like set out with a strategy for each character.

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Speaker 3: And so whenever he beat me by just doing that,

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Speaker 3: I would I would like turn the game off.

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Speaker 2: I would just it would make me so mad. What

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Speaker 2: were your games?

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Speaker 3: Mostly fighting? If we were cooperative, like we would play

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Speaker 3: Street Fighter together. We played a little tech and together,

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Speaker 3: but then I you know, otherwise it was like hack.

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Speaker 2: And Slash and RPGs.

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Speaker 3: Oh, we played a play Twisted Metal. He was a

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Speaker 3: real fair I loved I loved swissed Medal. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 3: but yeah soundtrack, Yeah yeah, And I don't know that

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Speaker 3: was kind of it.

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Speaker 2: I think I think if I'm inclined.

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Speaker 3: To do like group games now, it will be like

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Speaker 3: scategories or charades or something that, you know, something that

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Speaker 3: I will dominate in.

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Speaker 2: Obviously. Have you ever played Boulder Dash? You would love

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Speaker 2: see I.

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Speaker 3: Get all these confused because they're made up words.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's the idea, is that there's like some obscure

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Speaker 1: word that they like announced at the beginning of every round,

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Speaker 1: and everybody writes down a fake definition of it, and

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Speaker 1: you vuilte on what you think the real one was.

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Speaker 1: And you would be so good at that. You're you're

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Speaker 1: a man of letters, your words, your words.

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Speaker 3: Man, And see where it's gotten me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Man, Well what drew you to this in your What

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Speaker 3: continues to draw you to the story of monopoly?

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Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what sparked it, and you will

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Speaker 1: never in a million years guess what?

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Speaker 2: Maybe want to tackle this? That sounds right.

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Speaker 1: I saw the movie Heretic with Hugh Grant, that psychological

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Speaker 1: horror movie.

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Speaker 3: So out of character to see any psychological horror movie.

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Speaker 1: Well, my friend from high school is an actress and

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Speaker 1: a writer, and she was in lot of horror movies

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Speaker 1: and she was literally on that VH one reality show

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Speaker 1: called Screen Queens, and she wanted to like educate me

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Speaker 1: in the realm of scary movies. So she got me

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Speaker 1: over a couple of weeks ago and she was like,

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Speaker 1: I really think you would like this movie. It's like

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Speaker 1: a I know you're not really super in the horror movies,

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Speaker 1: but it's like a smart, psychological horror movie.

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Speaker 2: And it was really good.

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Speaker 1: And you Grant had this whole bit about the surprising

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Speaker 1: origins of Monopoly, the dramatic some would say steeped in

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Speaker 1: betrayal origins of Monopoly.

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Speaker 2: So that really put it in my head.

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Speaker 1: But you know, I mean, like so many elements of

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Speaker 1: twentieth century Americana, I do have a begrudging affection for

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Speaker 1: Monopoly in the way that I do most aspects of the.

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Speaker 2: Rapidly vanishing monoculture.

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Speaker 1: And I'm sure, like you, I recall many happy hours

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Speaker 1: attempting to cheat at this game and a desperate bid

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Speaker 1: to make it end. I mean, was it like an

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Speaker 1: open secret that this game sucked before the Dane Cook bit?

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Speaker 2: Was Dan Cook really the thing?

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Speaker 1: That like the Hannibal Burist Cosby thing was Oh, Dane Cook,

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Speaker 1: Dank Cook, the guy made it okay to hate on Monopoly.

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Speaker 2: No, I think it is.

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Speaker 3: You know, I think it's totally it that I didn't

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Speaker 3: put together until I read this from you. I think

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Speaker 3: it's got to be like a children of the Depression

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Speaker 3: situation or like children of the Children of the Depression situation,

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Speaker 3: because like I, you know, I cannot imagine that my

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Speaker 3: like as my dad or my mom were like growing up,

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Speaker 3: there would have been any reason for them to have

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Speaker 3: any interest in this game if it had not been

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Speaker 3: probably just passed at something their parents just passed down.

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Speaker 2: You know, there were chatty Kathy dolls to play with.

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Speaker 3: I mean in one Boomers, you know, for they would

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Speaker 3: they would have been born like what ten fifteen years

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Speaker 3: after this thing like hit Critical Masks, so it's still

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Speaker 3: pretty much in the It would have been pretty much

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Speaker 3: in the wheelhouse.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: Do we think the kids today actually sit through a

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Speaker 1: game of Monopoly?

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Speaker 3: No? I mean, I don't know, man. I feel like

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Speaker 3: a lot of that analog stuff has actually come back

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Speaker 3: around to us and maybe Zoomers just because we're so

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Speaker 3: tired of being poisoned and lied to by every screen.

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Speaker 3: But somehow I think it's going to be like, you know,

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Speaker 3: I mean anecdotally, it's just like poker games and like

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Speaker 3: and puzzles and and you know, less involved things than

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Speaker 3: a game of Monopoly, because I think, I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I don't know. I think everyone grew up with the

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Speaker 3: understanding that this is going to take forever. Enemies will

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Speaker 3: become friends, friends will become enemies, and we'll all be

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Speaker 3: begging for death by the time this is over, much

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Speaker 3: like living in America in twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 2: Should I learn to play backgammon? Folks?

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Speaker 3: I want to learn dominoes? You know, it seems like

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Speaker 3: dominoes is good.

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Speaker 2: I want to learn. Hmmm.

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Speaker 3: Really, just spring right to her, really, just accelerate right

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Speaker 3: into your senior citizen re All right.

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Speaker 1: Well, folks, strap in for a surprisingly drama filled episode

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Speaker 1: as we talk about the wholesale theft at the heart

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Speaker 1: of the creation of this game, the murders it sparked,

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Speaker 1: the gigantic case of corporate fraud it inspired, and the

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Speaker 1: prisoners it sprung from German prisoner of war camps.

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Speaker 3: The only good thing it ever did in its life

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Speaker 3: here's everything you didn't know about monopoly.

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Speaker 1: I call this section Pasco young Man, the orgins.

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Speaker 2: That's so dumb. That works. That works. You gotta keep that.

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Speaker 1: According to state sponsored Monopoly lore, the game was invented

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Speaker 1: by Charles Darrow, an out of work plumber from Philadelphia,

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Speaker 1: who crafted it to bring some badly needed joy to

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Speaker 1: his friends and neighbors in the dark days of the

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Speaker 1: Great Depression. When he pitched the game the Parker Brothers

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Speaker 1: in the early thirties, the toy conglomerate supposedly rejected the

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Speaker 1: soon to be iconic game for having quote fifty two

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Speaker 1: fundamental errors, but nevertheless, he persisted, and Darrow was rewarded

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Speaker 1: for his tenacity by becoming a very wealthy man when

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Speaker 1: the game became an immediate hit upon its release in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five.

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Speaker 3: I actually tried to look up all of the all

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Speaker 3: of the Yeah, no, you can't find them. No, they're

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Speaker 3: not They don't want you to know, they don't want

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Speaker 3: you to notice the patterns. Y. Yeah, it's weird, I

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Speaker 3: you know, And some of the ones that I worry

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Speaker 3: able to find were just so granular.

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Speaker 2: Yeah that I was like, what does this how is

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Speaker 2: this how is this the basis for rejection?

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Speaker 3: But you know, I'm not a I've never been. I've

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Speaker 3: never been an inside part.

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Speaker 2: Of big game. I don't I don't know games.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for decades, this is wild. The story of Darrow's

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Speaker 1: rags to riches ingenuity was literally included in the Parker

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Speaker 1: Brothers rule book that accompanied every game. Allow us to quote,

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Speaker 1: I need to read this in like an old time

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Speaker 1: radio voice.

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Speaker 2: Like nineteen thirty four, B.

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Speaker 1: Darrow, Germantown, Pennsylvania, presented a game called Monopoly to the

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Speaker 1: executives of Parker Brothers. Mister Darrow, like many other Americans,

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Speaker 1: was unemployed at the time and played this game to

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Speaker 1: amuse himself and pass the time. It's the game's exciting

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Speaker 1: promise of fame and fortune. The prop to Darrow to

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Speaker 1: initially produce this game on his own.

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Speaker 2: That was no. I think he kind of nailed it.

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Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Uh.

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Speaker 1: The truth of this is a little more complicated in reality.

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Speaker 1: Charles Darrow effectively ball roads. Can you hear the air quotes?

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Speaker 1: That's a polite euphemism for legal reasons. The idea for

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Speaker 1: Monopolis his family is like old, right, they're old and rich,

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Speaker 1: so so.

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Speaker 3: It's like fifty to fifty they squeak, we either squeak

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Speaker 3: under the radar or or they came us. All right, well,

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Speaker 3: I just want to say this guy and he's dead

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Speaker 3: and in hell.

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Speaker 1: Yes, he borrowed the idea for monopoly from a pre

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Speaker 1: existing toy called the Landlord's Game, which was invented many

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Speaker 1: years before I think thirty years before his version by

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Speaker 1: a woman called Elizabeth McGhee.

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Speaker 2: Poor Lizzy.

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Speaker 1: I know she did not take kindly to this and

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Speaker 1: would take legal action against Darrow, which rules, but ultimately

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Speaker 1: she'd be denied recognition for her contribution to pop culture

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Speaker 1: for decades. This has all made so much more poignant

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Speaker 1: slash ironic, slash frustrating by the fact that McGee developed

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Speaker 1: her game as a cautionary tale against capitalism it is,

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Speaker 1: and then in a perfect twist, it was taken by

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Speaker 1: a man for financial gain and the meaning was completely

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Speaker 1: inverted into a full throated celebration of capitalism.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, it's just also sort of like it's really

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Speaker 3: everything that's gross about America is like summed up in

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Speaker 3: this story. It's like, yeah, theft, corporate whitewashing of that theft,

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Speaker 3: and then just how much men hated women at the time,

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Speaker 3: and it was like legally societally totally cool for them

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Speaker 3: to do so, Like I mean, ah god, yeah, it's

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Speaker 3: disgusting anyway. So Lizzie McGhee, it's a fascinating woman. She

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Speaker 3: was very far ahead of her time. And look where

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Speaker 3: that got her. The lesson is fall in line. The

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Speaker 3: bottom line of this country is that deviation from the

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Speaker 3: norm will be punished unless it is exploitable for profit.

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Speaker 3: She bought her own home and property as an unmarried woman,

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Speaker 3: which already was probably caused her being hanged as a

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Speaker 3: witch in the late eighteen hundreds if she were in

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Speaker 3: you know, ironically, if she were in Salem, where Parker

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Speaker 3: Brothers is headquartered anyway. So yeah, she worked as a

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Speaker 3: scenographer and typist at Washington, d c. In the dead

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Speaker 3: letter Office of the Post Office, which is many of

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Speaker 3: you know, is the nation's repository for undeliverable male What

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Speaker 3: is the state of the dead letter office in two

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Speaker 3: twenty five?

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Speaker 2: Man?

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Speaker 3: How about whither the dead whether the dead letter office?

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Speaker 2: Anyway.

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Speaker 3: Outside of her day job, she performed in plays and

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Speaker 3: penned poetry and short stories, and in eighteen ninety three,

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Speaker 3: she secured a patent for an inventive device that could

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Speaker 3: feed various sizes of paper through typewriter, enabling more words

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Speaker 3: to fit on a single page. So she had a

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Speaker 3: lot going on as an unmarried single, unmarriage, a name,

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Speaker 3: as a name, as just a magnificent flappam. She sat

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Speaker 3: on flagpoles and got passed earlier. This was nineties. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: I know, so she narrowly avoided being beat to death

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Speaker 3: in the street for holding a patent. An outspoken advocate

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Speaker 3: for women's rights, McGee did not marry until her mid

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Speaker 3: forties and used her writing to speak out on behalf

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Speaker 3: of working women and against sexism and societal expectations for years.

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Speaker 3: Her most notable claim to fame was an innovative piece

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Speaker 3: of political performance art, a mock newspaper ad in which

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Speaker 3: she offered herself for sale as a young woman American slave.

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Speaker 2: That's the quote.

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Speaker 3: The stunt was both a protest against the wage gap

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Speaker 3: that left women earning far less than men and a

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Speaker 3: satire of the transactional nature of many traditional marriages, and

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Speaker 3: pretty freaking bold for doing that. Not that far from the.

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Speaker 1: Civil War, Yeah, I was like when you could not

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Speaker 1: vote hey got their asses.

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Speaker 3: Got their asses, and McGee was intrigued by the philosophy

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Speaker 3: of the then influential economist Henry George. Henry George had written

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Speaker 3: a book in eighteen seventy nine called Progress and Poverty,

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Speaker 3: which detailed his belief that land and natural resources belonged

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Speaker 3: to all members of society, and therefore wealthy landowners should

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Speaker 3: have to pay higher taxes. His basic argument was that

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Speaker 3: land was the only thing that could be taxed because

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Speaker 3: land couldn't actually belong to anyone. Many progressive thinkers and

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Speaker 3: activists of the era integrated Georgist proposals for single tax

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Speaker 3: plans into their political platforms and stump speeches, and to

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Speaker 3: help spread this premise, McGee developed The Landlord's Game in

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Speaker 3: nineteen oh three as both a teaching tool and a

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Speaker 3: political statement to teach people about quote the evils of

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Speaker 3: accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others.

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Speaker 2: Where's the wind up?

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Speaker 3: And of course, as players of monopoly are aware, the

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Speaker 3: game is actually a demonstration of that. The more money

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00:17:08,920 --> 00:17:12,200
Speaker 3: you win as one player, the more the others go bankrupt.

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Speaker 3: There's the pitch, and this was her intent. She wanted

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Speaker 3: to illustrate the economic dangers and fundamental unfairness of monopolies.

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Speaker 3: She wants told a reporter, and just a further demonstration

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Speaker 3: of what a brassy old broad McGee was. In a

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Speaker 3: short time, I hope a very short time, men and

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Speaker 3: women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and

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Speaker 3: Rockefeller maybe have more than they know what to do with. Boy,

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Speaker 3: she was so wrong to hope that, oh twenty years ago. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, this is actually kind of interesting.

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Speaker 2: I have this.

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Speaker 3: You can forget this, but I do want to kind

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Speaker 3: of have your thoughts on it. I think one of

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Speaker 3: the worst problems that we are facing right now is

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Speaker 3: that this generation's crop of wealthy have no concept of

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Speaker 3: nobless obli which was something that I think was completely

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Speaker 3: imported in from Victorian moral principles, and that was the

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Speaker 3: only reason that we got people like Carnegie, Alfred Nobel,

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Speaker 3: and Rockefeller to give large swaths of their money back.

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Speaker 3: And I mean, you know, I think because I work

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Speaker 3: at a conservatory, I see this most readily in classical music,

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Speaker 3: because part of the reason that classical music was sustained

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Speaker 3: as such an institution in America was because philanthropists funded orchestras,

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Speaker 3: and you know, they paid for these educational programs like

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Speaker 3: Lenny explaining the Symphony to kids on NBC, and that continued,

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Speaker 3: and now those people are.

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Speaker 2: Dying and their errors are not.

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Speaker 3: Similarly motivated towards philanthropy, and nor are you know, your

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Speaker 3: current class of billionaire So I don't know you think

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Speaker 3: there's anything to that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I mean that's a really interesting point. It's

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Speaker 2: a really terrifying point.

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Speaker 1: With the our current crop billionaires not giving back and

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Speaker 1: the arts program is being cut left, right and center.

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Speaker 2: I don't know what will happen.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, we'll be dead. We'll be dead

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Speaker 3: and it doesn't matter to these people because it did

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Speaker 3: hell people. Yeah, because people who work in tech do

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Speaker 3: not have souls, and everything.

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Speaker 2: Is just they won't be dead. That's the that's the

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Speaker 2: sad part. Well, you know, I mean it's just you think.

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Speaker 3: About like the last ten or fifteen years of tech innovation.

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Speaker 3: The last one that really broke the mold was the iPhone,

380
00:19:34,920 --> 00:19:37,920
Speaker 3: and since then, every big app that has struck big

381
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:41,280
Speaker 3: has just been a variation on another idea or a

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00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:46,560
Speaker 3: pointless insertion of said tech people as a middleman into

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00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:49,960
Speaker 3: various industries that did not need another middleman, you know,

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Speaker 3: uber let, Ubert, Yeah, disrupting the tech they call it

385
00:19:53,680 --> 00:19:57,119
Speaker 3: disrupting though, you know Taxis and seamless, grub Hub, all

386
00:19:57,160 --> 00:20:00,159
Speaker 3: those places. Disrupting the restaurant industry, like you couldn't just

387
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:06,560
Speaker 3: order pizza from a restaurant before music, Spotify, Pandora. Oh,

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00:20:06,640 --> 00:20:08,679
Speaker 3: you know, we just it's really too much. We'll just

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00:20:08,720 --> 00:20:12,960
Speaker 3: take all the effort of you know, of choice away

390
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:15,399
Speaker 3: from you, and in doing so we just impoverish all

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Speaker 3: the creators.

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Speaker 2: But but you know, it'll.

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00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:19,399
Speaker 3: Be slightly more convenient for you to never have to

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Speaker 3: think about a constant stream of music coming into you.

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Speaker 3: Delete all that I just wanted to get I needed

396
00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:28,840
Speaker 3: to get it out anyway. The Landlord Game. McGee's Landlord

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Speaker 3: Game looks pretty familiar to the game that we know

398
00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:33,800
Speaker 3: as Monopoly today. It is a square board with nine

399
00:20:33,840 --> 00:20:37,320
Speaker 3: rectangular spaces on each side, designed to trap the devil

400
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,160
Speaker 3: in an arcane No, I'm kidding, God, that would rule verbally,

401
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:46,040
Speaker 3: trademarking that a game of monopoly that unlocks a primeval

402
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 3: god of avarice and greed by a certain game, a

403
00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:52,600
Speaker 3: game being played in a certain way, and then it's

404
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:53,440
Speaker 3: unleashed upon.

405
00:20:54,119 --> 00:20:55,000
Speaker 2: It's like a vengeance.

406
00:20:55,080 --> 00:20:57,000
Speaker 3: It's like Pumpkinhead, and we just get to see a

407
00:20:57,040 --> 00:21:02,959
Speaker 3: bunch of thinly veiled versions of of Elon and Zuckerberg

408
00:21:03,119 --> 00:21:06,919
Speaker 3: just horrifically tor to shreds. And this just happens for

409
00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:10,080
Speaker 3: ninety or so minutes, and then the movie just kind

410
00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:10,920
Speaker 3: of ends.

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00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:11,600
Speaker 2: Anyway.

412
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:15,320
Speaker 3: You know, there's corners of course that label go to

413
00:21:15,440 --> 00:21:19,840
Speaker 3: jail and public park, which, man, that's an outdated concept, right,

414
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:22,720
Speaker 3: you know, we're losing public We're losing third spaces baby,

415
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 3: at a faster than we can count them. Players circle

416
00:21:26,800 --> 00:21:29,560
Speaker 3: the board, buying up railroads, collecting money, and paying rent

417
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:33,840
Speaker 3: as you do in society. Honestly, like the biggest mockery

418
00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:35,400
Speaker 3: of this game is the idea that you would get

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00:21:35,400 --> 00:21:37,480
Speaker 3: to do anything in life other than pay rent.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the eighteen nineties, though, Railroads was like probably like

421
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:44,480
Speaker 1: your apartment rent.

422
00:21:45,040 --> 00:21:48,800
Speaker 3: I guess that's true. Mege's description of the game published

423
00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:54,200
Speaker 3: at the time also sounds familiar to people. Representative money deeds, mortgages, notes,

424
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:56,600
Speaker 3: and charters are used in the game. Lots are bought

425
00:21:56,640 --> 00:21:59,879
Speaker 3: and sold, Rents are collected, money is borrowed either for

426
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 3: the bank or from individuals, and interest in taxes are paid.

427
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:06,040
Speaker 2: The railroad is also represented, and those who make.

428
00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:08,040
Speaker 3: Use of it are obliged to pay their fare unless

429
00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:10,480
Speaker 3: they are fortunate enough to possess a pass, which in

430
00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:13,480
Speaker 3: the game means throwing a double. There are two franchises,

431
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:17,520
Speaker 3: the water and the lighting utilia. It's like utilities, right, Sorry,

432
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,640
Speaker 3: I was like, is that a typo for lightning?

433
00:22:20,840 --> 00:22:21,359
Speaker 2: Is this ship?

434
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:27,000
Speaker 3: The four elements into this? There are two franchises or utilities,

435
00:22:27,080 --> 00:22:30,040
Speaker 3: the water and the lighting. The first player whose throw

436
00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:32,560
Speaker 3: brings him upon one of these receives a charter giving

437
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:35,360
Speaker 3: him the privilege of taxing all others who must use

438
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:38,920
Speaker 3: his light and water. And in the case of California,

439
00:22:39,080 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 3: this evolved into PG and E, who are now responsible

440
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:46,800
Speaker 3: for causing the bulk of wildfires in California. We're gonna

441
00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:49,239
Speaker 3: get so you got to cut all this because we're

442
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:51,240
Speaker 3: gonna have some real pissed off boomers coming in and

443
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 3: being like, I just wanted to learn more about the

444
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 3: game of my youth, and the woke people just kept

445
00:22:56,800 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 3: the woke one just kept saying things that are true.

446
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 3: Sorry for saying things that are true. In a podcast

447
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:12,080
Speaker 3: about verified Trivia. There are two tracks of land on

448
00:23:12,119 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 3: the board that are held out of use, neither for

449
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:17,119
Speaker 3: rent nor for sale, and on each of these appear

450
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:21,199
Speaker 3: the forbidding sign no trespassing go to jail, which I

451
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:23,239
Speaker 3: guess now you're just likely to see in a lot

452
00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 3: of public.

453
00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:26,879
Speaker 2: Spaces, right right, Yeah, yeah.

454
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:30,360
Speaker 3: McGee's version had two variations of gameplay, one in which

455
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:32,920
Speaker 3: players competed to capture as much real estate and cash

456
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 3: as possible, a lah the version we know today, and

457
00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 3: then one in which the point of the game is

458
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,880
Speaker 3: to share the wealth as equitably as possible. Heartbreaking.

459
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:43,840
Speaker 2: What happened to that role?

460
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 3: Well, of course it was phased out of time because

461
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,200
Speaker 3: of human nature, and also, you know, this game is

462
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 3: kind of interesting in terms of like American economic theory,

463
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:56,399
Speaker 3: like this would have preceded kinsy and economics, so there

464
00:23:56,440 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 3: was a chance that people were still kind of interpreting

465
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:02,480
Speaker 3: things through the more like Adam Smith, like the invisible hand,

466
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 3: and we're less less inclined to view it as like

467
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:08,679
Speaker 3: the way that we are, which is like, you know,

468
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 3: trickle down economics are both unchecked. Growth is cancer, and

469
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 3: this whole system no longer works anyway. McGee argued, let

470
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:21,360
Speaker 3: the children once see clearly the gross adjustment of our

471
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:24,959
Speaker 3: present land system, and when they grow up, if they

472
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 3: are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will soon be remedied.

473
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 3: Every single one of these quotes is just like something

474
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:34,560
Speaker 3: that should be nailed. I mean, every single one of

475
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 3: these quotes has become a horrible mocking of her words,

476
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 3: just just you know, a little over a century later.

477
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: So now we're going to talk about how this the

478
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: sweet teaching tool.

479
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 3: She earnestly believed that people being showed an alternative to

480
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 3: capitalism via a board gamp would one day rise up

481
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 3: and reject it. What a sweet, sweet fool. Instead, this

482
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:02,679
Speaker 3: game was stolen and exploited.

483
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: The Landlord's Game was sold for a while by a

484
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 1: small time New York City based publisher, but it soon

485
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: began to spread by homemade versions that were passed through

486
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 1: intellectual circles along the Eastern Seaboard. Fraternity brothers at Harvard Columbia,

487
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: Williams and other elite colleges, Quakers living in Atlantic City,

488
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 1: and writers in radicals like Upton Sinclair used it as

489
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: a means that discussed economic issues and inequality.

490
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 2: As it traveled the rules.

491
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 1: In terminology evolved, students of the Wharton School of Business

492
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 1: began referring to it colloquially as the Monopoly game, and

493
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:40,160
Speaker 1: as it moved some people localized the game using locations

494
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: found in their home city. That was when it fell

495
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: into the grubby hands of one Philadelphian named Charles Darrow,

496
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier. There have been multiple stories of

497
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: exactly how he first became familiar with the game thirty

498
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 1: years after McGee invented it. I'll go with the version

499
00:25:56,520 --> 00:26:00,720
Speaker 1: detailed in the twenty ten documentary Under the Boardwalk Theopoly Story.

500
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: A business professor from Arden, Delaware, where the game was invented.

501
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 3: Oh, so you can't even you can't even blame him

502
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 3: for he's not Philly native.

503
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:12,680
Speaker 2: No shrend Oh no he is.

504
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 1: He is Philly native. He is Philly native. No, no, no,

505
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: We're sorry. Where the where the Where? The Landlord's Game

506
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:23,280
Speaker 1: was invented in in Arden, Delaware, and a business professor

507
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:26,399
Speaker 1: from Arden, Delaware took the game to the students of

508
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 1: the Wharton School of Economics in so yeah, I think,

509
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. One of the professors of Wharton took it

510
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: to his home in Reading, Pennsylvania, and one of his

511
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: friends took it to a college in Massachusetts, where it

512
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: was showed to a classmate who took it home to Indiana.

513
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: This classmate, who took it home to Indiana, made his

514
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: own version, who showed it to a teacher friend of his,

515
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,199
Speaker 1: who then borrowed it and took a new job in

516
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,119
Speaker 1: Atlantic City. And this teacher friend thought it would be

517
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: more fun if they changed the properties on the board

518
00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 1: to the areas and their adopted hometown of Atlantic City.

519
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 1: And these people showed their new Atlantic cityized version of

520
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 1: the game to a friend from Philadelphia who made some

521
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:12,119
Speaker 1: minor changes himself. And then one night, on an evening walk,

522
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: these people from Philadelphia ran into an old school friend

523
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 1: they hadn't seen in years, Charles Darrow and his wife.

524
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 1: He ran into an old school friend who I guess

525
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 1: happened to be carrying a homemade board game that he

526
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: then shared with this guy. It was a weird time.

527
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: It's a weird time. But I mean movie Pitch Butterfly

528
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: Effect remake, but about the creation of Monopoly. Think of

529
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,440
Speaker 1: how this like all pinball across the Eastern Seaboard to

530
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: land in this guy's lap.

531
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's an example, the Invisible hand of

532
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 3: the market talking about putting all of these people together

533
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 3: to create something that would be an unfettered celebration of greed.

534
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 2: Yeah.

535
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean human beings are animals at least,

536
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's true.

537
00:27:57,560 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 2: It wouldn't have been hard. I mean, if there was

538
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:00,439
Speaker 2: one guy would have another.

539
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's yeah.

540
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:06,879
Speaker 1: Darrow was taken by the game and decided to make

541
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,640
Speaker 1: a version himself without to take it, yeah, without.

542
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 2: Changing McGee's rules in any substantial way.

543
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:14,560
Speaker 1: But because he was a white man in the early

544
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: twentieth century, this seemed to pose no problem. Like most

545
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: people during the Great Depression, Darrow was out of work,

546
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: so he had a lot of time to workshop this.

547
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: He made copies using household items. The original board was

548
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 1: an oil cloth, the cards were handwritten, and the hotels

549
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 1: and houses were off cuts from wood molding. For reasons

550
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:37,879
Speaker 1: that are probably best chalked up to pure laziness, he

551
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 1: didn't feel the need to change the locations on the

552
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: board from Atlantic City, which was the version he'd been

553
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:43,000
Speaker 1: given to.

554
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 2: His native Philadelphia.

555
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: The lore put around in later years was that he

556
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: chose Atlantic City because it was a favorite vacation spot.

557
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 2: But that's not true.

558
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 3: See, we don't claim him. Man, that's not true Philly.

559
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 3: There's absolutely no true Philadelphia in the world. Who would

560
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 3: rather give New Jersey credit? Then they're on city. That man,

561
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 3: he's I know, here's something doesn't smell right about him.

562
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: Check and see. Okay, I'll keep talking. Google him and

563
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: see where he was born. Maybe he's not native for Philly,

564
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: but I do like this. The homemade edition that he'd

565
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: received misspelled Atlantic City's Marvin Gardens as Marvin Gardens instead

566
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: of mar V E N, which is correct as mar

567
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 1: V I N. And in nineteen ninety five, Parker Brothers

568
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 1: apologized to the people of Marvin Gardens for the misspelling,

569
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 1: but not notably for screwing over.

570
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: The original creator of the game. As we'll discuss.

571
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: On a related note, people apparently take their monopoly locations

572
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: very seriously. In nineteen seventy two, the Commissioner of Public

573
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: Works in Atlantic City threatened to change the names of

574
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:50,480
Speaker 1: the real Baltic and Mediterranean avenues, but public outcry vetoed

575
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: the bill.

576
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 2: No, these are the monopoly spots. You can't change it.

577
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So he was born in Germantown.

578
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 2: Okay, that's not far from philling No.

579
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,760
Speaker 3: But it was. It was an independent borough until eighteen

580
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 3: fifty four. So he born eighteen eighty nine, so he

581
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 3: is technically a native Philadelphia. But I'm grandfathering him out

582
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 3: of that out of disgust. Okay, because Germantown was not

583
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 3: a real city. Yes it is now though, that's cool.

584
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 3: Shouts to Germantown. I'm just trying to get this guy

585
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 3: to Philly anyway I can. Good, thank you.

586
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: At first, Darrow set out a modest goal for himself,

587
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: sell one game a day for four bucks, and if

588
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:35,840
Speaker 1: he did that for a year, that's like three hundred

589
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: and thirty grand in today's money.

590
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 2: So bully for him, you know.

591
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, after he met with some success,

592
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: he took the ad Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, the

593
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 1: two biggest toy manufacturers on the block, and both rejected it.

594
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: As we touched on earlier, Parker Brothers supposedly found fifty

595
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: two fundamental errors with the game, including the length and

596
00:30:56,840 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: complexity of the rules. Ultimately, Darrow decided to go it alone,

597
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: hiring a printer to make a number of copies I've

598
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: seen multiple numbers five hundred, five thousand, and seven thousand,

599
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: five hundred sided. But he sold these through Wannamakers, a

600
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: popular Philadelphia department store, and after the store sold out,

601
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: Parker Brothers reconsidered their decision and bought the game from

602
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: Darrow in nineteen thirty five, a year after he first

603
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: pitched it. This time, however, he was in a position

604
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: to negotiate the first time around. The company had the

605
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: option to buy the game outright from this out of

606
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: work plumber, and now he demanded a royalty for every

607
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: game sold, a move that would make him a multi

608
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: millionaire and continues to benefit his family to this day.

609
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 3: I mean, this really is just like an example of

610
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 3: how America doesn't work. Like a guy steals something and

611
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 3: his kids or his dumb family would just get to

612
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 3: live off of it for the rest of their lives,

613
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 3: you know, like yep, and oh yeah, sorry, But first

614
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 3: they have to shave all the mainstream edges off of it.

615
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 3: They have to make a dumber less academic a more

616
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 3: rapidly pro communist.

617
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 2: It's just a it's a pro capitalist.

618
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 3: If you were writing, like if you were writing like

619
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 3: a parody of this for like your screenwriting class. Your

620
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 3: screenwriting class that you took, it probably would have been

621
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 3: dinged as a little too.

622
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 2: On the nose. Jordan Jesus Christ, we live in Hell.

623
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 3: One person who did not become a millionaire from Monopoly was,

624
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 3: of course, it's creator, Elizabeth McGee. She tried to sell

625
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 3: the game to Parker Brothers twice, once in nineteen ten

626
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 3: and another time in nineteen twenty four, and it was

627
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 3: turned down for fear of being too political. But because

628
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 3: she owned the patent to her game, Parker Brothers had

629
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 3: to buy it off of her in order to produce

630
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 3: Darri's Monopoly. For her troubles, she was paid a princely

631
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 3: one off sum of five hundred dollars. Just seemed as

632
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 3: more or less a way to head off a potential

633
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 3: pr scandal since people were starting to rightly ask the question,

634
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 3: why is this a new game? I've been playing it

635
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 3: for years. At first, he was thrilled that her game

636
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 3: was with its teachings, was going to be shared with

637
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 3: the hideous, unwashed masses of this ruinous failed state. It wasn't.

638
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 3: At the time, though people were happy about it. They

639
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 3: were pulling together. Rosie the Riveter had been created in

640
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 3: a lab. We can do it was the national mo motto.

641
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 3: A chicken in every pot, A chicken in every pot,

642
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 3: a Nazi war criminal, rocket scientist in every position of

643
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 3: American aerospace engineering, Tony two, Scado, Google operation paper clip.

644
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 3: And then she saw that her entire message had been

645
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 3: co opted, which left her horrified, and the terms of

646
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 3: her settlement left her completely without credit. She railed against

647
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 3: Parker Brothers and Monopoly in the press for the rest

648
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 3: of her life, accusing them of stealing her intellectual property,

649
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 3: and apparently some legal action was taken, which was resolved

650
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:55,280
Speaker 3: when the toy company quietly settled in exchange for buying

651
00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 3: some of McGee's other game ideas, but there's no actual

652
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 3: evidence that these games were ever even reduced. In the

653
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 3: nineteen forty census taken eight years before she died, she

654
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 3: listed to her occupation as maker of games. In the

655
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 3: column for her income, McGee wrote zero. Her critical role

656
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,840
Speaker 3: in Monopolies history was not fully revealed to the public

657
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 3: until a nineteen seventy three lawsuit by Ralph and Spatch.

658
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 2: And Spach he worked in aerospace, a.

659
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 3: Fresh import from Argentina until her critical role in Monopolies

660
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 3: history was not fully revealed to the public until a

661
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three lawsuit by Ralph and Spatch, a college

662
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:37,359
Speaker 3: professor who created and tried to copyrate a game called

663
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:41,399
Speaker 3: Anti Monopoly. We will talk about this later, but back

664
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 3: to the relatively sunnier climes of unfettered profits for the

665
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 3: straight white guy.

666
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 2: We're going to take a.

667
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: Quick break, but we'll be right back with more too

668
00:34:53,040 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: much information in just a moment. Wow Wow, spinning newspaper,

669
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, Parker Brothers releasing.

670
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 2: A new game.

671
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:15,320
Speaker 1: Monopoly's official birthday is March ninth, nineteen thirty five, the

672
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: day the rights were acquired from Charles Dara.

673
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 2: It became an immediate.

674
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: Hit, selling two hundred and seventy eight thousand copies in

675
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,760
Speaker 1: its first year and more than one million, seven hundred

676
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand the next Soon, thirty five thousand copies

677
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:33,720
Speaker 1: were being manufactured each week, outstripping the capacity of Parker

678
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: brothers headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts, a haunted place if there

679
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: ever was one.

680
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,799
Speaker 3: Surely no coincidence they were headquartered in place that had

681
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 3: a wonderful and wil widely publicized history of punishing women

682
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 3: for existing, having thoughts, and the like.

683
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: The game's success is partially due to the timing of

684
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,840
Speaker 1: its release, hitting shelves in the midst of the Great Depression.

685
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 1: It's themes of wealth, property, and economic power resonated with

686
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: the public grappling with financial hardship. Even just physically handling

687
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: money was seen as a novelty in these times. In

688
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, a year after the game's release, it

689
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: was licensed to John Waddington Limited, which, in case the

690
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: name didn't give it away, was a company in the

691
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: UK that produced games. To make the game relevant to

692
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 1: British consumers, the names of the properties were changed to

693
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: well known streets in London, and that's a practice that

694
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: continues today whenever Monopoly is introduced in a new country.

695
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: In the United States, the property with the highest rent

696
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: is Boardwalk, named for the famous Atlantic city Esplanade, But

697
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 1: if you're playing the Spanish version of the game, the

698
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: highest rent property is Pesl de Prado, named for a

699
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 1: street in Madrid. And in France the most expensive place

700
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: to rent is Rue de la pey uPAR Resian Street.

701
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: And in England, I think it's mayfair.

702
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 3: You're going to say and in some Saharan Africa.

703
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: This probably isn't news to any foreign listeners listening right now,

704
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: but we Americans forget that the world doesn't revolve around us. Ultimately,

705
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 1: Monopoly was recreated in one hundred and thirteen different countries

706
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 1: in over forty six different languages.

707
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 2: To date, more than two hundred and seventy five million

708
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 2: games have been sold.

709
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: The original Monopoly game sold for two dollars, which is

710
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: around thirty seven dollars when adjusted for inflation today you'll

711
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: pay about eighteen.

712
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 3: Wow, it actually got cheaper.

713
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 2: It got cheaper. Yeah, that's why on these people stopped

714
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 2: giving it.

715
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:34,799
Speaker 3: Yeah.

716
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 2: Also, it's like how many like who's buying a new

717
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 2: game of Monopoly?

718
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: Like like somebody like you could get your hands on

719
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 1: a game of Monopoly. It is ten oh seven pm

720
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: right now for me, Like I could. I'm sure I

721
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: could find a game of Monopoly without going to a

722
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: store right now.

723
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 2: That's true.

724
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 3: It's like it doesn't go away so much as it

725
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 3: just shifts locations.

726
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, conservation of mass energy, conservation of monopoly.

727
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 2: That's actually a good.

728
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 3: That's a good for the for the No, it was

729
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 3: a good wrinkle for the horror movie where it's like,

730
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 3: where did this Monopoly game come from?

731
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:09,840
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, the one that's gonna be

732
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:10,799
Speaker 2: just a.

733
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 3: Snuff film with thinly veiled versions of America's wealthiest class.

734
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:16,319
Speaker 2: Creepy be if you.

735
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 1: Like went into an attic and you found an old

736
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: Monopoly game and you opened it.

737
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:22,439
Speaker 3: Up all of your faces were in there.

738
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 2: Oh oh well, it's actually that's even better.

739
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 1: Now mine's not gonna sound as good. I was gonna

740
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: see you opened it and just all the squares were

741
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 1: just blank.

742
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that'd be kind of goods of creepy.

743
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 3: Great if you could just kind of hear, like, you know,

744
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,240
Speaker 3: dust bowl farmers screaming all.

745
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 2: That's just that's it.

746
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 3: That's my pitch for a historically un a world, historically unpopular.

747
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 2: Game of Monopoly. It's one that would.

748
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 3: Just play you oral histories of farmers from the dust

749
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 3: Bowlers Monopoly exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, especially ill especially illustri

750
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 3: by the dory of the laying photos. You know, just

751
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 3: I really want you all to experience what this system

752
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 3: has wrought while you, uh, while you have a fun

753
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 3: time with your family.

754
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 2: Oh you landed on Hooverville five dollars.

755
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 3: Go to jail, but it's full, so I guess just die.

756
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 2: Anyway, fun riff instead of railroads. It's just like the

757
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:34,439
Speaker 2: push cart thing like that. I like that a lot.

758
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:38,479
Speaker 3: We could kickstarter it people. People buy anything these days

759
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 3: except for music anyway.

760
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 2: Sorry, go ahead.

761
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 1: Well it's a more movie tooopoly board. Oh yes, I

762
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: guess that's Jumanji.

763
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but like a nice you know, we had

764
00:39:49,160 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 3: like a brief speed of these like Eat the Rich

765
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 3: movies that like didn't really move the overton window at

766
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 3: all on that, but they were fun to watch, so

767
00:39:57,320 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 3: I don't know verbal trademark.

768
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:00,880
Speaker 1: This is a good segue though, to the most expensive

769
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 1: monopoly set ever created.

770
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, just another indignity heaped upon poor poor Lizzy McGee.

771
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:09,839
Speaker 2: Yes.

772
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 1: It was created by one of your fellow San Franciscans,

773
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: a jeweler named Sidney Mabel. It featured a twenty three

774
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: carrot gold board, eighteen carrot pieces, diamond studded dice, and

775
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 1: money made of gold leaf. Costing upwards of two million dollars.

776
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 1: It has never been sold and is currently on display

777
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: in the Smithsonian.

778
00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:33,440
Speaker 3: It's funny about Mobil because what you just described was

779
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 3: commissioned or coincided with the nineteen eighty eight World Monopoly

780
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 3: Tournament then held in London. But prior to that, his

781
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 3: entire claim to fame was just making really expensive versions

782
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 3: of cheap pop culture crap. He had like a normal

783
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 3: jewelry business. But his first big splash was he created

784
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 3: a near perfect replica in all gold of the popular

785
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 3: Mickey mouse watch that had been going around. So he

786
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:03,359
Speaker 3: eventually made a for Roy Disney, and then he made

787
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 3: a similar solid gold Charlie Brown watch for Charlis Schultz

788
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 3: for the birthday of Ray Kroc, who built a McDonald's

789
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 3: franchise into the disgusting empire that it is today, in

790
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 3: which we will touch on later. He designed a gold

791
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,799
Speaker 3: mouse trap, and don't get it, he built a better

792
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:21,959
Speaker 3: He built a better mouse trap. That's like the log

793
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 3: line about about McDonald's about McDonald's.

794
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard that.

795
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: Oh please, I would assume you wouldn't want to like

796
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:30,320
Speaker 1: link mouse traps with food.

797
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 2: Okay.

798
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 3: The original quote is actually apparently from are apparently actually

799
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:40,959
Speaker 3: credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson of all people, originally build

800
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 3: a better mouse trap, and the world will beat.

801
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 2: A path to your door. Okay.

802
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 3: Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat

803
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 3: a path to your door. Originated in a slightly different

804
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 3: form with Ralph Waldo Emerson.

805
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 2: He wrote in his.

806
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 3: Journal under the heading common Sense in February of eighteen

807
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 3: fifty five, if man has good corn or wood, or

808
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 3: boards or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs

809
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 3: or knives, crucibles or church organs than anybody else, you

810
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 3: will find a broad, hard, beaten road to his house,

811
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 3: though it may be in the woods. So that should

812
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 3: have been edited for clarity and length, as we often

813
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 3: say about interviews. But in May of eighteen eighty two,

814
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 3: a month after his death, that quotation was altered and

815
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 3: attributed to him by the Cincinnati Inquirer with the line,

816
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 3: if a man can write a better book, preach a

817
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 3: better sermon, or make a better mouse trap than his neighbors,

818
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 3: though he builds his house in the woods, the world

819
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:43,839
Speaker 3: will make a beaten path to his door. I'm not

820
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:48,359
Speaker 3: sure when it popped into like popular consciousness, but you know,

821
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:51,280
Speaker 3: it's just the title of every one of these books

822
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:52,280
Speaker 3: about business.

823
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 2: I can't believe I've never heard that. I've never heard that. Oh,

824
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 2: we know what. Here it is.

825
00:42:56,719 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 3: Here's an interesting posit. The popular modern snap track version

826
00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:03,840
Speaker 3: of the mouse Trap was invented by William C. Hooker

827
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety four and then improved upon by a

828
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 3: guy named John Mass in eighteen ninety nine. So this

829
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:13,839
Speaker 3: is just like twelve and under twenty years after that,

830
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:18,959
Speaker 3: it had appeared as part of Emerson's like obituaries. So man,

831
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 3: that's interesting. But yes, it was a massacred quote from

832
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:26,280
Speaker 3: Ralph Moldo Emerson's diary.

833
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:29,440
Speaker 1: And even weirder, we were talking about mouse Trap the

834
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: game earlier in this episode.

835
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:37,439
Speaker 3: They don't want you to notice the patterns. Anyway, that's

836
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:37,919
Speaker 3: really cool.

837
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.

838
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, after he did that for Ray Kroc, he

839
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 3: then whimsically bought canaff sardines at the grocery store and

840
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,719
Speaker 3: decided to make an eighteen carrot gold can of sardines

841
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 3: with diamond sardines inside.

842
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 2: How do you feel about that stuff? What sardines? Oh? No,

843
00:43:53,680 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 2: I like, I'm very pro sardines. Oh you mean just somebody?

844
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:03,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, the lux warhol making luxury versions of common American

845
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 3: consumer goods.

846
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 2: Well it's reprehensible, but what isn't you know? Was he like?

847
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:11,880
Speaker 1: I mean, was it like a Warholian approach of like

848
00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: I'm going to elevate this to art or.

849
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 2: I think he might have preceded Warhol.

850
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:21,359
Speaker 3: Actually, oh wow, well it actually might have coincided as

851
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,320
Speaker 3: owner of a This is per the Smithsonian as owner

852
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 3: of a San Francisco jewelry store in the nineteen sixties.

853
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,360
Speaker 3: Mowill said, I figured I had to do something as

854
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 3: far as competition, something different that nobody else does, and

855
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 3: that led him to making the gold Mickey mouse Watch.

856
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 3: But oh, it wasn't even commissioned that, did it. The

857
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 3: Monopoly Board, Yeah, it was. I contacted them and they said,

858
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 3: if you can make this thing look exactly like our

859
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:49,440
Speaker 3: thirty dollars monopoly board, will send you to London and

860
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 3: that'll be the featured item.

861
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:52,239
Speaker 2: He says.

862
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 3: When I got there, the news hit and it was

863
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 3: picked up in every television station in London. All of

864
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 3: a sudden, I had become famous. And so the Smithsonian

865
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 3: have twenty of this guy's works, not just the monopoly board,

866
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 3: but a golden diamond pacifier, a yo yo presumably also

867
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 3: made of just a regular yo yo, no obviously, you idiots,

868
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 3: an expensive yoyo, a gemstone covered cell phone, and his.

869
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 2: Two thousandstone cell phone that.

870
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 3: Gem Stone sell His two thousand and four replica of

871
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 3: the Smithsonian Castle is permanently on display.

872
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:31,959
Speaker 2: Uh well yeah, that's great.

873
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 3: Just yeah, just love what you know, just love these

874
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 3: metaphors that just keep piling up the middle on the nose.

875
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:41,440
Speaker 2: World.

876
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 1: Well here, maybe this will make you a little happier.

877
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: There was also a chocolate version of the game sold

878
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 1: by Neiman Marcus in nineteen seventy eight for six hundred dollars,

879
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of three grand today.

880
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'm a big fan of chocolate. I often,

881
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 3: in times of sorrow think I'm a big friand three grand.

882
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 3: But I often in terms of trouble, Kathy comforts me

883
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 3: speaking those of wisdom.

884
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:16,439
Speaker 2: Ac ac act chocolate and who is landing? I love that.

885
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: I love that here, this this really bothers me. There

886
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: will never be a complete list of Monopoly editions because

887
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: there are simply too many, plus an untold number of

888
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:30,719
Speaker 1: exclusive additions that have been made for non commercial use forgiveness.

889
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: As of December twenty twenty four, the World Record Collector

890
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:38,400
Speaker 1: has four three hundred and seventy nine different sets of

891
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,240
Speaker 1: Monopoly in their personal archive.

892
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 3: Would that satisfy you or you just it's just you're

893
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:44,439
Speaker 3: the completest in use.

894
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 2: Just that I'll never know, you'll never know. That really

895
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:49,560
Speaker 2: bothers me.

896
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: How many grains of sand are there on the Bijcne

897
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,320
Speaker 1: Island and how many monopoly editions are there in the world,

898
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: and the fact that I can't know it.

899
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 2: It really keeps me up at night. Is that grain

900
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 2: of sand thing from something?

901
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: No?

902
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 3: Because there's a spoken word passage in Philip Glass's Einstein

903
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:08,720
Speaker 3: on the Beach that has this. It's actually quite lovely.

904
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 3: It's it's a section that starts with like two lovers

905
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 3: sit alone on a park bench and he's like, the

906
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 3: one line is count the number of grains of sand

907
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 3: on this on the beach?

908
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 2: That is how much I love you? Yeah, that sounds familiar.

909
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 3: Actually I openly wept at this when I saw this.

910
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 3: Uh okay, where was I?

911
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:32,359
Speaker 1: But we're going to take it back a bit. We're

912
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: going to talk about the famous man on the monopoly box.

913
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,359
Speaker 1: This gentleman's name has been a hotly debated topic over

914
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:41,719
Speaker 1: the years. Officially, according to Gamelore, his name is rich

915
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: Uncle Pennybags, and he actually had a Parker Brothers game

916
00:47:45,040 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: of his own for.

917
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 2: A number of years.

918
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:47,319
Speaker 3: Lame.

919
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:49,360
Speaker 2: You tell me that he actually has several?

920
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 3: Yes, Jordan, he actually had several. In nineteen forty, Parker

921
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 3: Brothers spun him off into a game called Dig, and

922
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:59,080
Speaker 3: six years later starred him in a third Rich Uncle.

923
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,839
Speaker 3: The latter remained in production through the nineteen fifties. He

924
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 3: was spun off again in nineteen eighty five into a

925
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,120
Speaker 3: new game called Advance to Boardwalk, and yet again in

926
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 3: Free Parking, which is you guessed it about trying to

927
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:14,560
Speaker 3: avoid parking fines or make money from them.

928
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: I guess, but Michael Caine voice, not many people know

929
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: that that's the monopoly Man's name.

930
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 2: Hasbro conducted a study.

931
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,760
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety nine which determined that most people simply,

932
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, rather lazily uncreatively called the mascot

933
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 1: mister Monopoly. So hasbroke cave to popular idiocy and officially

934
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,839
Speaker 1: changed his name to Mister Monopoly later that same year.

935
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,040
Speaker 1: Other official names within the Monopoly game include Jake the Jailbird,

936
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,840
Speaker 1: supposedly designed by Darrow as a less than flattering self

937
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 1: portrait to make fun of himself.

938
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 3: It's the way of admitting that he belonged to jail.

939
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 3: It does make him sound like a Philadelphia.

940
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:54,840
Speaker 1: Theo's officer Edgar Mallory as the guy in nego directly

941
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 1: to jail square and the decks of cards also include

942
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:01,400
Speaker 1: Richard ll Pennybag's wife Madge, who have also seen described

943
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 1: as Maud, and his three nephews Randy, Sandy, and Andy.

944
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 2: Oh you like that? Yeah?

945
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:13,880
Speaker 3: Well, the first mister Monopoly appeared in the winning pitch

946
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 3: of the version of the game that Darrow eventually sold.

947
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 3: It was drawn by his buddy, who is a political

948
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,839
Speaker 3: cartoonist who went by Franklin fo Alexander. Fun fact that

949
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:26,880
Speaker 3: winning version of the game that was accepted was inspired

950
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 3: by the Quakers version. So nothing did you rip off

951
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:34,440
Speaker 3: a nice lady who just wanted to preach against capitalism?

952
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 3: He also ripped off the Quakers, the religious sect the Quakers, anyway,

953
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 3: friend of the pod, the Quakers. You know, I've the Quakers.

954
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 3: Actually go back and look at them. They've been on

955
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 3: kind of the right side of history of almost every

956
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 3: like military conflict and moral issue in the since their founding. Anyway,

957
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 3: fo Alexander drew the event cards for the initial much

958
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,439
Speaker 3: smaller production run of the game in nineteen thirty five

959
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 3: when they first commissioned it and launched it. However, in

960
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 3: late nineteen thirty six, the design for the cards changed

961
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 3: and it was the newly commissioned artist whose name is

962
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 3: Daniel Fox, who created the version of the man we

963
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 3: now know is Mister Monopoly. For Fo's Troubles, he was

964
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 3: reportedly checks notes, never paid by the company, and received

965
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 3: no royalties. This is doubly horrifying because he continued to

966
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 3: do other work for the company, including on the same character.

967
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 3: He allegedly drew Rich Uncle on the box of the

968
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 3: aforementioned in nineteen forty six spinoff game Rich Uncle. In

969
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, though, a woman named Wendy Wolfe had read

970
00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:48,239
Speaker 3: an author named Philip or Bain's books The Monopoly Companion

971
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:52,440
Speaker 3: and Monopoly, the World's Most Famous Game. In this book

972
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 3: there is a claim that the original artist behind Rich

973
00:50:55,680 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 3: Uncle was unknown. Wendy wolf turns out to be the

974
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 3: granddaughter of this artist named Daniel Fox, and she contacted

975
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 3: Orbans and her family came together and sent this author

976
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 3: material that identifies Daniel as the originator, Allegedly things like

977
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:17,719
Speaker 3: receipts first drafts contracts between him and Parker Brothers. I

978
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 3: haven't bought the books and I wasn't able to find

979
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 3: them for free online, so I don't know.

980
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 2: Exactly the depth of it.

981
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 3: But the reason why why fo Alexander's name comes first

982
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 3: online is because of search engine optimization. A woman named

983
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 3: Mary Palon wrote a short article for the Smithsonian Magazine

984
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 3: online in twenty fifteen that was sort of in advance

985
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 3: in hyping up a book she wrote called The Monopolists,

986
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 3: which is an investigation of the game, and that in

987
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 3: that she identifies the artist as Alexander.

988
00:51:47,160 --> 00:51:50,400
Speaker 2: I was able to find in her book.

989
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 3: Though she doesn't mention Daniel Fox in the article, she

990
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 3: does allow exactly one mention of Fox in her book,

991
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 3: saying he is quote believed by many to be the

992
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 3: uncredited artist behind the Mister Monopoly character. So I don't

993
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 3: know what beef she has with this guy, or if

994
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 3: she did her own research and found that the materials

995
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 3: provided by his family were not up to snuff, but.

996
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 2: At her own research.

997
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 3: She did her own research, but in an effort to

998
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 3: perennially shine light on the uncredited among us, Daniel Fox

999
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 3: drew the modern incarnation of rich uncle.

1000
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: There's a mister Monopoly. He's a question mark wrapped inside

1001
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:33,320
Speaker 1: an enigma. There's a lot of mysteries about this man.

1002
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: It's been said that his look was possibly inspired by

1003
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, the tycoon who helped finance the construction of

1004
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 1: railroads and organize several major corporations, including General Electric. He

1005
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:48,239
Speaker 1: also owned International Mercantile Marine, the company that built the Titanic,

1006
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:50,439
Speaker 1: and he was booked to travel on the ship before

1007
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 1: pulling out at the last minute, giving way to a

1008
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:55,319
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that the ship was sunk on purpose for

1009
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: an insurance scam. It's a theory that is so stupid

1010
00:52:58,560 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 1: that it's not really worth our time.

1011
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 2: But if we want to google it, have at it.

1012
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: Others believe that the design of mister Monopoly was inspired

1013
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: by a businessman at Parker Brothers who had business cards

1014
00:53:07,680 --> 00:53:10,840
Speaker 1: printed up with characters of himself printed on them, wearing

1015
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:13,720
Speaker 1: a top hat and riding a train for some reason,

1016
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:17,319
Speaker 1: very whimsical. And then also some people theorize that the

1017
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:20,440
Speaker 1: design was based on Little Esquire, the former logo of

1018
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:22,080
Speaker 1: Esquire magazine.

1019
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 2: Your mileage may.

1020
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 1: Despite popular perception, however, mister Monopoly does not wear a monocle.

1021
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:33,280
Speaker 1: It's one of the bigger examples of the Mandela effect

1022
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:34,319
Speaker 1: that I can think of.

1023
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 2: And you know, while we're here, let's talk about the

1024
00:53:37,560 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 2: Mandela effect for a moment, shall we.

1025
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:42,319
Speaker 1: I first encountered it on that show How Too with

1026
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,800
Speaker 1: John Wilson, that HBO show. It is named for Nelson Mandela.

1027
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 1: He died in twenty thirteen, despite the fact that countless

1028
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: people distinctly remember him dying in prison in the eighties,

1029
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 1: which is weird to me because his release from prison

1030
00:53:57,120 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: was kind of.

1031
00:53:57,600 --> 00:53:58,319
Speaker 2: A big deal.

1032
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 3: Yea, yeah, The fact that this is named after him

1033
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:06,759
Speaker 3: is so weird because I was like, no, he'd gone

1034
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:09,400
Speaker 3: out of prison and lived for a while after.

1035
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 2: That, I know.

1036
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: But for some reason, a huge percentage of the population

1037
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:17,239
Speaker 1: distinctly remembers this event that never occurred, and so this

1038
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 1: phenomenon of mass illusion of remembering things incorrectly has been

1039
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: named the Mandela effect. And other examples of this include

1040
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:28,399
Speaker 1: in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader doesn't say, Luke,

1041
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:32,760
Speaker 1: I am your father, he says, no, I am your father.

1042
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: In Snow White and the Seven Doors, the Evil Queen

1043
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:37,719
Speaker 1: says magic Mirror on.

1044
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:40,400
Speaker 2: The wall, not mirror mirror on the wall.

1045
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:44,439
Speaker 1: For the clothing brand Fruit of the Loom, many recall

1046
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 1: the brand's logo as featuring a cornucopia or horn of

1047
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:51,760
Speaker 1: plenty behind the fruit very Thanksgiving, but no official version

1048
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:53,399
Speaker 1: of the logo for Food of the Loom has ever

1049
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 1: included that bad got me.

1050
00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:57,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, that's a tough one.

1051
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: The mister Roger's theme song, people recall, well, it's a

1052
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:03,480
Speaker 1: beautiful day in the neighborhood, but the opening lyric is, actually,

1053
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:05,600
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful day in this.

1054
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 3: Neighborhood because it was a white one. Sorry, that would

1055
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 3: never have been Fred Rogers' intention. I'm just riffing.

1056
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:17,360
Speaker 1: A large number of people remember there being a popular

1057
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: children's book series called the Berenstein Bears, but it's actually

1058
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: the Berenstein Bears. In Forrest Gump, he never actually says

1059
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: life is like a box of chocolates. If you listen closely,

1060
00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: he says life was like a box of chocolates.

1061
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 2: Mmmm.

1062
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,920
Speaker 1: And then I've seen full articles written about this. So

1063
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 1: many people distinctly remember a movie from the nineties starrings

1064
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: the comedian Sinbad Yes, called Shazam. Many argue that they're

1065
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 1: actually confusing this memory with a movie Kazam starring Shaquille

1066
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: O'Neal as a genie. But like people have strongly held

1067
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: believes about like the plot of this movie and the cast,

1068
00:55:57,480 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: it never existed.

1069
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:01,879
Speaker 3: I think it's an influence that one, in particular, it's

1070
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:03,359
Speaker 3: like one of the more famous ones. I think it's

1071
00:56:03,360 --> 00:56:06,959
Speaker 3: a confluence of nobody actually seeing the Shaquillo no Neil

1072
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:11,480
Speaker 3: movie and Sinbad one person seeing the Shaquillo Neil movie

1073
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 3: and many people seeing various Sinbad comedies. But yeah, man,

1074
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:19,120
Speaker 3: I don't have an explanation for that, mostly because I

1075
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 3: knew about Kazam because I saw it too. I say,

1076
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 3: I guess, how are you people confusing this? That's that

1077
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 3: movie was a movie?

1078
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently Sindbad for April Fool's Day in twenty seventeen,

1079
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 1: like released like clips from this non existent movie.

1080
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:39,399
Speaker 3: Isn't good for him?

1081
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:39,799
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1082
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 3: I know.

1083
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 2: I hope he's doing okay. Didn't you have like a

1084
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,560
Speaker 2: really bad stroke? Yeah? Probably. We can't have anything nice,

1085
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 2: but you know, we can't have that's nice? What's that?

1086
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:48,840
Speaker 3: Jordan?

1087
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:53,839
Speaker 1: The pieces in Monopoly, like our beloved race car talk

1088
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:54,799
Speaker 1: to us about.

1089
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 3: Oh that's so true.

1090
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:56,040
Speaker 2: Jordan.

1091
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 3: The homemade versions of the game were played with whatever

1092
00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 3: was available around that house, and so the early manufactured

1093
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 3: versions of Monopoly followed suit. The instructions encouraged players to

1094
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:07,840
Speaker 3: search around the house and find things that made sense,

1095
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:11,799
Speaker 3: like buttons, coins, and thimbles. It made reference to the

1096
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 3: fact that Darrow's niece initially enjoyed playing with charms from

1097
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 3: her charm bracelet, which inspired the set. So the first

1098
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 3: official tokens were added in late nineteen thirty five that

1099
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 3: included a cannon, thimble, top hat, iron like clothes, iron battleship,

1100
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 3: and a boot. In nineteen thirty six, the race car

1101
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 3: was first added to the six token sets, and then

1102
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:35,680
Speaker 3: after that the purse was added to make eight tokens.

1103
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 3: In late nineteen thirty six and early nineteen thirty seven,

1104
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 3: the lantern and rocking horse were added to make ten

1105
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 3: token sets. To date, the current pieces are race car

1106
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty five, top hat nineteen thirty five, thimble nineteen

1107
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:51,960
Speaker 3: thirty five to twenty seventeen, absent for five years and

1108
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:55,920
Speaker 3: brought back in twenty twenty two. Scottish terrier nineteen forty six.

1109
00:57:56,040 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 3: Never understood that one are they a particularly luxurious brand

1110
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:03,120
Speaker 3: of dog, No but sure, Sack of Money from nineteen

1111
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 3: to eight just dispensed with any subtlety here. Sack of

1112
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 3: Money was a token from nineteen ninety eight to two

1113
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, and then again in twenty twenty five,

1114
00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 3: Cat twenty thirteen for Cat penguin.

1115
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 2: Peter Chris as the cat.

1116
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, it's just a Peter bust

1117
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:26,720
Speaker 3: of Peter Crace Penguin in twenty seventeen, presumably inspired by

1118
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 3: Danny DeVito's role and Batman returns and a rubber duck

1119
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:33,520
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen, which is just stupid.

1120
00:58:34,040 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild to be that some of these classics

1121
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: have been retired.

1122
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:38,840
Speaker 2: Talk about the ones that we can no longer find.

1123
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 3: Sure, So from nineteen thirty five to nineteen forty one,

1124
00:58:41,680 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 3: we all we had access to a cannon, a lantern,

1125
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 3: a purse, and a rocking horse. Clothing Iron was held

1126
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:52,520
Speaker 3: from nineteen thirty five to twenty thirteen, and the Boot

1127
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 3: originally went from nineteen thirty five to nineteen forty six,

1128
00:58:56,280 --> 00:58:58,720
Speaker 3: absent for four years and then was brought back from

1129
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:03,680
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty to twenty seventeen. The battleship lasted from nineteen

1130
00:59:03,720 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 3: thirty five to twenty twenty five. Car with driver is

1131
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:11,640
Speaker 3: different from race car, I assume. So that's like, oh,

1132
00:59:11,680 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 3: because you had to have a chauffeur, because it was Yeah,

1133
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 3: you had to have a little little slave driving you

1134
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 3: around in your fancy car. A car with driver was

1135
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:24,680
Speaker 3: there from nineteen forty six to nineteen fifty three, wheelbarrow

1136
00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 3: present from nineteen forty to twenty seventeen, an airplane for

1137
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 3: just four scant years forty six to nineteen fifty, Howitzer

1138
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:36,080
Speaker 3: from nineteen forty six to two thousand and seven. Presumably

1139
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 3: you know some raw raw army ship, horse and Rider

1140
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:42,360
Speaker 3: nineteen forty six to two thousand and seven, a train

1141
00:59:42,560 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty to two thousand and seven, and a

1142
00:59:44,920 --> 00:59:49,680
Speaker 3: t Rex from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty two. Obviously,

1143
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 3: as is known to you and I, Jordan and everyone,

1144
00:59:53,760 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 3: the race car is the most popular piece. However, every

1145
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 3: piece does have his supporters. Pop like the clothes iron

1146
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 3: because it's the smallest and can kind of slide in

1147
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 3: under the radar on the board. Others prefer the wheelbarrow

1148
01:00:05,640 --> 01:00:08,080
Speaker 3: because it helps you visualize carrying out your winnings.

1149
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 2: After a successful game.

1150
01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 3: The top hat has elegance, but many others love the

1151
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 3: Scotty Dog because, as one fan observed, it's the only

1152
01:00:15,560 --> 01:00:16,400
Speaker 3: piece with a heart.

1153
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 2: All.

1154
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 3: A monopoly board has forty spaces with twenty eight properties.

1155
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 3: The most landed on space is jail. This is due

1156
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:25,480
Speaker 3: to just like in real life baby.

1157
01:00:28,200 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 2: H Christ.

1158
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 3: This is due to various factors, including players landing on

1159
01:00:33,800 --> 01:00:36,480
Speaker 3: the go to jail space, drawing go to Jail cards

1160
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 3: from Chance or Community Chest, or rolling doubles three times

1161
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 3: in a row. According to dice related probability, after jail,

1162
01:00:43,560 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 3: Illinois Avenue is the most landed on property. This is

1163
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:48,800
Speaker 3: because it is located near the jail space and many

1164
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 3: players are frequently moving from jail. Least likely is Chance,

1165
01:00:53,200 --> 01:00:57,560
Speaker 3: Community Chest, Mediterranean av all using the same.

1166
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:00,000
Speaker 2: Probability rules from just rolling the eye.

1167
01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:03,640
Speaker 3: Jail may seem like the worst place to be during

1168
01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 3: game of Monopoly, but being locked up could actually be

1169
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:10,320
Speaker 3: a winning strategy. According to Natalie Fitzsimmons twenty fifteen UK

1170
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:12,920
Speaker 3: Monopoly Champion, which we will talk more about at the

1171
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 3: end of the game, it's best to just sit in

1172
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 3: jail and collect money from your opponents rather than land

1173
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:19,520
Speaker 3: on their properties and end up owing money, which I

1174
01:01:19,640 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 3: don't think you can do in America's car seral system.

1175
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:28,080
Speaker 3: We just, you know, in California, we take that. Yeah,

1176
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:30,840
Speaker 3: in California, we just make you fight fires and pay

1177
01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 3: you pennies for it, and then when you get out,

1178
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:35,120
Speaker 3: you actually can't get a job as a firefighter because

1179
01:01:35,120 --> 01:01:36,440
Speaker 3: you have a criminal breaker.

1180
01:01:36,680 --> 01:01:40,000
Speaker 2: You do, I didn't know they Yeah, yeah, dude, you

1181
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 2: tell me more about that.

1182
01:01:41,680 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 3: It's just that once again, as I mentioned, you know,

1183
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:49,120
Speaker 3: our California's beloved PG and E Utilities company is responsible

1184
01:01:49,160 --> 01:01:52,480
Speaker 3: for the vast swaths of the state's forest fires because

1185
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 3: they are too cheap to keep up with their upkeep.

1186
01:01:55,520 --> 01:01:58,280
Speaker 3: It's just spread too far around and they just simply

1187
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:01,000
Speaker 3: can't be fighted to you know, keep up with all

1188
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 3: of it. So as of January eleventh, though in twenty

1189
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:08,400
Speaker 3: twenty five this is related to the Los Angeles wildfires,

1190
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 3: over nine hundred prisoners have been battling those Inmate firefighters

1191
01:02:14,240 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 3: make up about twenty percent of California's wildfire force and

1192
01:02:19,720 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 3: save the state up to one hundred million annually. Wow,

1193
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:29,880
Speaker 3: this is a slavery loophole. In the thirteenth Amendments first section,

1194
01:02:30,040 --> 01:02:34,680
Speaker 3: which is neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as punishment

1195
01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 3: for a crime.

1196
01:02:36,360 --> 01:02:37,960
Speaker 2: Shall exist in the United States.

1197
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 3: So, of course, a document that has virtually zero grounding

1198
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 3: in the modern world continues to for us over just

1199
01:02:47,600 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 3: in the same way as the whole gun thing does.

1200
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 3: But let's hear let's droll down into this. Inmate firefighters

1201
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 3: are only assigned to firefighting positions with their consent. However,

1202
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 3: fire firefighting is one of only three types of work

1203
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 3: available to inmates, and the other two are daily prison

1204
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 3: labor and prison industry works. Firefighting is actually coveted in

1205
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 3: California prisons because it pays more than those other roles.

1206
01:03:14,400 --> 01:03:18,600
Speaker 3: That said, their hourly rate is sixteen or seventy four

1207
01:03:18,720 --> 01:03:22,000
Speaker 3: cents per hour and a maximum day rate of five

1208
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:27,560
Speaker 3: eighty to ten twenty four per hour. California's minimum wage

1209
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 3: is sixteen fifty Wow. They face an injury rate four

1210
01:03:31,280 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 3: times higher than other firefighters, an eightfold risk of smoke

1211
01:03:34,880 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 3: inhalation compared to other firefighters, and a higher likelihood of

1212
01:03:38,240 --> 01:03:42,160
Speaker 3: experiencing burns because they're just not as well equipped. Okay,

1213
01:03:42,160 --> 01:03:44,920
Speaker 3: so here it is the rules for the California Emergency

1214
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 3: Medical Services bar someone with one felony conviction from getting

1215
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 3: an Emergency Medication Technician certification, which is a certification that

1216
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 3: is virtually a requirement for aspiring firefighters ten years post release.

1217
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 3: Someone with two felony convictions can never get that. So

1218
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 3: you can't come out of jail after fighting fires.

1219
01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 2: And if you have a felony, you.

1220
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,320
Speaker 3: Can't even face the possibility of getting hired as a

1221
01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 3: firefighter for ten years. And if you have two felonies,

1222
01:04:16,880 --> 01:04:19,800
Speaker 3: which by the way, many people are in jail for

1223
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:23,360
Speaker 3: low level drug offenses that are classified as felonies, someone

1224
01:04:23,360 --> 01:04:26,000
Speaker 3: with two felonies can never get that. Governor Newsom did

1225
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:29,240
Speaker 3: sign a law that allows released non violent inmates who

1226
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:31,960
Speaker 3: worked in prison fire camps to petition courts to expunge

1227
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:36,160
Speaker 3: their records. This was in twenty twenty and programs. There

1228
01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 3: are programs that exist called the Future Fire Academy that

1229
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 3: exists to provide training, certification, and job placement to former

1230
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:51,680
Speaker 3: inmates who fought fires as part of this while incarcerating. However,

1231
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:57,320
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, California voters rejected Proposition six, which

1232
01:04:57,360 --> 01:05:01,240
Speaker 3: would have banned forced labor in state prisons by removing

1233
01:05:01,240 --> 01:05:02,360
Speaker 3: the slavery.

1234
01:05:01,880 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 2: Loophole from the state constitution.

1235
01:05:03,800 --> 01:05:05,280
Speaker 3: So that was just something the whole state did. We

1236
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 3: all just voted for that. Well not me, but we

1237
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 3: all just voted for that.

1238
01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 2: What were I talking about again? Oh? Yeah, the little

1239
01:05:11,960 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 2: greenhouses and red hotel.

1240
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 3: The little green houses and red hotels in Charles Darrow's

1241
01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 3: original game were originally off cuts of little wooden wall moldings,

1242
01:05:21,600 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 3: and to date more than six billion of those little

1243
01:05:24,280 --> 01:05:26,640
Speaker 3: houses have been made, which is enough to circle the

1244
01:05:26,680 --> 01:05:29,760
Speaker 3: world twice around if laid end to end.

1245
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:30,880
Speaker 2: Isn't that fun?

1246
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 3: And better than people putting life in limb in danger

1247
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 3: to fight fires while they're in jail. Isn't that fun?

1248
01:05:39,520 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 3: The thing about the statistic I put in there, does

1249
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 3: it make you forget? Forget it? Try and forget it.

1250
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:47,120
Speaker 3: You'll sleep better.

1251
01:05:47,680 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 1: Oh this is probably a goodest segue as any to

1252
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:53,960
Speaker 1: talk about the coal hard cash of this game. The

1253
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: total bank in the game of Monopoly is twenty five

1254
01:05:57,800 --> 01:06:02,360
Speaker 1: eighty dollars, which, inflation from nineteen thirty five bucks is

1255
01:06:02,680 --> 01:06:05,040
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty twoy nine hundred and one, so

1256
01:06:05,160 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 1: less than half a million. Still not a lot for

1257
01:06:07,440 --> 01:06:11,800
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's being bought for Monopoly's eightieth anniversary.

1258
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:14,160
Speaker 1: Has Bro, the company that makes the game, engaged in

1259
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:17,880
Speaker 1: a Wonka esque activity of putting real money into eighty

1260
01:06:17,920 --> 01:06:19,360
Speaker 1: game sets distributed in.

1261
01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:23,280
Speaker 2: France for some reason. Yeh look cute. Yeah, I know.

1262
01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 1: So they were with eighty game sets in France that

1263
01:06:25,640 --> 01:06:27,600
Speaker 1: had twenty grand apiece.

1264
01:06:27,320 --> 01:06:30,800
Speaker 3: Distributed to the Nazis' most enthusiastic collaborator.

1265
01:06:30,920 --> 01:06:35,440
Speaker 1: Today earn that John Travolta also apparently plays this game

1266
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: this way with real cash, but given how he's described it,

1267
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:41,440
Speaker 1: I have a sneaking suspicion that he's doing it wrong.

1268
01:06:42,400 --> 01:06:45,640
Speaker 1: Talking to James Corden on The Late Late Show, he said, look,

1269
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:47,800
Speaker 1: it's twenty dollars, it's one hundred dollars.

1270
01:06:47,840 --> 01:06:50,520
Speaker 2: It's not that much. I think in totality it's about

1271
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:51,600
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars.

1272
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:56,840
Speaker 1: If he replaced the whole thing, he is ten times off.

1273
01:06:57,680 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 3: That's aspire sweet.

1274
01:07:00,680 --> 01:07:06,360
Speaker 4: Yes, as you meditate on that, we'll be right back

1275
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 4: with more too much information after these messages.

1276
01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:24,360
Speaker 1: Every four to five years, Hasbro hosts a US Championship

1277
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:28,080
Speaker 1: any world championship for Monopoly, and their winners can earn

1278
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:31,360
Speaker 1: up to twenty and eighty dollars equal to the amount

1279
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:32,160
Speaker 1: of money at play.

1280
01:07:32,360 --> 01:07:33,360
Speaker 2: In Monopoly, the.

1281
01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 1: Location is chosen specifically in a city that's a reputation

1282
01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:40,480
Speaker 1: for finance and glamour. Prior sites include Tokyo Money Carlo

1283
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:45,320
Speaker 1: and Check's Notes Toronto in two thousand and three, Hey,

1284
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:46,360
Speaker 1: I like Toronto.

1285
01:07:46,480 --> 01:07:49,200
Speaker 3: They're trying a great They're trying.

1286
01:07:49,360 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 2: They are, They're great playing. They're nicer than us. They are.

1287
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:54,200
Speaker 2: In two thousand and three, it was hosted on a

1288
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:55,000
Speaker 2: moving train.

1289
01:07:55,920 --> 01:07:58,640
Speaker 3: Okay, there were many fatalities.

1290
01:08:01,040 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: The first championship was held in nineteen seventy three in Liberty,

1291
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:07,280
Speaker 1: New York, so clearly the glamour rule is new.

1292
01:08:08,160 --> 01:08:09,040
Speaker 3: Got their ass.

1293
01:08:09,080 --> 01:08:10,720
Speaker 2: In order to play, you must qualify.

1294
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 1: To compete, there is an online quiz with five short

1295
01:08:14,160 --> 01:08:18,400
Speaker 1: essays Seriously, I don't know what the stopics are, and

1296
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:22,080
Speaker 1: the top seventy five entrants must play each other online.

1297
01:08:22,600 --> 01:08:25,759
Speaker 1: From that pool, twenty three winners are brought together along

1298
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:29,080
Speaker 1: with the previous years champion to duke it out. One

1299
01:08:29,120 --> 01:08:34,400
Speaker 1: longtime Monopoly champ could bankrupt players in fifteen minutes. Training

1300
01:08:34,479 --> 01:08:39,559
Speaker 1: consisted of studying the odds, analyzing tapes of previous games,

1301
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,840
Speaker 1: and writing computer simulations to determine what.

1302
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:45,439
Speaker 2: Makes the game tick before you leaf.

1303
01:08:45,840 --> 01:08:49,040
Speaker 1: Two thousand and three champ Matt McNally dated Day Vegas

1304
01:08:49,080 --> 01:08:49,760
Speaker 1: Showgirl for.

1305
01:08:49,720 --> 01:08:53,360
Speaker 2: A number of years, so your mileage may vary.

1306
01:08:53,880 --> 01:08:56,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it just sounds so insane to me

1307
01:08:56,520 --> 01:09:00,000
Speaker 3: to try and wrangle a live online game of mine.

1308
01:09:00,520 --> 01:09:02,760
Speaker 3: Like you know how hard it is to schedule a

1309
01:09:02,840 --> 01:09:06,880
Speaker 3: zoom meeting with like three people at your job. But

1310
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 3: I guess people competing for this are not particularly tightly

1311
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 3: scheduled individuals.

1312
01:09:12,720 --> 01:09:16,559
Speaker 2: If I was making an uncharitable assumption, continue.

1313
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:19,479
Speaker 1: So we mentioned how some Monopoly champs can bankrupt players

1314
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: in fifteen minutes. That probably sounds like a bit of

1315
01:09:21,960 --> 01:09:23,960
Speaker 1: a relief to a lot of you listeners, because everyone

1316
01:09:24,040 --> 01:09:27,599
Speaker 1: knows that Monopoly games can drag on to an interminable length.

1317
01:09:28,439 --> 01:09:31,920
Speaker 1: The longest game on record lasted seventy straight days.

1318
01:09:32,240 --> 01:09:35,559
Speaker 3: I would kill I would kill myself. I know no

1319
01:09:35,760 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 3: part of my being has that much I would rather kill.

1320
01:09:39,120 --> 01:09:40,800
Speaker 3: I would be like the saw Traps where it's like

1321
01:09:40,840 --> 01:09:46,599
Speaker 3: you must to survive, you must play Monopoly. Nope, close

1322
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:48,960
Speaker 3: the big metal jury rigged jaw in my face, man,

1323
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:51,439
Speaker 3: not going to happen. Don't really don't really want to

1324
01:09:51,479 --> 01:09:54,719
Speaker 3: live that much, you know, moving on.

1325
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:55,639
Speaker 2: For some reason.

1326
01:09:55,720 --> 01:09:58,240
Speaker 1: Another stat I have on hand is that the longest

1327
01:09:58,400 --> 01:10:02,000
Speaker 1: underwater game was seventy two hours.

1328
01:10:02,439 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 3: Why was it stopped at seventy two hours?

1329
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:07,760
Speaker 2: That's all the oxygen they had.

1330
01:10:07,920 --> 01:10:09,720
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, an eye.

1331
01:10:10,160 --> 01:10:13,639
Speaker 2: The air pocket the boat finally went out.

1332
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:17,400
Speaker 3: Holy, that's grim. I'm sure it's all very above board,

1333
01:10:17,439 --> 01:10:20,799
Speaker 3: but it's much more fun imagining. Like the longest underwater

1334
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:25,479
Speaker 3: of game, Monopoly lasted seventy two hours. Tragically, all lives

1335
01:10:25,560 --> 01:10:26,480
Speaker 3: were lost.

1336
01:10:28,120 --> 01:10:28,839
Speaker 2: Good times.

1337
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:32,000
Speaker 1: Because of its extreme length, tempers have been known to

1338
01:10:32,040 --> 01:10:34,200
Speaker 1: frey when playing this game, as we'll touch on in

1339
01:10:34,320 --> 01:10:39,080
Speaker 1: murderous detail later. The late Queen of England, you know,

1340
01:10:39,280 --> 01:10:43,839
Speaker 1: of England, banned the Royal family from playing Monopoly at Christmas,

1341
01:10:43,880 --> 01:10:47,559
Speaker 1: as quote, it gets too vicious. One royal even turned

1342
01:10:47,600 --> 01:10:50,559
Speaker 1: down a gift of the game that's a lamb Royal

1343
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:54,080
Speaker 1: gift that he was officially presented with, saying, quote, we're

1344
01:10:54,120 --> 01:10:55,800
Speaker 1: not allowed to play Monopoly at home.

1345
01:10:56,479 --> 01:10:57,799
Speaker 2: Mother says, I can't.

1346
01:10:59,439 --> 01:11:02,080
Speaker 1: Not to speak of the dead unless Heigel was reading

1347
01:11:02,080 --> 01:11:04,920
Speaker 1: this section, in which case absolutely speak ill of the dead.

1348
01:11:05,240 --> 01:11:07,960
Speaker 1: There is a high likelihood that her majesty was playing

1349
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:11,320
Speaker 1: the game wrong. As any nineties comic will tell you,

1350
01:11:11,439 --> 01:11:14,920
Speaker 1: a lot of men don't read instructions. Instead, in the

1351
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:17,240
Speaker 1: case of monopoly, you're just kind of taught by a

1352
01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:20,240
Speaker 1: friend or loved one that's passed down. As a result,

1353
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:22,920
Speaker 1: a lot of incorrect rules have been passed down, and

1354
01:11:22,960 --> 01:11:25,800
Speaker 1: the popular rules of monopoly have drifted further from the

1355
01:11:25,880 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: actual rules, which would actually.

1356
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:29,000
Speaker 2: Yield a shorter game.

1357
01:11:29,720 --> 01:11:32,080
Speaker 1: The biggest rule, which is ignored in the oral tradition,

1358
01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 1: goes as follows. If you land on a property and

1359
01:11:34,840 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 1: choose not to buy it, the property goes up for

1360
01:11:37,280 --> 01:11:40,400
Speaker 1: auction and it goes to the highest bidder. This speeds

1361
01:11:40,439 --> 01:11:42,880
Speaker 1: up the game, which lasts from sixty to ninety minutes

1362
01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:43,479
Speaker 1: in this case.

1363
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:45,000
Speaker 2: But because games.

1364
01:11:44,800 --> 01:11:47,320
Speaker 1: Were played by children, a lot of parents decided to

1365
01:11:47,360 --> 01:11:49,880
Speaker 1: skip the auctions because it caused the kids to fight.

1366
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:52,640
Speaker 1: And then also the whole putting five hundred dollars in

1367
01:11:52,680 --> 01:11:54,160
Speaker 1: the center of the board when you land on free

1368
01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:57,240
Speaker 1: parking thing that's not real in the.

1369
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,680
Speaker 2: Game, and the real rules that's made up. Yeah, it's

1370
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:03,000
Speaker 2: made up. Jesus, no wonder everyone grows up hating this thing.

1371
01:12:03,320 --> 01:12:07,639
Speaker 2: I am I play.

1372
01:12:07,720 --> 01:12:10,960
Speaker 1: With these rules, you can conceivably emerge victorious from a

1373
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:16,200
Speaker 1: two player game in twenty one seconds. A sociology professor

1374
01:12:16,200 --> 01:12:19,240
Speaker 1: at Notre Dame worked out the fastest route. Four turns,

1375
01:12:19,479 --> 01:12:23,000
Speaker 1: nine rolls of the dice. Player one starts by rolling

1376
01:12:23,040 --> 01:12:26,240
Speaker 1: double six's, landing on community Chest and drawing the bank

1377
01:12:26,439 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 1: error in your favorite card for an instant two hundred dollars.

1378
01:12:30,280 --> 01:12:33,559
Speaker 1: Then the second player rolls and lands on Income Tax

1379
01:12:33,600 --> 01:12:38,000
Speaker 1: Square loses some money. Next player one rolls double twos

1380
01:12:38,000 --> 01:12:40,280
Speaker 1: and lands on park Place and buys it, and then

1381
01:12:40,360 --> 01:12:42,200
Speaker 1: double one because when you get doubles you can go again,

1382
01:12:42,280 --> 01:12:44,760
Speaker 1: and then double ones to reach Boardwalk and purchases that

1383
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:47,960
Speaker 1: as well. Because they roll doubles, they go again past

1384
01:12:48,000 --> 01:12:50,559
Speaker 1: Go and collected none to two hundred dollars. With the

1385
01:12:50,600 --> 01:12:53,080
Speaker 1: cash in hand, they can buy three houses on park

1386
01:12:53,120 --> 01:12:56,679
Speaker 1: Place and two on Boardwalk. On player two's next turn,

1387
01:12:56,720 --> 01:12:59,440
Speaker 1: they draw a chance card reading go directly to Boardwalk,

1388
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:01,320
Speaker 1: landing there triggers the rent.

1389
01:13:01,120 --> 01:13:03,559
Speaker 2: Payment that they can't afford, and the game is over.

1390
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, you know, the thing is this is just

1391
01:13:06,280 --> 01:13:08,519
Speaker 3: a way of doing business for like black Rock and

1392
01:13:08,560 --> 01:13:11,479
Speaker 3: all these real estate consortiums.

1393
01:13:10,840 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 2: So like.

1394
01:13:13,600 --> 01:13:17,320
Speaker 1: Well, according to a klubby University professor, this lightning fast

1395
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:20,960
Speaker 1: win would only occur once in roughly two hundred and

1396
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:25,360
Speaker 1: fifty three trillion, eight hundred and ninety nine billion, eight

1397
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:28,320
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety one million, six hundred seventy one thousand

1398
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:29,360
Speaker 1: and forty games.

1399
01:13:30,360 --> 01:13:35,280
Speaker 3: Wow, that's crazy because it feels like a chance. I

1400
01:13:35,360 --> 01:13:38,320
Speaker 3: was just gonna say, so, it's much less probable than

1401
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:40,759
Speaker 3: it for you than it is for the wealthy class

1402
01:13:40,760 --> 01:13:41,479
Speaker 3: in this country.

1403
01:13:41,760 --> 01:13:45,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, how fun, so much fun? Okay?

1404
01:13:45,880 --> 01:13:47,880
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, as we mentioned in the intro or

1405
01:13:47,880 --> 01:13:50,080
Speaker 3: towards the top of the episode, there's exactly one good

1406
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:54,200
Speaker 3: thing Monopoly has contributed to, aside from I guess joy

1407
01:13:54,240 --> 01:13:56,960
Speaker 3: and family togetherness and whatever abstract.

1408
01:13:56,439 --> 01:13:58,280
Speaker 2: Concepts you want to try and sell me on this

1409
01:13:58,320 --> 01:13:59,880
Speaker 2: thing for but I ain't by.

1410
01:14:01,240 --> 01:14:04,920
Speaker 3: During World War Two, the British Secret Service used Monopoly

1411
01:14:04,960 --> 01:14:08,679
Speaker 3: boxes to smuggle escape supplies to pow stuck in German

1412
01:14:08,760 --> 01:14:12,439
Speaker 3: war camps. This sounds like a plot point on Hogan's Heroes,

1413
01:14:12,960 --> 01:14:16,040
Speaker 3: but it is entirely real. It came about due to

1414
01:14:16,040 --> 01:14:19,799
Speaker 3: a weird mix of practicality and coincidence. Paper, for example,

1415
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:22,160
Speaker 3: is a terrible material from which to make maps because

1416
01:14:22,160 --> 01:14:24,840
Speaker 3: it's noisy, it rips, can't get wet, and so forth.

1417
01:14:25,240 --> 01:14:28,240
Speaker 3: Silk is a much better material. So in nineteen forty

1418
01:14:28,280 --> 01:14:33,560
Speaker 3: one the British enlisted silk manufacturing company Jawn Waddington Ltd

1419
01:14:33,720 --> 01:14:36,160
Speaker 3: to print maps that would be sturdier and easier to

1420
01:14:36,240 --> 01:14:39,679
Speaker 3: hide than paper ones. As we mentioned earlier, that company

1421
01:14:39,720 --> 01:14:42,639
Speaker 3: was also responsible for licensing Monopoly games in the UK,

1422
01:14:43,080 --> 01:14:45,799
Speaker 3: so they decided to print silk maps, place them inside

1423
01:14:45,840 --> 01:14:49,560
Speaker 3: boxes of Monopoly, and distribute them to camps via humanitarian

1424
01:14:49,600 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 3: aid groups where they would not have drawn much attention.

1425
01:14:52,520 --> 01:14:55,240
Speaker 3: In addition to the silk map hidden in the game board,

1426
01:14:55,280 --> 01:14:59,040
Speaker 3: the box contained hidden compartments for tools like metal files, matches,

1427
01:14:59,080 --> 01:15:03,080
Speaker 3: and compasses, and under the fake money were real actual banknotes.

1428
01:15:03,640 --> 01:15:06,200
Speaker 3: There were six different maps created for areas around German

1429
01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:10,080
Speaker 3: pow camps and other maps for Italy. Thousands of prisoners

1430
01:15:10,120 --> 01:15:12,559
Speaker 3: are believed to have escaped camps thanks to these maps,

1431
01:15:12,760 --> 01:15:15,320
Speaker 3: but they were all destroyed following the war, the maps,

1432
01:15:15,320 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 3: not the prisoners. In fact, it was forty five years

1433
01:15:18,280 --> 01:15:20,960
Speaker 3: until the British government admitted to the scheme, and this

1434
01:15:21,120 --> 01:15:24,160
Speaker 3: was only after many many reports of families in the

1435
01:15:24,240 --> 01:15:28,640
Speaker 3: UK finding quote unusual versions of Monopoly in their attics.

1436
01:15:29,000 --> 01:15:30,920
Speaker 2: I know that that's really really funny.

1437
01:15:31,280 --> 01:15:34,479
Speaker 1: In the USSR, Monopoly was banned as a symbol of

1438
01:15:34,520 --> 01:15:39,759
Speaker 1: Western greed. However, black market copies flourished. Some families created

1439
01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:43,479
Speaker 1: homemade versions, hand drawing game boards and writing in Russian cyrillic,

1440
01:15:43,600 --> 01:15:47,200
Speaker 1: using scraps and bootleg materials, which is fitting considering the

1441
01:15:47,200 --> 01:15:50,519
Speaker 1: game's origins, and these were passed around privately as subtle

1442
01:15:50,520 --> 01:15:53,599
Speaker 1: acts of rebellion and curiosity about capitalist systems.

1443
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:58,960
Speaker 3: Phenomenools, you complete fools.

1444
01:15:59,439 --> 01:16:01,960
Speaker 1: This phenomen well became a cult symbol of resistance and

1445
01:16:02,040 --> 01:16:05,519
Speaker 1: fascination with the West, and the game's supportedly still not

1446
01:16:05,600 --> 01:16:09,519
Speaker 1: available in Cuba. The World Championship of Monopoly was held

1447
01:16:09,560 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 1: in Berlin in nineteen ninety two, just after the Wall fell,

1448
01:16:12,680 --> 01:16:15,080
Speaker 1: and in more recent years some of the best players

1449
01:16:15,080 --> 01:16:17,200
Speaker 1: in the world have come from Eastern Bloc countries.

1450
01:16:17,439 --> 01:16:20,400
Speaker 3: That's nice, Yeah, yeah, so is it?

1451
01:16:20,520 --> 01:16:21,400
Speaker 2: Yeah? I like that.

1452
01:16:21,760 --> 01:16:25,040
Speaker 3: Okay, now you know they're like they're taking.

1453
01:16:24,800 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 1: It back, yes, yes, but Monopoly teaches more than just

1454
01:16:28,800 --> 01:16:34,000
Speaker 1: capitalism sort of. During the Yugoslav Wars of the nineteen nineties,

1455
01:16:34,200 --> 01:16:38,200
Speaker 1: humanitarian organizations distributed board games like Monopoly and refugee camps

1456
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:42,479
Speaker 1: to help children process trauma, rebuild social trust, and engage

1457
01:16:42,520 --> 01:16:43,640
Speaker 1: in structured activity.

1458
01:16:44,920 --> 01:16:48,600
Speaker 3: You did that with a game that espouses capitalism.

1459
01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:51,240
Speaker 2: This is how it works in the country.

1460
01:16:51,240 --> 01:16:54,320
Speaker 3: They just bombed a shit out of us because they're

1461
01:16:54,360 --> 01:16:57,639
Speaker 3: only arming one side in this conflict. You understand it's

1462
01:16:57,680 --> 01:16:59,519
Speaker 3: advantageous of them to do so.

1463
01:17:00,160 --> 01:17:00,559
Speaker 2: Sorry.

1464
01:17:01,160 --> 01:17:04,880
Speaker 1: In some cases, Monopoly became a symbol of escapism and routine,

1465
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:11,200
Speaker 1: helping children learn trade and negotiation in safe environments in

1466
01:17:11,280 --> 01:17:15,280
Speaker 1: Tito's Yugoslavia. At the other end of the spectrum, an

1467
01:17:15,280 --> 01:17:18,960
Speaker 1: economics professor named Ralph Anschblosch, who we talked about earlier

1468
01:17:18,960 --> 01:17:21,760
Speaker 1: in this episode, created a game called Anti Monopoly in

1469
01:17:21,800 --> 01:17:25,960
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three to critique monopolistic practices and promote competition.

1470
01:17:26,880 --> 01:17:29,240
Speaker 2: Parker Brothers reaction was a little on the those.

1471
01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:32,960
Speaker 1: They sued Ashblash for trademark infringement, which resulted in a

1472
01:17:32,960 --> 01:17:37,080
Speaker 1: protracted legal battle. He argued that Monopoly's origins predated Parker

1473
01:17:37,080 --> 01:17:40,640
Speaker 1: Brothers patent, using Lizzy McGee's previously untold story to.

1474
01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:44,760
Speaker 2: Support his case. Hell yeah. After a decade of legal wrangling, he.

1475
01:17:44,760 --> 01:17:47,600
Speaker 1: Won the right to produce his game. Nice victory. That

1476
01:17:47,720 --> 01:17:51,960
Speaker 1: helped shed light on the true origins of monopoly.

1477
01:17:52,120 --> 01:17:53,519
Speaker 2: I wonder if this so you said that, when was

1478
01:17:53,560 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 2: that nineteen seventy three?

1479
01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:57,679
Speaker 3: Okay, so that was before the people versus Larry Flint,

1480
01:17:57,840 --> 01:18:01,519
Speaker 3: when that legalized satire, that set the precedent of satire

1481
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:03,040
Speaker 3: as protected speech.

1482
01:18:03,240 --> 01:18:04,320
Speaker 2: That was how late that was?

1483
01:18:04,720 --> 01:18:07,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy, right, when you actually look up is

1484
01:18:07,320 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 3: satire protected speech?

1485
01:18:08,439 --> 01:18:10,640
Speaker 2: It only goes back to that case.

1486
01:18:11,840 --> 01:18:15,120
Speaker 3: Because wonderful, you know, right, no problems here, make it

1487
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:18,200
Speaker 3: great again. So now we have to talk about perhaps

1488
01:18:18,320 --> 01:18:21,759
Speaker 3: the biggest monopoly scandal in the minds of millennials. Certainly

1489
01:18:22,400 --> 01:18:25,959
Speaker 3: we're speaking, of course, about the McDonald's Monopoly game incident.

1490
01:18:26,680 --> 01:18:29,120
Speaker 3: For more than a decade. The McDonald's Monopoly game is

1491
01:18:29,120 --> 01:18:32,320
Speaker 3: one of the fast food chain's most successful promotions. Launched

1492
01:18:32,360 --> 01:18:34,519
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven, it mimicked the classic board game

1493
01:18:34,560 --> 01:18:38,240
Speaker 3: by offering customers peel off game pieces attached to drink cups, fries,

1494
01:18:38,280 --> 01:18:41,719
Speaker 3: and burger wrappers. Collecting properties like boardwalk in park places

1495
01:18:41,760 --> 01:18:45,000
Speaker 3: could win you millions, while other combinations awarded smaller prizes,

1496
01:18:45,120 --> 01:18:49,200
Speaker 3: free food, vacations or even new cars. Millions of customers

1497
01:18:49,240 --> 01:18:51,599
Speaker 3: played each year, drawn by the tantalizing chance to turn

1498
01:18:51,600 --> 01:18:55,520
Speaker 3: a happy meal into a jackpot and eat a nutritious

1499
01:18:55,560 --> 01:18:56,759
Speaker 3: and delicious meal.

1500
01:18:58,160 --> 01:18:59,040
Speaker 2: At the same time.

1501
01:19:00,000 --> 01:19:02,679
Speaker 3: Only twelve years, the top prizes were never truly up

1502
01:19:02,680 --> 01:19:08,240
Speaker 3: to grabs. Behind the scenes, a former cop shocker named

1503
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:11,960
Speaker 3: Jerome Jerry Jacobson had reached the game in one of

1504
01:19:11,960 --> 01:19:16,799
Speaker 3: the most elaborate frauds in promotional marketing history. This plot

1505
01:19:16,920 --> 01:19:21,519
Speaker 3: ultimately netted him over twenty four million dollars. The ex

1506
01:19:21,640 --> 01:19:25,200
Speaker 3: cop Jacobson worked for Simon Marketing, the agency that McDonald's

1507
01:19:25,200 --> 01:19:28,560
Speaker 3: contracted to run the Monopoly game. As the Director of Security,

1508
01:19:28,640 --> 01:19:30,680
Speaker 3: a cushy job that many cops who are forced to

1509
01:19:30,760 --> 01:19:34,760
Speaker 3: leave the force in disgrace then fall into. Jacobson was

1510
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 3: entrusted with safeguarding the game's integrity. His responsibilities included transporting

1511
01:19:39,120 --> 01:19:42,040
Speaker 3: the high value winning pieces and overseeing their secure placement

1512
01:19:42,120 --> 01:19:47,200
Speaker 3: at packaging facilities. McDonald's and Simon Marketing took elaborate precautions

1513
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:50,960
Speaker 3: to prevent tampering, sealed envelopes, armored transport, and even fake

1514
01:19:51,040 --> 01:19:54,639
Speaker 3: security measures to throw off potential thieves, but the real

1515
01:19:54,720 --> 01:20:00,280
Speaker 3: threat came from within as a so off.

1516
01:20:00,200 --> 01:20:00,719
Speaker 2: In the case.

1517
01:20:01,160 --> 01:20:04,439
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen nineties, Jacobson discovered a loophole during

1518
01:20:04,479 --> 01:20:07,120
Speaker 1: one of his trips to deliver game pieces to packing plants.

1519
01:20:07,400 --> 01:20:10,599
Speaker 1: He discreetly slipped into a bathroom and switched a high

1520
01:20:10,680 --> 01:20:14,000
Speaker 1: value winning sticker with a decoy, hiding the real piece

1521
01:20:14,080 --> 01:20:17,960
Speaker 1: in his sock. Emboldened by how easy this was, he

1522
01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:22,439
Speaker 1: continued to steal winning pieces over and over again. At first,

1523
01:20:22,560 --> 01:20:25,760
Speaker 1: Jacobson passed the pieces to close friends and family, which

1524
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:29,480
Speaker 1: does not seem smart, who claimed the prizes and shared.

1525
01:20:29,160 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 2: The winnings with him. But soon he grew even more ambitious.

1526
01:20:33,439 --> 01:20:35,640
Speaker 1: He began selling the pieces to a growing web of

1527
01:20:35,680 --> 01:20:39,479
Speaker 1: supposed winners across the country. The scheme involved into a

1528
01:20:39,560 --> 01:20:43,240
Speaker 1: black market lottery. Jacobson would sell winning tickets for cash

1529
01:20:43,320 --> 01:20:46,640
Speaker 1: up front, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, and then

1530
01:20:46,680 --> 01:20:48,559
Speaker 1: take a cut of the prize money after the winners

1531
01:20:48,600 --> 01:20:53,400
Speaker 1: collected from McDonald's. To avoid detection, Jacobson coast his accomplices

1532
01:20:53,439 --> 01:20:56,439
Speaker 1: on how to lie to McDonald's investigators. They were told

1533
01:20:56,439 --> 01:20:58,240
Speaker 1: to say they found the piece stuck to a fry

1534
01:20:58,240 --> 01:21:00,639
Speaker 1: box or received it as a random gift from a friend.

1535
01:21:01,400 --> 01:21:04,280
Speaker 1: Winners were instructed to claim their prizes from different cities

1536
01:21:04,320 --> 01:21:08,080
Speaker 1: and states to avoid raising suspicion. In many cases, he

1537
01:21:08,200 --> 01:21:11,479
Speaker 1: used middleman, using mob connected figures and members of his

1538
01:21:11,520 --> 01:21:15,800
Speaker 1: extended social circle to recruit fake winners. The web of

1539
01:21:15,880 --> 01:21:19,080
Speaker 1: frauds spread across the country, but McDonald's never realized it

1540
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:22,720
Speaker 1: was being manipulated from within. The scam unraveled in two

1541
01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:24,719
Speaker 1: thousand and one thanks to a tip to the FBI.

1542
01:21:25,520 --> 01:21:29,040
Speaker 1: An anonymous caller claimed that someone named quote Uncle Jerry

1543
01:21:29,760 --> 01:21:31,519
Speaker 1: was rigging McDonald's monopoly game.

1544
01:21:32,120 --> 01:21:33,160
Speaker 2: The FBI launched an.

1545
01:21:33,120 --> 01:21:37,679
Speaker 1: Investigation dubbed Operation Final Answer, a reference to Who Wants

1546
01:21:37,680 --> 01:21:41,200
Speaker 1: to Be a Millionaire, and quietly traced the connections between winners,

1547
01:21:41,439 --> 01:21:45,519
Speaker 1: discovering a strange pattern. Many were related or linked through marriage,

1548
01:21:45,600 --> 01:21:49,000
Speaker 1: lived in the same areas, or had suspicious financial histories.

1549
01:21:49,880 --> 01:21:52,799
Speaker 1: The FBI set up a sting where they wiretapped phones,

1550
01:21:53,120 --> 01:21:56,679
Speaker 1: interviewed suspects under false pretenses, and even created a fake

1551
01:21:56,720 --> 01:22:01,560
Speaker 1: production company to record supposed winter testimonial housing the pretense

1552
01:22:01,640 --> 01:22:05,080
Speaker 1: of filming a commercial to get suspects talking on camera.

1553
01:22:06,040 --> 01:22:09,080
Speaker 1: What they uncovered was a sprawling conspiracy involving more than

1554
01:22:09,120 --> 01:22:12,559
Speaker 1: fifty people in over twenty four million dollars in fraudulent winnings.

1555
01:22:12,840 --> 01:22:15,679
Speaker 1: In August two thousand and one, the FBI made their move.

1556
01:22:17,240 --> 01:22:18,639
Speaker 1: That was why they had their eye off the ball.

1557
01:22:20,800 --> 01:22:24,839
Speaker 1: Jacobson and several accomplices were arrested and indicted on charges

1558
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:28,559
Speaker 1: of mail fraud and conspiracy. The story made headlines across

1559
01:22:28,600 --> 01:22:31,240
Speaker 1: the country, not just because of the deception, because of

1560
01:22:31,280 --> 01:22:34,880
Speaker 1: how long it had gone undetected. Jacobs impleaded guilty in

1561
01:22:34,920 --> 01:22:37,400
Speaker 1: two thousand and two and was sentenced to thirty seven

1562
01:22:37,479 --> 01:22:41,759
Speaker 1: months in prison, which is not that long in shock,

1563
01:22:42,439 --> 01:22:45,600
Speaker 1: and was ordered to pay twelve point five million dollars.

1564
01:22:45,280 --> 01:22:47,519
Speaker 2: In restitution so that PRIs doing now.

1565
01:22:48,080 --> 01:22:50,519
Speaker 1: Many of his co conspirators also serve time, though some

1566
01:22:50,680 --> 01:22:55,360
Speaker 1: received lighter sentences for cooperating with investigators. McDonald's, though not

1567
01:22:55,479 --> 01:22:58,720
Speaker 1: legally culpable, suffered a PR nightmare and immediately shut down

1568
01:22:58,760 --> 01:23:01,800
Speaker 1: the promotion. To make amends, McDonald's ran a new game

1569
01:23:01,880 --> 01:23:04,280
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one and gave away ten million

1570
01:23:04,320 --> 01:23:08,360
Speaker 1: dollars in prizes, this time ensuring strict security and transparency.

1571
01:23:09,479 --> 01:23:12,439
Speaker 1: Years later, the bizarre caper became a subject of renewed

1572
01:23:12,479 --> 01:23:15,560
Speaker 1: interest in twenty eighteen, The Daily Beast published an in

1573
01:23:15,640 --> 01:23:18,360
Speaker 1: depth feature that went viral, sparking a bidding war for

1574
01:23:18,439 --> 01:23:23,240
Speaker 1: film and TV rights. HBO ultimately produced the docuseries titled mcmillions,

1575
01:23:23,880 --> 01:23:28,160
Speaker 1: which was executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, airing in twenty twenty,

1576
01:23:29,000 --> 01:23:34,000
Speaker 1: chronicling the FBI's investigation with interviews from agents, conspirators, and.

1577
01:23:34,160 --> 01:23:39,040
Speaker 3: McDonald's really Fascinating Stuff from CNBC. At one point, Jacobson

1578
01:23:39,080 --> 01:23:41,840
Speaker 3: even anonymously mailed a one million dollar game piece to

1579
01:23:41,880 --> 01:23:44,839
Speaker 3: the donations clerk at the Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital

1580
01:23:45,040 --> 01:23:49,960
Speaker 3: in Tennessee. The size of that naturally made national news

1581
01:23:50,000 --> 01:23:53,360
Speaker 3: at the time, though a source close to Jacobson later

1582
01:23:53,520 --> 01:23:55,920
Speaker 3: told CNN he had sent them the winning game piece

1583
01:23:56,040 --> 01:23:58,240
Speaker 3: in the hopes that the good deed might secure him

1584
01:23:58,240 --> 01:24:01,040
Speaker 3: a more lenient sentence should he ever be caught.

1585
01:24:01,560 --> 01:24:01,760
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1586
01:24:03,479 --> 01:24:05,760
Speaker 1: Well, now, should we move on from monopoly related white

1587
01:24:05,800 --> 01:24:08,040
Speaker 1: collar crimes to full scale capital offenses?

1588
01:24:08,840 --> 01:24:09,080
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1589
01:24:09,840 --> 01:24:11,800
Speaker 3: I just want to find out if this guy's dead

1590
01:24:11,840 --> 01:24:16,080
Speaker 3: and in hell. According to the Daily Beast, he's now

1591
01:24:16,120 --> 01:24:18,160
Speaker 3: in his late seventies. Well, this is in twenty twenty.

1592
01:24:18,280 --> 01:24:21,040
Speaker 3: According to that Daily Beast article, he is in his

1593
01:24:21,200 --> 01:24:24,599
Speaker 3: late seventies and in declining health, living a relatively secluded

1594
01:24:24,680 --> 01:24:27,720
Speaker 3: life in Georgia. He still keeps in touch with some

1595
01:24:27,880 --> 01:24:31,559
Speaker 3: of the members of his fraud ring that twenty twenty five.

1596
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:36,759
Speaker 3: Maybe he's dead now. I hope so dead and in hell. Anyway,

1597
01:24:37,280 --> 01:24:41,719
Speaker 3: here's a more monopoly crime, less or more severe, depending

1598
01:24:41,760 --> 01:24:46,400
Speaker 3: on whatever weird moral code you live by. On July nineteenth,

1599
01:24:46,520 --> 01:24:49,080
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one, two best friends decided to play a

1600
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:53,000
Speaker 3: friendly game of Monopoly in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. They were

1601
01:24:53,160 --> 01:24:55,960
Speaker 3: twenty five year old Mark Sinkowski and thirty one year

1602
01:24:56,000 --> 01:24:57,040
Speaker 3: old Michael J.

1603
01:24:57,280 --> 01:25:01,040
Speaker 2: Klu klucks Nick. Yeah, they were wol hunter ass naves.

1604
01:25:02,200 --> 01:25:04,479
Speaker 3: They didn't even start the game, though, before an argument

1605
01:25:04,520 --> 01:25:07,120
Speaker 3: broke out over who would get to be the race car.

1606
01:25:08,080 --> 01:25:10,760
Speaker 3: Sinkowski argued that since they were at his house, he

1607
01:25:10,880 --> 01:25:13,960
Speaker 3: got to be the car. Thimble and hat be damned.

1608
01:25:15,240 --> 01:25:18,479
Speaker 3: Klux Nick insisted that he was going to be the car,

1609
01:25:19,040 --> 01:25:22,120
Speaker 3: and continued to insist this after Sinkowski hit him in

1610
01:25:22,120 --> 01:25:26,840
Speaker 3: the face. Sankowski then grabbed his compound bow and shot

1611
01:25:26,920 --> 01:25:30,680
Speaker 3: his friend through the heart. Kluxnik staggered outside and, in

1612
01:25:30,800 --> 01:25:35,679
Speaker 3: a truly heroically manful act, pulled the arrow from his chest,

1613
01:25:35,960 --> 01:25:39,400
Speaker 3: broke it in half, and got into his car attempted

1614
01:25:39,439 --> 01:25:41,680
Speaker 3: to drive away. Sadly, he was dead before the car

1615
01:25:41,760 --> 01:25:45,400
Speaker 3: reached a neighbor's garden. Sinkowski later pleaded guilty to criminal

1616
01:25:45,439 --> 01:25:48,040
Speaker 3: homicide and got murder in the third degree. It was

1617
01:25:48,160 --> 01:25:52,040
Speaker 3: the charge that they gave him snoomdug anyone murdered, Yeah

1618
01:25:53,000 --> 01:25:57,040
Speaker 3: you're white. Apparently there was some jealousy as Kluznik stepped

1619
01:25:57,040 --> 01:26:00,280
Speaker 3: out to smoke a joint with Sinkowski's on and off

1620
01:26:00,360 --> 01:26:05,479
Speaker 3: again girlfriend. Earlier that evening. A monopoly game for a

1621
01:26:05,520 --> 01:26:09,320
Speaker 3: family in Tulsa escalated disastrously as recent as twenty twenty

1622
01:26:09,360 --> 01:26:12,080
Speaker 3: two after a heated argument in the midst of gameplay.

1623
01:26:12,280 --> 01:26:17,600
Speaker 2: Joan Jesus, I've read that as Joan Armor trading obscure

1624
01:26:17,680 --> 01:26:18,519
Speaker 2: singer songwriter.

1625
01:26:19,360 --> 01:26:22,960
Speaker 3: A monopoly game for a family in Tulsa escalated disastrously

1626
01:26:23,040 --> 01:26:25,800
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two after heated argument in the midst

1627
01:26:25,840 --> 01:26:29,759
Speaker 3: of gameplay, John Armstrong reportedly overturned the board and furniture,

1628
01:26:29,960 --> 01:26:32,719
Speaker 3: and then, after being told to take the confrontation outside,

1629
01:26:33,200 --> 01:26:36,479
Speaker 3: pulled a gun and chased his stepfather and stepsister down

1630
01:26:36,520 --> 01:26:41,439
Speaker 3: the street, firing one shot, albeit towards the ground. Thankfully,

1631
01:26:41,600 --> 01:26:44,559
Speaker 3: no one was injured, but Armstrong was arrested and charged

1632
01:26:44,600 --> 01:26:48,200
Speaker 3: with assault with a deadly weapon. Police found Monopoly money

1633
01:26:48,240 --> 01:26:51,360
Speaker 3: and game pieces scattered in the living room. Can you

1634
01:26:51,360 --> 01:26:53,120
Speaker 3: imagine they were chalk outlined.

1635
01:26:54,320 --> 01:26:55,360
Speaker 2: Little Scottie Dog?

1636
01:26:58,360 --> 01:27:01,519
Speaker 3: Back In twenty eleven, to be precise, a Monopoly game

1637
01:27:01,560 --> 01:27:04,920
Speaker 3: spiraled into violence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when sixty

1638
01:27:05,040 --> 01:27:08,799
Speaker 3: year old Laura Chavez accused her boyfriend Clive Butch Smith

1639
01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:13,280
Speaker 3: of cheating. Laura, I think you could have done better.

1640
01:27:14,040 --> 01:27:16,320
Speaker 3: According to police, her ten year old grandson, who was

1641
01:27:16,360 --> 01:27:19,680
Speaker 3: also playing, was sent into the bedroom and Smith hit

1642
01:27:19,800 --> 01:27:24,040
Speaker 3: Chavez with a wine bottle. Chavez grabbed a knife to retaliate.

1643
01:27:24,520 --> 01:27:27,919
Speaker 3: Smith was stabbed around the chest, neck and face but survived.

1644
01:27:28,520 --> 01:27:31,519
Speaker 3: Good for you, Laura, I'm awarding you the first ever

1645
01:27:31,880 --> 01:27:38,400
Speaker 3: TMI Retribution winner award. A late night and the most

1646
01:27:38,439 --> 01:27:41,439
Speaker 3: recently one of the most recent episodes in a late

1647
01:27:41,560 --> 01:27:45,600
Speaker 3: night sidewalk Monopoly game in Belgium turned violent that what

1648
01:27:45,760 --> 01:27:49,720
Speaker 3: an embarrassing series of words for them turned violent in

1649
01:27:49,800 --> 01:27:52,160
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, when a neighbor, upset by the noise

1650
01:27:52,200 --> 01:27:54,640
Speaker 3: at five am, en listed his son to break up

1651
01:27:54,680 --> 01:27:58,800
Speaker 3: the game. The Sun reportedly retrieved a katana sword, which

1652
01:27:58,880 --> 01:28:01,960
Speaker 3: does rule, and injured at least two men during the dispute,

1653
01:28:02,160 --> 01:28:06,320
Speaker 3: one of whom suffered a serious arterial cut. Both were hospitalized.

1654
01:28:07,560 --> 01:28:10,760
Speaker 3: That's fine, that's an argument favorite of the Belgi, who

1655
01:28:11,080 --> 01:28:14,640
Speaker 3: have so little going for them. And lastly, an apocryphal

1656
01:28:14,760 --> 01:28:15,920
Speaker 3: and group.

1657
01:28:17,240 --> 01:28:17,719
Speaker 2: Indictment.

1658
01:28:18,040 --> 01:28:25,599
Speaker 3: Indictment in Russia, Monopoly fueled Russia, Monopoly themed, vodka fueled,

1659
01:28:26,560 --> 01:28:29,200
Speaker 3: or as you might put it, vodka themed and Monopoly

1660
01:28:29,320 --> 01:28:33,479
Speaker 3: fueled games have led to fist fights and stabbings which

1661
01:28:33,520 --> 01:28:35,720
Speaker 3: are quote too numerous to mention.

1662
01:28:36,360 --> 01:28:40,280
Speaker 2: In Soviet Russia. Yeap, yep, yep, yep, go passes you.

1663
01:28:43,840 --> 01:28:46,320
Speaker 1: Honestly drawing a direct line between murder and a game

1664
01:28:46,360 --> 01:28:48,680
Speaker 1: that teaches capitalism to children sounds like as good a

1665
01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:52,320
Speaker 1: place as any to end this episode. Thankfully, our little

1666
01:28:52,360 --> 01:28:54,840
Speaker 1: talk about Monopoly is about us tenth as long as

1667
01:28:54,920 --> 01:28:58,599
Speaker 1: most games of Monopoly that I've played, So I'm happy.

1668
01:28:58,479 --> 01:28:59,880
Speaker 2: Just to leave it here. What do you think, Kyle?

1669
01:29:00,160 --> 01:29:03,040
Speaker 3: All I'll say is go to the kofee or tweet

1670
01:29:03,080 --> 01:29:05,840
Speaker 3: at me if you want all the deleted Very real

1671
01:29:06,320 --> 01:29:10,639
Speaker 3: said that Jordan wouldn't let in. Jordan's a good guy.

1672
01:29:10,800 --> 01:29:12,720
Speaker 3: He's just trying. He's a cool guy. He's just trying

1673
01:29:12,760 --> 01:29:18,280
Speaker 3: to help me. But I anticipate this being a censored

1674
01:29:18,320 --> 01:29:24,599
Speaker 3: episode for your pal, Heigel, or alternately, if I wind

1675
01:29:24,720 --> 01:29:27,120
Speaker 3: up dead somewhere, it was this episode that did it.

1676
01:29:29,080 --> 01:29:29,439
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1677
01:29:29,520 --> 01:29:31,759
Speaker 3: This whole thing is disgusting, which is what an awful,

1678
01:29:31,960 --> 01:29:34,760
Speaker 3: sad like thing that I learned about, A classic quid

1679
01:29:34,800 --> 01:29:35,160
Speaker 3: to say.

1680
01:29:35,400 --> 01:29:37,720
Speaker 2: Actually a perfectly fitting thing.

1681
01:29:38,080 --> 01:29:40,720
Speaker 3: That's the whole theme about this is that, like the depressing,

1682
01:29:40,840 --> 01:29:44,280
Speaker 3: shitty side of monopoly, is more is just sadly in

1683
01:29:44,439 --> 01:29:51,160
Speaker 3: keeping with America. Yes, so you know, enjoy that midterms

1684
01:29:51,200 --> 01:29:57,880
Speaker 3: are coming up. Julius Ethel Rosenberg reframed, No, no, I

1685
01:29:57,920 --> 01:30:02,800
Speaker 3: don't believe that Bacho and Vanzetti were framed. This has

1686
01:30:02,800 --> 01:30:07,040
Speaker 3: been too much information. I'm Alex, Heigel Jordan on the tug.

1687
01:30:07,560 --> 01:30:08,720
Speaker 3: We'll catch you next time.

1688
01:30:14,000 --> 01:30:16,479
Speaker 2: Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio.

1689
01:30:16,760 --> 01:30:19,960
Speaker 3: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk.

1690
01:30:20,160 --> 01:30:23,599
Speaker 2: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show

1691
01:30:23,720 --> 01:30:27,040
Speaker 2: was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk and Alex.

1692
01:30:26,880 --> 01:30:29,800
Speaker 1: Heigel with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost

1693
01:30:29,840 --> 01:30:30,559
Speaker 1: Funk Orchestra.

1694
01:30:30,920 --> 01:30:32,960
Speaker 2: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

1695
01:30:33,040 --> 01:30:35,880
Speaker 2: us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit

1696
01:30:35,920 --> 01:30:39,120
Speaker 1: The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1697
01:30:39,160 --> 01:30:40,040
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.