Bittersweet Infamy - #138 - Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

Episode Date: February 21, 2026

Josie tells Taylor about the hidden history of the classic board game Monopoly, and how Parker Brothers covered up its unlikely roots as the anti-monopolist polemic, The Landlord's Game.

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Welcome to Bittersweet Influence. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in me. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

You know what makes me happy these days, Josie, as we head into episode 138 of Bittersweet Infamy. I don't think the list is long. Watching the news. Oh, okay. Love to keep up with the happenings. All of the global goings on. Every day, I think we go closer and closer to whatever the opposite of disaster is.

Sike, February fools, bitch, everything's on fire. How are you doing, Josie? It's reminding me of like Groundhog Day, where it's like, little Taylor comes out of the hole. Nope, still a fucking apocalypse disaster. I don't know why they put me in that hole. They really shouldn't. Maybe that's why things look so dark. To silence me. To keep the truth from coming out. But the truth is here and folks, the world is a fucking vampire. Just like me and Billy Corgan have been saying since the mid-90s. So long now. 30 years.

What do you make, Josephine? You're a proud American, American citizen, a patriot, true patriot. There's a flag in the middle distance. That's what I'm looking at. And always in the middle distance, not so far away that your enemies can take it, but not so close that you're desecrating it with your sweat or, you know, breath. Exactly. Yeah. Or my liberal thoughts. Yes. Those, well, you shouldn't be, didn't we send you to the reprogramming Center, Josephine? What do you, what do you make of, for example, the recent activity around ICE immigration control and enforcement, certainly they have had some like really high profile goings on in Minneapolis whereby a couple of bystanders have been murdered, right? Alex, Alex Pretty and Renee Good. It's truly terrifying. It feels like that part in the history books,

where it's like, everyone really should have seen what was common. But how much would it help? Because I feel like a good number of people have been saying that this is coming for a good chunk of time now. Yeah. But I guess it wasn't enough for the eroded version of democracy that wasn't is in place to stand up to. So it seems, I mean, the story isn't over.

But right now it's a particularly low ebb. Like you say, it's sort of a moment that we'll be looking back at in history books, certainly those of us who are fortunate enough to live to see the history written. Yeah, or have a book to read. Yeah, or have a school district where that book is allowed to be taught. Yeah, I think what has been happening and still is happening in Minnesota is pretty scary, but also very inspiring, like what Minnesotans have been doing. Renee Good and Alex Preti included to help neighbors, to keep ICE accountable is amazing.

It should never be something that is paid for with your life. It does just feel, and maybe this is my sense of living in Texas, that things feel insurmountable. And I think Minnesota, in spite of these tragedies, still feels hopeful. I think that's a really important thing. Not to intentionally move from that note of relative hope to one of the most hopeless subjects in the world, but Josie. How about them Epstein files?

Hackshack job. This is the investigation files, the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many investigation files. Millions. Related to the convicted sex trafficker, sex criminal, Jeffrey Epstein. The general gloss of it without getting into the, you know, control F details. It does feel like the rich and powerful, in specific rich and powerful men, can do whatever the fuck they want without any moral qualms because they're rich, because they're powerful. And orchestrate the entire culture war that everybody's been performing for the past, you know, 10 years and all of this, all of this.

Yeah, it feels very eyes wide shut. And when will, I wonder when enough will be enough. Is there a limit to like the depravity that a populace will suffer from its rich and powerful? I'm not saying like go out there with Belistas or anything, but like, as a student of history, that tends to be where these things go, right? I mean, we're in late stage capitalism. now. Everyone's like, well, maybe... But they've been saying that for what's the next stage? When do we pupate?

When is the pupation? You know, this is a really... That's a beautiful question. What is the next stage? When do we... Let's get in that chrysalis bitch. Yes. Yes.

And away from like the part where all the rich pedophiles are running the world. Yes. I, that would be cool. That'd be really nice. I'd really like that. What else can I say to lighten? the mood. Our cat has AIDS. Oh my God. You know. No, that's not true. Our cat has feline immunos. Okay, so not cat AIDS, cat HIV. Cat HIV, yes, thank you. Lord.

Well, I'm sorry your cat has AIDS. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's lighten up the mood, Josie. you, me, Mitchell Collins recently watched a film of Some Note from the 1980s. It was, I believe, called... We did, 1988. Horking girl. Horking girl. Horking girl.

Starring Melanie Griffith. A little fun fact about Melanie Griffith. I used to be a little bit of like a compulsive liar for fun. It's not something that I really do anymore. But there would be times when I would go out for a night and I would be disinclined to be going out wherever I was going out. You know, you like to stay inside, whatever. So the way that I would sort of entice myself to go is I would give myself some sort of like

elaborate lie to tell that evening in case I met a stranger and I didn't usually. But every now and often I did and I'd tell them my little lie and I would usually do it convincingly enough and I would feel, I guess, some sort of little thrill of adrenaline from having done it. The most memorable of those that I can remember was I was at a art event, like paintings. Uh-huh. And it wasn't all that jazzed to be there. Nothing wrong with the event. I just didn't want to go out that day.

And so the lie that I came up with was Melanie Griffith's son with her first non-famous husband. My cover story was that I was in town because my half-sister Dakota Johnson was filming something. I believe maybe it was like the 50 Shades sequel was filming in town around then. It is filmed in Vancouver. So, yeah. That was what my lie was for that night was I was Melanie Griffith's son from her first non-famous husband and I was in town to visit my half-sister Dakota Johnson on the set of some movie.

And that just gets to be my little, like, you know, talented Mr. Ripley, just like a little confidence trick for me for the entire night. I love that. And then I can go home and never think about it again. But I found I stopped doing it because I wanted to, like, engage with others in ways that were more respectful of their intelligence and time. So I don't do that anymore. But I used to.

And it was Melanie Griffith. And she's the star of Working Girl, which we covered on film club, Josie. Oh my God, you're fake mom. My fake mother. I don't. I pulled her out of fucking thin air. I wanted to challenge, so I was like, first woman I think of, Melanie Griffith, go. Wow, first woman you think of is Melanie Griffith.

Yeah. I love that for you. It's Adam and Melanie Griffith, not Adam and Steve, Josie. What do you want me to say? She's great. And we're horking girl. She is fantastic. I have really good time watching her.

You need a glass of water, Josie. Orgy, Carl. How would you describe this film in very brief to those who haven't seen this fabulous film that was recommended to us by our follower, Terry McCann? And you can become a follower too if you subscribe over at K-O-hafe at fign.com slash bittersweet infamy. Describe the movie, Josie. It's the 1980s. It's the height of like shoulder pads and big business. And Melanie Griffith with a hair teased to the ceiling is a hard working secretary from Staten Island.

island and she's going to make it big. So we've got a great supporting cast. You've got Alec Baldwin in there, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, a real who's who, like Joan Cusack in there. Yeah. Oliver Platt, even Kevin Spacey playing himself, a sex pest. As a curio, as gross as it is, you're sort of like, wow, he nailed it. Yeah, he really did. He totally believed. He went method for this one, I'm sure. And that all that and more can be yours, all that. And, you know, this episode like 19 of the film club. We got like 18 other ones. We've watched I Tanya, the Tanya Harding biopic. We've watched Dinosaur Titanic. Yeah. Yeah. Give me a couple here. Help me out. Josie. I'm dying out here. Help me. The dressmaker. The dress maker. We watched the dress maker. You slut. We watched the dress maker. Put on

your dress, you slut. Look at what you're missing by not subscribing at k-o-hyfi.com slash bittersweet and funny. And Taylor, you forgot. important little nugget of all of this. Starting season six with Warkin' Girl, we are now doing the film club as a video podcast. You can see inside our homes. That's fucked up. That's a fuctive way to put it. Our curtains, our couch. Our curtains, like an isometric angle of the corner of my apartment kind of walls. Yeah. You can see it all. Actually, Mitchell and I, we give, there's a ballet on our couch, a small animal. Oh, dude, they were so pro. It was crazy.

You wouldn't have even known. If this was like an audio podcast, you wouldn't have even know that they were being swarmed by their pets. They were wrangling them with such skill without even like breaking the tone of their voice. It was very, very impressive. And we're also going to be for February because February is a month of love. So we wanted a bad romance of sorts. And so we've picked notes on a scandal for February. Lots of fun.

Kate Blanchett. Dame Judy Dinch. Let's go. Lots of, lots of fun. A story about it. Another sort of riff on a teacher sex assault scandal that sort of draws, again, heavily from the Mary Kayla Turner case of the 1990s. But there's sort of a, I don't know, a pulpy gothic lesbian twist this time. See you there.

Josie. I got one last to send us into break here. I got a story that I keep meaning to commit to the podcast because every time I walk by the corner on the way to my weed store, I think about this moment. It just really filled me with just the absolute love of humanity. It was one of the only times I've liked people in the past five years. Wow, okay. I was walking to the weed store to buy some weed. I'm walking there and walking toward me is a man with, and don't mishear me now, the biggest

clock I've ever seen. Mind out of the gutter. Right. Like a, I don't even know. I'm doing a full arm span here. Like, imagine just like, the clock that like a giant from a production of Jack and the beanstalk would. use a wall clock, a big flat wall clock, but like every number on it is like probably three

quarters of the size of a human face kind of thing. How is he holding it? Like you would hold a flat screen TV in front of you. Okay. Okay. But with the clock, with the clock face facing out, this is very important. The clock face is face out. Yeah. Okay. And as I'm walking up to the sky, because I'm me, you know what I want to say. What time is it? Yes. Hey man, do you got the time? And I'm like, Taylor. Don't fucking say it. This guy does not want to hear this from you. Control your urges.

Control your desires. Control your baser instincts. And as I walk by this guy and I'm so good, I'm on my best behavior. I've got my lips, close, my tongue bit. Guy turns to me and goes, hey man, do you know what time it is? And I fucking died laughing. I was so excited. I was like, man, I was going to ask you that, but I thought I'd be stupid.

I made me so, so very happy, and I think about that moment very, very fond. I was delighted that that man asked me what time it was. It felt very seen. That's really good. That's what I think about when I try to remember that people can be like nice to each other sometimes. The world can be full of like very small, cute things like that. Do you think he was moving the clock or was it like a performance art situation? You think it was like a sort of like a joy activation flash mob of the type we might have had in the early Obama era?

well it worked. If so, mission succeeded, man. Exactly. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But I do, I got the sense that he was just for whatever reason in the process of carrying this gigantic clock between one place and the other. And he got the exact incredibly obvious and corny joke in his head that I didn't, you know. But you know, it's nice to see someone who wants to have that bit of fun with a stranger.

That's what I think is like rare in Vancouver certain. And that's sort of what, it's sort of my entire brand is like fun with a stranger. It's true. Yeah, yeah. Listen to our road trip episodes from this past summer. True, true. I'm real chatty in those. Hey, bud. Where are you from? Is your husband dead? All of it. You know, my mom is Melanie Griffin. Yeah. Yeah, true. See, look at how I've come socially. I've come so far. Now I bite my tongue. Now I bite my tongue. And the universe rewards you. You bite your tongue. And then the pun comes anyway. Abundance. Abundance.

In these trying times when all you can do to find good news is Google good news and then you get the AI bullshit in your face. So instead, we need to put down our screens. We need to look away from the blue light. We need to interact with each other in person. You need to go to the hall closet. You need to dust off that old board game. What board game do you get, Taylor? Clue.

It's clue for me, always. Did you guys ever play Monopoly? Were you a monopoly household? We were a monopoly household, but not. I wouldn't, you know what? That's going too far. I wouldn't say that we were a monopoly household. I would say that, like, we had a monopoly set where my dad had, like, notably drawn.

I've still got it. He'd drawn a muffler on, like, the free parking with a permanent marker. You know what I'm like, doctored it up. But I wouldn't say that, again, because other than maybe Corey, neither of my parents were game people particularly. Corey, yes, the other two know. I'm not really a game person. We didn't play.

We played Scrabble. That was a big one. It's a big difference between. It's fundamentally, I think the biggest difference between us is that I love any game for any reason. And you're like, eh, it's not my preferred source of interaction. Can we just chat? Yeah. But I do, I do have to say I particularly dislike Monopoly.

Oh, yeah. There's nothing there for you. Not a damn thing. There's absolutely nothing. I don't like games. People are being deceptive. and not saying what they mean, and people are stealing. You have to keep track of a bunch of shit.

I don't like the math. Exactly. Yeah. It's what's it called? It's adversarial by its nature. Like, you can and I have done damage to friendships over a game of monopoly. Exactly. Yes.

It's a famously contentious game. Even though it's play money, it's still money. And it is not a good place to bring your friends and family. It's one of those games that either. it reveals character or you convince yourself that it reveals character, by which I mean that, like, there are some people who can get real nasty and vicious during a game of monopoly because that is their nature revealed. And then there are people who can get really intense about a game of monopoly because that's their outlet for that feeling of getting intense. And they're not

really like that most of the time. But it's easy to convince yourself that they are because, like, they're coming at your real heart about Illinois Avenue right now, you know? Mitchell and his friends, when he lived in New York, they played a game of monopoly one night. And they decided that key members around the board, like four corners kind of vibe, would wear cameras on their head. And this was like before gopros were available. So it was like duct tape kind of vibes. Remarkable. And he made a short film editing all the different perspectives.

And it starts with like, oh, I'm having so much fun. And then it just devolves into like, this fucking sucks. I'm not having a good time. And that's the thing, too, is I feel like Monopoly is not set up to. encourage conclusions. It's set up to encourage a giving, a collective giving up that we've all decided that we've had, we've gone through enough displeasure today. So that one person can remain on top as the little monopoly man with his monocle. If you're lucky enough to finish the game to the point of the one monopoly man, what I'm saying is I feel like most games don't make it to that point.

No. I feel like there's a lot of, I'm, I'm a big fan of a corporation in monopoly. Like, if I realize that I on my own and I'm not going to be number one and I never am, I don't play to be number one, I play to like be number three and seduce number two. You know what I mean? Like let's pool our resources together and then we can both win, you know? Do you know the story behind Monopoly? But like what's printed in the little, you know, on the pamphlet in the board set? I've never read what's printed in the pamphlet on the board, but I have a distant familiarity with it because very, very, very early on in our run.

Like back in the genre bear days, Jonathan Mountain floated a request, I believe, for this subject. Oh, well, Jonathan Mountain, I don't know your request, and you don't know my story, but perhaps I have delivered, we will see. Well, according to legend, the origins of monopoly are that it was created at a kitchen table in German town, Pennsylvania during the Great Depression. Which is ironic. Right. Aspirational, we wonder. What's the deal? Exactly. The man who invented it was an unemployed engineer named Charles.

B. Darrow. And he had a monocle and a mustache and a top hat and a cane. That's Mr. Peanut, dude. So Darrow was down on his luck, like so many hardworking Americans at the time. Even though Darrow was unemployed, he was not one to idle. So he set himself to the task of sketching out a game that would allow him to fantasize about owning property, being comfortably wealthy, stably providing for his wife and two children. And this was at a time when most Americans could only dream of the American dream. Which I guess is kind of an image in the American dream. Listen.

We've all seen death of a salesman. It's okay. You know what I mean? We know it's bullshit. We've gotten the message by now. Surely we've gotten the message by now. Exactly. Yeah, no, depression.

No great shakes. The depression. We didn't enjoy it. Thumbs down. I don't know if you've ever read Steinbeck, but you had to shoot your friend in the head because you strangled a woman to death. Terrible times. Terrible times.

What? Read Steinbeck, Joseph. Okay, sorry. Sorry, sorry. Okay. Oh, I'm back. Okay, okay. Thank you.

Educate yourself. Read of mice and men. So, according to the legend, Darrow spent his unemployed days fashioning different versions of the game board. One was like a circular gameboard shape. We don't like that. Won't play in the German market. The Germans like right angles.

Right. He is in German town. There, see? See? He even got a little nostalgic and added those old place names from old Atlantic City. Atlantic City, New Jersey. Oh, yeah. St. James Place.

Boardwalk. Yeah, St. Charles Place. Marvin Gardens. All the hits, right? So Darrow's homemade boards, they grew in popularity. and they had enough traction that he decided he would commission an artist to do the artwork on the board. And this is the artwork that we know. It's those nice, clean lines with a little art deco flourish here and there, but it's relatively simple.

It's symbols rather than detailed drawings for the most part. Exactly. And when he had the best version of the game that he could get to, he pitched it to Parker Brothers. the big game publishing entity at that time. And we still know them today. Matthew and Mark Parker. Yes, yes. We still know them today.

Their names ring on in the history of legend, absolutely. So Matthew and what was this name? Tom. Mark. I was ass-pullin. I was asked Pullen. I was asked Pullen Waypoint names is what I was doing. So they turned Darrow down. They said, no, it just, It seems like a lot.

Like there's a lot happening. There's like this, a little thick trinket, and then you have a car, and then you have the money, and the, it's too much. Luxury tax, people will never go for it. People, community chess, what is this? Kids aren't going to be able to understand this. The dogs are going to choke on the hotels. Exactly.

But Darrow, who was persistent, he did not stop. He would not be discouraged. He printed another round of the boards. And he started selling them at a department store in Philadelphia. And they were literally flying off shelves. Flapping their wings, literally flying off the goddamn shelves. As you ever seen Croaching Tiger and Drake? That's how.

They delete the wires with CGI. That's how the boards are doing it. So eventually, one of these boards, one of these reprinted boards, made it to the Parker Brothers, and they finally said, well, if it's so goddamn popular in Philadelphia, all right, let's give it a try. Sure. Philly knows. Philly knows good taste.

Those cheese steaks, they know what's going on. That bell with the crack in it. Right? It's so great. Rocky. He's Philadelphia, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

There you go. So the Parker Brothers, they reach out to Darrow again, and they say we would love to take on your guys. game, produce it, and market it. And ever since then, the game blew up. You thought it was flying off the shelves with the CGIed wires and Philly? They put jet packs on them. Oh my God. No CGI needed. They just like, damn. Right, right away. Spontaneously, I'm imagining them kind of flapping in the middle, like, because you know how the board folds in the middle. Oh yeah, cha, cha, chah, like a butterfly. Yeah. And Darrow became a million. And Darrow became a million.

millionaire in the 1930s, which, you know, factor in inflation. Yeah. Very rich man, very quickly. And Monopoly has become one of the most famous and beloved or hated board games played around the world. There are world championships for playing Monopoly. It has been played underwater. There's footage of scuba divers playing it underwater.

Laminated money or what? There's a whole, yeah. Did they play a whole game? Did they play a whole? I don't want the photo op. Did they play a whole game? An entire game. What was the ranking?

Do we have books? I want an audit of this underwater game of Monopoly. And this is the beloved story of the creation of really and truly America's game, Monopoly. Or is this the true story of Monopoly? I was getting suspicious that we'd wrapped this story. story up so quickly, you know, I was, these tend to be a bit longer. Taylor, I want you to imagine yourself in Mancato, Minnesota. And it's 1977 and it's in July, so it's hot. It's a hot July, 77. There's a gaggle of reporters holding their noses as they

watch a truck back up into a sweaty, smelly hill of garbage. You are at the local dump. So this dump truck, it does its cool thing that toddlers are amazed by. It lifts up, it teeters up so that all the trash falls out of its back swinging automatic tailgate and outpours almost 40,000 sets of game boards. So these game boards are in the dump. There's paper money flying, small trinkets are clattering and sifting to the bottom of the Thimbles, like die-cast thimbles and shoes and whatnot. But these game boards have stamped on their outer boxes the name anti-monopoly.

Okay. Photographers snap some photos, the video cameras roll, and the spectacle is theatrical and very well documented. This is a stunt. It is a stunt. Right, right. Okay. The destruction and... And the documentation of its destruction is a very important thing to Parker Brothers, the company who owns the game monopoly.

Right. They were the ones who invited the journalists who scheduled for the dump truck to dump its load at this specific time. That monocode old bitch had his little fucking walking stick if he has one all stirred up in this, didn't he? He certainly did. If he didn't have one, he got one just to stir it up at this bitch. So why in the world is destroying this game anti-monopoly so important to Parker Brothers? I took eighth grade symbolism. May I, by destroying anti-monopoly, you not only show visibly that you can't bite on

RIP, but you're literally destroying something called anti-monopoly. What's the opposite of anti-monopoly? Monopoly. It's true. So the game anti-monopoly was created by a man who had found out the true story behind the invention of the original Monopoly game. And it was not the sweet pull yourself up by the bootstrap story that's printed in the box. Can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps. It doesn't work. The physics don't work.

It was not Charles Darrow at his kitchen table, American hero turned millionaire. It turns out the true story of Monopoly's Genesis is just as ruthless as it is. to play the game of Monopoly. I have a game in my cupboard called Dogopoly. It's Monopoly with dogs instead of buying a North Carolina Avenue, you buy a Boston Terrier, you know. Yeah. I mean, that's how popular it is, right? Is that it's changed.

It gets customized in all these different ways. San Diego Opelie. Now it's to celebrate the year of the woman will do Womanopoly or whatever. You know what I mean? You see all of them. Yeah. Star Wars Opelie, Pokemon, Opelie. Lisa Frank Opelie.

Yeah. Mario Monopoly. The real story I would imagine, though, is not as, you know, again, I've done one of these shows before one or two. That's going to be pretty bad. What was it to put you on to this as a non-game gal? What was it that put you on to this? You know, I was at a event. It was like an art and poetry event, and it was ACLU of Texas was hosting it. American Civil Liberties Union. Thank you. And it was an event to end cash bail. Oh, interesting. And one of the poems that was read, which all the poems in the artwork were kind of like focused and had some type of connection to the prison system and incarceration and, you know, cash bail. And this woman's poem featured the true story of Monopoly.

And I thought it was really interesting, especially when you're thinking of like cash bail, because it's like the more money you have, you can get out of jail, right? Yep, or avoid it all together. and the jail in the corner of the monopoly is a cash bail situation. Exactly. There's a spot you can say, just visiting. You put your little... Not me.

Not me, guys. Not me. It's not me. I would... Whatever I'm being accused of, and the game is always very, like, kind to gloss over why you went to jail. You know, maybe you were speeding in your little car. Who knows?

Yeah, a cute little roadster. In any event, I'm just... I was here for a stint, but I'm just visiting now. I'm not like them. So I heard about it there, and I was like, this is fascinating. This is bittersweetened for me written all over it. It certainly does. There's some twists and turns in it that are pretty good, pretty fascinating.

So I'm going to start us off in kind of the middle of the story. Because part of this history is sex that it was literally buried. Parker Brothers had a vested interest in not everything coming out. They have a tendency to run things to the dump, right? So we pick it up in the middle just because that's when we get the unburied truth. Okay. I mentioned this man who created the game Anti-Monopoly. Whose name was?

Ralph Anspect. Anspech was born in 1926 and Danzig, Germany. Okay. You can imagine it's 1926, it's Germany. I've seen Cabaret. I know where this is going. Ralph and his family are Jewish. Oh, it is not a good time to being Germany.

And so he, along with his entire family, they fled to New York to escape the coming Nazi takeover. He was a smart kid. He taught himself English and he kind of took off with his new life in America. He joined the U.S. military in World War II and he was stationed in the Philippines. And he came back and with the GI Bill went on to study economics at U.S. see Berkeley in California. He became an economics professor at San Francisco State University, so he stayed on in the Bay Area. And he got married, he had two kids. And when his kids were still young and they were playing board games specifically Monopoly quite often, it was 1973,

1974, and it was the height of the OPEC oil crisis. Got into this a little bit in my Guilford Science Fair presentation of oil friend versus foe. So this is all familiar info to me. But Josie, why don't you take the crowd through the OPEC oil crisis? Well, the way that it came to land on American soil was that the monopoly of the Persian Gulf oil companies made it such that there was limited supplies of oil in the U.S. You had to wait in long lines at gas stations. They only had a certain allotted amount of gas. There was gas shortages.

And because it was so hard to find gas, people would be out there trying to stockpile. For Anspec, this meant that his one-hour commute home turned into four hours. Ooh. Ugh. Yeah. That'll set anybody off. He gets home and he is so infuri. that he wants to communicate to his students,

but not only them, to the wider population, how damaging monopolies can be to a capitalist system. So he's played monopoly many a time with his sons, and he decides, I can show using a general framework that monopoly provides how monopolies are actually stifling what we need here in America, which is a scugam capitalism. So he develops this game, just kind of homemade, kitchen table vibes,

and he calls it, first draft, bust the trust. It's got a certain like Pierre Puella, axe the tax, bring it home. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's got that populist charm to it, sure. Yeah. He lands with anti-monopoly. You know, it feels clear to the point. People know what it is.

And then you need like a logo who's this sort of like, I guess, This like bohemian older woman named Auntie Monopoly. That's how you market that. She's sort of like the woke counterpart to Mr. Monopoly. You know what I mean? I'm kind of into this. This is nice. There you go.

Well, you would be, wouldn't you? Wouldn't I? Yes, it's true. The way the anti-monopoly works is that instead of buying up assets and then charging rent, which is what you do in Monopoly, right? You put the little houses, you put the hotel, you can charge more rent with a hotel. Instead, players, quote, take the role of federal caseworkers bringing indictments against each monopolized business in an attempt to return the state of the board to a free market system. This is according to the game's Wikipedia page.

The gameplay loop is sort of like monopoly backwards. And it starts off with everything too fucking unaffordable and expensive. Yeah. And then you just remove the vets, I mean, yeah, there's something to it. Something you could do with like a home brew monopoly board though, too, really, you know? I think something that's interesting for me to think about. It wasn't necessarily like anti-capitalist. He was talking about like the monopolies are toxic to capitalism. And so we can't be aspiring to them. He made a few boards and he began selling them and he marketed them as the answer to this current oil crisis.

And so with his economics background, being an economics professor, he had a few sales going. It wasn't crazy, but it was exciting. He saw some potential there. It was the late 70s. We were all looking for the next pet rock. Well, it was 73, 74, so not quite late. It was the early 70s, and so we were all just fucking in keys in the fishbowl. Yes.

Pineapple on the doorstep. That's what we were doing. Watch the ice storm. Watch the Ang Lee film the Ice Storm. That'll, that'll, after you read of mice and men, watch the Ang Lee film the Ice Storm. It will clue into everything. slash watch list attached to this. Yeah.

So Anspec's excited. He's working on this. He's tweaking it. And so one day he gets a pretty thick letter in the mail. And it is a cease and desist letter from General Mills. Which you might be wondering, wait, why the fuck is General Mills sending him mail? No, I assume that they're and they're owned by Coca-Cola and they're owned by Fox News and they're owned by Disney.

Like, I assume. Yes, exactly. They, yeah, yeah. Ironically, this is a huge conglomerate. Parker Brothers was consumed by General Mills. Wasn't really just two guys named fucking Matt and Zach or whatever I was lying that their names were? No.

They're such a big company. They have four different law firms working for them. And in their letter, they request the Antspec stop manufacturing his game, destroy the remaining boards that he has, and then to at his own cost, publish a letter in a local newspaper distinguishing his game from Monopoly and saying that you can no longer find anti-Mocomit. Sub-Supu on the fucking law court steps. Strip naked and lose at Monopoly for the rest of your life.

It was like, yeah, one of those things. What I would do here out of spite is I would lean hard into like parody law. I would just make it as obvious satire of Monopoly as I could. And then I would be like, this is covered under parody law. I don't know if that would work. Yeah, I don't know. He was being sued. Parker Brothers was suing Anspex for trademark infringement. So parody law might work, but he didn't.

He felt strong enough in his conviction that his game was not infringing on a trademark. And not one to back down. Again, a survivor of Nazi Germany. Anspex is such a David and this David and Goliath story that he actually goes ahead and he countersues General Mills. Okay, for like, for what? For like intimidation tactics or what? What's the, for time and suffering?

I don't have it specifically written down, but I think it was something about like choking out the competition. Monopoly shit. It was monopoly shit. Essentially, yeah. You can't have the market on all games related to finance and the economy. No, but you're fine a bit close to the sun on this anti-monopoly. It's monopoly backwards shit. So when he countersues, Anspec, he has.

he has set himself a task. He needs to do some digging into the historical record in order to fact-check. Dig up some fucking dirt on these bitches. Yes. Yeah. He has to see, like, what is the origin story of Monopoly? Can they completely corner this market with the game that they have on the market right now? Yeah. What patents do they have? Where did they get them? When? From whom? Yeah. And so he starts doing a little bit of this work and he's getting deeper and deeper until one day his son, walks in to his office and he's like, hey, dad, I'm reading this book. And do you know who invented Monopoly? Because according to this book, it was a woman named Lizzie McGee. Okay. And Spex realized he had even more digging to do than he thought. So Lizzie McGee, she was born in 1866. Okay, remember how I told you, we were dropping in to the middle of the story. Now we're going back to the

beginning. We're going back to the beginning. So she was born in Illinois. in Macom, Illinois. And her father was a newspaper publisher and a pretty prominent abolitionist who accompanied Abraham Lincoln as he traveled in Illinois in the 1850s debating with Stephen Douglas. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. So she was exposed to a lot of progressive thinking, a lot of like civil war, post-Civil war progressive thinking. And not only was she exposed to it, but as a young woman, she had kind of front row access to a lot of. lot of this information that many women at the time would not have, one, even been educated about and two, been exposed to in such a primary source way.

Very interesting. Yeah. She was a feminist, a short storywriter, a poet, a newspaper writer. She was a comedian, a stage actress. Did I mention a feminist? She was also an engineer. As an engineer, she invented and had patented, not only invented, but she went and got the patent for a device that made the typewriter work more smoothly, the device like moved the paper through

the rollers in a more like effective and efficient way. At one point in her life, she did, I suppose you would call it like a public demonstration, art performance. I don't know what you would call it at the time. Her Marina Abramovich years. Yes. And her Marina Abramovic year, she took out a newspaper ad, advertising herself as a young woman American slave looking for a husband to own her. So it was... That's edgy. An edgy satire of the American social and economic situation where she was trying to point out that women and black folks were not getting a fair shot and the only people

who were were white men. So she had a very creative and progressive mind and she was not afraid to show. share it. She was also, and most importantly to this story, a game maker and a huge supporter of an economist and political thinker by the name of Henry George. So Henry George, he was well known at the time for a theory he created called the single tax. According to Wikipedia, the... Josie, this, you didn't tell me there was going to be math today. There's no math. It's just economics. You didn't tell me this going to be economics. This is, I, I, I, I, I, I follow Herman Cain's 999 plan, and that is what I follow.

Okay. Okay. To throw that back. Yeah, an oldie, but a goodie. Evergreen, evergreen. If it ain't all the way broke, then why fix it? If it's right, twice a day, why fix it? So a little background on the single tax.

It is an economic perspective that instead of taxing income or other sources, the government should create a universal land tax. based on the usefulness, size, and location of the land. This idea of a single tax only on land means that landlords would not be able to collect rent from folks. This fucking call me. The Red Queen has joined us, I see. But he still believed in all other facets of capitalism to run the same.

There would still be a free market, but when it came to taxation, it would be consolidated not to income tax, not a luxury tax. Nothing else would be taxed except for land because that's what everybody uses. And the tax that was produced from the land would pay for the government and then what's left over goes back into a communal pot. So Lizzie McGee, she probably understood the single tax much better than I do and wanted

to share her knowledge with others. And a good way she knew how to do that was to create a game. So she created a board game that she created a board game that she. called The Landlords game. McGee files a patent in 1903 and she, and I'll read from the very beginning of the patent.

Sure. To all whom it may concern, be it known that I, Lizzie, Jay McGee. People used to be so much more classy back in the day, huh? A citizen. You ever hear Donald Trump talk, not to get on the soapbox, but you'd be up there like, this is the best

monopoly game ever. And she's like, they're like, let it be known, motherfuckers. is I Elizabeth Meag. Born of great noble parentage, etc. That's how people should be. Yes. A citizen of the United States, I have invented certain new and useful

improvements in board games, of which the following is a specification. My invention, which I have designated the landlord's game, relates to game boards, and more particularly to games of chance. So, she builds a board

that is square, and on the outer rim of the square are different painted on tiles. In the four corners, there is a jail. Okay. Poor house. There is like a beautiful little world decoration where you can receive money from the government. You have go. We took the government out of it.

Who gives you the money? The amorphous go figure. No handouts from the government explicitly. The banker, the most, you know, like, oh, wow, you got to always please the banker. Yeah, it's got to be on your knees for the banker, folks. There's Steinbeck about, read Steinbeck, read of Mason Man. Please, people, please. What was the other thing we had to do?

We had to watch. Oh, watch the Ice Storm. Watch Engleys, 1990s suburban family drama, the Ice Storm. I'm excited. She creates this game. Even though the board itself has a lot of verbiage, it's very crowded with all this information and kind of embellishments and drawings and that sort of thing.

she starts getting it out into the world with a long list of instructions. Everybody gets this amount of money. You do this. When you pass this, everybody, blah, blah, blah. It has some traction. It's a fun game. The people are playing it. Lizzie is excited.

She brings it to Parker Brothers, who had just actually published another game of hers. She is not an unknown to them. They had just a few years prior published a game called Mocker. trial the she created. And it was... That sounds good. Relatively popular. The people seem to like it. It wasn't whish, whish, whish, whish, flying off the shelves, but it, you know, crawled. Parker Brothers declined, saying, these instructions are just too long. The board's really crowded. This is going to be hard to market. She's okay with that. She knows, she knows what she has to do.

She starts working on it again, trying to, you know, get things going. Meanwhile, the board gets around. Now remember, she initially created it as a way to educate folks about the single tax theory and about Henry George. So she is willing to have it in schools. She's willing. People, I love people sometimes when they bought the big clocks. You know what I mean? When people have their big clocks out, that's when I like her best. She did. She had her big clock out. Good. Rock out with your clock out, folks. That's the moral of that I'll tell you before we even get to the ending. Do not hear me incorrectly. What? Yes. Please, please, please do not misunderstand what I'm saying to you. But she really flopped

her clock out onto the table, man. So she put in the request at the patent office in 1903. It was confirmed in 1904. So even with the patent, the game is getting around. There are early versions. And this gets into a little bit of like the patent law situation and games in particular, which is kind of interesting because if you think about certain games, there is no copyright. There is no trademark. There is no trademark on chess. On checkers. A deck of playing cards with four suits. Yeah. If you think of other games like Mankala, that is not trademarked. Well, these are like ancient games that were to like hundreds of years old, thousands of year old and that's part of it is that they're so old that you can't own them. Who had the first fucking

game of Mankala? You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, like, into the ground with little pebbles. Yeah, exactly. Now, there are some other games that there were attempts to trademark them. And Parker Brothers was the one to attempt to trademark ping pong. How dare. Did not work because it was very easy to just do the same exact thing and call it table tennis. That trademark kind of fell apart. The trademark fell apart for tidly winks for Parker Brothers. Those motherfuckers. Those are plastic discs, you little bitches. I don't want it off of you. And I don't know how they even attempted to get the trademark for this, but Mahjong, that is an ancient game. This is going way back now to our early episodes when we were talking about those white ladies putting like flowers on the mahjong tiles and everybody being like, this ain't new.

What's the mark up? We're in this kind of world of folk games. That's another way to describe them. They are of the people. Chests of the people. No pat and no trademark. Absolutely. Monks have been playing chess since time in Memorial.

and so have like fathers taught their sons this game and so on. Fathers and sons. It doesn't get older than that. It's so true. Some women sometimes even learned how to play chess as well. I'd like to see the proof, but, you know. That's all AI. It's all AI.

It's all I think of us. It's all awkward. So the game of Monopoly, even with McGee's patent, was getting kind of passed around. People were making their own boards. The folks who were playing it, socialists, anti-capitalists, economic students who wanted to kind of do a little bit of role-playing. There was a large contingency of Quakers who played a lot of this early monopoly. Sure. I love the Quakers. Love the Shakers. We love them all.

And there are accounts of it being played at like MIT and Harvard and all these different places. One such student can be quoted saying it was considered a point of honor not to sell the game to a commercial manufacturer. since it had been worked out by a group of single taxors who were anxious to defeat the capitalist system. Right. Can't sell out. Fuck you. Stay punk. A little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. DIY. Put on your battle jacket and sit hunched over a board for a little while with some friends. Yeah. And the game, too, is like, it's not just a set of rules. It's not just the dice and the little figures and the cards.

It's also a role playing game. You know, you play the role of the banker or you play the role of a, uh, uh, a real estate tycoon. You might not be assigned your role, but you have to negotiate with people. You have to convince others to make financial, monopoly financial decisions that might not always be in their best interest. So even though it's a game, you still have to be like, well, Taylor, you really, you don't want Marvin Garvin. No, Marvin Garvin. Marvin. Garvin. Marvin. Marvin. Marvin. Marvin. Marvin Garvin? No, it's yes. But now I really wanted is that I want, now I would like to keep Marvin Garvin if I can. What do you got? Wow me. And then so goes the landlord game, right? Yes. Yeah. It's as simple as that. I found a really great description of this idea of the role playing in Monopoly and how it kind of fits in with McGee's version, but also how it bleeds into the modern, known monopoly. And it was from an article in the New York. written by a guy named Calvin Trillen.

And he writes, quote, apparently a monopolist demonstrated his wickedness while winning the game, the same way the villain in a professional wrestling match does when he's permitted to pin the hero through some filthy underhanded trick. Mm-hmm. So the moral of monopoly is that it will expose the badness in folks. But I did also, I did also taunt and pose like a heel when I was winning that bar Mario Kart tournament for my brother's brewery, though, too.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You smoked them. I got the impulse. Sometimes, sometimes you just got to heal it out. It's true. So McGee, she sells the game around a bit, but it has these underground, these punk, these DIY vibes going on still. And it never really takes off in the market way. She does, though, and this is important, she does renew the patent in 1924. This time she publishes it with another set of game instructions where it's meant to be that the regular gameplay favors the landlords so much so that it frustrates everybody on the board. You guys are not killing the landlords. Yeah. We need to change the course of the game. Understood. Exactly. She really like she kind of turned it so it was very villainous. And then though, the second set of gameplay instructions was for what she called another version of the

game, prosperity, where you communally work to improve the financial. aspects of everybody who is sitting around the board. This is so conceptual now. You're supposed to play this twice back to that. Well, this is the woman who took out the newspaper article, right? Like, she's, she's Maria Brabivic-She is making art. Monopoly, okay. So, as you can probably guess, that didn't really work either. Apparently, the American public is not really, that sounds like it sucks. That's how rotten. The American public doesn't want to play a shitty game that is specifically designed to be frustrating and unfun as a parable for their already shitty unfun existences as they currently are. The very existences we're playing this game to escape from.

But she does renew the patent. And the homemade games, the DIY punk games, were getting a little out of control. There was even a group of Quakers. We mentioned the Quakers, loving to play this game, a group of Quakers in Atlantic City that designed the game around the street names and the landmarks of the iconic vacation city. It was the Quakers. You can you believe it? It was the Quakers that did that. Who made this chair? As with all of the great aesthetic touches, it comes courtesy.

Like Quakers! Exactly. Exactly. This is well built. This board could fly off the shelves. Exactly. Who made those shelves? Quakers.

But how interesting that that's where the familiar New Jersey naming convention comes. Although you can, as we kind of discussed, you can get monopoly now that's themed around pretty much any major city. Sydneyopoly, Vancouveropoly. you swap out Park Place for Robson Street, you know? And those homemade versions, the DIY, the punk versions, they did do that. They changed names here. They changed this rule there. You know, it was that approach to kind of make it your own.

Which is even stranger, though, that the monopoly we know today just really focused in on this one Quaker version. You know, so did the Oates. No one says shit about that. That's episode number 140. Oates. Yeah, yeah. I'm doing a Quaker theme this year. Oh, I love it. Please. I would unironically love you. If you want to keep bringing Quaker stories of all ears, please. We have the Quaker version with Atlantic City. There's the boardwalk. There's, you know, all the recognizable things of the wonderful city of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Wow. Now enters our dog Charles Darrow. A real guy. He is a real guy,

Which makes it worse. So here we find ourselves with Charles Darrow, and I'm going to tell you the true story, not the legend printed in the monopoly box. So he was indeed an unemployed. As were many people during the Great Depression. I think it said that he was an engineer. It was more likely that he was more like a plumber. And he did have two kids, and he had a wife that he did need to support, and he was unable to do so being unemployed. He did not dream up this game at his kitchen table.

Instead, he and his wife were visiting some friends by the name of Charles and Olive Todd. So Charles and Charles sitting at the kitchen table playing this fun, interesting new homemade game. Right, right. So the Todds are associated with the local Quaker community and they got this board from some friends. we know that the board that Charles Darrow played on for the very first time had Atlantic City built in to the board. Charles Todd, Mr. Todd, is on record saying that while the two couples played, quote, Darrow had a lot of stupid questions, end quote. Okay, I think I see where this story is going and I don't care for it.

But all right. After that night, the Darrow's did not. darken the doorstep of the Tods nearly as much anymore. Dude, that's brutal. That's so, like, imagine being so annoying while you're playing Monopoly that people, like, will go on the record about it, which I definitely, which I definitely have been. Russell, I'm sorry. I did not, I was young and I did not have very good sportsmanship. I made a deal that I would, basically, he was really on my deed. It's like, say there's like five, six of us, but this is mean. This is mean. You're about to learn.

Okay. It doesn't matter. You're about to the person that I do this to in this story. Poor Russell. Russell and I were clashing early on strategically also maybe just as a personality thing. So I was giving people properties that they needed on the condition that they not make a deal with Russell for the rest of the game. Oh my God. And I did that to like three other.

I like don't even talk to him kind of thing. And it worked and he like ended up like quitting the game upset because it was such a brutal tactic. and he was maybe right to do that. Have you ever seen this individual again? Yeah. Yeah. We're still. Like what?

Dot, dot, dot. So Darrow, Charles Darrow, he plays this game with the Tads and he kind of disappears a little bit. He is hard at work recreating the board, the cards, the rules. the gameplay of the game that he played that evening. Just like sort of like when you like, you taste a potato salad and they've told you that they're not giving you the recipe, but you think if you like kind of swish it around in your mouth for long enough, you can kind of back engineer it. Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah. Got it. I remember that. And he does go through a few prototypes. He does make a circular board because, you know, you move sequentially, you know, over the spaces. So he thought maybe that would work. He makes a few different versions with different colors.

and different artwork, but it's, he finally gets to the square board that looks more or less like McGee's. Like the one he had just been playing, right? Because he's working off a reference to some degree, even if it's like a half-remembered one. And interestingly enough, because all these other homemade punkers were re-creating the game to reflect something different about where they lived or what they were studying. But Darrell, who is not from Atlantic City, did not live in Atlantic City, created the board. So this is stolen Atlantic City valor.

Yes, but it's also just like, why? Why did you do? Why not New York? Or why, you know. Played with the Quakers because it played with the fucking Quakers, didn't it, Josie? The Quakers loved it. He looked at that and he saw Q for Quonee, you know, and that's what he did. Yeah, that's it, Quenny.

So it's pretty clear based on, I should say, the story, Charles and Olive Todd share it willingly. There are many people who had recognized and played Monopoly in whatever form that they created well before Darrow brought it to Parker Brothers. There is verbal accounts, verbal interviews, but there's also physical boards. Lots of proof. So what Darrow sold as his own and then what Parker Brothers picked up, was not in fact Darrow's invention. It was a homebrew of the landlord's game based on another home brew that he'd seen while playing with some Quakers.

And quite a close facsimile of that other homebrew. So that pull yourself up by your brute straps, which as you mentioned is according to physics impossible. No, that's the gag. It's supposed to be like an Iraq. You're not actually supposed to think that it's a thing that you can do. It's satire. You just roll over backwards.

But somehow it got into like, why can't these poor people like pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which does not fucking, exactly. You idiot, exactly. Read of mice and men. Read of mice and men, you stupid fuck. And then watch Angley's film, The Ice Storm. Great key party. Great young cast. Christina Ricci.

Elijah Wood. Toby Maguire. Katie Holmes. A galaxy of stars waiting for you in Angley's 90s film, The Ice Storm. I think 97. Great movie. I got her today. Josie's loving it. Josie's loving the energy. He just, it works. It really works. Oh, okay.

So the story that is printed in the box that is widely known, where Darrow is the flat-out inventor, gosh, what a genius. Isn't this a true, a story of the true American dream? It kind of is. A white guy who saw something and said I did that. Yeah, the true dash true. Kind of. Yeah.

Parker Brothers bought it, hook line and sinker. So much so that they're like, it's a pretty good story. We're going to print it in the box. And they started manufacturing the game, which became wildly popular. Daro did commission an artist to make that little Art Deco flourish, and that is the style that we know today. He was responsible for hiring somebody else to do that. Again, a true story of the America. But you know what?

The Art Deco thing isn't a bad touch. Yeah, I love Art Deco. I like the numbers on the money. They're fat, then skinny. Sure, what next? from this point on, when Parker Brothers takes it over, it becomes a runaway hit. Parker Brothers is actually facing potential financial issues when they take on the game, and Monopoly solves those issues for them.

It sells so fast and so quickly, they have to create another factory in Salem, Massachusetts, where they do other manufacturing, just to produce more monopoly boards. And even then, they're not meeting the demand. The public wants monopoly. You know what? Can I say something here? And this is going to put me in bad stead with my fellow Democratic socialists at our meeting in the empty hall with the big flag at the front of the room where one of us talks in everyone. I kind of get it. The old game was not refined or sexy enough. The home brew aspect, well, interesting and the art piece and the two, like, that's interesting. But, like, you're not going to sell this thing with, like, it's the landlord's game. There's a set of rules that sucks. And then there's a set of rules that's a really didactic. and about economic systems, the stuff that makes the current Monopoly game work is that it lets you succeed, it creates memorable moments, it's bright and colorful, there's a few interesting

pieces of iconography, this kind of art deco style that you're talking about. At its bedrock, obviously there's some kind of a good game built in there, at least one that captivated the interest of all of these different, you know, your MIT and your Quaker and your kind of different walks of life, but also, like, I see why the Landlord game, as it was presented, didn't do, like, tremendously commercially well in the way that Monopoly has. As a point of pride, it didn't, right? This is, you pass this around at fucking parties with, you know what I mean? Like, who has this week's copy of fucking anti-capitalism game, man? Like, it's, it's not that. It's monopoly. Let's feel good about making money, folks. That'll sell. Especially in 1935. Yeah, let's make some

fucking money. Please, folks. Let's make some money. Aspirational. Even if it's just play money, it's going to feel good. And what else do we have to do in the Depression? You know, you can only play hide the pine cone so many times before it gets fucking boring. Before it gets hidden somewhere you don't want to touch it again. You wake up today? Did anyone get kicked in the face by a mule today? No. Well, fuck. What are we going to do? What's left? I'm so bored. Yes. I agree with you. I do. I think there was something that wasn't quite catching about Lizzie McGee's The Landlords game. I think what maybe makes it hard to swallow, though, is that Parker Brothers, who I mentioned, they had issues with some trademarks kind of falling apart, ping pong, tidly winks.

Tidly winks. Majong. Mm-hmm. Majong. That's a bit of audacity, Mahjong. Yeah, that one's definitely the white guy being like, ah, I've entered that. They are a little concerned that, like, are you sure, Darrow? Are you sure that this was yours and only your invention? You didn't, like, see it somewhere else and, like, create a new version or anything like that. Okay. Yes, yes, which is sort of the classic plagiarism thing of like, were you, you know, let's give you a little bit of latitude. Perhaps there was an unconscious inspiration that led you to, like, incorporate all of that Simpson's dialogue into your work as though it was your own or, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. Just tell us the truth. We're not going to get mad. Just tell us and so we know. Yeah. I've done it. We've done it. Listen, buddy. It turns into that, like, a good cop back. We've all murdered some kids, man. It's just what you do now with it, you know? Exactly. But Darrow sticks to the story. He sticks to, I was unemployed. I was on the kitchen table. I am persistent. And I then did this all in my own. I'm a genius. Did he, he cut out the Quakers even. No Quaker in history. What a son of a bitch? I don't want to be judgmental like that on the podcast. But what a, what a, what a son of a bitch? I don't want to be judgmental like that on the podcast. But what a, what a, what a son of a son of a bitch? I don't want to be judgmental like that on the podcast. But what a, what a, what a, what a, what a. What a rascal. My goodness. Don't cut out the fucking Quakers.

Okay. Come on. Yeah, that's true. What is the Quakers ever done but give us good furniture, man? Leave the Quakers out of this. So the Parker brothers having issues with their past trademarks, they knew enough to do a little digging. And as you know, Lizzie McGee had gone to them offering up the landlords game. She also had not one but two patents, which is not. Yeah, she renewed the patent.

Yeah. It's not a hard thing to do to go to the patent. office and look up, hey, are there any games that are similar to this? Parker Brothers does, and they realize, oh, shit. Okay. Um, we actually turned this game down before, even. Yeah. They approach Lizzie McGee. Oh, Lizzie. Come here. Exactly. That was Matthew doing that. Yeah. We don't know where, what, Mike? I forget the other brother. It's not, I think it's been Francis, it's been a few names. Greg? I think there was a Greg?

Me? Somebody, yes. You know, it doesn't mean just two brothers. All the brothers. It's an army of brothers and the one Parker sister who's not famous. She keeps to herself. She hates it. She hates all those brothers. Yeah, she doesn't like a father. She actually wanted a garden, man. So Lizzie, who by then was Lizzie McGee Phillips. She had married. And she was working at the time as a stenographer in Washington, D.C.

And they asked her, let us purchase your game. We really think that the newest patent, that prosperity, two sets of game rules, that's kind of cool. I do not know. And I could speculate until the day is blue. But I am not quite sure why Lizzie said yes. They gave her $500. I can imagine. Probably that. Yeah, it was fine.

I mean, she was working as a stenographer at the time. I don't think she was rolling in it. It was the fucking depression. Yeah, in 1935. It's true. And it could have been that she didn't need the game to blow up. She just wanted it to be out there in a bigger way. I mean, she really did believe in the single tax theory.

She was a strong proponent of Henry George. So maybe that was enough to excite her to sign over the patent. But they also tried to sweeten the deal by saying, we'll take this patent, we'll run the landlords game with prosperity, and then we'll publish two more. of your games as well. And you know what? Not only that, Lizzie, we just, we love you so much. We're going to put your face on the board. You're going to have a little like anti-mame little emblem side profile. Ah, anti-manopoly. Anti-monopoly. I know. I was like, oh my God, he knows. How does he know?

Damn. That's the way that you do. Be like, well, just put your face on it and everyone will know that you did it. Yeah. And she says yes. She signs it over. Anybody can be bought, even an anti-mame, dude, anybody can be bought. We all exist in response to the financial realities of the systems that we live in. It's true. You're a product of our times. So Parker Brothers did release her games, the landlord's game with the prosperity turn and the two others, but they did not really advertise them. They did a shoddy job of producing the prosperity rules. And her games were more or Unless, buried in obscurity.

Like so many anti-monopoly games being poured into a dump. And probably worst of all, they continued to give Darrow full credit for the invention of monopoly. Full credit and full access to all and any royalties. I mean... Yeah. Well, everyone involved is certainly dead. There's nothing I can do about it.

Josie, keep talking. Well, except for Darrow's grandchildren, they're still around. They're still... I'm not going to kill him. I'm not going to kill him, Josie. whatever you want. I know we're all about inciting violence on this podcast. I'm not going to kill those grandkids.

Are you an AI? This is robot, Josie. This is Rojozy, rope-boop. I see you, bitch. She is doing the robot. That's how I know it's robot. That's the telltale sign that it's robot, Josie. She does the robot.

So McGee herself, when she realized what had happened, she was pissed. She was angry. She called up the newspaper because it's 1930. and what do you do, right? She gave interviews to the Washington Post and to the Washington Evening Star. She posed for a picture holding her game board, the landlord's game with, you know, all the writing on it, but all the tiles in the four corners.

I think she holds up Darrow's board game, the widely popular one at that point. And you can see clearly, she's making a statement. These are the same thing. My game patented in originally in 1904 is the genesis. of this game that was patented in 1935. This is not okay. This is not okay. Unfortunately, the articles did little to change

any of the narrative, though. McGee died at the age of 81 in 1948, and at the time of her death, she was uncredited for her contributions to one of the most popular board games in modern history. Oh, and I get, though, because on the one hand, it's a much more interesting story than the one that they put

on the pamphlet in the middle of the game. Yeah. It also is, like, much, more untethered though from the actual message of that game. We love a plucky underdog story, like the Darrow story where someone sort of like pulls themselves up by the bootstraps, which you can do. You just roll on your back, y'all. That's all that happens. If you get two monopoly sets, you got both the boots, right? And then you just start from there. And of course, like, all of the sociopolitical stuff that comes from like, oh, you know, the accomplishments of women being attributed to men and all that, you know, good stuff, right?

Like the serious stuff. But other than that, I kind of see, I see what happened here from a marketing perspective. I'm not fond of it, but I do see what happened. Yeah. The New Jersey thing remains baffling, but perhaps that's just part of the ethereal magic that made Monopoly such a hit was that the streets were the streets from New Jersey. That little touch, yeah. That's got to be fun for them. It's nice to have a little. Atlantic City must have fun with that. They have Miss America there. They've got, you know, look at them contributing to the culture. But the story isn't all sad. It is a game of chance after all. It's a game of chance for you. For me, it's a game of making deals on the side of the board and stealing money from the bank.

What is it? You want to be number three so you can seduce number two? Yeah, exactly. And then we can unite against number one. Number three isn't threatening. That's the thing. It was when you're seducing as number three, you're not as threatening. That's a fact. It is. We got to pick up back with our guy Ralph and Spetch. Do you remember him? He was the anti-monopoly guy. Yeah, it did. It was bust the trust and then it became anti-monopoly. So we know the history, pretty much, of these D.I. board games. And so now your argument is that it's all the more ironic that Parker Brothers would put the boot down, given the actual origins of monopoly itself, the thing that they're enforcing. Is that where we're going?

Yeah, there's a little bit of that. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. I see that. I see it. To prepare for his court case against Parker Brothers, Antspec does a lot of research. He calls up and he goes paying for it on his own dime.

He visits the Todd's. he gets the story of how Darrow was asking all the annoying questions. So he puts out advertisements and newspapers being like, did you ever play a game of Monopoly before in 1935? Please contact me. Here's my home address. Again. Love it.

The 70s. Yeah. And this is how we did detective work. Yes. Back in the day. And he does an incredible amount of work to find out some of this information. He learns that some of those early versions of the games, just like they would be tinkered.

with to reflect local customs or landmarks. They also had their own names. So some were called finance. Some were called economy. But most importantly, he did find and could confirm with game boards that many of them were called Monopoly. Even though he has all this wonderful, juicy history behind him. And there's McGee's patent.

He can trace Parker Brothers' assumption of the patent in 1935. Even with all of this information, in an early round of litigation, a California federal judge ordered that not only all copies of anti-monopoly be destroyed, hence why I brought you to the dump, but... Love when you bring me to the dump, baby. I was a fan. But the federal judge ordered that Anspects could not talk about the history that he had uncovered. Oh, disquistan. Yeah. Disquest done. I agree. I didn't know what you said it first, but the second time I got it.

Disgusting but Scottish. Yes. Now you know. Yes. It was not a great situation for Anne Spech. One, he couldn't sell his game anymore and he had to destroy the games and having them in the dump. But not being able to talk about all of this was just insane. And he was so upset by that.

And then you add to that all of the personal finance that he had put in to his research, the guy took out three mortgages on his house. Not to keep bringing it back to like. Dragon's Den slash Shark Tank. But, but, oof, that's a tough one. Yeah. I know. He's, he's playing a game in Monopoly. He's mortgaging his properties. He's playing anti-monopoly. And that's the thing is, I, like, what a concept to be so, like,

everyone just wants to, like, I guess, reflect their economic view in the form of this, this game format. Yeah. What a thing. What a thing to consider. You know, I like the stories that make me think in interesting ways about artifacts. Say, I've got two monopoly sets in my closet and a dogoply set even, You know. What are the other two? Are the other two just standard? Oh, they're just both.

One's my old family monopoly set. The other is like another vintage monopoly set that my mother got for me. Oh, wow. That's cute. Yeah. And Spech is outraged at this result, as you can imagine. Financially speaking, for his own game, but especially for the fact that he cannot share this history, this damning history. Yes.

That's the bitch of it, isn't it? And so he realizes he has. he has to keep fighting. He's not just fighting for his own game. He is fighting for McGee's legacy, too. So he repeals the case, and it goes all the way to the top, Taylor. He walks up those Supreme Court steps.

Some 10 years after his initial cease and desist letter. He says, Earl Warren question mark. Let's do this. Take it to swipe. Maybe not. That's a good one. I think you would say justice Earl Boren, though.

No, I don't respect the Supreme Court. I can see. Sorry guys. I can see why. Yeah, yeah. You should have term limits is what I think. Yeah. You should make a game about it. At the Supreme Court case, it is decided that anti-monopoly can't.

be produced. It can be a game on the market and that there is no gag order on the history of Monopoly's beginnings. Anspex is welcome to share that information, which she does. So anti-monopoly is now produced by San Francisco-based publisher University Games. And according to author Mary Pylon, who wrote the book, The Monopolis's Obsession, Fury, and the scandal behind the world's favorite board game. According to her, she says, Anspex. That's such the title of that. Oh, yeah. The blank.

The blank blank that ignited a blank and changed the way we blank and blank. Now I've lost my spot in the sentence. I don't know where I am. So Anspec and University Games found the game anti-monopoly difficult to distribute widely because of agreements between Hasbro and top game retailers. So they got cock blocked, essentially. Hasbro. Yes, because Hasbro then took over General Mills or something like that. Some conglomerate went like a meme.

I know Hasbro owns death row records now. Oh, what? It's all meaningless, isn't it? I hate this. So, even though Anspec doesn't get the opportunity to sell his game widely, he still gets a financial settlement out of the deal. So all his court fees are covered, but he also makes back all the money that he's spent. So in the end, this was like a net profit for him this whole venture because of this. Eventually, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you factoring in all the worry and stress of going through the experience. Oh, no, God, no. But again, he's allowed to share the story. And in 2000, he publishes the book, Get Ready for Another Long Title, The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle. Colon.

Oh, no, that's it. Oh, that's a shave. Damn it. You got me, Mitchell. You got me. Do you want to supply a subheading? The billion-dollar monopoly swindle, colon. How one woman's idea became one con man's fortune became one underdog's battle against the monopolies that rule us all. I would pick that book up. And you'd still be reading the cover on the inside cover.

You still be reading the title? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Speck, though he doesn't become a wildly popular game inventor, he does get to share the story. And in 2022, he dies at the ripe age of 96. Wow. As for Darrow, the guy got filthy rich in the 1930s, millionaire. Can I ring a bell, can you?

Nope. Sometimes got to be in the right place and the right time and the right place of the right time is with some like Quakers who are politely tolerating your presence while you play board games. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes, Charles. You can roll again.

Yes. Yes. Yep. Nope. It's called a die. No, it's just a die if it's one of them. It's only a dice. No.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, you can call it a dice. It doesn't matter. Oh, God. Funnily enough, I wrote in my notes when everybody else died. But then I wrote Charles Darrow died in. and then I stint finish it.

I just didn't care. Listen, would you like me? Allow me, Malady. 1967 at the age of 78 years old, so not bad. Not yet. There's a nice 6-7 allusion in there if you're bestly inclined. Darrow, his legacy, he was largely seen and often still is seen as the American hero who invented Monopoly. It's a nice, clean story that we are.

already know. Those types of stories are the hardest ones to rewrite. It kind of ticks all the boxes and we know it. Our grandma told it to us. It's got to be true. Still, today, Hasbro, now the parent company of Monopoly, credits the official Monopoly game produced and played today to Charles Darrow. Yeah. I mean, why stop now? Yeah. Like, why? So that Tucker Carlson can yell about it on TV. You know what I mean? Yeah. The die has been cast. no pun intended. We've kind of, I feel like the, the thing that you would do, here's how I would solve this, you just stop putting the story in the, in the pamphlet. You just gloss it over. You go, since 1930 Monopoly has blotiddi-da-da-da. You just quietly demote Charles Darrow and you don't

gotta fucking credit this like socialist woman that created the version of your game that's about how much the things that your game celebrates sucks. Yeah. And you just, you just push forward. And now it's not just Lizzie McGee. It's this whole story, right? it's Ralph and Spech. He's dead too. Time forgets everybody. It's fine. Let's just keep pumping out monopoly boards here, hey?

That's what we're here for, right? Matt and Mike and John and Frank and Steve. All them Parker Bros. And Becky, how's the garden going? Good. I say, we don't hear from you enough. You should call. She loves the yellow roses best.

The future still holds hope, though, Taylor. Okay. In 2023, 70 years after McGee's death and just one year after Anspec's death, a free and a pretty good documentary was released on PBS, which is the public broadcasting system in the U.S. So this is paid for with taxpayer dollars, American taxpayer dollars. Yeah, and very embattled in its current state of affairs under Trump's government. A little bit. It's losing a lot of funding. in this documentary called Ruthless Monopoly's Secret History.

Needs more words. Needs more words and one or two more colons. Yeah. Maybe like a thing colon other thing, M-dash thing colon other thing. You know? You got it. You know it. You're on it.

Thank you. I'm excited for your board game that has this long. long-ass title. Oh, you're going to need to, like, read it under a black light. It's going to be a real deal. No one's going to buy it. No one's going to like it. So this documentary, ruthless, it tells this entire story.

It was a major source for the story that I just told you. It tells it in all of its detail, including the visuals, because it's a documentary. And in this documentary, paid for by taxpayer dollars, it very clearly has one of the talking heads speak into existence. that Darrow was nothing but a charlatan. Yeah. And the documentary, it maybe doesn't like go so hard with that, but it allows that to be there,

and it definitely sides along those lines. What do you think? Do you think that this is an opportunist who, you know, bungled ahead and was the recipient probably of just a lot of privilege working in his favor, not in the way that anybody was super duper privileged, obviously during the fucking Great Depression, but he wasn't a woman, he wasn't from a particular religious, group, he was just like a guy presenting his board game in a somewhat, in the most marketable way

that had yet been presented to Parker Brothers to make them pay attention slash it wasn't presented them by a woman, let's say. Or do you think he's like a grifter? Do you think he's like, hey, hey, hey, I steal from the Quakers and give to the me? I think there is a little bit of that grifter vibe. I think so. I think especially because Parker Brothers made a point to be like, we really need to secure the origin story of your invention and we need to make sure because he doesn't tell the truth. And I think that is grifter behavior. Fuck boy behavior. Why would you expect someone? Because this is the story of monopoly, let's forget. This is a game whose tokens include or included briefly because they vote to like switch him out, right? But like there was a bag of money in there for a while.

This is a game where money is part of the imagery if you were to get a monopoly branded. thing. It would have money, money, money, money, money all over it. And you would expect the man who got his foot in the door stealing this idea and it worked. Now what's he going to do? No corporate or the lords. It was a woman what done it. A socialist woman, actually. And then it filtered down to some Quakers who loved New Jersey. They wanted to rep the 201. And so they did a bunch of New Jersey themed shit. Or you can just be like, nope, I'm in for a penny and for a pound. I've already got my foot in this door. It was me. I did it. Prove I didn't. If I were him, if I were him, my crooked ass, I do the same thing, which I guess

is the point, yeah, that he's crooked. So, we agree. Okay. But I think maybe what you're picking up on, and I agree is part of why it seems to go on, why the legend goes on, is it feeds into the theme of the

game. It's like, well, yeah, when I play Monopoly, I steal money. Small denominations, but I, whatever. It's how you play Monopoly. I was vulnerable with you. Don't do an imitation of me. hanging out my dirty laundry right back to my face so soon. But I think when you enter the topic of monopoly,

perhaps many people enter the frame of mind where it's like, well, yeah, you got to watch out for number one. That's how you play the game. Oh, yes. Yeah. Or watch out for number two so you can seduce your way up. Yes. And so it becomes excusable or it becomes understandable in some way that I,

is interesting. It's really interesting. I think it's a testament to the game, which Lizzie McGee invented, that you enter this mindset. And maybe what she wasn't picking up on is that people are bad or people like to pretend to be bad, which can lead to them just being bad. Sorry, Russell. But the opportunity to play the heel is enticing. Yes, it is.

To be a traitor. Yes, it is. To be a traitor versus a faithful. No, exactly. It's the same. It's a similar kind of conundrum, right? is like we and I do like genuinely I'm not even that much joking when I say that these games are like pro social at the best of times pro social outlets for aggression right the same way that dodgeball is the same way that video games are like if you have an impulse to antagonize which I think that like at a base level I am not I am not I'm a pretty chilled out person broadly when it comes to my interactions with others in the way I like to treat others like I don't like to treat others disrespectfully just like your mom Melanie just like me and Melanie and and uh Harrison Ford, my dad, or no, my non-famous, my non-famous dad from before she married Don

Johnson and Antonio Naderas. I think the success of Monopoly is as much down to the particularities of its branding and it's like aspirational, let me be the one who takes all the money. And I think that that's maybe something that the Landlords game version lacked. Although I do think it's kind of nice that some of the things that noted the landlords game have also carried through even this day, for the example, the idea of Homebrew Rules. I think that Monopoly, as much as any other board game I can think of, if you sit down house by house, there's going to be some sort of like, okay, but you actually, do you collect money on free parking? Okay, no, can you do this?

What kinds of deals are you allowed to do versus not allowed to do? Like, these are things that are not true of chess, for example, right? Like, you don't sit down in someone's house and usually like, yeah, in our house, the horses go backwards. Like, you know, like, it's not really that. So I like that sort of DIY spirit bleeds into the game. which perhaps speaks about it, like, from a game design perspective, whether it's the particular distilled version that Darrow ended up playing with these Quakers or whether it's the bones of the original Landlords game that McGee created. I think it speaks well to, like, the bones of the

game. Do you know what I mean? It is something that compels and it is something that, like, is still giving people, you know, opportunities to have creative rules or to, like, have these sort of story because the game is, can I tell you, secret folks? The game is just the vehicle for a a story between you and your friends. There is the game. Like, there's obviously the can I win, but to me, the game is as much about the story of what plays out as it is the actual mechanics of what plays out, right? Yeah.

How your sister fucking always steals and your mom had fucking Kentucky Avenue up your sleeve. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like how I told you about, yeah, I was real mean to this guy. I wrestled during a game of Monopoly one time. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There's always, there's narrative to that. And that's true of pretty much any game. Any game that you're playing works that way from Mario Party to Mancala to Monopoly. According to the current Monopoly rule book, the final rule states the richest player wins. But when we're thinking about the history of who invented Monopoly and how this story actually is and how it is being propagated and thank you Jonathan Mountain for requesting this even though you're not asking me. Let it be known, Jonathan Mountain and I have played many, many, many, many, many, a game of Monopoly together. But we should know when we're thinking about the history of Monopoly. The original, quote unquote, original Darrow's Monopoly board game from 1935, the final rule in the rulebook states,

the last player left in the game wins. So we just got a way to find out who the winner really will be. The one of you that doesn't starve to death under this oppressive system wins, question mark. And do what you want with that? Wait, what is your game piece? What do you play? I was going to ask you the same thing. Okay.

I like the thimble. Thimble's nice because it's like, it's just a thimble. And you can wear it like a thimble. It's like a stim. You can just like fuck around with it in your hand while you play. It's fab. How about you? If we had a game in front of us right now,

I'd pick Batman. Yes, the dog. The dog. Josie has a dog that looks like the dog in the Monopoly. No, the Monopoly trinket looks like my dog. How old's your dog? Dude, how old's your dog? But I agree with you.

I'm kind of, I'm kind of vibing with the thimble. I was often, I was very odd. I would say if you had to put like Taylor, what were you most? I would think I was thimble the most, probably. Oh my gosh. So a light. Matchy, match you thimble on the left hand and thimble in the right hand. It's like we're brothers.

It's like we're Parker brothers. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweet infamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At K-O-5Fi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free.

baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I use for this week's episode include an article from Board Game Studies Journal entitled Lizzie McGee, America's First Lady of Games, written by David Parlet, and it was published in Journal 13. Pages 99 to 109. I watched the documentary and I mentioned it in the episode itself. The PBS documentary, Ruthless, Colon, Monopoly's Secret History,

The Game You Know, The Story You Don't. I think that might be a double colon situation. And it aired February 20th, 2023. I looked at the website, The Landlordsgame.info, where you can see all past versions of, of Monopoly, Flash the Landlords game. I read an article from the Washington Free Press, Go to Court, Go Directly to Court,

written by Doug Collins, published in the 1998 November-December issue. I read an article in The New Yorker, written by Calvin Trillen, Monopoly and History, and Economics Professors Crusade against Jim Mills, unravels Monopoly's origin myth and exposes how a folk game became a course. corporate property. It was published February 6, 1978. I read an article in The Guardian, The Secret History of Monopoly and capitalist board games left-wing origins, written by Mary

Pylon, April 11, 2015. Lastly, I read an article in Star Tribune, written by Patrick Condon, Why Thousands of Board Games Are Buried Beneath Mancato, and it was published June 2, 22, 2023. I also looked at the Wikipedia pages for Henry George, The Landlords game, Lizzie McGee, and Charles Darrow. A big shout-up to all of our monthly subscribers, Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Joe, Sof, Dylan, and Sactuala Cat. Thank you so much for all of your support. Steadfast as always. If you want to be just like this dream team, then you can go to coffee.com and become a subscriber that is K-O-F-I.com slash bittersweet infamy. And once you become a monthly subscriber, you have full access to the Bittersweet Film Club. Our most recent offering was Working

Girl. Thank you, Terry, again, for the recommendation. Upcoming in our film club watch list, notes on a scandal. Bitter Sweet Infamy is a member of the 604 podcast network. This episode was edited by Taylor Basso and me, Josie Mitchell. The interstitial music you heard earlier was written by Mitchell Collins. And the song you were listening to now is T Street by Brian Steele. Again, Ice Storm. You're going to want to watch the Ang Lee's 1997 Josie. And you know what? You're going to watch this and you'll be like, dude, Taylor was right. I love this movie. This is a great movie. Ice Storm. And then of my Sin Man, I don't think I've actually read. So, it's There's the balance there.

What? Eh. Ah!