Do Go On - 354 - The Controversial History of Monopoly

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Monopoly is one of the best selling board games of all time, but it has a controversial history. The game’s inventor was an unemployed salesman named Charles B. Darrow who was struggling to put food on the table during the great depression - at least that was the commonly held belief for a long time. But actually, that’s only a tiny part of the story, tune in to hear more!Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: dogoonpod.com or patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/suggest-a-topic/ Check out our new merch! : https://do-go-on-podcast.creator-spring.com/ Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader Thomas REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:The Monopolists by Mary Pilon: https://www.marypilon.com/monopolyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/business/behind-monopoly-an-inventor-who-didnt-pass-go.htmlhttps://www.henrygeorge.org/dodson_on_monopoly.htmhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-originshttps://www.britannica.com/sports/Monopoly-board-gamehttps://www.thoughtco.com/monopoly-monopoly-charles-darrow-4079786https://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Monopoly_(1999).pdfhttps://www.monopolyland.com/monopoly-pieces/https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/02/13/who-really-invented-monopoly.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20070716173348/http://tt.tf/gamehist/articles/eugene-raiford_ltr_02jan64.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serengy Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there. Canada, we are visiting you in September this year.

If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. As always, by Matt Stewart. Matt, hello. Hey, Jess. Thanks so much for having me here at Sand's Pants Studio.

That's right. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'm doing the intro, poorly, because Dave isn't here. Who's here instead, Matt? Oh, my God. I'm so excited. He hasn't been on this show, but he has been on our Do Go, D&D. I can't remember what it's called, but it was a D&D spin-off podcast.

I think it was called Do Go on D&D. He's the dungeon master himself. Please make him welcome. It's Adam Carnivalet. You say please make him welcome and it's just me. So it's like, yes. Well, I'm picturing people at home doing it as well. Thank you so much for having me.

I was just sitting here in the studio when you two sat down. So it was inevitable. But thank you nonetheless. Yeah. I'm sorry that we hit record before you had the chance to leave. Yeah. And get on with your day. But now you get to sit here and chat to us for a couple of hours.

Yeah. Just scooched her chair just in front of the door. There is no way out now. I did hear, yeah, as the door closed, they did hear it lock as well. So I don't think there was ever an option. Did you know these doors locked? I didn't, no.

Discovered just now. So people might know you from the D&D episodes. They might also know you from primates and, of course, getting fruity with Mattie boys. Main host are getting fruity with Maddie and the boys. Yeah, Maddie and the boys. Yeah, that's what the real fans call. Yeah, yeah.

And of course, also the ape titty slide saga. You're one of the key in. Investigators. Yes. We broke that case. We busted it wide open. It is so open. I still want to do one last episode on it.

Yes, absolutely. But we've really got to find something that will bust the case open even further if possible. It's guaranteed that we will not do the episode until there is concrete, hard-hitting evidence for further Ape Tiddy Slide Adventure. Totally. And the other thing, well, I mean, one of the many other things you do is host a D&D podcast here at Sandus. That is correct, yes. And so if people like D&D, I mean, obviously check out our D&D series on patreon.com slash jrongopod, but also come across for the sand.

I mean, if you go to sandspans.com and you close your eyes and you click on any of the podcast, you'll probably find Adam Carnivalet. It's a decent chance, yeah. Basically, you'd throw a dart at the website. You're guaranteed to break your computer screen and hit a podcast I'm on. Yeah. Yeah. Double fun.

Double trouble. Yeah. Hey Jess, how does this podcast work for new listeners? I reckon Carnivali, the Carnivali massive is here, you know, and they're listening to the podcast for the first time. Well, first of all, welcome. And thank you so much for giving us a go. How this works is one of the three of us goes away.

Research is a topic, usually suggested by a listener. We bring back that research, that information, and we present it to the other two who listen quietly and politely and never interrupt. or go on silly little riffs. Oh, thank God, that was said jokingly. At first I wasn't sure. Imagine it's like, Adam, actually, I'm just going to need you to pipe down. Matt's telling us something incredibly interesting.

Keeps banging on this guy, kind of valet. You're not here to talk. You're here to listen. You're here for Matt to talk to you. Okay. It just makes me feel more comfortable about telling a story of there's other people in the room. Matt can't talk into a microphone in an empty room. He can't do it.

We've tried. and so we just have to sit here. Feel free to go on your phone. You and I could play a card game. We could do almost anything, but as long as we're in the room and not making too much noise, Matt can do the report.

And Matt, we always get onto topic with a question. That's right. And this week's question is, and there is a listener, or there was at some point, who was keeping track of the score. So you could be on this famous scoreboard if you get this right.

And Jess, you could probably continue. I could remain on the scoreboard. You could probably continue to be on the school board. My question is, jump in whenever you're ready. Uh-huh. Which famous board game features Atlantic City streets such as Mediterranean Avenue, St. Charles Place and Marvin Gardens. A board game.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, the English version, Old Kent Road, Pal-Mal, and Piccadilly. Your whole body. It was like your toes knew the answer first, and it went all the way up your body and it your arm shot out. You were so excited then. My toes are typically the first thing to make something out.

Manopoli. That was very good. Yeah, it's, yeah, I wasn't sure how well known here the American names were because I hadn't heard of them either. So is this, was that the original version of the... Yes. Oh, really? So this is going to be the story of the original version.

And the English version came out soon after the American one. But yeah, the American one. So this is the story of how it came to be. Quite controversial, this story. Very quickly at the top. Favorite piece, battleship? I would go to the little car. I always went to the little horse.

The horse and rider. Yes. I don't know this piece. Well, that's interesting. At the very end, I've got a, if we're... we have time and if we're not bored of Monopoly. I've got like a brief history of the pieces. And it's so funny that they delete them and add new ones and then bring some back.

I would go car or little dog. Car also a good option. Yes. Yeah, I like a car. No, I could never get bored of Monopoly. Whenever I, any moment, any time, any day I think I have a spare eight hours, I love to play half a game of Monopoly. And then how does it end?

Flipping a table? It always ends in flipping a table. typically ends when everyone else has walked away and I'm the only one standing because no one else wants to play. Everyone else is like, I've got to go to bed, man. It's 3 a.m. So this topic has only been suggested by a couple of people. It's interesting because Jess Adam has done a report in the past about the McDonald's

monopoly. That's right. Which was this big dodgy thing. No, I've heard of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a pretty wild story. story. I'd go give it a listen.

If I were you. I might. I want to know. Heaps of people suggest that, but only two people have suggested Monopoly the game. That's Jonathan McGee from Gathersberg in Maryland, I reckon. And Jough from Loll Radio and Colac. Joss. Jof.

Jof suggested it as part of a mini triptage with Trivial Pursuit and another board game. But I've just found enough to do it all. on Monopoly. Great. Yeah, I was surprised. I didn't know anything about the origin story. So if you're ready,

physically and emotionally prepared, your toes feeling good. Toes warm enough? Yep. And that's the best state for listening from my toes. Okay, great. That's a good sign.

So this is the origin story of Monopoly. According to Britannica, Monopoly, which is the best-selling privately patented board game in history, is a real estate board game for two to eight players

in which the player's goal is to remain financially solvent while forcing opponents into bankruptcy by buying and developing pieces of property. What fun. It truly is the game of life. When you hear it broken down to that, trying to make your friends bankrupt, you're like, all right, we're in for a good time here.

This is going to be fun for everyone. Oh, whenever you hear the word solvent in a description of the game, I'm like, oh, we hear of party? Yeah. The game gained widespread popularity in the United States after Parker Brothers started manufacturing it in 1935. The game's inventor was an unemployed salesman named Charles B. Darrow, who was struggling to put food on the table during the Great Depression. The story goes that he went down into his basement when he was suddenly struck by inspiration.

On a piece of cloth, he drew a board game which featured Atlantic City streets and buildings. He created the game almost fully formed out of thin air. His family loved it and he decided to start selling it. At least, that was the commonly held belief. Ah, yes, good, yes. For a long time. I know a little bit of a monopoly. Yes, oh my God, yes.

I was about to be like, what? But the truth is, that's only a tiny part of the story. Okay. According to Mary Pylon, who, uh, Seems to be the key source, the big brain on the history of Monopoly, the expert. The key, the person you would ask about it because they have knowledge about the topic more than others. That's not a good sign early. So, yeah, so she's written a book which I've read and listened to, which I've been doing on recent reports.

I've been buying the e-book and the audio book. So I can listen at night and then read in the day. So I've been doing that with her book, which came out in 2015. It's great book. Sorry, just a quick little side note. And I suppose just an opportunity to thank you, Matt, because you have been doing this for a while and you keep talking about, I listen to the book and then I...

And so I... Because I haven't read a book for such a long time because I don't have time to sit down and read and I can't sit still. So I just finished my first audiobook because I could listen to it in the car, doing dishes, doings. Like, I'd go to bed and I'd listen to my book for a bit. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to bed to read. But I'm just lying there listening. It's so good.

Reading with your eyes closed is the best. Big fan. Can I ask what was the audio book? It was the latest book from Sally Rooney. Beautiful World, Where Are You? Something like that. And it was pretty good. And the person reading it was Irish.

So that was just nice to listen to. Yeah, if you get the right, like the married pile on doesn't read this book on the audio book. Yeah. It's a guy who sounds like Neil Hamburger. The, uh, sort of the, um, the comedy character, sort of like the anti-comedy character, but only without the comedy, like, there's no comedy part to the choice, but it's, wow, he sort of talks like this. Yeah.

So it took me a while to get used to. You do get used to it, but yeah, initially sometimes you're like, ah, and I didn't really love how the, um, the. this narrator did male characters. It just sounded, I was like, you know, I don't think you have to do voices for all of them, but she'd sort of go, all the men sounded the same,

and they were a bit slower. And I was like, this is very distracting, actually, because. That's interesting, because, yeah, there's some where they'll do accents and stuff, and I'm like, oh, you're not nailing that. Yeah. And some are pretty good.

Like, all the Bill Bryson books that someone else reads them, and their Australian accents, like, pretty good. Okay. But it's also, it's still a bit distracting. Not an Australian? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know that because you're hearing their voice for the rest of the time. Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah, it would be hard. Like, especially with that, a books where there's heaps of different accents. Anyway, we're getting sidetracked very early. I just wanted to say thanks for getting me on to audiobooks. And if anybody else wants to give them a try, they're new, but I think they're going to catch on. I think Dave would now probably, if he was here, plug book cheat as an audible code. Yeah, you're right. If you do want to get involved.

I should be using that. If you're listening to this, surely an audiobook is right up your alley as well. It's literally the same thing, a bit longer, I would assume, unless this is going to go for about eight hours. And there's genuinely no people interrupting. Yeah, it's one voice. Apart from them doing an accent. Yeah. And I know, oh, there's someone else in the room now.

You've taken me out of it actually a little bit. Now all the men sound the same and it's just you doing a slightly deeper voice. So I'm going to be. referencing Mary Pylon's work. Her book, she also wrote a piece for New York Times and one for The Guardian and a few others. So I'll just refer to it as Mary Pylum, but yeah, she's written a lot about this story. According to Pylon, it turns out the Monopoly's origin begin not with Darrow in the 1930s, but decades before, with a bold progressive woman named Lizzie McGee, who until recently has largely been lost to history and in some cases deliberately written out of it. Do you know how much I love the surname McGee? It goes with any name. It's got a whimsy to it. Love it.

Lizzie McGee. Are you kidding me? It's so good. It is so good. Oh, yeah. Incredible in a rhyme. Yeah. Couldn't think of one right now.

Think of like, but any, like it goes in the Adam McGee. That's good stuff. Jess McGee. Are you kidding me? Matt McGee. Matt McGee is good. Are you kidding? I wasn't sure.

That's some good alliteration. Often that doesn't work, the double M. But, you know, there I think it does. Matt McGee. Yeah, right. Anything goes with McGee. Yeah. It's interesting.

I think, I don't know if it's in America or whatever. It's spelled slightly differently, but I would, I had to look up how to pronounce it. And I guess, luckily, the audio book help there. But it's spelled M-A-G-I-E, which I would have pronounced Maggi. Yeah, same. I think I would have thought it was bad. But anyway, McGee, it's way better. So, yeah.

So good. So Elizabeth McGee was born in Illinois in 1866 to parents Mary and James McGee. That makes sense. Yeah, Jimmy McGee was her dad. Are you kidding? Mary McGee and Jimmy McGee. Oh. It's so funny.

I'm like already was about to go back to pronouncing it, Madagie. Damn it. So yeah, it's fascinating that she was born exactly 100 years before the Saints won their one and only premiership in the VFL. But her father, James... It is crazy. Isn't that wild? That's wild.

I wouldn't have thought that. Can you believe? Yeah. She would have had no idea that day when she was born. No idea. Wouldn't have a clue. Her father, Jimmy McGee, was a newspaper man. Not made out of newspaper. He worked in newspapers.

Yes, yes. I thought, yeah, good. And he travelled with Abraham Lincoln in the late 1850s when Lincoln was on a political debating tour with opponent, Stephen Douglas. Apparently, they got on quite well. Jimmy McGee, quite politically minded. And she, uh, he kind of passed that on to his daughter, Lizzie.

Her dad was an anti-monopoulist and she took after him later saying. The game or the, uh, he was anti-monopoulos. Yeah, he really didn't support her on her endeavors. That sucks. No, no, he hated like corporate monopolies. Yeah. Uh, and she, she took after him later saying, I've often been called a chip off the old block, which I consider quite a compliment.

For I'm proud of my father for being the kind of old block that he is. A bit of fun. That's nice. Back to pile on. The seeds of the Monopoly game were planted when Jimmy McGee shared with his daughter a copy of Henry George's best-selling book, Progress and Poverty, written in 1879. As an anti-monopist, Jimmy McGee, it says James McGee, but I can't not say Jim's got to say. Yeah, don't be an idiot.

and say James Maggi. It's Jimmy McGee. Jimmy McGee drew from the theories of George, a charismatic politician and economist who believed that individuals should own 100% of what they made or created, but everything that was found in nature, particularly land, should belong to everyone. George was a proponent of the land value tax, also known as the single tax. The general idea was to tax land and only land, shifting the tax burden to wealthy landlord. His message resonated with many Americans in the late 1800s when poverty and squalor were on full display in the country's urban centres. Someone smarter than me would have to explain why that's not a good idea. But just, I'm like, that sounds like a good idea.

Yeah. You keep all your pay and people who own stuff. And I guess that means, you know, like people are digging out minerals and whatever. Yeah. They have to pay more tax. That feels like this, you know, that makes some sense to me, but I'm sure someone would be able to explain. With a vested interest has a very strong opinion against it, sure. Back to file.

McGee lived a highly unusual life. Unlike most women of her era, she supported herself and didn't marry until the advanced age of 44. In addition to working as a stenographer and a secretary, she wrote poetry and short stories and did comedic routines on stage. What? She also spent her time drawing and redrawing, thinking and rethinking the game that she wanted to be based on the theories of George who died in 1897, the year that the VFL began.

And you believe these coincidences. Wouldn't have known. Wouldn't have known. That's so sad. We never saw it and would have wanted to, I think. It's kind of funny to think back to a time when 44 was seen as an advanced age to get married. All right, Nana. I mean, what's the point at that age? But apparently it was really, really rare.

It was seen as being quite odd. She was sort of seen as being a bit eccentric because she supported herself. And she wrote and she did stand up. Got a few out there ideas. Not getting married. Ten.

What a cook. I love her. Around the turn of the century, board games were becoming more popular in the middle classes. According to pile on, changing work spaces gave rise to more leisure time. Electric lighting was becoming common in American homes, reinventing the daily schedule.

games could now be played more safely and enjoyably for longer hours than had been possible during the gaslight era Safely. Yeah, barely. I guess the gas lights, I guess is it because of the gas and fire? Oh, okay. I guess they're saying the lighting itself was dangerous, not the games. Yes, that's right. No one's playing hoop and stick and getting decapitated by an eagle or something.

It was very common back then. Electric lighting scared off a lot of those decapitating eagles. Which is sad. It is sad. Yeah, they're extinct now. Yeah. Well done. Yeah, well done.

Yeah, well done. Well done. Guy who invented lights. You idiot. Guy. I did a whole episode about lights and I can't. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

It's not important. Keep moving. Keep moving. That's not this episode. They can watch that episode. Newton was involved. Matt, he's responsible for the extinction of decapitone. Yeah, he shouldn't be remembered.

We dare not speak his name. Right. People are yelling at their iPods. No one cares. Her game called the Landlord's game wasn't identical to what we now know as Monopoly, but it was pretty close. According to a pile on, the game had a square board with nine rectangular spaces on each side, set between corners labeled Go to Jail and Public Park.

Okay. Players circled the board buying up railroads, collecting money and paying rent. She made up two sets of rules, monopolist and anti-monopolis, but her stated goal was to demonstrate the evils of a cruise. growing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others. So you can, I mean, if I just describe that to you. Yeah. There's nine spaces down each side.

There's a jail. There's a go to jail. You go around buying and renting. Yeah. Yeah. You got money. It's monopoly. It's monopoly.

Yeah. It's not exactly the same. The go to jail part is like, I don't know any other games that have that. Very few other games are like, you go to jail. Yeah. Jail for you, Jail! It's so funny as well that the original game is kind of... As you're describing, it's very similar, if not identical to the original game,

except it's the original... Sorry, it's... The original game is just the modern game, but they're like, oh, and this is bad. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not good. Yeah, see, it's kind of the opposite in now. It's like the inverted...

It's the same game, but with the opposite message, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So she created two sets of rules for a game. So the anti-monopolis set rewarded everyone when wealth was created and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. A dualistic approach was a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally superior. She might have overestimated humanity.

Describing her game, McGee said, It's a practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences. In a short time, I hope a very short time, men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller maybe have more than they know what to do with. Her hope was that was going to help show that, you know, maybe the super rich shouldn't have quite as much as they do. Yeah. Crazy. Insane. I really, I don't think she'd love to see today's world. I think she'd be a big Bezos fan, actually.

I'll have you know. Now he worked hard for that. It's true. Worked very hard. Yeah. He should have it and all of it. Every time you order something from Amazon, Jeff Bezos himself, refuses to piss, packs it and sends it to you.

That's right. I mean, I just plugged one of his businesses with Audible as well. I know. I'm part of the problem. I'm sorry, McGee. Sorry. Sorry, Lizzie McGee. Yeah.

As well as inventing games, Lizzie McGee also had a cracket engineering in the 18, she invented a contraption that let paper pass through the typewriter more easily. Because she was a stenographer. I've always liked the notion of the job of a stenographer. Because first off, it's a job that, well, maybe a computer can't do it better than a person. But I think it's still so funny and admirable that we do get a person to write down everything that's happening in a courtroom. But then also, I love the concept of chaos happens in the courtroom.

and the stenographer still needs to keep track of all of it. Oh, it's full on, right? And have you seen their funny little computers that they use? Yes. It's got like three keys. It's incredible. Spacebar. A.

I don't know how they do it. Caps lock. I wouldn't say those are the important ones either, which is crazy. Probably Spacebar. Spacebar, yeah. I once saw a keyboard that someone had made that was, it only had 10 keys, one for each finger, and you, it had the full alphabet but it was like you could pull or push

all 10 letters? Yeah, all 10 letters. No, you could pull or push or push in. So you could, it had like the full... So once you learn it, it would be way more efficient. And then what the person could do is if they did it all at the same time, the computer would figure out what letters they had pressed

and then it would be like, well, this is the word clearly that you wanted. And it was wild watching. They... It was like out of the... matrix or something. It was incredible to watch. Imagine it's sort of a steep learning curve once you've got it, it would just be like unstoppable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at them go. I know. That's up and the shit out of that. I'm excited by stuff like that. Yeah, that's really interesting. If I could take that machine and give it to me as a child, I might have some chance of learning how to use it.

Absolutely Buckley's chance now. Yeah, at your band stage of 44. McGee was also a feminist. mocking marriage and how it was seen as the only option for women. She put out a newspaper ad selling herself as a wife to the highest bidder as a sort of protest against it. The ad made news around the country and when asked by reporters what she was aiming to do, she told them that it was to shine a light on the subjugation of women saying,

we are not machines, girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambitions. So yeah, she did a lot of different things. Incredible. Well, when you're not married, you've got so much more time, on your hands to do things. Yeah. Marriage takes up a lot of your time. A lot of your time fetching pipes and slippers.

You got to make the bed, I guess. Making a martini. You got to make a martini. Does he want a dirty, extra dirty today? I don't know. Oh, extra dirty martini. Oh, no. No.

Filthy? Does he want it filthy? Setting your alarm half an hour earlier so you can do makeup before your husband wakes up. So he never sees you as you actually are, you disgusting monster. So, yeah, she did all these other things. But the game, that was her big passion. Back to pile on, after years of tinkering, riding and pondering her new creation, Lizzie entered the US Patent Office on the 23rd of March 1903 to secure her legal claim to the landlords game.

Coincidentally, this was the same day the Wright brothers filed their first patent or their flying machine. Coincidence? I think not. Yeah, like, is that a coincidence? It's just, I mean, that's maybe interestingly. We did an episode about the Wright brothers back in the day. You recall it, Jess? Yeah. At least two years later, she published a version of the game

through Economic Game Company, a New York-based firm, which I believe was formed by Lizzie and other followers of Henry George. Economic Game Company. Yeah, it's pretty snappy. A lot of pizzazz to that name. EGC? It's not terrible.

Yeah. But it's not really. not fun. No. It's not supposed to be. It's an economic game. Yeah. Yeah, no one's meant to have fun playing this game.

That was what her ad said. Yeah. This isn't for fun. If you like fun, you're playing it wrong. You're playing it wrong if you're having fun. Yeah. Have some respect. If you're having fun, you're probably not playing the anti-monopoly version.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try that one and learn about morals. At the time, she put her application in fewer than 1% of patents in the US came from women. At that point, women didn't even have the right to vote, so she was really a pioneer. McGee moved to Chicago looking for more opportunities. There she continued inventing games. One of them called Mock Trial was published by Parker Brothers in 1910. And I only had very wild success, but, you know, got published by one of the big game makers.

Yeah. That same year, she was married, had the advanced surge of 44. So now she's got no time to do anything. And this might have come as a bit of a shock to see. as she was so anti-marriage. Yeah. She said when she did that stunt about selling herself to the ice bitter, she said, who's got time of marriage anyway?

Maybe if you could have three days on, four days off. Maybe I could do it then. She actually said that? Yeah, yeah. That is so funny. That is great. That rules. Also, I just don't understand what marriage was back then.

Why was it so time-consuming? Oh, I think that was... I just need a day off from marriage. Well, I think wives... I mean, I don't know, but my impression is wives back then were basically servants. Oh, yeah, you didn't work if you were married. You couldn't work. You weren't allowed to.

Because you didn't have any time because you were doing the, you were basically the house made. It just wasn't appropriate. Like, why would you, why would you be at work? But when there's a house to be looked after. It would also be quite emasculating to the husband. Oh, yeah. Imagine. Imagine if your wife worked.

Oh, that'd be so embarrassing. Everyone would know you had a little weena. Yeah. That's what people. people would think and say. That's what they could say if your wife worked. Nothing else, though. There'd be nothing.

No other repercussions, but that's pretty bad. Yeah, that's bad enough. Sorry, Toots, you're not going back to work. I got a big dick. And I want everyone to know. Don't tell them the truth. Don't tell them, please. Please.

What was that? He's giving her a little kiss. Oh, I see. Yeah, I thought one of them was calling the other one over like they were a cat. Come here. Come on. I really only bring up the marriage because of this one fact about a husband. Because it's a huge part of a woman's life.

Oh, yes, and that. And it's the most important part. Well, it takes up a lot of time. It takes so much time. Yes. Thank you so much for saying it. Yeah, it does. Bread to bake and...

Well, I mean, since Dave's been married, he's been missing so many episodes of this show. That's true. He's probably off right now doing marriage. Yeah. Just doing it. That's true. Well, not doing it. He's definitely not doing it.

Well, you know, he could be. We don't know. I mean, we don't know for sure, but we know. We know. Adam. It's very kind, but we know. All right. Fair enough.

Fair enough. Fair enough. So, her husband was a businessman named Albert Phillips. And he was involved in a scandal in 1889. He was taken to court over his saucy publication named Climax, which featured... Photos of curvaceous women with sultry faces and exposed arms and knees. Oh my gosh. Arms and knees.

Are you kidding me? So he's a pervert. Yes. She's married a perv. She married a perv. She could have done so much better. Yeah. Did he, okay, yeah.

Now I'm going to just let you keep talking. Well, that's, I mean, that's all I know about him. But did she continue? But I mean, I think it's a worthy thing to know. Do we need to know anything else? Climax. You can't name a magazine climax. You can't.

Call it orgasm or something. Just a monthly. God, I'd have a subscription to that. And just knees? Does that mean the, then the shins are covered? Yeah, socks. Sort of ripped jeans is what the models are wearing. Shorts, high socks.

Yeah. The sexiest combo. You shouldn't be saying that in polite company out of it. The sexy clothes window, as it's often. referred to. Get a peek of my sexy clothes window. Yeah. Knee cleavage.

Yes. Yeah. Kneavage? Yeah. Neveage. Yeah. And it's equivalent, sorry. It's equivalent.

Elboogge. Yeah. Elboobo. Elboge. Check out. The elbows of the arms. No, the boobs are the arms. The elbows of the arms.

They are. Yeah. That one made sense. Yeah. I think of the wrists is the elbow of the arm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I see that. Her game sold to Britain under the name, confusingly to me, Brayer Fox and Brayer Rabbit with slightly different rules. Okay. What? Yeah, it was made in Scotland. Okay. Yeah, it was like, is Brer, Fox and Brer Rabbit's like a book series or something?

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, vaguely rings a bell. Anyway, yeah, that's a strange reworking of it. Okay. I think it was, you know, not super successful, but... Yeah. According to pile on, on April the 28th, 1923, Lizzie, now in her 50s, and known professionally

as EM Phillips, filed to update her landlord's game Peyton. She used the opportunity to revise some of the game's features, though the core of the game remained the same. Lizzie added Chicago-based spaces to the board, including Lakeshore Drive and the loop. She also added small numbers on the outside perimeter denoting separate property groupings. Now that's done by colour, but so even that,

she'd already done. I mean, she didn't make it colour though, which is probably, it's certainly more aesthetically pleasing than numbers, but. I don't think they had, it was all black and white back then. Like the world was black and white.

Yes. Isn't there actually a thing where it was considered odd, like something that you would actually see a doctor about if you dreamed in colour? because I think it was, especially during the advent of black and white television, early television, because people saw things in black and white so often. If you dreamed in color, that would be a reason to go to the doctor. Wow.

They forgot that they could see color. Yeah, I know, which is crazy because everything aside, you look slightly left or right to the TV, and you can see color. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. That's bonkers. Humans really shouldn't exist, should we?

Like some of the dumb stuff we've done, it's like, oh, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be here. I like the idea that Monopoly was invented by Darrow, not Lizzie McGee. It's because, you know, it was colours instead of numbers and stuff. Does that mean, is there something we can do here by taking, you know, like Amazon and just changing something slightly and then owning our own huge empire? I wonder. I, if you want to create a competitor to Amazon, you are welcome to do so. Okay.

I wish you the best one. Okay. You're right. I think I want to be involved. Sounds like a bit of work. Yeah, yeah. Who has the time? And I'm not even married.

I know. You know. At this age. I know. People are talking? Yeah. The things people say to me, say, is he okay? I said, no.

Of course not. At that advanced age? Unmarried? Scandalous. Must have a tiny penis. You must have a tiny penis. Wait, doesn't this mean I have a huge? No, you're right.

Well, actually, I guess it's not been confirmed. Yes. Yeah. To be decided. Yeah. Schroding is cock. Yeah. While the game was commercially available, it was also being passed around from friend to friend with homemade boards.

As the game spread, it became a favourite of academics and academics and, you know, it was also being passed around from friend to friend. As the game spread, it became a favourite of academics and intellectuals being played at universities, including Harvard and Columbia. Harvard. Harvard. Scott Nearing, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, was one of many university professors who used it as a teaching tool. Another one was Columbia teacher with a fantastic name, Rexford Tugwell. Get the fuck out.

Rexford? Tugwell. Rexford. Yes. Tugwell. Rex Tugwell. Yeah. And he's like a, he's a professor.

Yeah, he's teaching it up. But by night he's like an explorer. Yeah. By night he features in Climax Magazine. Yes. Rexford Tugwell. Holy shit. Yeah.

One of the great. That is a name you see in a movie and go, bloody hell. They had some fun making up that name. But this is a person's actually. name. Yeah, his parents had fun. Rick's for Tugwell.

See, that's why marriage is so time-consuming, because as a wife, you spend a lot of time coming up with incredible names. Yes. They don't just happen. And I guess it's like, you take forever to pick a husband as well because you're like, you're trying to find the Tugwells of this world. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You want to get a good... Can't take too long, though. You don't want to get to, you know, like your late teens and not be married. Oh, my God. How embarrassing. Yeah. Oh. According to pile on, the nearing, so this is Scott Nearing and his partner,

the professor from the University of Pennsylvania, they were among those who started calling the landlord's game Monopoly or the Monopoly or the Monopoly game, shorthand for what they felt was the game's call message. So that just sort of started happening organically as the game was being passed around. It's also possible that Nearing didn't even realize that McGee had invented the game because, you know, being passed on, people are just hand-making their own game. You know, it's different times. Yeah.

People are able to, they're better at craft back then. So people crafting their own versions. It's kind of fun. I don't think that really happens anymore that people pass around a homemade version. Yeah. Like word of mouth games. It's really interesting. So people, they'd have a games night or something, and the guests would be like,

oh, we love this game. and then they'd make it before they go home, I guess. That's very cool to imagine. I quite like that. Yeah, I think it's really, really nice as well. And I think McGee, I don't know how much you knew about it, but the vibe I get is she wouldn't have minded that. Yeah, I don't think so either.

She was happy for the game and the message to be being spread. No one's making money out of it. It's just like this sort of nice organic thing. I can imagine other people who would be like, hey, whoa, go to the shop and buy it. You dogs. As the game was passed around, it slowly evolved. In the late 1920s, a college student in Indianapolis named Ruth Hoskins was taught the game by a friend Pete and James Daggett,

a friend's Pete and James Daggett, who referred to it as Monopoly as well. The Daggett brothers taught Hoskins how to play, and according to Pylon, showed her how to make her own handmade board, complete with residential properties, railroads, and utilities. All the board's property names reference Midwestern and North Eastern locales. Among them were Gross Point in Michigan and the Bowery in New York City.

The board had jail and go-to-jail spaces, and players received $200 every time they passed go. So a lot of these things that you're still familiar with. Obviously, the locations were different. They were being changed as the game moved around different places. I guess that's kind of always been a tradition of monopoly, to change the places to being more local names. Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's, like now there's even like a Melbourne version, a Sydney version. Pokemon version, a Star Wars version. Yeah. I think, yeah, there's pretty much any niche interest you have. There's probably a monopoly version of it. Then in 1929, when Ruth moved to Atlantic City to become a teacher at a Quaker school, she brought the game with her.

She introduced it to other Quakers, including her teaching colleagues, Cyril and Ruth Harvey. Ruth was a big name back then apparently. A bit of Ruth on Ruth actually. Love a Ruth. Yeah. It's good. Oh, yeah. The Harvys loved the game and started hosting popular Monopoly nights at their house.

I love it. These Quakers aren't a party. Yeah. I don't fully know what a Quaker is, apart from they make oats. I think it's like a... Actually, no, they were never involved in that. Oh, never involved in it? Oh.

Yeah, yeah. Used as branding. Yeah, because the... That is a weird choice. I don't know the name of the person who owns... owned the company or whatever, but when he was designing the brand, he was like, well, people trust Quakers. So I'll call it Quaker Roads.

And the Quaker community were very upset. That's such a weird choice. Yeah. I should before, I mean, I'm going to mention Quakers a little bit, and I didn't look up what it actually means. I should probably... That's like a denomination of Christianity. Right.

Kind of, I guess. Let's, I mean, let's just check in with this great resource of just someone called Wikipedia.org. Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of them. Yeah, I guess it's sort of like a Quaker, Companium of Quaker knowledge. Oh, I thought it was like an encyclopedia Britannica.com.com. com.com sort of thing.

Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I've only just stumbled upon it now, so I couldn't tell you. Yeah. But all I've seen of it is that it's got... Quaker stuff. That's fair enough.

That's fair enough, yeah. I don't want to jump to conclusions. We shouldn't. It says Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Yeah, isn't that cute? Oh, that's nice. Oh, my God.

Oh, that was funny. Oh, my gosh. Sorry, keep going. Members of these movements are generally united by the belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see, That of God in everyone. All right. So, so yes, the Harvey's and these Quakers,

I think one of the Harvys is a principal at the school, the Friends School. That makes sense because the schools are called the Friends School. Yeah, okay. But instead I wrote down Quaker School because I'm like, no one's going to know what Friends School means. According to Pylon, Ruth Harvey created copies of the game for a Friends on a long sheet of oil cloth that covered the entire dining room table.

Using a small paintbrush, she drew thick lines to separate the board's properties. At some point, a corner space on the board that had originally been a community park had evolved into free parking. Atlantic City hotels had started using that phrase in their marketing materials, as more and more travelers were now arriving by car rather than by rail. As a kid, that always confused me, the free parking square. Yeah. What does that mean? Free parking, I guess.

Yeah, it's just, there's a picture of a car. I probably should have put it together. Huh, yeah. Jesse Rayford, a real estate agent and friend of the Harvys, assisted Ruth by making little wooden boxes to use as the game's houses. Jesse then experimented with using color sequences on the board, finally deciding to divide the properties into groups of three. Closely familiar with Atlantic City property values,

he also affixed prices to the board game. The Quaker community were also responsible for adding local Atlantic City street names to the game. According to Ruth Hoskins's friend Ruth Harvey's daughter Ruth Maverinolos What? Why so many Ruths? Do we just not know this person's name? Can we not just name them?

Well, I just really wanted to let you know that it was, her name is Ruth Mavronikolos. That's an incredible name. But she's the daughter of Ruth Harvey, who is the friend of Ruth Hoskins. I just wanted you to know that we're in. We're in Ruth country now. We're in the ruth of it. Yeah.

Thank you. So every space, according to Ruth Mavronoculus, every space on the board is somewhere that her family lived or their friends had lived or where wealthy people lived. So they're all direct references. And they're the ones still on the American version of the board to this day. Oh. In 1932, Jesse Rayford passed on.

Sorry. 1932, Jesse Rayford passed on this Atlantic City version of the game to his brother, Eugene, who lived in Philadelphia. Eugene, another great name in my opinion. Love, big fan of Eugene. Eugene's good. Eugene. It'll come back. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, Eugene, the sort of name for someone who works on a train, my opinion. If you work on a train, good chance your name is Eugene. Well, good chance. Yeah. Your name should be Eugene. Yes. And if you're thinking about changing your name,

consider Eugene. Yeah. Yeah. In turn, the Rayford's taught the game to his Philadelphia friends Charles and Olive Todd. So the game,

big in Atlantic City, they're having big game sites and stuff. It's been passed around there. It's evolving. They've put a bit of their mark on it. And then Jesse Rayford passed it. it on to his brother Eugene Rayford, who lived in Philadelphia. Oh, Eugene's wife's name, by the way, was Ruth.

Yeah, wasn't this around the time where everyone's name was Ruth? Like, literally everyone in the world? Yeah, I think this would have been around that time. It was around that brief time period. Yeah, that, like a decade between 1922 and 1932, everyone was Ruth. Yeah, it was a real weird blip. Yeah. Totally coincidental, no one had sort of talked about it.

Just everyone was Ruth. There was no collusion. It was wild. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the list of popular baby's names was very short. It was just Ruth. Even pets.

All pets were Ruth. They were all Ruth. Crazy, isn't it? Every pigeon you see, Ruth. Yeah. They're all descendant from a Ruth. I mean, that was very good. Bless, thank you.

So it's been passed via the Rayford Brothers. It's now ended up in Philadelphia with Charles and Olive Todd. By this day, as well as the Atlantic City place names. The game featured Go, free parking, community chess and chance spaces. All evolutions of concepts McGee had included in her game 30 years earlier. So they're not all brand new things.

They just went from a park to free parking. Yeah. All these, you know, you can see a direct line. Quick question. Everyone here, when you play Monopoly, is free parking the space? When you land on it, you get the cash. The cash taken from fees.

I haven't played in a long time, but I reckon that's how we used to play. I think so. Apparently that's not a real rule. Yeah, it's not a real rule. It's just the most popular home rule. And it means that the game goes for way longer than it otherwise would. Oh, yeah.

Which is interesting, because people complain about how long it takes. Yeah. And one of the rules that's not one of the rules is one of the reasons it takes so long. It's very funny. That's funny. I didn't know that until this week reading about it. I'm like, no shit. I thought that was the point of it.

So people like just don't read the rules, I guess. People see free parking and they think, oh yeah, free I get money. Yeah. Free I get money. That's what I'm seeing on the board here. It says free I get money. So Charles and Olive Todd loved the game. Olive is, I'm guessing, a nickname.

I assume a real name of truth. Yeah. They love the game. They invited their friends over to play. A bit of a double date. Their friends were the couple named Esther and Charles Darrow. Esther again, and Ian. nickname, her name is Ruth.

Yeah, of course. And also Darrow. Yeah. And now there's, at this, amongst these four, there's two Charles's as well. So it's all Charles and Ruth. Stop it. Genuinely, though, there seems to be like six names in this story. Do you have any close friends that you hang out with on a regular basis that have the same name as you?

Yeah, but none of them are known as Matt. Oh. And I'm probably not known as Matt to them. Yeah, right. Yeah. There was a, there's one group of old friends where there's like four or five mats. That's too many mats. So everyone's just known by this too.

Yeah. That's wild. There's a lot of Tom's at Sanspans and we call them all different things. But there's no other atoms or not in any of my friendship groups. Yeah. No, I don't, I don't have another Jess. And I won't. I refuse.

Yeah, that's not a coincidence. No, no. You just refuse to befriend any Jesses. That's right. There was only one and it is me. Yeah. I'm everyone's Jess. You're in the No Jess Club.

I don't even like it if my close friends have another Jess. I'm like, I don't feel comfortable with that. So you cut them off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you at least give them an ultimatum. Yeah, I say it's me or the Jess. Yeah, you're not brutal about it. You give them a choice.

Yeah, I give them a choice. That must be confusing if they don't know which Jess you're talking about. Well, yes, if they've got multiple jesses too. Well, then it's like, well, this is a lost cause. Yeah. See you later. See you later. Better to prune the dying flesh than to...

Yeah, deal with it. Fair enough. I won't do it. So, corner polon, at this little double date with the Darrow's and the Tods, the two couples sat around the board enthusiastically rolling the dice, buying up properties and moving their tokens around. The Todds were pleased to note that the Darrow's like the game. In fact, they were so taken with it.

Charles Todd made them a set of their own and began teaching them some of the more advanced rules. The game didn't have an official name. It wasn't sold in a box, but passed from friend to friend, and everyone called it the Monopoly game. Together with other friends, they played many more times. One day, despite all his exposure to the game, Darrow asked Charles Todd for a written copy of the rules. Todd was slightly perplexed.

Why do you want him, Todd asked Darrow. Darrow replied that he'd like to have them to teach other friends the game. Todd did as Darrow had requested and wrote down the rules. He then asked the Rayfords to review them for accuracy before giving a few copies of the rules to Darrow. The Todd's version of the game still used all the Atlantic City place names, but they had one of the names written with a slight spelling mistake. Marvin Gardens spelled Marvin with an I instead of the correct Marvin with an E.

Embarrassing. Marvin Gardens being one of the places that Ruth Harvey lived at one point. As the Todd's weren't from Atlantic City, it was an easy spelling mistake for them to make. Charles and Esther Darrow were struggling financially. Charles had lost his job as a salesman in the Great Depression. This is when Darrow had the idea of a new game, monopoly. Well, yeah, he had the idea of a new game.

Yep. He went down to his basement and it just came to him. This is the story he told. I've just had an idea of a network of pod. Podcasts, for example. Yeah. And I'm going to call it Sandspans. Wow.

Yeah. That's great. That's pretty good. Yeah, pretty, do you need a DM? Do you need someone to do dungeon mastering? It's very unique and different than you. Yeah. I, it came to me.

I went downstairs and this new game came to me. I was just reading this little, I guess you call it a rule book. I was reading through it and I was like, oh, monopoly. Yeah. A new game. Yeah. That I've just thought of. Me, alone.

Isn't amazing? Just when he needed it the most, he came up with a million dollar idea. Wow. Before selling it, he went about improving the design. He got an artist friend named Franklin Alexander to help with this. Over the following weeks, the two played the game regularly,

with Alexander slowly adding illustrations. So Alexander was like a, it was a political cartoonist and stuff. Hmm. I don't think it's exactly known what elements. Alexander added to the game, but it does sound like he jazzed it up a lot. Pazazaz. Yeah, he added pizzazz.

He gave it a certain, how do you say? Oh, how do you say? Genesequa. Yes, jeanesecois. Certain specific, a little something something, um, uh, a legally distinct. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, he got it looking even more like the game we're familiar with now. even though Darrow's initial version of the game was circular. I guess that was him going, no, this is different. That one's square. It's not a pyramid scheme. It's an upside down pyramid. It's completely the opposite.

Yeah. But apparently, so Alexander, yeah, it's unclear which bits he did, but he might have done, you know. Like, it sounds like maybe the prison guard and those sort of things might have been his drawings. But he never saw any money. from it. And he apparently wasn't really upset about it. Apparently he remained friends with Darrow for the rest of their lives. But yeah, he never really got any credit or money.

Darrow took his creation and stole it? Well, you know. We have no evidence of this ever happening before from Darrow. According to a pile on, it's unclear whether the early Mr. Monopoly was Alexander's creation. But the original character, which is a lot of the original character, which is, stylized and drawn in thick black lines bears a strong resemblance to his cartoon work. Can I say,

this might be, this is neither really here nor there, but the, the, I assume the thick black lines is something that the original source material keeps saying. It's just weird that they keep describing things

as being thick black lines. The lines in between all of the different spaces with thick black lines as well. Yeah, the drawings are thick black lines. I think at one point, thick black lines are, are what the names of the places are written as, as well?

I just think it's really, really... All right, we get it. They're lines. They're lines. distinct. We could see them. You know, Ruth wrote her name in thick black lines as well. Which one? Yeah, which Ruth?

Ruth is also a plural for Ruth. Oh, yes, of course. It's like the collective noun of Ruth. Yeah. We've got a Ruth of Ruth right now. Inside the game were more illustrated figures, including a scolding police officer and a criminal sulking behind bars in the jail space.

The go-to-jail and railway property cards were virtually identical to the cards found inside Monopoly games today, but the chance in community chess cards were still devoid of illustration. Property cards were printed on assorted colours of paper and paper money, including a $500 bill. The new art, an elegant packaging of Darrow's game, elevated it to something approaching a work of art. A game people would want to bring into the...

their homes, present to their families and friends, and play for hours. So that's Pylon's words there. I think people do want to give Daro some credit for adding, like a lot of other people have before. He added something as he had it. Yeah. But he just took credit for all of it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So even though Daryl fully ripped off the game, he did add a bit to it as well, at least with his help of his friend Alexander. Darrow found a local printer and started selling his version of the game independently, but it was selling quite well, so he wanted to look into getting it sold through one of the big players.

He contacted two of the big guns, Milton Bradley, who I think was around for longer and was one. I mean, these were the two big guns when I was a kid. I don't know. Parker Brothers maybe wasn't as big at the time, but that was still pretty big. So he sent letters to Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley going to check out this brand new game I've invented. Yeah, it's incredible.

I don't know. I was in the basement. And I know it's going to do incredibly well because heaps of people are already playing. I mean, people are just going to love it. Okay. I don't know why, but I know it's got a captive audience. You can't ask any follow-up questions, but like, trust me on this one. Oh, winky-blinky.

He's written that out. Winky-blinky. They're like, reading it going, this is a very, professional letter. But I do remember playing this game. Yeah. So I know it's good. I love this game.

Well, it turns out the Parker brothers and Milton Bradley weren't familiar with the game, and they both sent rejection letters. Oh. As it turned out, both companies were also doing it pretty tough. It was a great depression time. It was a good time to have depression, baby. It was a great. It was a great depression time.

Chush. Absolutely shush. The golden age for Ruth's and Depression. Sorry, Ruth and Depression. Ruth and Depression. So, yeah, both companies had pretty disastrous sales figures. And maybe for that reason, they just weren't in a position to take on new games. So instead, he continued producing it and selling it independently.

And before long, sales started really taking off. It was now being sold in many stores, including America's oldest toy store, F-A-O-Schwartz. side note, I'm like, oh, that vaguely rings a bell. And I looked it up. And it's maybe best known, or at least to me, for its giant floor piano, which was featured in the 1988 film Big, where Tom Hanks played chopsticks and another old-timey song sort of dancing around on the board. Or the parody version in The Simpsons.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think it's one of those scenes that's been paraded a bunch because it was pretty iconic. Yeah. Yeah. Being featured in the FAO Schwartz Catalogue brought the game back to the attention of Parker Brothers. In 1933, while Parker Brothers was struggling financially, founder George Parker stepped down to let his son-in-law Robert Barton take over the running of his company.

Apparently, he said to Robert Barton, so I guess George Parker had two sons and a daughter, and his two sons had worked for the company, didn't want to take on the main role. He asked Robert Barton and apparently said, I've run out of sons. Do you want to do it? And Robert Barton's like, okay.

I've run out of sons. Oh, God. You just married my daughter. And my daughter is too busy. She's too busy being a wife. God. So, yeah, Barton said he'd do it. He'd had no experience in the gaming world at all.

His daughter, Sally, I guess, had grown up in the, industry. Yeah. But she was busy being off. I remember the beginning of this? The ad in the newspaper? Yeah. Yeah.

That was good. That was fun. Anyway, keep going. It's a pretty uplifting story for sure. Yeah. Yep. After Parker's daughter and Barton's wife, Sally, heard about the Schwartz's new, popular new game.

She told her husband and dad about it. So she did play a big role in them getting men off. She's like, she'd heard about it. She's like, we should take a lot of it. another look at this. According to a pile on, Parker Brothers had rejected Darrow's game earlier because it was found to be too complicated and too wonky. And who would want to play a real estate game now anyway when housing was at the root of so

much distress for many American families? I'd love to play a game where I can afford to buy a house. You're kidding me? Which I think is what turned out to be the truth. Why do you play the Sims? You can get a house for like 30 grand. Oh man. That's an expensive house too.

You could type in like five keys as well and just get a 10,000. thousand Somolians or whatever, yeah. Yeah, a new cheat the other day. You can just type in free real estate and move into any house you want. Whoa. Yeah. Incredible stuff. I remember I used to play SimCity 2000 and I know you could type F-U-N-D fund and it would give you $10,000.

And I thought that was free. I thought it was a money cheat. But actually, it's the shortcut to take out a loan. And you're in a lot of trouble. So you're just there putting yourself in so much debt. I spent years being like, why is it that I do really well? And then suddenly everything tanks. Because I would type, like, I would type fund six, ten, twenty times all at once.

I would have these incredible loans that I would have to suddenly pay off. Oh, man. I thought the code was Fund D. So, so they, they, Parker Brothers had rejected. the game because they didn't think people would be keen on it. But with his firm poised for collapse and nothing to lose, Barton decided to listen to his wife and buy Darrow's Monopoly. Travelling from Boston to Manhattan, Barton summoned Darrow to the Parker Brothers showroom.

What a cool progressive guy. He listened to his wife. Well, there was nothing else to lose. Well, I guess we'll give it a go, Tuts. Listens to his wife? He's a true feminist. Sign me up. Oh, well.

what I wouldn't give to have a man who listens to me. When I read that, I saw a lot of myself in him. I'm like, look, like you, I'm a feminist. Yes. I say, Tuggington, I had this incredible idea the other day. My wife, I was ignoring her, as I always do. And then the craziest thing struck me. What if?

And this made sound crazy. crazy to you. So he listened to his wife, got on a Darrow. They had a meeting and Darrow quickly agreed on to the terms. They dropped a contract that allowed Parker Brothers to buy Darrow's version of the game for a reported $7,000, which was quite a lot of money at the time.

Tens and tens, maybe over $100,000 even. As well as that, he also got resists. residuals, so he made money with every game sold as well. The version included artwork by Darrow's friend Franklin Alexander, but like I say, Alexander never got credit or cash for it, and all the details that the Quakers had added to the game, including the Atlantic City locations, the hotels, the color groupings of the properties, the income tax, the 10% space, the Marvin Gardens, misspelling that had originated

with the Tods. And though Darrow would later claim it was his spelling mistake, since it's been found that Todd's handmade game featured the same mistake and that's been proven and that all helped prove Darrow had ripped it all off so that spelling mistake was kind of crucial in some ways

proving the true story that's like um I'm so sorry I know I keep doing this but there's a Interrupting we said stay quiet I know I remember that is what I'm supposed to be doing make like a 1910's housewife and

shut out He's the feminist of the pod. Anyway, what were you saying? There's like a real-life thing where map makers will on purpose insert errors into their maps so that then they can tell if someone's copying their map because they can be like, this street does not exist, so you have to have copied my map. Amazing. Yeah.

No, we didn't copy yours. We copied the guy who copied yours. Yeah. And there's an incredible... Hang on. Oh, sorry? In that act out, I'd just realize what I'd done. I see.

Love realizing of what you've done in an act. But there's an incredible example as well of in the United States. I don't know the name of the town, but a fake town was put onto a map. And then because people kept seeing this fake town, just a general store was opened there. And the person was like, oh, I don't know the name of this area. And he finds the name of the fake town. and so he's like fake town general store and then a town builds up

around this fake they all thought that was the name of the town but it wasn't that is so good incredible that's good stuff it's probably Gary Indiana yeah that does sound made up yeah the only explanation

yeah it's got to be made up anyway sorry please keep up oh that's great the city was Gary was named after its founder Mr Gary which is true I believe Mr Gary Garrison. All right, everybody, we'll be back after these short messages,

assuming some get put in here. If not, we'll be back really quickly. Let's go back to the great Mary Pylon. Charles Todd didn't hear from this. There's so much as it's so grim. There's so many names. I'm struggling a little bit to get up. Oh, okay.

So Charles Todd, well, he was one of the two who taught the game to the Darrows. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you. And he wrote up the rules, which were exactly the rules, the exact rules that Darrow put in his game. He didn't even change him a little. So Charles Todd didn't hear from Charles Darrow after he handed him the written rules to the Monopoly game. But they were friends. Yeah. Never heard from him again.

He found that strange. He thought they were becoming really good friends. But Darrow seemed to be avoiding him. Then one day, Todd saw Darrow in a most. unusual place on a poster in a local bank advertising a demonstration of a great new business game called Monopoly by Charles Darrow. The side of the poster infuriated Todd. He was angry not just with Darrow but also with himself being the one who taught the game to Darrow. He tried to confront Darrow but when either Charles or Esther Darrow saw Todd walking down the street, they

crossed the road or ducked into a store. It's hard to talk to people when they're on the other side of the road. Yeah, what can I do? I can't cross the road. Yeah, it's funny, like the social rules back then. Well, I can't make a scene. Yeah. They've crossed the road.

I have to let it go. Todd felt that he couldn't sue Darrow over the game because he himself hadn't invented the game. He just copied it from the Rayford's. He felt like there was nothing he could do. So he just sort of had to let it go. Absolutely heartbreaking. He was heartbroken.

I mean, he just thought that were mates. Yeah. It's so brutal. Soon after buying Darrow's Monopoly, Parker Brothers, also contacted Lizzie McGee. So you might be thinking, well, Parker Brothers, they would have had no idea

about the original game. It's also quite, people are like, it's weird that Darrow was able to get a patent on Monopoly himself. It was like they should have checked and found that you can't. But yeah,

somehow he got one. But obviously Parker Brothers found out about Lizzie McGee and her game because they contacted her right after buying Darrow's Monopoly. Yes. And they struck a deal with her to purchase the landlord's game patent and two more of

her game ideas. And it sounds like she was only paid 500 bucks and no royalties. A much shittier deal than what Darrow got. Also a much shittier deal than, I'm not going to go into it, but there's a few other games that evolved out of Lizzie's game. Yeah. And Parker Brothers bought them as well for much more money. Like 10 grand and stuff like that.

I mean, you know, devil. advocate over here. She doesn't need more money than $500. She has a husband. That's true. That's true. So it's like what's she going to do

with more money? Do you know what I mean? Like, but like the other people that they're buying games off are husbands. So they need more money. That's true. To give to their wives. Yeah.

Well, to give an allowance of the money to the wives to buy that would be crazy. vegetables or whatever wives buy, I don't know. Imagine a crazy idea like a woman having a bank account. Oh, God. Adam. We should make that a game. Okay.

Like an alternate reality where women can have bank accounts. That's fun. But it's, I mean, it's also possible, I guess, that they, I mean, it's definitely true that they took advantage of her. She wanted to make games, so she saw this as an inn with them. And she thought she'd make. she'd make more games. Whereas maybe the others they knew they needed to cash in

or whatever, I don't know. But she was also like someone who saw was like actively involved in the greater good. For sure. I don't think she would want to be like, oh perfect, I've solved this game and I'm a bajillion. Yeah, she didn't like that the way that the

society was going where people were just cashing in big time, I guess. But yes, I'm definitely confident she wouldn't have might have been a little more comfortable. Yeah. She was living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah.

She was earning 10 bucks a week with doing the typing. Gosh. 10 bucks a week. Which I think... And so then being paid 500 is like... Yeah. So that was a bit of money. Yeah.

That was a decent chunk of change. Yeah. Especially compared to how much money Monopoly made. Yeah. $500 is quite a lot compared to how much monopoly made. Yeah. Monopoly didn't make much more than that. No.

Did it even cover that cost? No. Yeah. I don't think Parker Brothers made any money. on that, to be honest. Well, I forget, because I wrote this in the last week. So as I continue reading, maybe we'll find out. But, yeah, I think you're right.

Someone should check that. How much, did you say it was Monopoly? I don't think I'm heard of this. I don't know it. Yeah. I'm not much of a gamer, though. Yeah. So what people mean?

When they say gamer? Yeah, I'm a gamer. I got Pokemon and Star Wars Monopoly. So, yeah. I play Solitaire on the game. the daily. In my man cave. So the way I read it, they bought the patent to bury her game and avoid any legal action.

Right, yeah. Which I think is probably how most people would read it. Yeah. They only produced, I think, 200 copies of the landlord's game. So part of the deal was, she said, but it has to be made exactly like I want it to be made. And they only made 200 copies of it and they didn't really advertise it. Yeah.

So it was just really like they said they would to get the deal. We made it. Yeah, it made the minimum amount. It didn't really sell. So we're going to delete it. It's not nice. And they were clearly not open about their motivations in dealing with her because according to Pylon, in a letter to George Parker, McGee expressed high hopes for the future

of her landlord's game after selling it at Parker Brothers and the prospect of having to two more games published with the company. Yet there's no evidence that the Parker brothers share this optimism. So she was feeling like it was great. This was the start of a great relationship. They're going to make lots of games. But yeah, she didn't realize that they were just using her to avoid, like, legal liability or whatever. Cool.

Despite the obvious similarities between the games, there was no mention of McGee on the new Monopoly box, apart from her patent number in tiny print. So, like, they've clearly admitted that the game's inspired by it. Didn't say that they were taking it. She didn't know about this Monopoly game or Darrow. She didn't know about any of that. So when she realized what had happened, she was, let's say, pissed off.

Okay, P-Oed. P-Oed. She was P-Oed. She was peed right O. Well, I mean, you know, probably that time of the month. Women. According. I can say it, Adam.

It's okay. I know. Yeah, I know you can say it. Yeah, of course. I can say it because I'm a feminist. Jess can say it. Yeah. Because I led her.

As the dominant male in this situation, it is up to you to ultimately decide what is and isn't. Well, I don't like to put in those terms. I think of myself as the dominant feminist. Oh, God. Being a male has got nothing to do with it, Adam. And that's kind of offensive, actually, to put it in those terms. So according to Pilelum, in 1936, she interviewed with the Washington Post and the Evening Star and expressed her anger at Darrow's appropriation of her idea. Then elderly, you know, so by this stage, she's in her, I mean, they're saying elderly, but I think she's in a 60s.

Past the best years, her childbearing years. Now useless. So she hoisted her own. game boards before a photographer comparing it with the Monopoly game board being like, huh? So there's photos of her going, look, it's obviously a rip-off.

Yeah. And you'd think that would have like just ended monopoly, but it hardly made a dint in the whole story. People were lapping up this Darrow story. Yeah. He just came up with it. It was the great depression. He was desperate for money

and then he had this million dollar idea. And it was a million dollar idea. Monopoly became a smash hit pretty much overnight, selling 278,000 copies in its first year and more than 1,750,000 the next, saving the Parker Brothers business and making Darrow a millionaire. $500, did you say? Yeah, $500. Yeah, cool. That seems about right.

Yeah. She had a husband. It's true. And in one, I think in one interview, he did, Darrow did say. that I said, I'd like to just say, put on the record that, you know, I couldn't have done this without a game created by Lizzie McGee. But yeah. Wow. I don't know how he still had the story of him inventing it out of thin air.

That is an incredible, a very tall glass of water to drink. I'll tell you that much. Yeah, what's that thing you call when you're like, you know the truth, but you're, you know the truth, but you're, lying to yourself. Cognitive distance? Yeah. I think he had a bit of that going on. Maybe, maybe, yeah.

And all the while, it's booming, but all the while, the game lost its connection to McGee and her critique of American greed and instead came to mean pretty much the opposite of what she'd hoped. It has taught generations to cheer when someone goes into bankruptcy. So it's brutal. Not only did she not get her credit for it for years, she didn't make really any money out of it.

Also, the message that, I think if she just got that message out, that would have been a win for her. I don't think she necessarily was that worried about being the big name or making the big money. But she didn't get any of those things. And unfortunately, there's no happy ending for Lizzie McGee. In the 1940 census, taken eight years before she died, she listed her occupation as maker of games. and in the column for her income, she wrote zero. In 1948, McGee died in relative obscurity, a widow without children. Neither her headstone nor her obituary mentions her role in the creation of monopoly.

So grim, so brutal, so sad. But, and I've been, I'm like, for a podcast, it's meant to be relatively light. Sure. This is a pretty grim story. So I was trying to think, what's the positive here? I think maybe the positive and more hopeful thing is, that her story is now been told. By us.

By us, by me. The feminist of, do go on. That's right. Resident feminist, yeah. Not by us, I mean, in generally. He loves to raise women up. And I love when it's convenient to him and when it serves him, he loves to raise women. Well, you know when it's convenient to me?

At any opportunity. That's right. Any opportunity he loves to raise women. Yeah. He loves it out of it. I'm not always free to do it, but when I am. And he's free to do it when he's got the time. I will.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I pleasure in it. I take pleasure in it. I pleasure in it. I remember you do pleasure in it. You wrote that article for Climax Magazine. A lot of elbow. No, not the story being told by us.

I mean, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. I was just including us in it, that we are heroes. Yes. The fact that there is such a complete story of how the game journeyed and evolved from McGee to Darrow via the university professors and the Quakers of Atlantic City is because of an economics professor named Ralph Ansbach. Ralph's wife's name at the time, by the way, of course.

Oh, my God. No way. It's fucking wild. Gordon and Pylon, in 1973, Ansback began a decade-long legal battle against Parker brothers over the creation of his anti-monopoly game. So he also hated monopolies. He thought he was an economics professor and he thought monopolies were bad for society, bad for the economy in general.

And he was apparently he was saying, talking about this to his son and his son was like, we played monopoly last night. and we had a good time. And Ralph was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. He sort of had, he sort of had separated in his mind. The game. So he's like, that's a good point.

And he's like, I'm going to make a game that is about the key to the game is breaking up monopolies. And he called it anti-monopoly. And then he started selling it. It was getting a bit of traction. And then Parker Brothers sent him a cease and desist. and he's like, he looked into it and he's like, no, he got advice. He's like, no, anti-monopoly, no one's confusing the two. There's anti at the start.

I think the inclusion of the word monopoly might have been a bit of a downfall there. Well, maybe. But in researching his case, he uncovered McGee's patents and Monopoly's folk game roots. The folk game roots being passed around, being called Monopoly, basically meant it was public domain if he could prove it. And he became consumed with telling the truth of what he calls the monopoly lie. He's a feminist. Yes. He loves to raise women up.

Yes. He, Ralph. He says that, me, Ralph Antsback. I like raising women up. In a deposition for the case, Robert Barton, the Parker Brothers president, who oversaw the monopoly deal, called McGee's game, quote, completely worthless and said that. that Parker brothers had published a small run of her games, quote,

merely to make her happy. They were doing it as a favour. We're really nice. It wasn't, it wasn't, like how, what a ball face lie. Like, it's so obviously not the reason they published the game. They published the game to get the deal that would take legal risk away from them being sued. Yes. It took years, but Ansback ended up winning his legal battle.

Good. meaning he could keep producing his anti-monopoly game and in the process helped the Supreme Court finally vindicate McGee as the game's inventor. One of the key pieces of evidence was the Todd's version of the game with the misspelling of Marvin Gardens. When Ansback asked if he,

when Ansback asked if it was possible to use their old board game as evidence, the now elderly Charles Todd replied that he'd been waiting years for the opportunity. He'd been like, Go, get him. Yeah, he's like, yeah. I'm waiting for this day. Why do you think I kept it?

Go, here's your $200. Get on. The court's decision helped lift the spirits of many involved in the evolution of the game. There's all these people who felt like they were part of the story. You know, the Quakers, all the intellectuals, then the academics at the universities. Finally, the intellectuals got to win. One of them.

Dorothea Rayford, one of the Atlantic City Quaker crew, said that after 55 years, she would finally be able to look at a monopoly board and smile. There was a plaque unveiled in Atlantic City saying, you know, talking about how the Quakers there. It didn't mention Lizzie McGee. They also sort of took the credit for it, but still, you know. Darrow dined out on his story as the inventor of the game for the rest of his life until his death in 1967.

And Parker Brothers didn't do much to stop this story being believed. He'd go around, he appeared on TV and newspapers the rest of his life. Yeah, I invented the game. What a great story. Just came to me. It was just widely spread. Everyone believed Darrow was the guy. Amazingly, into the 2000s, Boxes of Monopoly was still being sold with a version

of Darrow's story inside. Probably in part because of this, the myth that Darrow invented the game has endured And still people today would believe it. Yeah, this is amazing. This is after that court case. That ended in the 80s. Wow. And the story sort of came out, but still, it's such a powerful bit of mythology.

But this is changing. And this is what I think is maybe the positive to come out of it. While the makers of Monopoly still don't seem to credit McGee at all, which is now Hasbro. Hasbro bought out Parker Brothers. They also brought out Milton Bradley as well. Also bought out D&D. Yeah. So funnily enough, they've got a bit of a board game Monopoly.

Oh, yeah. So they do. But if you search for the inventor of Monopoly Online, Lizzie McGee's name will now come up. Like if you see Monopoly inventor, her name comes up like, that's all the results. And I think that is in some part because of Mary Pollan's articles, obviously in a big part,

because of Antsback's court case. And now a big part because of your work here today. Well, I had a bit of spare time thought, maybe I could find a woman to raise up. The three big voices revealing the Monopoly story. Matt, Anne's back, and there was some third, Mary? I don't know. Whatever, whoever that third point.

Let's call her Ruth. Yeah. And yeah, so the book she published, Mary Pollan's book, It's called The Monopolis Obsession, Fury and the Scandal behind the world's favorite board game. And it's worth a read if you want to hear more. It's a great book, but unfortunately Hasbro, the now owners of the game, were not at all forthcoming with information of a pile on when she was making the book. That doesn't sound right.

A note in her book says, my lists of over 200 fact-checking questions and follow-up contact attempts went unanswered. When Hasbro purchased Parker Brothers in 1991, it's likely that it also purchased a trove of George Parker's diaries and neatly organized game library, which it has declined to make available to researchers for decades as it declined my request to access them. So they have like, well, yeah, because there'd be so much evidence in there that they've ripped so many people off. Yeah, isn't it, isn't it weird? Because normally people who aren't hiding anything would just release it. So it's strange. Well, it would be like such an interesting part of history.

Yeah, exactly. You'd make a little museum out of it. They'd be, you would think they'd be super keen to tell the story. Good on, good on for making 200 requests. Maybe this is the one. Yeah, I feel like after the fifth, I'd be like, they're probably not going to respond. Yeah, I understand. She goes on to say, Monopoly continues to be among the best-selling commercial board games of all time

and lives on in its classic cardboard incarnation, as well as on iPhone, iPad, and other digital platforms, well over a century after Lizzie McGee drew her original game. Yeah, it's amazing that it's still such an iconic thing. You know, the Monopoly version of it. It's in all these movies and stuff. They played it on Sopranos. You know, it's been referencing every bit of pop culture. I feel like, for me, at least, a bit of a lesson from this

has been that if you want to truly capture the spirit, the original spirit of a game of Monopoly, you should make your own and not purchase one. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, and then you can make whatever you like. You can make your own... You can put your own misspellings in there.

Yeah, name the streets after your friend's streets. Yeah. Whatever colour you want to make the board, make it that colour. It's fun. I think that that's a great call. I would make every second tile jail. Oh, every second, but only one go to jail toll soon. So you get to pick which jail you go to.

Hold it in Monopoly Hard Mode. I'd love it if I, uh, if I, if I'd love it if I, listener put together our own homemade monopoly and send us some photos. That would be sick. Yeah, apparently, so American trademark law or whatever, I get confused between trademark, copyright and patent law. Yeah, right. Apparently, it used to be 50 years after the death of the inventor.

That's, I think, for copyright? And now it's moved to 95 since the invention. So apparently now, at the moment, it's going to run out at 2030. but it's been pushed back a couple of times. American politicians have... Big push by Disney, actually. Yeah, that's right. I think it's actually called the...

that referred to as the Mickey Mouse Law or whatever. So yeah, that's pretty much... That's the story, which, you know, it's a roller coaster and it's brutal, but I just... I'm glad I now know of Lizzie McGee. Yeah, and I'm... Raising her up. No, no, I just think she's...

He's great. And I thought maybe, Jess, if you don't mind, I could finish with a few fun facts. Well, you can finish with some facts. Okay, I'll finish with some facts. And I'll decide if they're fun. Great. As is my role, Adam. I'm the one who decides if facts are indeed fun facts.

That's good to know. All right. So how about this? I'm a fun policeman. Good to not have to worry about, oh, is this going to be a fun fact or not? Yeah. Oh, you'll tell me. Oh, thank you.

Yes. Am I having fun with this? Yeah, yeah. It's my, ugh. As a. It. Keep going. In 1936, Parker Brothers licensed monopoly for sale outside of the United States.

This is one year after they started making it. And British intelligence had special versions made for prisoners of war held by Nazis. The games had maps, compasses and real money to eight escapes. So I'd have like cash from whatever countries that are being held in. Yeah, I know. How cool is it? I knew this one. That's a fun. Wow, is it fun though?

That's a fun fact. Yes. Yes. Yes. What if I was like, no? I was so, I was so scared. That wasn't going to be a fun fact. That would have ruined your day.

I actually feel like I maybe have started with the maybe the only fun fact. But here's some other facts. Here's some facts. Yeah, I would have ended on that one. The British rights of the game were acquired by the Leeds firm of Waddingtons. And the slightly bizarre choice of London streets was based on a flying visit to the capital by one of the firm. firm's employees, which I didn't realize that they're brander, but apparently if you're from London, I guess they're like, they pick some weird streets.

That's interesting. Curious. But it was because it was not a local Londoner. Yeah, they just turned up and wrote down some street names as they had a wander around. So there you go. Nailed it? No, it'll know. I don't know if that's fun or not.

That's somewhat fun. Okay. Yeah, okay. When the character of Mr Monopoly was first created, he wasn't given a name, but was reportedly modelled on J.P. Morgan, some rich guy from the olden days. In the 1940s, he was given the name rich uncle pennybags. But since then, Hasbro has officially named him Mr Monopoly, which I think is a downgrade from Rich Uncle Pennybags.

Pennybags? That's so good. According to Hasbro, the record for the longest game of Monopoly is 1,680 hours, Or 70 days. Oh, my God. Is that a dream of yours, Adam? You know it, yeah. 70 days.

Oh, yeah, that sounds so fun. Sounds so good. Yeah. Yeah, so that's, that's, I feel like more of a depressing thing. But like, are you playing for five minutes a day? Like, yeah, well, I... Just to stretch it out. I feel like it must be, like, obviously, it can't be the same people playing it that

whole time where they would have died. So it must be like a bit of a relay game. Was it hours and then days? No, it's just two versions of the same. same amount of time, I think. 1680 hours or 70 days. Right, okay, yeah. I'm reckoning they're not, I think they're taking breaks,

and I think they're counting those breaks in time. Yeah, big time. I'm guessing. And the breaks are three weeks at a time. Yeah. Even if they were playing for an hour a day, actually, that's still 70 hours. Imagine how long you can't use the dining table, because of like, Oh, my God.

It's like they've started one of those big puzzles that you never finished. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I made the wrong choice to cook a rice. roast tonight. I'm trying to eat it off my lap. They might have played by Lizzie McGee marriage rules, three days on four days off. Oh, that would have been nice. That's the dream. I love four days off.

Marriage. What does that mean? I wrote this one down late last night, and you can tell that because it says, accordion to monopoly land.com. Yes, accordion to monopoly land.com. According to monopoly land.com, when Charles Darrow first developed his version of the game, intended for people to use random household objects as tokens.

And I think maybe that had already been a thing. Ah. Anyway. And it was his niece who suggested including charms from her bracelet instead. Ah. And so the eclectic playing pieces took their place in history. Oh. That's cool.

Yeah. So if you have the stomach for it. Oh, that was, that's Irish Siri? I didn't get that. Can't you try that again? She feels less patronising than the Australian man, so I changed it. I get that. Yeah.

I get that. Do you want to try that again? No, sometimes I would say, hey, see. You want to have another go. And he would go, hmm? And I felt dismissed. Huh? Hmm?

Like, yeah, what? Annunciate. I'm like, it's your fucking job to listen out for what I'm going to say. Yeah, your one job. So I made it Irish lady and she's much nicer. So if you've got the stomach for it, I can now give you, and this is also accordion to Monopolyland.com, I can give you a brief synopsis of the journey of the tokens over the years.

That's, well, it's like five minutes. Surely the journey's always been, like surely we know the journey. You start at one end, you go round. You hit go again. Oh, okay. It's a journey, right? I've been playing it wrong, it seems. All right, well, I can skip that then.

So the six original Monopoly pieces in 1935. I don't know if you have a guess of these. 1935. Yeah. I'm going to guess iron. Iron in it? Iron is there. Top hat.

Top hat is there. Is, I don't think the car's going to be there. No, I don't think so. Because the car looks too modern, in my eyes at least for 30. You're right, the car's not there. Okay, well done. Is the battleship there? Battleship's there.

Yes. We're nailing this. Oh, my God. Do you think the dog would be in there? Were dogs around back then? There's three more. Three more. We'll go with dog.

Dog's not there. Okay. Trying to think of a charm bracelet as well. Yeah. Is... Think a depression era. Okay. What's the saddest of all of the tokens?

Oh, no. The famous tokens. Saddest. Oh, the boot! The boots, yep. I forgot about the boot. I'm blanking on everything else now. Was that the sad one?

Oh, I was thinking of a different one. I mean, it's not even that sad. It was a sad. It just feels like a sad thing to have in a game. Okay. Hmm. It's like a food stamp. It's something, something, yeah.

A little metal food stamp. Something used in sewing. Oh. A thimble. Thimble, yeah. Yeah, that is important. Oh, how fun. We're having fun now.

A thimble is involved. Also, why did you have a thimble on your charm bracelet? That is a bit strange. And the last one, which maybe, I was the canon. Remember that? I don't remember the canon. I think my version of the kid, I think, had the canon. I think the really old version we had at my grandparents' beach house might have had a cannon.

Yeah. That was the one I had as a child. Yeah. Brand new. That makes sense. Later in 1935, the race car was added to the game to make seven. And shortly afterwards, the purse was added to make eight. Oh, the purse.

I remember the purse. Over the next 12 months, two more pieces were added. The lantern and the rocking horse. to make what is considered to be the 10 classic monopoly pieces. I can't picture the lantern, but I think I can remember the, yeah, the rocking horse I remember. The first new piece to be introduced after this was the wheelbarrow in the 1940s. Wheelbarrow, right. I forgot about that one. Along with the horse and rider, which is the one I always used as a kid.

I don't remember that one. And this Scottish terrier. Yeah, a doggy. Little doggy. So that was in the 40s. The car also gained a drop. in the 1940s. Oh, yeah, my version did not have a driver.

I think mine also was bereft. Beret. Whatever. Didn't have a drive. Beret of a driver, yes. Yeah, I think, yeah, they were so far ahead of the game. Driverless cars, but they went backwards in a lot of ways. But the driver only lasted until 1950, and then they took the driver back out.

Okay. In 1946, the cannon was replaced by a similar howitzer, while an airplane was also introduced, but only until 1950. It's amazing how many have come and gone. Yeah. Three other pieces were retired in 1950, the lantern, the rocking horse and the purse, which is probably why I don't recall any of those.

From 1950 until 1998, the Monopoly game pieces stayed the same. They were the dog, the battleship, the race car, top hat, iron, horse and rider and howitzer. So that was obviously the version of the game

I had came in that time. Yeah. Yeah, and those eight Monopoly game pieces formed the backbone of the game for many years. In 1998, with Hasbro now in charge, a new playing piece was added. 1.5 million people voted in a competition to decide whether the new token

would be a sack of money, a piggy bank, or a buy plane. With 51% of the vote, the sack of money won. Oh, God. That's a least interesting one. I reckon this is exactly what Lizzie McGee would have won. It's a sack of money.

It's good. Putting hotels on my property and charging lots of money. It didn't last that long though and was retired in 2007. The sack of money was not the only monopoly piece to be retired then. Two other pieces, the horse and rider and the howitzer were also retired the same year. So that's maybe why you two don't know the horse and rider. Maybe. I'm remembering the rocking horse, but it sounds like that was retired way soon.

So maybe it was a horse and ride. I feel like my game came from before 2007, but I definitely don't remember the canon or the howitzer or the horse and rider. Oh, interesting. But you were playing the Simpsons version. Yeah, I was, yeah. You always went with the Iron Horse. The inanimate carbon rod. You are.

You're also a feminist. I'd choose Maggie because I'm a little baby. That's a good reason. No more changes would be made until 2013 when the decision was made to retire the iron. Another vote was held and the cat won out over a diamond ring, toy robot, helicopter and guitar. I remember that making a bit of news the cat getting brought in. Although the Monopoly cat didn't have a name at first, she has since been named Hazel. Well, that's cute.

He's since been named Ruth. I mean, that would have been a nice touch. That would have been great. Should have been Lizzie McGee. Oh, Lizzie would have been. I just, to me. Parker Bros or Hasbro are ready to acknowledge that at this point? They own the patent as well.

Yeah. I know. Just come out. It's a great story. Why don't they come out and just give her the prop she deserves? Totally. Put in every game a pamphlet about the whole story. Yeah.

I don't understand why they don't do that. Yeah. And they go, these decisions were made by generations past. And we realize it was awful now. and we want to celebrate the actual inventor of the guy. I don't understand. It's such a cool story of how it started and how it sort of got passed around. It's way more interesting than a guy.

I had a thought one night. Shut up. Who cares? In 2017, the thimble, the wheelbarrow and the boot became the latest retired monopoly pieces. They were replaced in another popular vote, this time by the penguin, the T-Rex and the Rubber Ducky. Okay. Well, I'm playing T-Rex, that's for sure. I like penguin.

Yeah, Penguins cute. And after another popular vote on the 31st of May 2022, very recent, Hasbro announced that the thimble was the winner and would be making a comeback. And sadly, Jess, the T-Rex has now been made. I'll get spiked. I'll find one on eBay. Yeah, you're guaranteed. I guess if you went to the shops now, you would probably get the last ones with the T-Roech.

I love a charm bracelet with all the pieces from a Monopoly board. Yeah, that would rule. When I was like 20, it was a big thing for 21st birthdays is you'd get a Pandora bracelet with charms and stuff on it. And I was in a Pandora recently and they had, I still have a charm brazier, but I haven't worn it in a very long time. They had like Marvel charms. And you could pay so much money to have a little Captain America shield.

And it honest, I mean, if you like it, good for you. But I was like, and I love Captain America. but I was like, that is the lavest thing I've ever seen. And I want it. That was a roller coaster that set of. Yeah, I didn't know where that was going. I was like, that sucks. That's hilarious.

That sucks. I love it. I love it. I hate it. I love it. So, yeah, that's the story of the pieces. I mean, you could go in all sorts of directions talking about Monopoly, about all the different franchise versions of and all that sort of stuff.

For Christmas, I bought my data version that's like, it's an express version. You're supposed to be able to play in like 10 minutes or something. Oh. Or like, yeah, a really short period of time. So you're just like... I think Parker Brothers were really nervous at the start about putting out a game that would take quite a while. But apparently we, like the common way to play it is takes way longer than the rules actually say. And in the original rules and maybe this, the same rules now, there was one that said a briefer version of the game, play with a time limit,

whoever's got the most money at the end of the time they win. Um, yeah. That's probably a better way to do it. All right. Well, uh, that brings us to everyone's favorite section of the show where we get to thank our great supporters. And if you want to become a supporter, you can sign up at patreon.com slash dogo on pod or dogoonpod.com.

And yeah, if you get involved there, you are one of the, what I like to think of as the best people in the world, uh, who help keep this show running. And we really appreciate it very much. That's why we love to spend a little bit of time at the end. to give you your Jews. I do recall, yeah, outside of the, before we started recording, you did say that you love everyone equally, but you love some people a little bit more equally.

That's right. Yeah, that's how we like to phrase it. And I'm about to name a few of them now. And, yeah, Jess, what are some of the rewards you can get for signing up? You can get three bonus episodes a month. You can vote on most of the topics that we present on. you get access to a Facebook group, the most beautiful part of the internet. Yeah, you also, as well as the three episodes, you get a month, you get the whole back

catalogue of bonus episodes and there's like 150 plus there now, I think, including a series of D&D, which we did with Adam Kunnavalet. That's right. That was a lot of fun. Which we're going to, I think we're, you know, hoping to do another series of. Because I loved it. I had such a great time. And if it means sitting in one of these comfy sans pants chairs for an afternoon, I'm down.

I'm also, and I still, I'm thrilled by this because quite early in the game, I said something a bit pervy. And Adam said, well, we found the Jackson of the group. And I was thrilled by that. Yeah, that's a high compliment. I think about it often. I think about it often. I'm like, I learned the expression looking for strange on live on air once, basically. Jackson taught it to me.

He truly is to me. He truly is the, an older boy told me to do it. What a great influence he is. Yeah, that's what you want. Yeah, sure. I just remember, I think it was when Jackson was on last, that someone messaged saying, they're still trying to get their heads around

how the younger generation of Australians have a bit of an American accent. And I think that might be particularly true with Sandspants. I feel like you've got your own accent going in Sands. pants somehow. I always attribute it to, because I, as a kid, yeah, used to get all the time people being like, you, where are you from? And I'd be like, oh, Melbourne, they'd be like, oh, you have a bit of American accent. And I always attributed it to, I watched too much TV as a kid, but my partner is American.

And they have told me that I did not, in fact, have an American accent. I have what they determined, a nerd accent. And I've been like, oh. Is that better or worse? I don't. Well, it's neither here nor there, I suppose. Wait, so what I think of as the sans pants accent is actually a nerd accent. Look, this is only...

But you wouldn't know that because you're a cool boy. This is only according to my partner. I have spoken to other Americans and they have been like, no, it does sound kind of a little American. My partner's... My partner is very firm on the point that... No. It is a nerd accent.

Because if that's true, that's funny because that means the only nerds I know are sanspants people. Or Americans, I guess. All right. So the first thing we like to do is the fact quote or question section. And this bit, if you want to get involved in this part in particular, you sign up on the Sydney-Shaunberg level or above. This section also has a little jingle go, something like this. Fact quote or question. Ding.

Dave usually does a ding there. God, I miss him. Would it be acceptable if I did the ding? Would you love to do the ding? Please. Okay, I'll go again. Fact quote or question. Ding!

Oh my God, that was a great ding! She always remembers the ding. Well, if you want to play all the Dave rolls, there's some great fun to be had. There's some stuff coming up for you. I would love for you to project onto me. Fantastic. All right, well, first I'm going to read out four facts, quotes, or questions.

The first one comes from Betsy N. and they also get to give themselves a title. And Betsy's got the title of Random Fact, Trapp and Release Specialist. Oh, that's good. That's a great title. And Betsy's fact is, this might be a little relevant to you, Bob. Okay. For an upcoming trip.

Hawaii is one of the few islands in the Americas that does not have hummingbirds. And it is illegal to import hummingbirds to Hawaii. Oh, Jess, I'm so sorry. Okay, well, first of all, I was going to... going to see the hummingbirds and then I was also going to bring in some hummingbirds, some extras. So I'm canceling my holiday. Well, you could, you know, you could cancel some of that luggage requirement. I don't know you put in for 18 bird cages.

That's true. That's true. That could save me some cash. Maybe I could actually stay at a hotel now. Instead of among the birds. Which, to be fair, was your dream. It was going to be beautiful. The reason it's illegal to import hummingbirds.

birds to Hawaii is because they will pollinate the pineapple crop, allowing the pineapples to develop seeds and decreasing their market value. It's sort of a monopoly reason. Yeah. Appropriately. Importing unauthorized animals to Hawaii is punishable by up to three years in prison and or up to $500,000. Wow.

Damn. That's a lot. They're serious. Damn. They're not fucking about. What were Sims money called before? Mozolyans? Somolians.

That's a lot of simoleons. Thank you, Betsy. That's a fun fact. Oh no, sorry, that's a fact. I assume, actually. I don't even, I don't know if it's fun. I don't know if it's a fact. Okay, great.

And great to know. Thank you, Betsy. That is handy. That is handy. That is handy. A lot of jail time. And cash. Or half a million dollars.

I'm not worried about the money. It's not about the money. It's about the birds. The next one comes from a man. I like to call, because it's his name, Gary J from the UK. Ah, Gary J. And Gary J is offering a suggestion, but Gary's title is Mr. No, wait, that's my dad's name.

Just call me Gaddy J from the UK for short. Is there a pronunciation guide as well that comes along with that? I just have a stab each time. Oh, okay, very long. It's just fun to say. Give it a try. Hang on. Oh, you give it to me so I can try and get it.

Gary J. from the UK. Gary J. from the UK. Oh, that's good. You did it better than me, I think. I think Adam did do it better. Coming for your spot next. Soon, do go on. We'll just be Adam.

Glorious. And it'll be, honestly, it'll take it to New Heights. And Gary writes, me, Sophie, okay, the swap queen, and everyone's friend, Saraj. So there's three of the Patreon supporters, very active in the Facebook Patreon community there. active at live shows, beautiful people.

Sophie's called the Swap Queen because she's organised a bunch of Patreon. Snack swaps and book swaps. Yeah, maybe a magnet swap was there? Maybe at some point, yeah. Anyway, they're going to see, oh, this would have been so perfect for the last episode we recorded. They're going to see Michelle Brazier and Reese Nicholson at Edinburgh Fringe on the 20th of August. Saying, I just wanted to suggest the shows to others and maybe pack the show out with people from,

with people in do go on merch. Anyway, ta-ta for now. That would be, I think, I mean, we had Michelle Brazier on the episode last week and she said she would absolutely love to see some dogo on people in the crowd for sure. It would probably be maybe a little bit baffling for Reese. But, I mean, he would know what it is. Yeah, well, he was on one of our live shows.

Yeah, the quiz show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he knows who we are, that's true. But I think it would just be a bit of a baffling coincidence to him that there's a bunch of people in Do Go On merch. I love it. Oh, I love it so much. I love it.

If anyone listening, it can go on the 20th of August to either or both of those shows. Get on to Garag Jay from the UK or tag us in and we can tag him in if you don't know his Twitter handle or whatever. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Great suggestion. Great suggestion. Great accordion. And good job for going and checking out those shows because they're both award nominated and award winning shows. As we went last week.

It's an honour to be nominated. And Michelle is an award winning writer. She's an award winner writer. When you go see the show, don't focus too much on the performance. She didn't win the award for that. But just like listen to the writing. Yeah. Incredible. If you close your eyes and just picture the words on the page.

What you need to do is bring the stenographers typing. Yes. the typographer, the type, the machine they use. And write it down as she's saying it, and then you can go away, and you could properly appreciate it then. Yeah, you read it and go, holy shit, this is well written. Oh, my God. Thank you, Gattie J.

The next one comes from Ben Johnson, aka Elizabethan era playwright and poet, overshadowed by Shakespeare. I know Ben's in England, so maybe he's a good show getting to the shows. It's a small, it's a small country. Yeah, it's, there's not much to do as well, yeah. You're bump into the, you'll bump in normal eventually. And Ben writes, despite being born in Oxford, England,

Stephen Hawking was often mistaken for an American citizen because of the accent of his computerized voice, aka the nerd accent. Text a speech. nerd accent. After catching pneumonia in 1985, Hawking had to have a tracheoctomy which left him unable to speak,

after which he used a voice synthesizer controlled by facial muscles. Oh, I didn't know it was controlled by facial muscles. Yeah, that's cool. The state of the art text to speech system was developed at MIT. Senior researcher Dennis Clat created a digital version of his voice

called Perfect Paul. that was adopted as the default voice of the system. At the start of a public lecture in 1986, Hawking joked, the only problem is that it gives me an American accent, he said, to big laughs. Despite this, Hawking quickly became attached to his new device. After a British accent was added as part of an upgrade in 1988, he asked them to replace it with the original, saying his voice had become an iconic trademark of his identity.

During a meeting with the Queen in 2014, she jokingly asked Hawking, Have you still got that American voice? Hawking replied, yes, it is copyrighted, actually. Ultimately, Perfect Paul had to be stimulated in new software to match his iconic voice. Hawking said, my old system worked well and I wrote five books with it, including a brief history of time. Sorry for the long fact, I'd try to cut it down as much as I could, but I hope you found it interesting. P.S. Dave, which I guess is you today, Adam. Yes.

Don't worry about covering history of time if it's not going to work. Live your own life. Climb every mountain. Reach for the stars. Follow that rainbow. That's when your dreams will all come true. I'm glad I don't have to worry about the history of time. Is it the history of time book or is it just a history of time?

I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of it. Yeah, there is a lot. Ben's been suggesting for a while that Dave should do. a book cheat on the history of time? I should do a book cheat. Oh, sorry, yes. You should do a book cheat on the history of time. But he's released you from that burden there.

So now you can go and I guess do what Dave is doing and travel around Italy? Yeah. If that's what you want to do? That sounds nice. Yeah. It does sound really fucking nice. Especially that's gotten real cold in Melbourne. Not bitter at all.

No, no, no, no. No, we should well. Hey, he's entitled to holidays. He should be, you know. Yeah. That's all? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely don't wish I was spending six weeks in Europe. Fucking hell. Fucking hell, mate. Fucking hell with this one. The last fact, quote or question this week comes from David Loring, aka pod lexiconographer. Is that? How's that?

Okay. And David's offered a suggestion writing, Hey, friends, I return with a few more words I feel should be in more common usage. Okay, try these on for size. So we've got three suggestions here. Firstly, and David, I really appreciate that you spelling them out phonetically as well as... Oh, that's good. That's nice.

That is. First up, we have vitioperative, which means bitter and abusive, especially in relation to communication between or about people. You might talk about a nasty election campaign becoming increasingly vitioperative. Vitupirative. Vituparative. That's great. I like that. Yeah, I can't wait to...

Someone's being slightly rude to me. All right, mate. We don't have to be vituperative right now. Odds of me remembering that word, pretty slim. Very slim. Next one is contumelius, which is rude in an obnoxious or spiteful way that shows a real contempt for someone

with the added fun that you can deliberately emphasize the first syllable to sound like can't. Cunchumilius. Cunchumelius. It'd be interesting to find out if I can be bothered bleeping that. Nah, definitely not.

It's deep into the episode. Yeah, kids are asleep by now. It's fine. I've left one in recently. One of mine, I always assumed they'll be bleeped. Nah, never assume. Don't say it if you don't.

Somebody think of the children. What about the fenestrate? I just like the sound of that. It's the act of throwing someone out of a window. Oh, okay. That's good. That's why I like it. This is nice.

Saying, please note, nothing about the definition says the window needs to be open before the throwing. Wow. What, give me that word again? The fenestrate. That is good. That is good stuff. You got to it a lot quicker than me. I already.

Oh, you knew that one. I knew that one already. What a nerd. Yeah. Got the accent, got the vocabulary. So thanks for those great facts, quotes and questions. The next thing we like to do, Adam, is thank a few of our other great supporters. And we normally come up with a little game.

Jess normally does based on the topic at hand. Yeah, let's give them what their little type, what's their token thing? Yeah, okay, their little monopoly token. It doesn't have to be an existing one. Yeah, it can be anything. I love this. All right. Maybe we'll, like we did last week, do we go...

Yeah, we'll go one... Do you want to go first? Yes. Thank you so much. I would love to thank. I'm thankful for... I'm thankful for so many things. I would love to thank from Lake Zurich in Illinois.

Marius Trapzinski. This might be less name more Lake Zurich, but I'm thinking Battleship. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going on with a classic. Yeah. Yeah. A battleship. on a lake.

Yeah. Yeah, love that. Marius's battleship. Fantastic. That's good. Like that.

Well, Adam, maybe you can come up with all of them. I think that's great. Jess and I will read out the names. All right. You come up with it. If you're comfortable.

Oh, let's do it. He started on his sleeves. I mimed. Did not actually. Because that's gross. Yeah, he's gross. And not very COVID safe.

Yeah, true. Also, not very COVID-s-safe. I would. Safe. I'd like to thank. From Doreen in Victoria, Australia, it's Declan Grant. Doreen, Declan Grant. Thimble.

Thimble. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Confident on that one. Yeah, great choice. I said it was sort of like a kind of depressing game talking, but I also love it. I love it. It's elegant, it's simple. It's a beautiful piece of...

And as a child, you try to put it on your pinky. Yes, guaranteed. Every time. I love it. Now, my finger's too big. Like, can you really, you can't, you know, put on the boot? No. You know what I mean?

Yeah, you definitely can't put that boot on. No. Don't ask me how I know. You definitely can't. What, do we talk about what all of our chosen tokens? I said mine was horse and rider. What was your, you were? I was the car or the dog.

I'm a battleship. But I would also go, car and dog tied second for me. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I was a fan of the car and the dog as well. A lot of good options there. I reckon there's a few good options and then there's, like, I'd happily let other people go first, knowing that. that there would be enough that I like,

that I'd get one I'm happy with. But there's a few at the bottom of the list, you know, where you'd be like, okay, fine. Yeah, I'll be the fucking Thimble. I'll be the Turkish delight of the Monopoly board game. Exactly right. I like Thimble because I think it's a sturdy piece.

It's not getting knocked over. Yeah, the horse is very skinny and, well, you wouldn't know this. You don't recall. No, I wouldn't. Battleship gets knocked over. Battleship also skinny. It's knocked over all the damn time. But funder sail.

When you're moving to imagine sailing. Yeah, because you don't have to like pick. But it's a horse, you pick it up and go like, clip clop, clip clop, clip clop. So there's pros and cons to all of them. Yes. I would love to thank from Croydon in Great Britain, Mitch Barrett. Mitch Barrett. And remember, it doesn't have to be a real one if you want to go outside the constraints.

Wow, you can do my trick of looking around the room. I do that a lot. Mitch Barrett, I'm going to give them Charazard from Pokemon Monopoly. Yeah, that's good. Which one's Charazard? Is that Pikachu? It's the drag. Have I answered my own question there?

That was good. I like that. That took me as you... Charisard is Pikachu. Yeah, Charisard is Pikachu. Yes, correct. That is correct. Cool.

Yeah. I'm a bit of a pokehead. I'm a bit of a gamer myself. I'm a bit of a pokey man, if you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to thank someone? I'd love to thank. From Amsterdam.

in the Netherlands, Arande Hibema. Arandebema. That one's getting the horse. Horse and rider. Oh, no, sorry, it's car and then car and rider. But horse and rider. Oh, Arrand.

Hey, you and me. Yeah. We both, hey, hopefully there's room for two on that horse. Good, big horse. Shush. Clydesdale. Yeah, we could get that, we could get that giant golden horse

from one of our previous episodes. Clydesdales are gorgeous. I love a course. Claude's, they're big clippity clop shoes. They're wearing flares. Yeah, I was about to say. It's like they wear in flare pants. It's great.

Love it. A very stylish animal. And they must love them as well because they're wearing two pairs. Sorry. I would love to think from Sorrento in Florida. Caleb Sellers. Srento in Florida, Caleb. Sorrento gives me a bit of like a beach vibe.

Yeah, I'm thinking Tarina. Tarina Rorina. What's her name? Tina Arena, sweet Sorrento moon. Yes. Sweet Sorrento moon. Do you reckon Tina Arena was singing about Sorrento, Florida? No, she was talking about Sorrento on there, Mornington Peninsula.

Oh, right. Yeah, definitely. Beautiful place. Lovely spot. What's Caleb working with? I think that is the chance card that you won second prize in a beauty contest. Oh. Oh, I thought that was so funny as a kid.

That's a great dad. Great. Classic bit. Yeah. Always funny. Always good. You got second place. You're not literally the most beautiful person.

You are worthless. Another thing that I'm sure Lizzie McGee would have been stoked about. Yeah. Yes. I've been happy with that. Back to me. I'd love to thank, well, address unknown this person is from, so I can only assume from deep within the fortress of the malls.

And I would like to say, I'd like to get ahead of the game here and say, I for one, welcome our new mole people overlords. But I'd love to thank from the fortress, Norma Doodle. Norma Doodle. Love the name. Additionally, address unknown, that's a lot of opportunity. And with a lot of opportunity comes the original, not the original, but the Atlantic City version of the game.

Yes. The entire set. Wow. Whoa. Is it like a miniature version of the entire set and board? Yeah. That is sick. I love that.

That's so good. That's nice, actually. Yeah, I like that. A few more. I would love to thank from Sacramento in California. Home of the Kings and the NBA, a team that I did not think was defunct on a recent episode. Okay.

I would love to thank Susie Costa. Car without rider. Car without rider. Oh, yeah. Also known as a driver. Driverless car. Yes, that is correct. Driverless car.

Yeah, also without a driver, Jess. Yeah, just saying. It's without a lot of things. I don't know why Adam's specified rider. It's also out without a unicorn. It's also without a motor. Well, there's just as two different versions. And maybe someone will present themselves that they are.

Okay, good point. So we've got two more. I'd love to thank from Burton on Trent in Great Britain. KDW. The brief period where a Toyota Yaris replaced the regular car. Oh yeah, okay. A zippy little number, the Toyota Yarris. Get you from A to B.

Yes. Oh, buddy, they'll just go forever. Beautiful to park and cramped city car parks. Nice and easy. Great little zippy city car. This episode brought to you by Toyota Yaris. And finally, I would love to thank from Born, Bowen in Texas, Ethan. Brundine.

Brundine is a fun name. Yeah, a bit fancy. Brundine. Top hat. Top hat. You're right. Fancy. Ethan Brun Dean.

Thank you, Ethan. Love that very much. So thank you very much to all of those great supporters. Ethan, Katie, Susie, Normadoodle, Caleb, Aaron, Mitch, Declan, and Marius. The last thing we like to do here, Adam, is welcome a few people into our Triptage Club. So you get involved in the Triptage Club. after you've been a supporter of the show on the shout-out level or above for three straight years. What's the website again?

It's Patreon.com slash do you go on pod. Good to know. So if you're involved in that, you get welcomed into this club. It's lifetime membership. It's the Hotel California. You can never leave. I don't know if that's the same thing, but all right. One sounds distinctly like a trap.

So we've got three inductees this week. This is a bit of a theory of the mind game. And Dave's role slash your role this week, Adam Kahnabalai, is an important one. You're the MC at the event. So I'm on the door. I'm the doorman. I've got the clipboard. I've got the list.

I'm going to read out the names. Lift up the Velvet Rope. Welcome them in. You're going to be on stage, hyping up the crowd, which is hundreds of triptych club members who are already there enjoying themselves. Jess is behind the bar. She's going to be there to support you. Yeah. Because every hype.

Man needs a hype woman. And Jess, you're also behind the bar. What kind of cocktail? What's the Monopoly cocktail you've come up with for guests? I've actually got a series of cocktails and they are all like the colours of the Monopoly board. So yellow, green, purple, etc. Yeah, so like, you know, limoncello and Midori and sham board for purple.

So yeah, I've got something for everybody. Not like last week where I just put all of the shots in. one big glass. That wasn't good. And we did have some complaints. So this time I've made like seven different different tests. A lot of stomachs were pumped. A lot of stomachs were pumped.

But we do have a hospital on site. However you say... I'm also the doctor though. What's blue caracaccio? I've always said correct. Yeah, great. Because I didn't know how to say it. So I just made a joke of it.

Yeah. Is that safe? Yeah. And then when people say you're saying it wrong, you say, I know I'm saying it as a joke. Oh my God, you don't get my joke. Yeah. But I have no idea to say it. No, I have no idea either.

And I would never. You might have had it right. Oh, really? Yeah. Holy shit. I think that's how you say it. Look, hey, I would also typically fall into the maker joke. Yeah, yeah.

So I don't take this as gospel. Yeah. Just say, correct, crack, right. But if it is wrong, please, what is your Twitter handle, Adam? Well, my Twitter handle is at Jackson Bailey. So any complaints can be sent there. That's funny. It's not even his Twitter handle.

Send them over. All dogs are dead. Yeah, old dogs are dead. I don't know anyone's Twitter handle, but I know Jackson B. Bailey's. Yes, it's hard to forget. And, yeah, wait, is there, oh, yes, and, Adam, you also book a band for the after party of the event. Oh, okay. Oh, it's a lot of responsibility.

Okay. Who have you booked? I've booked the only band worth a damn. The first band that came to my mind that is definitely in my mind right now. I'm thinking of a band. Yes. Wouldn't be stalling for time. That's not what I do.

It's not, I'm not panicking right now. Okay. I am thinking. No one's suggesting you are. The only band in existence, just Elvis himself. Elvis himself. Yes, we got him. Yeah, and his backup band.

What are they called again? The Fantastic Five. Something business. Whatever. Yeah. The business district. Yes, the business. It's Elvis Presley and the business district.

Taking care of business. Sorry, keep going. All right, so everyone in the club, please stick around for Elvis. That's a pretty good get. I don't think Dave's ever got anyone that big. Dave's a massive loser. Adam, your role here on stage as the MC is, I'm going to read out the name. Dave would normally make some sort of weak pun as he sort of hyps them up as they enter the room.

You're the hype man. All right, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. You don't have to make a weak pun. Last week, Michelle just sort of was an emcee and really hyped them up. And then I'll hype you up. So you do whatever comes to your mind. All right. So we've got three.

Don't panic. I wouldn't. I've never done that in my life. First from Armstrong Creek in Victoria, Australia. It's Jemima Knox. Armstrong. Got to be careful. They've got...

Strong arms. Tickets to the gun show. Yeah. The guns being their arms, they are Armstrong. Yes, Jemima, your big strong arms, woo. Welcome from Manton in New South Wales, Australia. It's Sarah Smith. Sarah, Sarah Smith.

Also got strong arms. Surprisingly, strong arms going to do an arm wrestle with Jemima. Yes. And finally, oh my God, from a Welsh place. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm going to have to look up the phonetics of this. Give me the name so I've got some time.

Okay. It's James Burton. James Burton. All right. How am I going to work arms into this? His arms are burnton after. Arm wrestling, Jemima and Sarah. That's good.

Thank you. Yes. Yeah, do that. All right. Let's see. Matt, I reckon you could get away from saying from Wales. From. Stratkin, Lice.

From Stracken Lice. That doesn't feel right. From Strach and Lice in, and how do you say Wales in Welsh? From Montgomery, it is James Burton. And I should have an absolute burden. Also got stronger. Stronger. And that's no burden to them.

They love it. God, do you see it. It's great that you came up with one real quick. Welcome into the club, James, Sarah and Jemima. And yeah, stick around, enjoy a few monopoly cocktails. And, yeah, collect the whole set if you can. Probably don't, actually. I do need you to drink responsibly.

My RSA is being questioned. If you spew, that's the equivalent of being bankrupt in the game. The board is calling it not-existent and a big line. But that brings us to the end of. of the episode. Thanks so much for joining us, Adam Carnival. I just, is there anything we need to tell people before we go? Just that we love them so much. Adam, where can people find you? Typically screaming on a street corner, but if you want to find me online, I can be found at retro archetype. Retro and archetype, the two words just slam them together. Chuck them into any social media.

You'll find me there, or alternatively, at sanspence radio.com. There you go. And thank you for taking the tiny, tiny shoes of Dave Warnocky for this week. We appreciate it so much. The little boots. He's one of the few that can put his feet into the monopoly boot. Tiny feet, massive pies. Yeah.

That's it. If you want to suggest the topic, anybody can. There's a link in the show notes or you can do it at our website. Do GoOnpod.com. We can also find bonus episodes. You can buy merch. You can do just about anything you dream of over there. And speaking of Dave, he is going to do a live show in London this week of bookcheats.

So if you want to get involved in that, check out Book Cheat Pod online. Yeah, it's happening Wednesday, the 10th of August. And yeah, I mean, I wish I could be there. It would be so much fun. So do yourselves a favour. Yeah, that brings to the end of the episode. Thanks so much for joining us. Hopefully, Adam, you can come back and do a report at some stage.

I would love to. So we'll see you then. And, yeah, thanks for joining us, everyone. Let's. Bye. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later,

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