I Can’t Sleep - Lego | Calm Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Ease into sleep with this calm bedtime reading about Lego, perfect for soothing your mind and easing insomnia. Discover the fascinating history behind one of the world’s most beloved toy brands while relaxing to Benjamin’s gentle voice. Learn how Lego bricks were born from creativity and perseverance, shaping generations of imaginative builders around the world. Benjamin’s steady, peaceful reading offers a comforting way to drift off, helping you manage sleeplessness, stress, and anxiety without whispers or hypnosis—just calm, fact-filled storytelling. Press play, unwind, and let your mind rest. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from Lego, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox Media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcasts, where I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. In today's episode is about Lego. Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego group. A privately held company based in Beelan, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored

interlocking plastic bricks, made of acrylic nitril butyting styring that accompany an array of gears, figurings called mini figures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Assembled Lego models can be taken apart, and their pieces can be reused to create new constructions. The Lego group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Molding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1,140 elements per second.

One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced. Lego maintains a large fan community based around building competitions and customs. some creations, and a range of films, games, and ten Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. The Lego group began in the workshop of Ula Kyrk Christiansen, 1891, in 1958, a carpenter from Beel and Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called Lego, derived from the Danish phrase, Le Got, which means play well.

In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949, the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now-familiar interlocking bricks, calling them automatic binding bricks. These bricks were based on the kitty craft self-locking bricks, invented by Hillary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair

Lego had received a sample of the kiddiecraft bricks from the supplier of an injection molding machine that it purchased. The bricks originally manufactured from cellulose acetate were development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time. The Lego group's motto, only the best is good enough, in Danish, de best is eager for God, literally, the best isn't exclusively good, was created in 1936. Christensen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly.

By 1951, plastic toys accounted. for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine, Toy Times, visiting the Lego factory in Beelen in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seemed to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic and children's toys, due in part to the highest standard set by Ula Kirk. By 1954, Kirstensen's son,

Gauthras, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Gottfress saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system

for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint. Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed. ABS subsequently replaced cellulose acetate as a manufacturing material five years later. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on the 28th of January

1958, and in various other countries in the subsequent few years. The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and became a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first mini-figures, which have since become a staple in most sets. In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavor Missions S-T-E-S-W-W-Wingers, 134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity as a part of the Lego bricks and space program.

In May 2013, the largest model ever created made of over 5 million bricks was displayed in New York City, a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-Wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-meter tower and a 4-kilometer railway. In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the world's most powerful brand, overtaking Ferrari. While Lego has generally been considered a children's toy, there have also been adult fans of the toys. In 2020, Lego introduced sets aged at 18 plus. Generally, some of their more expensive and difficult to assemble sets based on real-world or fictional objects,

such as the Concord or Rivendale. The timing of these sets favorably aligned with the COVID-19 pandemic was many adults purchasing these sets to work on during various lockdown periods. Popularity within adults was further pushed by the release of the Lego movie and the reality series Lego Masters. By 2024, nearly 15% of the sets released in the U.S. were aimed at adult builders. In May 2025, Lego announced that it was planning to move its London headquarters from Farringdon to 76 South Bank in 2007. Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years,

each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlocked with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. six bricks of two by four studs can be combined in nine hundred and fifteen million one hundred and three thousand seven hundred and sixty five ways each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision when two pieces are engaged they must fit firmly yet be easily disassembled the machines that manufacture lego bricks have tolerances as small as ten micrometers Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Bieland headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan,

which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around 12.000. 12 months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market. Some are stationed in toy shops, close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage.

As of September 2008, the design is the design. teams use 3D modeling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the validation process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of their user instructions.

Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organization for marketing and packaging. Lego Digital Designer was an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS10 and Windows, which allowed users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from digital designer to consumers. The service ended in 2012. LEGO's website now recommends Bricklink Studio. Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from ABS plastic.

As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX, CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimized by way of mold, flow, and stress analysis. Prototype molds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 degrees Celsius until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the molds using forces of between 25 and 150 tons and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The molds are permitted at tolerance of up to 20 micrometers

to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the molds to eliminate significant variations in color or thickness. According to the Lego group, about 18 bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1% of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be reused in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold onto industries that can make use of it. Lego in 2018 set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly friend. the alternative to the ABS plastic. Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the

world. Molding is done in Beel and Denmark, near Jaze, Hungary, Monterey, Mexico, and most recently in Joching, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries, and in Cloddno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades, it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1,140 elements per second. According to an article in Business Week in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number one tire manufacturer.

The factory produces about 306 million small rubber tires a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012. In April, 2023, Lego broke ground on its first manufacturing facility in the United States. The new carbon-neutral factory will be located near Richmond, Virginia. It will amount to over $1 billion in investment once completed in 2025. The 340-acre site will have rooftop and ground solar panels and an on-site 35 to 40 megawatt solar plant, generating the equivalent of the energy of powering 10,000 American homes. In April 2025, Lego opened its 6th factory worldwide, located in Vietnam, was Lego saying

the location is its most environmentally sustainable factory to date. In December 2012, the BBC's more or less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine how many Lego bricks stacked one on top of the other it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick. Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determine the average maximum fours, a two-by-two Lego brick and stand, is 4,22-210440 newtons. since an average 2x2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams. According to their calculations, it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse,

which represents a stack 3,591 meters in height. Private tests have shown several thousand assembly disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out. although Lego tests show fewer cycles. In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using biodevised polyethylene to make its botanical elements, parts such as leaves, bushes, and trees. The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year, and that it was investing about $1 billion crooner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that LEGO's researchers have already experimented with around 200 alternatives.

In 2020, LEGO announced that it would seize packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil. By using recycled polyethylene-terothelate bottles, But in 2023, reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, European castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and Wild West, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle, and Heurbanical.

Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City, a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973, and Lego Technic, a line aimed at emulating complex machinery introduced in 1977. Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises, and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft, and Wicked. Although some of these themes, such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the Lego Group expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes, unless upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes,

such as a bionical mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become collectible and command value on the secondary market. For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special team GB minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016, summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots, Vinicos, and Tom. One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a mini-figure-scaled

edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, designed by Jens Cronvold Fredericksson, the ultimate collector's Millennium Falcon, set 10179, was released in 2007 and contained 5,000 It was later surpassed by a 5,922 piece, Taj Mahal, set 10189. A redesigned Millennium Falcon, set 75192, retook the top spot in 2017, with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego artwork. map, set 3123 at 11,695 pieces. The Lego Titanic set 10294 at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Coliseum set 10276 at 9,036 pieces. In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower, set 103077. In 2022, Two, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower, set 10307, which consists of 10,001 parts, and reaches a height of 149

centimeters, making it the tallest set and tower, but second in number of parts after the world map. The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called Mindstorms in 1999, and continued to expand and update this range until it was eventually discontinued in 2022. The roots of the product originated with a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name was taken from a paper by Seymour Pepeir, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.

The programmable Lego brick, which was at the heart of these robotic sets, underwent several updates and redesigns, was the last being called the EV3 brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorm's EV3. The set included various sensors, such as touch, light, sound, and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader. The programmable brick could be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers.

In the earliest iteration of the product, the program would be uploaded to the programmable brick via an infrared transmitter. While in later versions, this was achieved via Bluetooth or a USB cable. Unofficial programmable languages that can be used with Lego Mindstorms programmable bricks have also been developed. There have been several robotics competitions which used the Lego robotics sets. The earliest was Botball, a national U.S. middle and high school competition, stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego Robotics Tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include First Lego League Discover for children ages 4 to 6,

First Lego League Explore for students ages 6 to 9 and first Lego League Challenge for students ages 9 to 16, age 9 to 14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. These programs have offered real-world engineering challenges to participants using Lego-based robots to complete tasks. In its 2019-to-2020 season, there were 38,000. 609 First Lego League Challenge teams, and 21,703 First Lego League Explore teams around the world. The International Robocub Junior Football Competition involved extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment, which was often pushed to its extreme limits. The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have also been harnessed for use in the ICO-creative prosthetic system,

a prosthetic limb system design for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed onto the end of a child's limb. Ico was the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres and is a modular system that allows children to customize their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department,

and CERIC, a Colombian Foundation for Physical Rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporated myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contained an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, which allowed the wearer to build an extensive range of customized programmable limbs. Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art.

It has been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the U.S., Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsko, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group. In 1998, Lego Bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong in Rochester, New York. Lego is commonly used as a mass noun, or in American English, as an accountable noun with plural Legos, to refer to the bricks themselves. but as is common for trademarks, Lego Group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product, as in Lego bricks.

Lego bricks have a reputation for causing pain when stepped on. Often being humorously exaggerated is more extreme than that caused by even the worst injuries. In this way, they are viewed as a sort of modern-day caltrop. The last significant patent for Lego bricks expired in 1978. Since then, competitors have produced blocks of similar dimensions and design that can be connected with Lego bricks. In 2002, Lego sued the Coco Toy Company in Beijing for copyright infringement over its Cocoa Bricks product. Coco was ordered to cease manufacture

of the products, publish a formal apology, and pay damages. Lego sued the English company best-locked construction toys in German courts in 2004 and 2009. The Federal Patent Court of Germany denied Lego trademark protection for the shape of its bricks for the latter case. In 2005, the Lego companies sued Canadian company Ridvick Holding, Zinc, which makes Megablocks, for trademark violation. However, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Ritvik Holding's rights to sell its product. In 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled that the eight-peg design of the original Lego brick merely performs a technical function and cannot be registered as a trademark. First launched in 1996, the Lego website has developed over the years and provides many extra services beyond an online store and a product catalog. There are also moderated message boards that were founded in 2001.

The site also includes instruction booklets for all Lego sets dating back to 2002. The Lego website features a social media app named Lego Life, which is designed for children under 13 years of age. The app is available as a free download and only features Lego-related content. It was designed to be a social network for children to be inspired, create and share their Lego builds, photos, and videos with a like-minded community, whilst also providing Lego content in the form of product advertising, images, videos, campaigns, and competitions. The app incorporates a variety of child safety features to provide a safe digital environment for children, including the protection of personal information and the heavy moderation of all uploaded user-generated content and communication.

My Lego Network was a social networking site that involved items, blueprints, ranks, badges, which were earned for completing certain tasks, trading in trophies called masterpieces, which allowed users to progress to go to the next rank. The website had a built-in inbox which allowed users to send pre-written messages to one another. The Lego Network included automated non-player characters within, called networkers, who were able to do things which normal users could not do, sending custom messages and selling masterpieces and blueprints.

The site also had modules which were set up on the user's page that gave the user items, or that displayed picture compositions. My Lego Network closed in 2015. Before my Lego Network, there were Lego Club Pages, which essentially held the same purpose, although the design lacked complex interaction. Berlin Entertainment operates 10 Legoland Amusement Parks, the original in Buellan, Denmark, the second in Windsor, England, the third in Gunsburg, Germany, the fourth in Carlsbad, California,

the fifth in Winter Haven, Florida, the sixth in Escandar, Putary, Malaysia, the 7th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the 8th in Nagoya, Japan, the 9th in Gosha, New York, and a 10th in 2022 in Shanghai, China. On July 13, 2005, the control of 70% of the Legoland parks was sold for $460 million to the Blackstone Group of New York, while the remaining 30% is still held by Lego Group. There are also eight Legoland Discovery Centers, two in Germany, four in the United States, one in Japan, and one in the United Kingdom. Two Legoland Discovery Centers opened in 2013, one at the Westchester Ridge Hill Shopping Complex in Yonkers, New York, and one at the Vaughn Mills in Vaughn, Ontario, Canada. another opened at American Dream Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 2021.

The first Lego store to open anywhere in the world was in Sydney, Australia in 1984. Located in the Birkenhead Point outlet center, it was not only the first dedicated Lego retail outlet, but it also had displays including many iconic Australian items, such as the Holden FJ, Sydney Harbor Bridge, and the Sydney Opera House, as well as buildings from Amsterdam, dinosaurs, and an English village. Known as the Lego Center, Birkenet Point, the store closed in the early 1990s. As of March 2024, Lego operates 1,031 retail shops called Lego Stores Globally. The world's largest Lego store is located in Leicester Square, London.

The U.S. stores include the downtown Disney shopping complexes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts, as well as in Mall of America and Bloomington, Minnesota. The opening of each new store is celebrated with a weekend-long event in which a master model builder creates, with the help of volunteers, a larger-than-life Lego statue, which is then displayed at the new store for several weeks.