Planet Money - BOARD GAMES 3: What’s in a name?

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons. We’ve decided we want a mass-appeal party game that quietly sneaks in the economics, so that we can report from inside a world that no other Planet Money project has entered: the real shelves at real big box retail stores. We have a great game mechanic and a set of rules. Now all we need is a good name and theme. Turns out, that is way harder and way higher stakes than any of us could have imagined. In the third episode of our series, we learn the importance of a good game name and theme and try to come up with one for our game. Find our previous episodes in the board game series, here and here.Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift. / Subscribe to Planet Money+Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Kenny Malone and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed and edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Willa Rubin, and engineered by Cena Loffredo and Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Legend has it. There was a Canadian couple in the 1950s who liked to play this game called Yacht. They owned a yacht. They play the game on their yacht. But as far as I can tell, that is all the yacht involved in this game called Yacht? Yes, Yacht was a dice game. You roll a bunch of dice.

You try to make sets and pairs and whatnot. And apparently, friends of the Canadian Yotters were like, this Yacht game rules. You should publish it. Make some money. Maybe buy another yacht. Yeah, why not? And so the unnamed Canadian sold the game idea to a game entrepreneur who then made the very wise decision to not sell the game as yacht.

He changed the name, of course, to... Yotsie! Yatsy! Nobody's going to buy and yell yacht? Come on! And we share this little tale because a good title or a bad title will absolutely sink a really great game. That was the very serious warning we got previously on Planet Money Makes a board game. Let's catch everyone up real quick.

We're making a game. We have partnered with the game company exploding kittens to try and design a game inspired by the Nobel Prize winning economics paper, the market for lemons. That paper is literally about asymmetric information in the market for used cars, but broadly, it's about how making deal. when one side knows more than the other, causes chaos, distrust, and ultimately destroys a market. In our game version, players have hands of cards and they're offering each other deals, trying to get the best cards. But they can trick their friends into accepting terrible cards because asymmetric information. Yeah.

You only ever have to show part of the deal. We chose to make a mass appeal party game that sneakily brings the economics, the partial information, the mounting distrust, the spiral into joyful chaos, instead of a complex, hardcore, nerdy economics game. And that is because we're hoping that this game can be our Trojan horse into reporting and learning from inside a world that no other Planet Money Project has gone. The real shelves at real big box retail stores. Yeah, we think an exploding kittens party game gives us the best chance of sneaking into that world.

And in our previous episodes, we faced our first huge test. That test was named Jamie Wolanski. Jamie is a longtime game consultant. She's legendary, convinced target to carry Settlers of Catan way back when. And Jamie had two notes on our joyfully chaotic deal-and-distrust card game. Note one. Okay, I am constantly on the lookout for a new game mechanic that no one else has ever done. and there is not a game out there that I can equate this to.

She loved our game, but note number two, she told us, don't mess this up now. The most critical thing at this point is naming it. Really? Yeah, the name, the title, picking the right theme is going to be critical to making it work. Because a good title or a bad title will just absolutely sink a really great game. Game, game, game.

Hello, and welcome to Planet Money, America Barris. And I'm Kenny Malone. The Planet Money game needs a planet money name. And we need to not mess this up. Yeah, we have taken this gamble to make a mass appeal game instead of a complex, nerdy learning game. And today, the stakes get real. We learn what it takes to name and theme something for the big leagues, the big boxes. We are surprised to learn how unscientific that process can be. Plus, by the end of the episode, we will have a name and a theme. And we have saved some spots in our deck of cards for you all. You listeners, your ideas will end up illustrated

and part of the Planet Money game. Imagine rubbing that in your friends' faces a game night. Stay tuned. Okay, we are on a mission to use the Planet Money game to crack open next-tier access to the world of big box retail. Imagine getting inside the real shark tank rooms where a single pitch could result in the shipping containers full of game orders. But the problem was, what really was the Planet Money game? We had a prototype and we'd collectively done thousands of hours of playtesting, which you all helped us with. Thank you very much. But really, all we had to show for it was a set of rules.

Yeah, I mean, to be clear, we're proud of those rules. They explain a card game that is subtly complex and even more subtle. subtly, sprinkles in our big asymmetric information economics idea. But it's true. This was not yet a product that you could put on a shelf at Walmart or Target. But apparently, this is how exploding kittens works. During the prototyping phase, they seemed zero percent concerned with the theme of our game. Like, they didn't worry about the pictures on the cards, about whether our players should imagine they were used car sellers or fruit vendors.

running a literal market for lemons? No. Their strategy was the game should work without any of that, and only then do we start thinking about theming and naming. And then one day, we got word. Okay. So let's talk about. So just to be clear, we're preparing for the highest stakes part of this entire process.

Is that what we're about to do? Yeah, yeah. The way to think about this is... That is exploding Kitten's co-founder, Alon Lee and the rest of the team, and this was the big one, the meeting where we finally start looking at names and themes for the Planet Money game. Everything we've been through so far is exactly 50% of it. Now we start the other 50%, which is how to sell this thing.

Right, right. No pressure, right? In all honesty, when one of your consultants played the game, she really liked it, and it was a previous version even, and I asked her, I was like, what is the biggest obstacle, and like, what's the thing that could tank this? And she was like, the name and the theming is like, just don't mess it up. She really said that. Like, can this tank a game?

Absolutely yes. Like, we have games out there that I thought were spectacular. And when we launch games, like, I go camp out at all the big retailers. And I sit there in the aisles and I watch people. And I just, it's so heartbreaking to see them walk right by a really epic game because the box just doesn't catch their attention. Okay, that is a little intimidating. I was kind of joking, and now I'm like I actually do feel genuinely a little nervous about this. Now, I think what I found so genuinely nerve-wracking is that we did not have a yachtsy yet.

We just had yacht. But unlike Yotsie, we needed a name and also we needed a whole story for our game. Now, our first instinct was to push for the most obvious idea. Cars. Just call it for lemons and make it. Cars. Make it about trading different used cars. I mean, it's so it's right there.

Yes, but apparently, according to Exploding Kittens, car-themed games in particular have a risk of being confusing and disappointing on a shelf. Yeah, like imagine you're in the game aisle. Ooh, a car game. Is it about racing or they're moving pieces and fast cars? And oh, it's none of those things. Bummer, out. Not getting it.

I don't know if I fully buy this, but welcome to the world of choosing a name and a theme for Big Box. Yeah, because we were not just choosing something that would appeal to a potential customer. We were choosing something that Walmart and Target think will appeal to the potential customer. After all, they are the ones who will decide whether to order and carry the Planet Money game. And now, in that highest stakes part of the process meeting, Exploding Kittens was about to show us some potential themes and names that they think might get us on the shelf. Okay. Get ready for.

Oops, sharing is not turned on. Hold on. Let me hit Allow. I think I got it. Stephanie Pesta is in charge of the art and design part of this process. And she was ready to present us with three possible names and themes. But first, she wanted to share a bit about how her team takes a prototype like ours and starts to find a name and theme. So the way the art team works is we'll play the game to get a general understanding of like the emotions you feel as like you go through the core gameplay mechanics. And for this one, what we really loved was the true. trading aspect, right? That's where the tension is. That's where the excitement is.

Yeah. So remember, in our game, the players take turns entertaining deals from the other players. That deal might include great cards or terrible cards or mediocre cards or all of those things. But because you only have to show one of the cards, it turns the straightforward market into a chaos pit of distrust and betrayal and often shouting. I feel like we've shouted at each other a bit. A little. And we really wanted to jump off. of that feeling, those cards and the excitement of like trading something that could be really funny, but also really exciting to have. So we thought about people who trade a lot and we're like, oh my gosh, sports trading. Sports trading. You could imagine each of our players is a sports agent

or a team trading and acquiring good and bad athletes. Okay, cool. But part of the exploding kittens process, Stephanie says, is then to ask, what is the less on the nose version, funnier, more whimsical? that may help the game stand out on a big box shelf. Okay, instead of athletes, what if it's misfit mascots? And the goal of the game is that you're trading different mascots and you want to build this ultimate dream team. Stephanie pulls up a screen showing that the art department has invented and illustrated very silly mascots for all kinds of products.

King ketchup, Liverworth Lad, Charlie Roger, mop top. And that is how they arrived at theme and name number one. misfit mascots. Great. Okay. Take two. Okay. Stephanie pulls up an illustration of, oh my gosh, a very cute, big foot. Sell me a Sasquatch. Oh. This one we're like, what if people are trying to find and trade cryptids and or famous

magical animals? Imagine Lochness monsters, Chupacabra, the Kraken. The idea is you're a creature collector trying to count. capture and assemble the best groups of magical creatures. Ethically. We would ethically capture them. No cages. I did feel magically transported to being a little kid who loves Sasquatch, I will admit. They were adorable.

But okay. Finally, option number three. Okay. This next one is cats who are also car salesmen. Cats who are also car salesmen. Now, to be clear, not cars, because we talked about car problem, the imagery here is cats in suits. And they are in fact doing all kinds of jobs, to be clear, these cats. The goal is to be the best salesmen. Characters can be stock traders, car salesmen, street vendors, and other famous deal traders. But imagine it's cats instead of people exploding kittens. Let's bring animals into it. It is dawning on us that we clearly have entered, I guess we'll

call it the art of game selling. Like, will cats in suits sell better than ketchup bottles with crowns? But we have no idea. How are we supposed to know this? Yeah, you know, this is really the explorational phase. So right now, this part of the process is a lot of like seeing what sticks. Like this one feels right. This one will really, really, really work in retail. We're kind of looking to capture that feeling.

What feels right? What sticks? These are not metrics that work with our econ data brains. It's like when someone tries to give you a recipe and they just say, oh, you'll know when it's done. Like, no, tell me how long and at what temperature and what order the things go in. Yes, that is maddening. I do hate that.

But exploding kittens say this is the method that works for them. It's better they say for them than like a formal corporate focus group situation where you might drown in too much data. Sounds like a good problem to me. But apparently their process is to now just let these three ideas sit and see if anything ends up like one of those earworm songs that you just cannot stop thinking about. And that's it. That is pretty much where we left the meeting. Thank you for all the work you've put into this. I'm so excited to see more. And our reactions are, if we're not giving

you the reactions you want, it's just because we don't know what we're doing. This is great. Thank you. Thank you. So trust the process, I guess. Trust the process. Trust the process. I don't know about you, Erica, but I, for one, was not prepared for all of this. Trust your gut. Go on instinct to business. On what we had been told was possibly the most important decision we had to make. Jamie, great to see you again. It's been a long time. I know. Good to see you too.

You may remember game consultant Jamie Wolanski. She's a person who months earlier played a prototype of our game. She told us we've got something here. But she gave us that dire warning. Do you remember what you told us at the very end of our conversation? Yes. Well, I remember saying that the title and the theme are going to matter. You said, quote, picking the right theme is going to be critical to making it work. Heavy word. Strong word.

Jamie Wolanski is the Big Box Retail Whisper, and that is why Exploding Kittens hires her to help get their games into big box stores. In fact, she was visiting Exploding Kitten's office in Los Angeles when we called her up to talk about name and theme. I mean, the most obvious question is why does it matter? Like, if we have a killer game, why does, why do the theme and the name matter so much? Well, you're competing against hundreds of other games on the shelf. And when a guest or a customer comes up to the shelf to choose a game to play it that game night, you have literally three seconds to get that person to decide to pick up that box,

flip it over, learn a little bit more about it and take it home. Is three seconds like a science, like have you done research on this? You know there's three seconds. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty precise, Jamie. Well, I think we all say this, and maybe I'm giving away the keys to the castle, but in retail, we say we have three feet and three seconds to make a consumer purchase. You're three feet away from the product, and you have three seconds to make that person decide to pick it up,

learn more about it, or decide to just blindly buy it. So for Jamie, the question of theming and design and title is all about that three feet and three seconds. When you get close, does our game very... quickly peak the customer's curiosity somehow. And here, amidst all the trust your gut, use the Force Luke stuff, Jamie brings us a sweet, sweet numerical oasis because she says we can try to reason through this a bit. So what will peek a big box customer's curiosity?

Well, who is that customer, we should ask? The number one consumer that walks into these big boxes are generally millennial women, probably who are owning the household purchasing dollars, who are between the ages of 28 and 44. So that's your core customer. Our core customer is, it is basically you, Erica. You're the core customer. It's me.

I feel seen. Yep, that's me. Age-wise, at least, it's also me a little bit. So there is data supporting the fact that people go into a big box retailer to buy games. for two reasons. One, for game night that night with their friends or family. That night.

That night. Oh, no, I've scheduled game night. I forgot. I don't have a game. That's right. They want to play something new. Oh, okay. Sure.

That makes more sense. So a game that they buy that night to play that night with their friends or family or as a gift for someone else. Those are the two main reasons they come in. So millennials, giving gifts, spicing up the old game night. This was a bit of a revelation for us. Yeah, and just to step back for a second, after we had that big meeting with the Exploding Kittans with their three themes and names, we tried to trust the process to let the choices percolate. But that anti-data-driven process, it just doesn't work.

No. No, it totally worked. Of course it did. They know what they're doing. After a few weeks, just as they'd predicted, one of Exploding Kittens' themes and titles did start to stand out for us, but for the Exploding Kittins team as well. It was a name that we all just liked saying, like we wanted to tell our family and friends about and just couldn't stop thinking about. It was a theme that just felt fun to spend time inside. I can't defend it. It was just instinct. That theme and that name was Drum roll please. Sell me a Sasquatch. Oh, is that the sound?

You get a Sasquatch and you get a Sasquatch. Yes. Sell me a Sasquatch. We loved it. I don't know what to say. And until we talked to Jamie, it had not occurred to me, there was something else special about sell me a Sasquatch. Because unlike the theme that was funny mascots or the one where cats had jobs or whatever,

there was something about Sell Me a Sasquatch I hadn't quite been able to put my finger on. Ah, yes, that was it. Sell Me a Sasquatch was hitting me right in the old X-Files. Ah, yes, the breakout TV show about paranormal things viewed by tens of millions of people back in the 90s. And you suspect what? Bigfoot?

Scully, it'll be a nice trip to the forest. Sell Me a Sasquatch, a game where you spend an evening with family and mysterious creatures, that was surgical nostalgia, right to my elder millennial heart, to Sunday evening with dad safely watching spooky X-File stories. Or maybe you were one of the millions of 80s kids traumatized by NBC's Unsolved Mysteries. Is Bigfoot real?

An elaborate ongoing hoax. We wanted to believe in the 80s and 90s. And look, maybe we were, were just grasping for logic inside this wild exploding kittens process. But if the core customers walking into Big Box are millennials, we could do worse than picking a theme and a name that might cut to their 80s and 90s hearts. It all comes down to three feet and three seconds inside a store, a gut reaction to a name and a theme. So what would Jamie's gut reaction be to ours? Okay, so here's what we and Exploding Kittens are thinking.

Erica? It's going to be called, sell me a Sasquatch. Sell me a Sasquatch? Yeah. Okay. Listening back, it does sound a little like Jamie hates this idea, but her face does not say that. She seems unsure, not hateful.

Just like, let me process this. She's a thinker. Let me do this again. Sell me a Sasquatch. Sell me a Sasquatch. Is it cute? We don't know how cute it is yet, do we? That's cute.

It's cute. It's very cute. It's very cute. Yes. In fact, Explodding kittens had mocked up some cover art. So picture a vending machine and jammed inside, pressed up against the glass, is a very sweet, very cute Sasquatch. Yes. A cute Sasquatch ready to be sold.

Yeah. And I would say Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, whatever we want to call that. that old buddy is trending and super hot right now. That's what we're hoping. So I actually love that. I think you're right on the money with the trend here. Obviously, Jamie would know that kind of thing better than we do. But I will say if you squint at Google Trends for Sasquatch,

it kind of looks like searches have been on the rise over the last half dozen years. And if I may add one hard data point, my nephew is very into Sasquatch. Sasquatch gifts for Christmas, and I do consider him, a five-year-old trendsetter. Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. Sell me a Sasquatch. It has a good rhythm. Yeah. Okay.

So on a scale of sure thing to don't call it that, where are you on Sell Me a Sasquatch? Home run. I'm probably at a nine on this one. Whoa! Can we add a fairy in there? I do feel like... Off mic there. You can hear Kelly Volik from Exploiting.

kittens weigh in. In fact, there is a fairy in the game. That's right. See, okay, guys, now that we just went to a 10 out of 10, whoa. I mean, look, I won't pretend to fully understand it, but Jamie knows what the people want, or more importantly, what Big Box wants, I guess. This is really great. This is great. This is great. We were feeling about as good as we could possibly feel, about cracking our name and our theme and turning our yacht into a yacht. And that is when... So let's talk about what we all kind of agreed on a few months ago, which was sell me a saskatch. Elon Lee and Thor Ritz from Exploding Kittens called Another Meeting.

I still really love that name and that theme. Uh-oh. We ran into a problem with, mostly with the international teams. What? They don't know what a saskwatch is. Hold on. Yeah. Hold on.

They don't have saskwatches in Europe. They do not have Sasquatches in Europe, he says. How much of our, like, what are we expecting, like, the international audience to buy? Like, you know. Yeah. It's typically about 20% of sales. Okay. That's not.

Okay. No, that's not nothing. Are you sure they don't know about the Yeti? I mean, I'm not sure they don't know about the Yeti, but sell me a Yeti. No, no. Didn't roll off as well. Well, yes, you got it. You have to be creative.

But what about like, yeat me a Yeti? Like, throw me a Yeti. They probably don't know about yeat. They probably don't know about yeat. Yeah, I think you've introduced the whole new problem. So it doesn't matter that, like, the Loch Ness monster would be known or whatever. It's because we were so heavy on the title Sasquatch that was going to tank the whole thing? Yeah, yeah, because we would have to either translate the word Sasquatch to something else.

And then suddenly the game doesn't have the right name. or we'd have to leave that in English and just let people scratch their heads and say, I don't know what that word is, I can't pronounce it. It's very, very difficult, and I'm going to move on to the next game. After the break, we are miserable. But it gets better and how you can get your idea into the Planet Money game. I have heard a lot about you, but I'm going to have you just like introduce yourself to us. So I'm Yuri Hosta.

My team and I manage all of the international business for exploding kittens. So anything outside of North America. And Yuri, have you never heard of a Sasquatch before? For real? I have heard of it. I have heard of it. Yes, definitely. But I'm not so sure about all the other people in Europe.

So that's why we're thinking we might need to switch it up a bit. Ah. Huh. Uh-huh. Yori Hostas says that international business is actually more like 30% of exploding kitten sales at this point and growing. Yeah, but not monolithicly. Yuri has seen different exploding kittens games take hold in different countries, different preferences. France, for instance, is definitely more of a card game market and is often looking for a bit more layered and complex rules.

I was rolling my eyes. Sorry, Franz. Spain and Italy. maybe seems more dynamic play. So, for instance, our Trotro burrito range does better in those markets than many other markets in Europe. Meaning the game where you throw a foam burrito at each other is specifically popular with the Italians and Spaniards. Yeah, and then the game where you imagine being a horrible therapist has been doing well in Germany. And there are several other markets where it doesn't perform as well yet.

Interesting. Obviously, Austria is where Freud is from, you know, therapy, Freud. It's funny that you mentioned that, because I think, like, within two weeks of us announcing the launch, we were contacted by the Freud Museum asking if they could sell it in their gift shop. But, okay, the now-unitled Planet Money Game, is it really worth rethinking the whole name for Europe? Well, Yuri says there is reason to take this seriously. So I think overall our expectations are quite high. So in Germany, there's this game fair called Spiel. It takes place every year in Essen.

Gigantic. Exactly. So we did have the game there this year in October, and it was actually quite well received. All right. We're not throwing anything at each other with this game. So are the Italians and Spaniards going to not like it? No, I think they'll be that. French going to like it because it's a card game and it's a little complex.

Yeah, I think they will. All of those markets were on board. Obviously, a lot will be influenced by the theme that we ultimately picked. So hopefully we'll be able to make some good progress and lock something now. Now, we should say, it's not unheard of to launch a game in the U.S. and Europe with two different names. It's also not great either. It would slow things way down in Europe. It would obviously require completely redoing all of the art and the naming

and require a completely separate factory setup or whatever. It's possible. But regardless, let's cue the sad montage music. Because we spent forever trying to come up with a whole new title and theme. Okay, close your eyes. Please be a taxidermy chupacabra. Please be a taxidermy chupacabra. Something that would work for both America and Europe.

and first Exploding Kittens came back to us with, I guess it was like a swap shop theme? Sell me something stupid. Okay. Imagine you are at a swap meet? But just like the craziest most insane swap meat ever. And the items you trade each other are just like the wackiest junk you could imagine. We have a dog with human arms. Oh, I'm so out on that one.

We have a cactus with a sign hanging around it called Free Hug. This guy is very silly. Yeah, yeah. We have a couple's toilet. That's what I'm looking at. It's in the shape of a heart. That's the grossest thing I've ever thought of. That is so gnarly.

Hard pass on the toilet, but also, I don't know, a bunch of random objects just, it just wasn't a market for anything anymore. It felt wrong. All right. Okay. Do you want my feedback? Yeah.

Yes. I'm so naive in this space, right? I don't know what matters and doesn't. matter. But the basic tension is you're pulling this towards something that will sell copies to put it nicely. And we're not, I guess. And I think part of the reason this tension is interesting is because hopefully we're going to find something that's really oddly in the middle for both of us. And I think that will be the right place. Like maybe somebody even said it in this meeting and we just didn't realize it yet.

I did. I did say it. And it was, sell me a Sasquatch. We've all said it. What are we doing? Alon agreed to throw us a bone and actually try and make cars work. We'd asked a million times, he said he'd give it a whirl. And actually, a bunch of you, listeners, you got a little sneak peek at this. All right. Everybody ready? My whiteboard here is filled with car theme ideas.

We held an online event to talk about the making of our game. And Alon admitted to you all that he was struggling. to come up with a good car theme for us. Okay, here we go. Running on empty. A lot of lemons. He presented a bunch of his possible game titles for everyone to weigh in on. Wheeling and dealing.

That's cute. Yeah, yeah. See what I did there? Rust in peace. I'm going to keep going. Okay. Buy, sell, regret. No.

And listeners, you sure. Let him know that they were not good names. Okay, ready for another dad joke? Dumpster drive. No, nothing. All right, here we go. Welcome to what our meetings are like. We share the ideas.

In the comments, it says, I'm so sorry, Alon, those are all trash. No way. That's so perfect. After weeks and weeks and weeks of bashing our heads against the wall, exploding kittens, they called us back. Hey, everybody. Hello. I think we want to talk about

theming, correct? Sort of the million, literally the million dollar question, I think. Yeah, literally. Is our goal still to try to get this thing on shelves for next Christmas? Next July. So if we want to be in for Christmas next year,

we need to be in by July of 26. That's the idea. I did not realize that's the timeline we were working on. Welcome to the wonderful world of games. So today was originally the due date for this game.

We would love to walk out of this meeting, all holding hands and agreeing on a theme and a title. Okay. Okay. So with that said, we're going to present one theme to you today. Only one. Okay. So just to be clear, you're saying you want us to say yes to the one thing you're about to present. And if we don't, we run the risk of starting to fall even further behind schedule and miss Christmas next.

year. No pressure. Okay. Yeah, no. Let's let's just see what let's see what this is. All right. Steph, I assume the next slide gives everything away. My, my heart is genuinely thumping out of my chest because of how nervous I am that we may not. Okay. Well, go ahead, Steph, hit the button. Okay. What? Yes! Yes! How did we end up here? I know. Do we not care about the European? market? Is that what's going on? So here we have Sell Me a Sasquatch. Yes. Yes. And yeah, so here's what we did. We, like, we came up with 400 million other titles. And we pitched some of them to you and we pitched some of them to giant retailers. And everyone kept coming back to us with like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. But you've got to

at least give us something better than Sell Me a Sasquatch. And we just couldn't. Everyone has fallen in love this name, including our team. But the pushback, of course, was always international. Sasquatch is not a translatable word. And finally, we thought, you know what? Screw him. We just need to go for it with the best name we have. And they'll just deal.

They'll just figure out a solve. It's their problem, not ours. It's sort of our problem. But it's mostly their problem. And we love this so much. Sorry, Europe. Looks like we have an American edition and a European edition. And apparently the Europeans have really pigeonholed exploding kittens as the funny

animal company. So, I don't know, maybe cute animals is what Yuri told us. He'll figure it out. But here in the United States of America, the planet money game is Sell Me a Sasquatch. And here we are. Kelly, have we grabbed the URL yet? Steph, do you know? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm just going for your project manager. No, not yet. We were hoping for your blessings first. Yeah, yeah. Let's go grab. Go grab all of them. Sell me a Sasquatch.com. Have you reached?

So actually don't start searching. searching for it. Oh, because it'll like show, oh, no, sorry. Yeah, it's okay. I didn't, sorry. It's okay. How much did we just increase the price of that URL? We might have.

It won't be bad. If you want me to grab, eat me a Yeti. I'll happily do that too. Yes, please. Just in case the international market line. So yeah, grab that. That's gold. And now, the most important part for you.

Yes, you listening right now. We are going to need so many creatures for selling. for Sell Me a Sasquatch. Listen, we've got the classic cryptids covered. Your big foots, your locks nest monsters, however you'd say that. We've also got some more playful, magical creatures. We have a tooth fairy, a golden goose.

But we need two things from you all at home. Number one, do you have a local legendary cryptid that we must know about? For me, it's the pig people of Meadville, Pennsylvania. I know you're listening to this Exploing Kittens. I still haven't seen a Meadville pig person in the game mock-up. So just saying. But also, we need creative ideas that fit into the Planet Money Wheelhouse, like invented creatures with an economics twist.

So Toxy the toxic asset, a literal black swan, a sad, very slow, dear, you know, stagflation. Tough to beat stagflation. Go to planetmoneygame.com, and there's a post there to download. Download the latest playable prototype, plus a form to submit your creature ideas. We'll post a couple images of cards on the site for inspiration, planetmoneygame.com. And make haste, the window closes at the end of this month.

Planetmoneygame.com and thank you. You are all truly, truly, the Sasquatches in our hearts. Is that nice? You're the best. That's what we mean to say. This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Need and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Willa Rubin and engineered by Cina LaFredo and Quasi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Erica Barris.

This is NPR. Thanks for listening. Hey, Erica, do you mind, will you just, would you sell me that Sasquatch over there in your hand? I've got one here, but I don't know if I'm ready to give it up. You did this whole thing to make Sasquatch. noises. Oh my god, that's the other reason I saw me a Sasquatch. It's totally Chewbac and me. Interesting.