Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Playing Cards

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by podcaster/producer Jordan Kauwling (‘FANTI’, ’The Flop House’) and comedian/podcaster Teresa Lee (new album ‘We’re Still Doing This’) for a look at why playing cards are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Playing cards. Known for having numbers. Famous for having faces sometimes. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why playing cards are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guests today are Jordan Cowling and Teresa Lee. Jordan Cowling is an amazing podcast guest and creator and producer. She's an associate producer of multiple great podcasts at the Maximum Fun Network,

such as Fanti, which is a great show hosted by Travelle Anderson and Jarrett Hill, exploring problematic faves, and so much more. She's also an associate producer for The Flophouse, which is a podcast about bad movies. And one of the hosts there is Elliot Kalin. I hope you've heard the Musk Oxen episode of this show. Elliot is a guest there. Along with Jordan, I'm also joined by Teresa Lee. She is a fantastic stand-up comedian. Her new album is called We're Still Doing This. It's out right now. You can hear it for free on stuff like Spotify. We'll also link ways you can get it directly from her and support her comedy and help her make chunks of great stuff like that. Teresa Lee is many other things, too. She's a

podcaster with her show You Can Tell Me Anything. She's a former colleague of mine at the formerworkplacecrack.com, and she's very kind to make time for guesting on this show right here. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledged Jordan and Teresa each recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Jordan and Teresa each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and K'iche and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about playing cards, as in the noun, the object.

And thank you to listener Alexander Reichard for this suggestion. It won the runoff poll for April. It's one of two patron chosen topics this month. You can join up at sifpod.fun if you want to contribute to that. Make choices. I'm going to say up top that I actually have thought about doing this topic before, and I hesitated because it's huge. So I did corral us a bit material-wise. We won't talk about magic and magicians, even though many of them use playing cards for tricks. We don't talk about, you know, totally unique decks for card games like Exploding Kittens. We also don't talk about card games like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering, where it's based on like purchasing and collecting rare cards. This episode is about like a playing card deck, you know, like

52 cards, four suits. It doesn't have to exactly be that, but that general style of playing cards is what we're talking about. And tarot cards will come up because they're in the history of that, but the focus is, you know, numbers, jack, King, Queen, Ace, that kind of card. And I am so glad we got the push from you folks to do that topic, because it is an amazing launch pad into a bunch of history and lore and also just stories from us, the people on the show. So let's let you hear it. Please sit back or sit behind those weird sunglasses

that all pro poker players have for some reason. I haven't watched in a long time, but there was a guy one time with eyeballs on the lenses. Really didn't care for it. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jordan Cowling and Teresa Lee. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Jordan, Teresa, it's so good to have you. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about playing cards? I can go. I love playing cards. I mean, as an adult, I was not. Yeah. Hi,

I'm Teresa. But as an adult, I don't use them as much. Like I'm not like a gambler, except for with like my emotions. But I, I grew up like playing cards with my grandparents. It's sort of like the way that my grandparents who are from Taiwan, like we didn't always speak the same language and we would play games and that was how we bonded. So I loved using playing cards. But when you said this was about playing cards, I immediately was like, can we talk about tarot? Because I am fully into tarot now. That's great. My partner also has like gotten into it over the pandemic but also in researching this there's so much tarot stuff i think there'll just be a future episode there it's related and it'll

come up but it's a whole rabbit hole yeah i won't i won't mention it too much but i'll just say i didn't get into it it got into me okay i'm too afraid of playing or actually of a tarot cards like i purchased uh rachel true's tarot deck okay and i've just had it set up and i i read like the forward and i pulled one card and i was like oh i'm too this is this is terrifying i don't know i don't even know what it means i didn't look it up it didn't say it's all intuitive don't be scared if you're scared it means something inside you is scaring you outside of the card. Oh, for sure. For sure. Definitely. I'm not ready to face that today or any day. My experience with playing cards is really similar to yours, Teresa, because I played as a kid and I don't play as much now.

I don't think I've used a deck of greeting cards in a while, but I remember watching my abuelita play. She used to play this Spanish, I think it may be an Italian card game, but she used to play this game called Briska. And I would just watch her play. And as a sad kid, playing cards was my go-to game. So I would play war and and I'd play Uno and I'd like go to camp and play cards because I didn't have a lot of friends and you could play cards and you didn't have to be like super conversational. So that was my experience growing up playing cards. I felt like War was like a cool one though.

Like I thought you were going to say solitaire because I feel like War was one where it's like the cool kids were playing and then like nobody would teach you the rules if you didn't already know it. That was the vibe that I remember. Like, how do you play? And they're like, you don't know how to play war. That's how I felt when I was a kid watching like the elder cousins play a game called Spades. And I never understood it. And I still don't understand it. But it was like, if you don't understand this this game you can't even be in our presence you can't even be in this room but you can't sit you can't sit with us but playing solitaire it's funny I've never played the actual

card game like with a real life deck but I've played like computer solitaire a lot as a kid again because I was a really sad kid and I realized that I don't actually know how to play solitaire. I just liked the act of like clicking on things similar to like Minecraft but yeah I love solitaire but only on a computer. The computer one's better because if you ever like it's happened like maybe

once but if you ever do win all the cards go and fly everywhere and it doesn't in real life that doesn't happen you just have to be like, all right, time to clean up. And it's very anticlimactic. Yeah, exactly. At one point in the pandemic, I tried to find just a browser version

of Microsoft Solitaire for fun, because I have a Mac, so I don't have it. And it was the game, except it didn't do the dancing cards at the end. And I got real mad. I was like, why did I spend this time? This was useless. Yeah.

Someone should just make the YouTube gif of that. And then I bet that would have millions of views. I mean, if it doesn't exist, that's my next money making scheme. I would definitely watch that video and subscribe to your channel. Yeah. At the end of all old school games, like ski free and solitaire. Like, but like when you want. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm an older millennial. I need constant validation with no. And I'm like, did I just date myself? I'm glad that I'm amongst my people. By this time next week, I hope we're're all like oh theresa just dropped a new dancing cards have you seen it the new one's out like every week you know on the channel it's gonna be great yeah yeah i love it and also and thank you both for those stories of being kids playing

and i especially like jordan your story of like i relate to that. It's a cards being a way to socialize with kids, especially at camp. It was, I was briefly in a group at church camp called the card sharks, which just meant we played cards together in the cabin, but it was like, you know, it's a good way to meet people. I love that for you. Thank you. Did we gamble? No, but we played.

It was great. It's funny because I can remember as a kid, one of the, you know, when you're a kid and you're like, I want to be a doctor. I wanted to be an, I wanted to be a doctor. I didn't know what a doctor did. I wanted to be an interior decorator because I thought that that sounded like really like cool. Like I'm an interior decorator. And then another occupation option that I had was that I wanted to work at a casino and be like a dealer because I didn't understand I guess I didn't understand capitalism so I thought that like if the table won that like I got to take that money and like this is a really lucrative business plan because

the house always wins you're like I always win yeah like am I not the house that's so funny the when I was my equivalent of that as a little girl was i wanted to be a video girl like in like shaking my butt in music videos because and i like in a very innocent way i know like as an adult now you're like how are we supposed to react to this but as a child like i love to shake my butt like a little kid shaking their butt like you know like a little little kid like it's so fun and i would just get jump on like the coffee table and shake my butt and then you know there's an in-between when you don't really understand the context and you're watching music videos and it's so innocent and i was like that is a job i could just like shake my butt to music

and get paid uh apparently you still can but uh it's a little different now as an adult so i feel like i gave up on that dream don't give up on that dream you could still be a child but a job i need a time machine okay i like that i feel like as a little kid you're just all energy too so it's like i can shake my butt forever like if i could get paid for that amazing i'll never run out of energy yeah i love that i as a kid i i was just uh i was like a tomboy but also very introverted so i would have a new crush on a boy like every every other week every 10 days and i would like do stunts on my bike and like ride by their house and like be sweating oh my god that's awesome i could run and then i had no concept of

the fact that like that's not attractive like i'm like pulling sweat everywhere like look how fast i would have had a crush on you i love i loved i love the skater and bikers i'm like that's the way to my heart just do something dangerous yeah alex what's your what i mean you know this is your pod but we're so curious what's your relationship with cards yeah i think i think it was like was one of the ways along with sports where you could just hang out with other fellas without constantly convert like there was a game element to justify you sitting together it uh it made it simpler at all and also i the other one is that in middle school again there's a very cool story another one i was in bridge club for a bit and so i learned bridge and and the person running it i was like do they love bridge or are they do they just love

all old-fashioned stuff i wonder and then it turned out the the like culmination of bridge club was a night event where we all played bridge and we were supposed to square dance and i was like oh okay there's an old-fashioned person okay great now in bridge club is there like a is there like in hierarchy are there like you know the jock bridge clubs and you know members is there like you know spill the details, please. Right. Like, oh, he's a bad boy. Trump says spades.

Wow. Yeah, it's just all these tears of coolness. Yeah. I know nothing about Bridge. I have to confess that. I don't know any of the rules. Yeah. But it's such a commonly referenced thing in sitcoms. I feel like i grew up watching sitcoms that reference

bridge and i never bothered to understand it i feel like it's something that you play like on the lanai with rose and darthi like if you get to a certain age like you should probably get a book on it or learn to watch a couple of youtubes because you're gonna spend a lot of time drinking arnold palmer's and playing bridge if you're. Did you guys ever play, well, like we thought it was cool to call it actually Bullshit, but I guess just it's BS, right? That's the actual name. Church Campo is BS, yeah. That was like a hot game for a while.

And it was like, also, I feel like we thought it was really cool to say the bleep part as like 10 year olds. And that game was like so popular. Do you guys remember that? Like, was that? Yeah. Did you guys like that too? was that just a Bay Area thing? I do remember playing Bull Bleep as a kid and having a lot of fun with it.

Yeah, because it's so risque to say. It's a simple one to get a lot of people involved. It's a fun party one for kids and explain to people. Newcomers can come in and you'll be like, watch around and then they get it yeah yeah absolutely it was it was the opposite of bridge club in so many ways it was it was fun it was youthful you could understand it yeah it was it was good bridge club is so exclusive guys oh my goodness there's a lot of politics behind it i didn't realize i'd have so much to talk about cards and and really already i'm like having to be like okay hold it in hold it in because

yeah when you say cards i was like okay and now i'm like memory is flooding back like cards everywhere yeah it's like the you know the scene in alice in wonderland at the end just like right but they're doing the microsoft jumping like they're going you know yeah yeah in my head i'm like oh what this game that game slapjack what blackjack i love it i unlocked a memory from my early my early 20s when i was like still going through like my jerk phase of like an infatuation with playing 52 pickup because I never did it as a kid. So I like living my, my teenage years is like 23 year old. And I always thought that that, I don't know why I thought that was so funny to play 52 pickup. That's such a jerk move.

It's such a horrible thing to do to someone. Yeah. I don't know what that is, but based on the name, can I guess? Oh, is it when you just knock all the cards on the floor and make someone pick it up yeah that's right yeah that's how i played it yeah no one ever picked the cards up i was always the one like well i'm not going to just leave this mess here so i would really be a game against myself which is just like a cool thing where you're like do

you want to play 52 and then you do it and they go or is it like people know it i would i would go in under the guise that we were going to play another game. And then we're actually playing 52 Pickup. And then I would do like some kind of a trick. The cards would be on the floor. And then the person would be like, I'm not picking that up. Well, I do it because this is my house. So really the trick was on me.

It feels like a real older sibling move. And then hopefully you can make your younger siblings do it. Or your parents are like, just clean up. And everybody has to do it. I'm an older sibling. I'm an older sibling, too. Oh, are we all? Okay, well, then I guess it sucks.

Yeah, it's definitely older sister, younger brother energy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love these. And I think from here we can get into the first chunk of info in the show. Because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that is in a segment called... On the podcast, the secretly interesting podcast, we have some stats tonight.

Podcast, the secretly interesting podcast. We have some stats tonight. And that name was submitted by Luke Sowers. Thank you, Luke. We have a new name every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or SifPod at gmail.com. That was great.

I loved it. I loved it. Beautiful angelic voice. Well, the first number was going to be 52 for the number of suited cards in a standard deck, but we've covered that with the game from being an older sibling of 52 pickup, where that's the surprise. But that's in a standard suit deck. But that doesn't count the jokers, right? And that doesn't count the jokers, yeah. There's usually two jokers.

There's usually that informational card maybe from the manufacturer. So there's usually like that informational card maybe from the manufacturer so there's a few extra yeah i feel like that's such a waste of whatever paper it you know to produce that that informational card you just kind of keep that in the box you never use it and also the jokers do we use the jokers i don't remember what game do we use a joker for well certain games it's like a really good card certain games is a really bad one but it is funny that it's just not included because it's like it's always there like there aren't decks that don't come with it right yeah there are definitely decks that don't come with it and i don't recall ever

you i know when my what belita played prisca i don't think you use the eight the nine or the joker but i can't recall a game that you ever really need the Joker. Isn't it in BS that you can use it to sub any card? Like it's kind of like a trump card. Let's get rid of the word trump card. Yeah, big time. Yeah, I'm on board with that. We need a new one.

It's weird because it's like the word trump came before the person trump, but now I feel like I cannot use that word. But I think that Joker is like that in some games. I guess Alex would know more than me. I have no idea. I didn't do the research. I do. Toward the end of the show, we'll actually stumble on where

Joker's came from. Oh, okay. Great. And I also ran into that feeling of like, can we call it a Biden card or like, can someone else take that over? I know it predates him, but please, that would just feel better. I guess it's like, I would take away. Cause then I'm like, when you said Biden, I'm like, it's still like charged in a way. I would like give it a super random, like, I'm almost thinking like, you know, on tinder there's like super likes can we just be like it's my super light car or something that like to the degree of like it's a power a turbo

turbo car turbo car turbo car there it is that's a turbo yeah yeah okay that's the one we solved it that is the one call websters i'm sorry for derailing this, Alex. Please continue. Oh, no, no. I had that exact thought researching. I was like, oh, no, that word. We need it back. Why did he do that?

Well, next number here. This is the number 218,792. So well over 200,000. That's the number of playing cards in the biggest house of cards ever constructed. What? No way. And I say that as a picture of the person with it, but this is the Guinness Book of World Records. They say that Brian Berg, who is a self-described card stacker, he owns cardstacker.com if you want to find him. I am going to that right now.

Oh, yeah. I'm looking at this picture, and I'm just trying to wrap my brain around how one gets into the world of competitive card stacking or card stacking to get some kind of record book. How do you even get into that life? This is cool. Is it like you start in the bridge club and then it's like a gateway drug into like i think it starts by your parents don't love you enough and then i'm sure his parents loved him very much and he just enough that he wanted to love more things your parents love you just enough this is wild like i this website is very professional like when you say

cardstacker.com i imagine it's like sometimes people like have a specialty but they don't spend much on their branding that it would just be like comic sans and be like okay but he's good at his thing we'll call him it's a good website it looks really nice oh no by day i'm a web developer and by night i am a card stacker card stacker. Sexy card stacker. It's like, good. And his record-setting one in 2010, he... And I assume he was hired by the casinos to do this, but he built a massive replica of a set of three casinos

in Macau in China. And it's more than 34 feet long, 11 feet wide, and 9 feet tall. For metric friends, that's over 10 meters long, 3 1⁄2 feet wide, and 9 feet tall. For Metric Friends, that's over 10 meters long, 3.5 meters wide, almost 3 meters tall. And it's just a giant total house of cards of these three casinos. And nothing is glued, nothing is taped. He says that his favorite part is knocking it down at the end to prove it. It's just cards piled onto each other i love that

nothing is taped nothing is glued it's just all balanced is that true for all of these yeah that's all he does that's wonderful there's so much there i mean if i could get uh serious for a second and i won't but i think there's such like a lesson about life in that because if i i mean i don't have the temperament or the patience to like build like a sandcastle or a house of cards or anything like that, that takes like, you know, kind of dexterity and patience. But if I built a house of cards, I would use glue because I would want that to like stand the test of time. I would want future generations to be like this, Jordan, she built this. This is, this built this. This is wonderful. But I think that it's so beautiful that he builds these houses of cards and then he just watches them beautifully destroy.

Like, that's how life is when you think about it, which, you know, I guess we should. Would it still be technically a house of cards if it was glued? Because I feel like, you know, even in the saying house of cards, kind of implies that, like, it's flimsy and it will fall over. So, like, it makes me wonder, like, what does it mean? You know what even in the saying house of cards kind of implies that like it's flimsy and it will fall over. So like it makes me wonder like, what does it mean? You know what I mean?

Like, I don't know. Would it be a house of cards if it was? It almost can't be right. I think you're right. I think it's like implied in the requirement because otherwise somebody would just staple together like more cards than this. And they're like, now I did it. It's like sand sculptures

on the beach you know they always look so cool but if you're like building it with a rock then it's like this does not count it's like it's only cool because it's a sand sculpture if you're creating a mermaid out of a rock it's like okay well now you're just making a sculpture right yeah it's like when i was a kid and i would solve the rubik's cube and i would bring it to my father and he'd be like clearly you just removed the stickers and put them in the right place. Technically you did it, but this is very much cheating. But I love that for him. I think that that's wonderful.

Next number here is the year 1685. Talking about 1685 talking about 1685 that is the first year when french canada printed paper money made of playing cards there was a time in like colonial french canada when according to the guardian the governor of quebec owed money for some debts from the government new currency had not come in yet so they issued temporary money in the form of ious printed on the backs of old playing cards and that might technically be the first like original paper currency printed in canada and in north america because all the money before that was from colonies or people already living here that's so cool car it's You've come a long way, baby. I love it.

Just thinking of like if you play a game of like poker with cards that are also currency, like if you win, do you win like double money or is that math not check out? Yeah. It's so stupid. I really wanted to make that joke, but it's really dumb. It does turn really chicken and egg with your poker game if the cards are themselves money then it's like who's winning or losing i don't know i got dealt good money i'm gonna leave yeah well i mean that's probably another episode that i shouldn't even open up the door for but like money's not real if you think

about it like we just decide a thing represents another thing so that's what i keep saying about my student loans and they're like no they're quite they're quite real you're right though money isn't real yeah it's no less weird for it to be scribbled on old playing cards by a french governor like yeah it's still all made up it's not it's not any different it's like when someone says uh oh this word is made up it's not a real word it's still all made up. It's not, it's not any different. It's like when someone says, oh, this word is made up. It's not a real word. It's like all words are made up. Yes.

That's a good point. It's only value that you give it. From here, those are the numbers we can get into. There's three big takeaways for the episode. And let's get into takeaway number one. The history of playing cards moved east to west. Saying that because we don't know exactly who first invented them or where, but historians seem to agree that the first playing cards were in Asia, probably East Asia, and then

sort of moved west across the world, including to the Americas. Were they playing cards? Because I know like there's like Mahjong was a big thing, which isn't playing cards in that realm. Like were they evolving from different forms? Or are we talking like literally like this 52 sort of deck was coming from Asia? Which I have no idea. I'm curious because I know the numbers are different in,

what do you call it, in Chinese, like it's written different. So that's fascinating to me that playing cards existed, even though, like the number system is different. That's the perfect question. Yeah. From what I'm reading, it seems like there were a form of playing cards in Asia first. And then also there were those tile games in parallel. And then from there, especially as it moved through Arabia, and then into Europe, we started to get what ultimately became these like 52 cards we're used to. Gotcha. That's really interesting. I thought playing cards, I mean, I did no research for the show

because I'm a professional. I thought that they originated in France, so I don't know why I would think that France didn't culturally appropriate and colonize. But that's so interesting. Because the suits that we think of actually came from France. Yeah, that was where we got the suits. We got a couple sources here in particular, an Atlas Obscura article by Dan Nozowitz, and then also the guardian and the atlantic but as far as what the first ever playing cards were there's a really early like debatable

candidate which is that in tang dynasty china they had a game called the game of leaves that was around in the 800s ad also china was one of the first countries to use block printing and so that's part of why we think maybe that was one of the first card games. However, Atlas Obscurus says that there's also some recent scholarship that says that that might have been a dice game. And then the printed material was instructions. So we're not actually sure if it was a card game or not. But that's one like early candidate. What we are sure of is that, according to a couple different historians, the earliest cards they started in Asia, moved their way through Arabia, ended up in Europe, and then spread elsewhere from there. The origin is probably either China or Persia or India, which I know is a lot of places.

But the general idea is that it's from that zone of the world. It's interesting because a lot of, I feel like those more traditional games tend to have some sort of root, like even like in chess and stuff, like a root in like war strategy, like I'll bite with a very, very diluted, like accessible for children, you know, all the killing part taken out of it.

But I'm curious because it seems like based on everything we've talked about so far, cards have always been for entertainment. So I'm curious if it seems like based on everything we've talked about so far, cards have always been for entertainment. So I'm curious if there was like a, like, you know, there's like a propaganda behind it to get people on board for like War. Or it was just that it was so in the zeitgeist. Like, because the suites even, you know, there's like the hierarchy. So it doesn't seem like there was ever a practical use besides fun, which is fine, but I'm curious, like why that, that it's so connected to this hierarchy of, uh, how would you call it? Not royals, but of like rank.

That's true. There's a lot of military, you know? It's so funny. In Briska, the suits are, so like in traditional deck of cards, you have like, you have the military or you have like the merchant. And then in Briska, like the Spanish, because when you play that swords, the baton, the cup, I think represents the church. So it's like, I don't know, maybe. Wait, say that again? Yeah.

Because those are tarot suites. Yeah, yeah. This is very exciting. Wait a minute. Have we cracked? Cups, coins. Is that what you said? Cups and coins? Yeah. Okay. And the other ones would be

um wands and uh swords yeah or or we would say uh batons but i'm also wondering if uh it's the the church and the state and then for uh the latinx community like the us taking kind of like the yoruba traditions and our our our deities and like adding them to the saints and like translating that into the card game form. Interesting. I don't know, maybe. This is secretly incredibly fascinating. So now we've got Catholicism in the mix. She said the title.

She said the title. I got to look at the camera and say no and that's that's really exciting jordan that you played with because one thing we'll get into a little later is that the suits are still different and uh the the standard cards of some european countries and it's partly related to tarot and so so like you played with a spanish deck growing up at least for those games. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's awesome. Wow. As far as the spread of the cards goes, another thing we have solid is the first written record of playing cards, which is in China and was in 1294, because it's a police record of gamblers being arrested and having their cards taken away. But from there, they spread through Arabia. And then in Europe in the late 1300s, there's records of what they call Saracens games,

which are probably card games. And Saracens was an old timey term for Muslim people in the Middle East. So they were saying, oh, you know, Muslim games as in cards. And then from there, either through Spain or Italy, cards go into Europe. And then we get playing cards and tarot cards developing at the same time. So those tarot suits of the wands and swords and cups and coins, or pentacles, I think it is, not coins, but that matches a lot of older European deck styles like the Spanish style. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break.

We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty.

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And remember, no running in the halls. It all fits together. I think we can go straight into takeaway number two of the show. Here we go into takeaway number two. The standard four playing card suits are only about 100 years old, and they're not used everywhere i think i i think i grown up just assumed that the cards i had were everybody's cards and they're very common but that's not the uh the standard thing as we've talked about and we talked a little bit about before about them being french they're called the french suits uh they were popular in france and then crucially also britain got into them So both those countries were spreading them all over the world and all over their empires eventually.

But the French suits look the way they look mostly because they're easy to print. They're super simple shapes. It's much easier than some of the other suits going on. So that's why they're kind of stripped down like that. Last year for the Maximum Fun Drive, shout out to Maximum Fun. We printed, so for our members, I forget what tier it was, but we printed out a deck of custom greeting cards, custom Max Fun cards. And I'm just looking at, I think we actually stuck to the traditional cards. Yeah, these are all the traditional. I think we only got creative on the Joker and on the other side of the card.

But I'm always fascinated by people who get custom decks of cards. I guess when you're a kid and the first time you see the nudie deck, it's pretty interesting. I've never seen that. Is it just naked people on a deck? Yeah, it's just naked people on a deck. But it's like playing people on a deck um but it's it's like you know like playing bull bleep it's like risque to see like oh this naked there's a naked dude or a naked lady on this deck of cards um i

had a pair or i had a deck of um hip-hop printed cards done up a couple of weeks ago so like i think it's i think it's interesting how creative we can get. I'm surprised that that's not a larger industry because I think that, like you said, Alex, this has been around for 100 years, but it's pretty much the same. I think we could get even more creative with it. Yeah. Etsy, do your thing. Yeah. Do your thing, Etsy. I want to say I had Star Trek cards where it was like uniform colors instead of suits.

It's the same idea. You can just do that. There's no limit on it. I used to get them from air because I think the international airlines, especially the Chinese ones, would do it a lot. And every couple of years, I'd go visit my grandparents in Taiwan. So I had like a whole drawstring bag of like China Airline Eva Air like all the plane cards you would get back when you know flying was supposed like they were still kind of making it feel like that it was supposed to be fun to actually be on the plane and you know now it's

just like you gotta pay for everything get on get off uh there was a time when it was like you pack stuff to do on the plane. Remember that? No, I just scroll through my photo gallery. Yeah, the plane was like, it's exciting, you're here. Yeah, yeah. Now it's like, oh, just sleep and wake up and hope you made it. With the suits of cards, so we have what became the French suits,

because in the 1400s, that's the first European mass production of playing cards, mostly done in France. And they print these hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades that they find easy to do. But even into the present day, there were some other suits in other countries in Europe that they've just kind of kept locally. And with that Spanish deck, you can get swords, clubs, cups, and coins. The Italian one is swords, batons, cups, and coins. And both those are very similar to tarot. The Swiss deck, if you get one, is acorns, escutcheons, which look like shields, and then flowers and bells.

And a German deck is acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells. Because that was just what they picked in their country. But they didn't build the British or French empires so much, and so it didn't spread so much. Interesting. Obviously, Spain had an empire and stuff. But the way things shook out over time is that we ended up centralizing mostly to this one set of suits.

But that's relatively recent in history. And even today, you can go to those parts of europe and play with other suits what would be your suits if you created one i feel like mine would just be a series of of like well-worn emojis or like gifs or something like that yeah i love that ice cream in there somewhere like just an ice cream there's enough to fill out a whole you know what i mean like you've got ice cream bars you got ice cream keep going i love it chocolate whatever ice cream chocolate okay this uh this vibe we're talking about and like etsy before there's also a thing where especially especially in medieval Europe, where it's massive wealth inequality. You have rich people commissioning decks for themselves. And we'll have pictures linked of what is the oldest complete deck of 52 cards in the world, because it was a rich guy's deck.

It was made around 1475 AD. It's called the Cloisters Deck because they keep it at a museum called the cloisters in manhattan in new york but it was made for somebody who loves hunting and so it's all falconry stuff the suits are hunting horns dog collars hound tethers and little nooses for your falcon those are this noose thing looks creepy i was like what is this like uh it's a it's a game noose it's called yeah okay so it's it's it's for hunting animals it's it's bad but i guess not for people you know it kind of looks like the things that they uh when you go to your ob that they make you um sit in to do your checkup oh the stirrups i guess i will not relate yeah okay yeah yeah

it's it's clinical i was like what's it doing on these cards though like there's like a custom gynecological day oh my god i mean because also every kind of cards we could joke about, it probably exists somewhere. Like, even today, people are just customizing these every way they can. Yeah, even when you were mentioning that, Alex, I was searching on Etsy the different kinds of decks that I could get. Oh my god, give us a top highlight. What did you find? highlight what did you find so there's of course the there's like a i don't know why this exists but there's like the custom ones that you can make of like your family you know the the one where like the family photo there's ones you can make for your dog i love it there's ones that you can make for your cat i love that even more um this one seems to be like funeral themed like

funeral home themed i don't know why that's needed but somebody out there like a favor to take a home after a memorial that seems oh no i didn't even think of that strange party favors for i guess it's like it's like you know people always say like when i die i want you to have fun but then like in reality it's like that's very awkward for the people who are alive like i understand why you want people you want to think that you're leaving behind fun but like let us more if we're gonna walk away with the playing card we're gonna feel weird about it okay hey yeah when i die play 52 pickup right over my right over my open casket like when i die you're allowed to cry as loud as you want you know never stop crying cry for

months years it's fine right i like that anyways i warned you i'm so sorry well there's also with the with like the suits of cards that this last thing here i had no idea about till researching but there was like one last push to change what the suits are in that standard french suited deck and it was to add a fifth suit so they tried in the late 1930s most of the big u.s playing card companies including the u.s playing card company that does bicycle and a lot of the big ones. In the late 1930s, they rolled out a deck with a fifth suit. So there was a suit of eagles, which were printed green. They were not red or black.

And it was a 65-card deck. You got five entire suits in it. And they were initially a hit. People were like, I'm going to do all kinds of games with this. Here we go. Oh, cool. Did it come with games that you could play? Or they were very Microsoft about it, be like, you decide what to do all kinds of games with this. Here we go. Cool. Did it come with games that you could play where they were, like, very Microsoft about it? Be like, you decide what to do with it.

Because it's like, it could be cool, but it's also super, like, you know, breaking a tradition to be like, what are we supposed to do with this? Like, it's just a suit of cards. I feel like there's so many opportunities for like so when i play one card game that i do still play it's like uno and a couple of years ago it came out that like the way everyone has been playing uno is like incorrect and uno itself was like no you guys are playing uno wrong and we were like shut up uno was wrong yeah i feel like consensus agreed that uno was stupid yeah but i'm just like imagining like when this changeover happened like people playing like Uno was wrong. Yeah, Uno is wrong. I feel like consensus agreed that Uno was stupid. Yeah, but I'm just, like, imagining, like, when this changeover happened, like, people playing.

Like, wait, how many, like, the dealer, you know, dealing the cards. And you're like, wait, I have too many cards in my hand. Like, no, we're playing. How many cards was it? 65. We're playing with a deck of 65 cards. And you're like, no, I don't. I play the traditional way.

I just want to, like, be a fly on the wall and, like, see all those fistfights that probably broke out. I'm sure traditional way. I just want to be a fly on the wall and see all those fist fights that probably broke out. I'm sure it happened. Was the eagle a patriotic reference? It was. And then also the British companies that did this made it a crown and they did it blue. So there was also a blue crown suit going on in the UK because they're monarchical. Yeah. No joke.

Sponsored by Netflix, the crown. So it sounds like playing cards have a lot of like just propaganda behind them. Like whatever's going on in the in that century. They're just like, this is what you value in, you know, game form. Yeah, we actually will. We won't really get into it. But in the French Revolution, they experimented with different face cards. That was a thing.

Like without heads on them, it would be a three-headed card. Right. That's a deck I want on Etsy right now. I'm sure it exists. I'm sure it exists. It comes with a little, like, a paper cutter that looks like a guillotine. Yeah, so you can, like can custom die cut your own cards

and you just chop the head off of each. And then when you're playing, it's like, I fold, your cards are really short. I don't like it. You got a lot of short cards. Oh no, let's not be mean to short people. No, okay, okay, I know.'s actually that's i feel like that's like a me thing because i used to make like you know as a comedian it's an easy punchline and then

i realized i was like this is also body shaming but it's different because as like a like as a girl out there we're just so used to like just like overcompensating for guys making fun of us and then i thought about it and i was like there's no reason for me to make fun of short people uh but napoleon specifically we can because you know if you're gonna conquer and kill then it's okay but short guys you're fine it's so funny because i'm i'm pretty short and i always forget that i'm short until i'm around someone who's like five six or above and. And I'm like, oh, I am your literal child. I'm like five, two. And I'm just like, I assumed I was, I was five. I assumed I was, you know, model-esque, statue-esque, but no, I'm just a little, I'm a little baby. I feel like guys get more self-conscious about it, but I will say as a, as a woman,

as an Asian woman who is considered tall when I go to taiwan i've on the opposite way like it's i like how i am so this isn't an insecure thing but like in taiwan people be like whoa you're so big like in a way that doesn't make me feel good uh and i'm like i like how i am but stop saying that and and uh so for a long time i would feel like self-conscious about how tall i was and so i think i never felt guilty making fun of short people because I'm like, it seems like you guys also have a good, but then I realized like, oh, it's all perspective.

But yeah, I'm a tall person who was insecure about being tall. Truly, you can find things to be insecure about no matter what you are. Yeah, I'm sensing like a buddy cop movie team up for us. Shorts and talls. My goal is always to have both guests form a buddy cop team at the end of the show. I'm glad we got here.

This is good. Also, all cops are back. Oh, yeah. Buddy firefighters. That's better. Great. Buddy firefighters. We need more of those movies.

Yeah, that'll be fun. Exactly. Five Hunters! We need more of those movies! Yeah, that'd be fun. Exactly. And last thing with the fifth suit here is the playing card companies rolled it out for Bridge. Again, very old-time game now, but they thought people would love it.

They also gave out instructions for how poker works if there are five suits, like where five of a kind goes in the order of hands and how you play. Did any casinos use this? No, and it went totally out of print within, like, it started late 30s and it was done by the mid 40s because people basically said, according to Life magazine,

the brain cells of an average bridge fan are sorely taxed by the strain of 52 cards and four suits. To players with durable memories, the five suit game offers a challenge to others a high hurdle basically it was like more confusion for no more fun and so it went out of fashion uh-huh i love that i'm just thinking of like my late abuelita like you know what i mean i i got a i got an i got a lot of cards already. I got enough cards that I need. Right. I don't need any more. You're doing good with 52. It just feels strange to talk about, like, oh, I drew the Queen of Eagles.

It doesn't sound like a card. I'm not into it. It has bad mouthfeel. I don't like it. Yeah. Well, and we have one more takeaway here about one more kind of card. Takeaway number three. we have one more takeaway here about one more kind of card takeaway number three the united states's contribution to the world's playing card deck is the jokers as we said earlier around the uh this is uh something that they came up with in the u.s it's also kind of the main

thing it's it's what we added to uh how people play that checks out yeah they're like let's put something in here that feels important but really like you don't need it at all but we're gonna make everyone think this is special so prescient i'm now i'm looking on etsy to see if there's any like deck of like no jokers no all jokers but they're all Trump. They're just all like, oops, just berries, but like, oops, just Trump. I do like the Joker card. I don't like the Joker movie, but I'm like, now there's too many things out here, references-wise, that I'm like, I gotta clarify. But I've always liked the Joker card. I think to me it was like this feeling of, I don't know, being like a little different and an outcast.

And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. And it was like this feeling of i don't know being like a little different and an outcast and sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad and it's like i relate you don't know what your place is and it doesn't matter you find it but uh but now that i know that america jammed it in there i don't know how i feel well i guess i've been jammed into america in some sense i was an anchor baby so and amer America's been jammed into me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm legal, okay, guys? Please don't come for me. I am legally born here.

My parents are citizens. But when I was born, I was an anchor baby. Yeah, I mean, look, we're all a joker in our own way, you know? It's all good when the story with with how they showed up is this is an 1860s thing so it is before the comic books and stuff according to a few sources here jokers originated as a special card for one game it's a game called euchre which is spelled e-u-C-H-R-E. I don't know if either of you have played Euchre before.

It's sort of an old-fashioned game. No. I've never even heard of it. How do you play? What do you win? What do you win? This is gonna be a frustrating explanation, but the short version is it's like Simplified Bridge. I know that doesn't help,

it's like simplified bridge uh i know that doesn't help but uh but it's a game where it's a game where you like take tricks so sort of like hearts maybe or something but it it's really only played in the british commonwealth in the u.s and it's not popular now but in the 1800s it was the most popular u.s card game wow and the rules involve like one card becoming the most powerful trump card and another card being the second most powerful trump card and so you need two like special cards that are extra powerful and in the 1860s the first guy was a card maker named samuel hart but they figured out hey if we sell our decks with like two special cards that can be your special euchre or super cards, that'll be a hook. That'll help us sell some cards, move some inventory.

That's very capitalist to be like, people are already buying these cards. How can we increase the income? It's like, well, let's add another card. Every card is going to cost a little bit more because we have two more cards. Yeah, right. And also then you'll have to get, it's like every card is going to cost a little bit more because we have two more cards. Yeah, right. And also then you'll have to get, like, it's like upgrade. It's like, do you get the new deck? No, I already have one.

But yours doesn't have the Joker cards. Ugh, fine. It's like Pokemon cards. You have to, like, keep expanding, getting new packs. It's a whole racket. They were like the Jeff Bezos of 18-whatever. The next iPhone is's gonna come out with a joker card it's gonna be like get this the new feature comes with two joker cards yeah

right the jokers are like the new the new cord for the new phone or like you and you too or something like it's just all all tack on stuff yeah oh my. You're still on that Joker 11? Oh, my God. You must be poor. Oh, my gosh. That's so funny. Yeah. And yeah, and then they made him from there.

Also, the name probably originates in the German name for Juker, which is pronounced about the same, but it's spelled j-u-k-e-r which is almost j-o-k-e-r and then from there it was also maybe influenced in terms of design and style by tarot because there's the fool card in tarot that is so important and is a major arcana uh it you know it looks like a joker it looks like that the fool card is a great card because it's the it's the beginning it's the beginning. It's the... Well, I think, not to get too into terror,

but it's also the way you interpret how they interact with each other on a spread. But the Fool to me, especially when you're like a creative person trying to like figure out what to do next

or if you should start a project, it's like Fool because you don't know anything yet, but it's usually very exciting. It's like the start of a journey and you're going to learn a lot. And that's how i like to interpret it i think maybe that's why i like the joker so much it's not about being a fool it's about being a fool now because you know you're about to like be a queen you know oh yeah i love that that's so awesome that and that

reminds me i so the reason that i growing up didn't give a lot of value to the Joker card is because I think that we would like remix the game rules and I think for a lot of those card games where like Jokers are wild that we would actually make the the two wild and we would just place the the Joker face down but I love that because two like that's that's just one more than one that doesn't have a lot of value but like in card games the two you know is like the two of hearts is like this wild card that like contains so much value and wins the whole game so i kind of like that lesson for life i love how tarot is just like inspiring everything yeah yeah because tarot does have an order but it's not uh the way you would think it's not like one is better than the other. And it does matter where they intersect.

And it's like, death isn't last. like actually the world, or I think is one of the last ones. And it's like, you would think like, it makes sense to me. Cause it's like,

you finally achieve fulfillment and understanding of who you are as a person, how you interact with the world. And then you're like, I give up myself to be a part of this big thing, which most people don't get to. I don't know if I'll ever get to that, but like, yeah, like death comes way before that, you know?

And I really like the Joker, especially having that tarot element and having this, it's an interesting evolution where it had a super specific purpose. Like it was for, oh, you probably want cards for Euchre. Here's Euchre specific cards. There you go and then now because of the style of it and the lack of euchre being a thing it's become anything right it's what like playing cards are one of the very few games where you receive a

couple items in the box that are like i don't know what do you want to do with it man like figure it out it's fun it's a really like nice element of the cards like a risk box doesn't come with like just some weird pieces that you try to figure out or like loose continents or something it's all very laid out it's very specific and and playing cards too it's nice you know what alex that's you just blew my mind because like life is like that we think we're all supposed to be like we're all the same in the sense that we all have similar experiences but like yeah there is no universal box of things you come with when you're born like and like there might be like some overlap of majority but like you can't even say like everyone has like like some people are born with more fingers and toes you know like that it really and it's not and that

doesn't make them not a person and so truly i love that it's like we threw in these wild cards it's like in general we understand there's a game here and there's cards but like in life you might need to figure out what to do with these things you got and also you might have things you're never going to use and it's okay yeah i love that lesson for life like choose to use it choose your own adventure or you know just leave it in the box. And that's okay, too. Yeah. Good job, America. Wow.

I never say that. But this time, this time you did it. Wow, that gymnastics routine was tiring. folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to jordan cowling and theresa lee for celebrating my past in bridge and sharing their own you know much cooler experiences anyway i said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com because patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the strange role of playing cards in several American wars. And just up front, it is an anti-war pro-weird story episode. You're

going to really like it. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than three dozen other bonus shows, to select topics for the show, vote on topics for the show, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Playing Cards with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the history of playing cards moved east to west. Takeaway number two, the standard four playing card suits have only been fully locked in for about 100 years. And takeaway number three, the United States' contribution to the world's playing card deck is the Jokers. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great.

Jordan Cowling is a fantastic podcast producer. She helps Maximum Fun make shows like Fanti and The Flophouse and so much more. You can also hear her guesting all over podcasts, and we'll have lots of Jordan things linked, including her website, so you can find all that. Teresa Lee's new stand-up comedy album is called We're Still Doing This. It's available for free on Spotify. We'll also have links for you to get it and support the artist. Also links for Teresa's podcast, You Can Tell Me Anything, and her comedy in general. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in Atlas Obscura.

It's called Playing Cards Around the World and Through the Ages. That is by Dan Nozowitz. A couple great sources, in particular, a Mental Floss video by Craig Benzine and an Atlas Obscura article by David Duchin. That's all about the American origins of the Joker, the playing card. And then a great book, which is the revised edition of the Penguin Book of Card Games. That is by writer and games historian David Parlett. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budos Band.

The music video has a bunch of playing cards in it. Fun fact. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.