Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Wooden Blocks

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer and podcaster Jeff Rubin (The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show, CollegeHumor.com) and comedy writer and author Joel Stein (‘In Defense Of Elitism’) for a look at why wooden blocks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Wooden Blocks Known for being a toy Famous for being a toy For babies Nobody thinks much about them So let's have some fun Let's find out why Wooden Blocks 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. Two guests join me this week. Jeff Rubin is an old pal of mine from my collegehumor.com days. Because I worked at College Humor and at their sister site that they had for a while. And that was an amazing environment, a lot of amazing people. It was really formative for me. Jeff is one of the biggest reasons I was there at CollegeHumor at all.

He's also one of the key people who built that site. He wrote for them, appeared in videos for them, managed things for them. Jeff Rubin is also an amazing podcaster. He hosts the Jeff Rubin, Jeff Rubin Show. It's his name twice. It's on the HeadGum Podcast Network, and it's Jeff doing some of my favorite interviews in the entire world. Jeff's show is interviews you never knew you wanted to hear and desperately want to hear

as soon as you know they exist. If you like what I'm doing at all, you're going to love Jeff's podcast. Please check it out. And then on top of all that, Jeff Rubin is a game designer, and his newest game is called LiesGame.com. That is both the URL and the name of the game. And LiesGame.com is awesome. It's based on information. So again, this is right up your alley. And it's a game that's easy to play. It's easy to do socially distantly. You don't have to gather friends around a board or anything. It's all through the magic of the internet,

through LiesGame.com. And we'll magic of the internet, through liesgame.com. And we'll, of course, have links to all that stuff. I'm also joined by Joel Stein, who is himself incredibly multifaceted and talented and just great. Joel Stein is a professional comedy writer for television and more. He's a journalist. He's also an amazing columnist. You might recognize his name from Time Magazine, doing columns there for many years. And on top of all that, Joel is an author of many books. The most recent is titled In Defense of Elitism, Why I'm Better Than You and You Are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book. End title. You want to be on that list of the elites. You want to do it. It's obviously a tongue-in-cheek title. It's also amazing research, amazing analysis. He

does a lot of on-the-ground reporting and going on adventures. Joel goes from incredibly rural Texas all the way to the mansion of Dilbert creator Scott Adams. And he does all this to find out what's going on in America right now and why. I'm also going to say Joel is a soothsayer, because in his book he describes a few kinds of American elites, and one of them is a wealthy, anti-intellectual Trump supporter. Right, a wealthy, anti-intellectual Trump supporter. There's more to it than that, but those are the basics. And he coins a name for these people, which is the boat elites, because he feels that they're more interested in having a boat than, you know, learning things, thinking about things, caring about other people. And Joel Stein coined that all the way back in October of 2019,

way before a lot of the recent boat parades and most recently a few weeks ago, like a massive Trump boat parade where they didn't go slow for each other and their wakes like sank each other's boats. Joel like accidentally saw a lot of that behavior coming and I'm amazed by it. It's that good of a book. So Jeff Rubin and Joel Stein, two pretty heavy hitting guests. I maybe shouldn't have stacked them into one episode, but I don't know. I like to have as much fun as possible right away. So here we are. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and I've used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Jeff recorded

this on the traditional land of the Lenape and Canarsie peoples. Acknowledge Joel recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech 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 wooden blocks, which are an interesting toy in the galaxy of toy types, as we'll discuss. I picked them as a topic because I think they truly fit the podcast title. People don't think they're that amazing of a toy. Let's show you why they are. So please sit back or click together some Lego bricks, because you are too adult to

play with wooden blocks, and not too adult to build a plastic X-Wing. And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jeff Rubin and Joel Stein. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Jeff Rubin, Joel Stein, I thank you both for meeting each other and, you know, gathering to talk blacks. Really excited.

Oh, I'm sure we've already been to Temple together or gone to a Jewish traveling camp or something. Oh, no, hello? This can't be the first time. Hello. Oh, man. Hey, I'm sorry. Are you guys there?

My internet went out and it completely froze. But it seems like we're back. Oh. I don't believe it. I apologize. We you guys there? My internet went out, and it completely froze. But it seems like we're back. I don't believe it. I apologize. We're still good? Is that what we say? If we don't have a funny quip, we just pretend the internet went out? Is that how this game works?

Sorry. If my internet, if I go off Zoom, I'm still recording. So you don't have to pause or anything. It's just something with my internet. I apologize. Keep going. Anyway, thanks for having us, Alex. That's all good.

This is what we do. I'll write down what I say. I mail it to Joel. Joel writes down his response, mails it to Jeff. It's Zoom times. We're doing great. And the topic today is wooden blocks.

And with every episode of this show, the first thing I ask the guests is, it's Zoom times. We're doing great. And the topic today is wooden blocks. And with every episode of the show, the first thing I ask the guests is, what's your relationship to this topic or opinion of it at any? Either of you can go first, but how do you feel about wooden blocks as a thing? Alex, I, one of the things I love about you is your curiosity knows no bounds. Thank you. is your curiosity knows no bounds. Thank you. Mine, however, apparently does.

And it stops long before wooden blocks. I have a child. I was a child. Yes. None of this has increased my interest in wooden blocks. I've dealt with wooden blocks. I've been disinterested while I was dealing with wooden blocks. I'm already bored listening to myself talk about wooden blocks.

I'm also not a fan of wooden blocks. I never had them growing up. I had Legos and a few other, you know, kind of construction toys, but never like kind of that classic wooden blocks. And I can even kind of remember playing with Lincoln Logs. I don't think I had Lincoln Logs, but I have like like, memories of Lincoln Logs. But just that classic kind of wooden alphabet block is not something I've ever played with. And I actually

kind of wonder if, like, maybe Lego has made wooden blocks obsolete. Like, maybe Lego's just a better toy that just kind of replaces it. I'm gonna argue that you might be wrong. You may have had wooden blocks having raised a kid. You would have had them at such a young age that you might be wrong. You may have had wooden blocks, uh, having raised a kid,

you would have had them at such a young age that you might just not remember them. Whereas you remember your erector sets and your Legos and your Lincoln locks. That's plausible, but they were never like around and like a lot, I guess some, at least some of my baby toys and stuff were always around. And like, I never saw blocks. It is plausible. I had them as a baby and I just like, don't remember them. They're the first thing I got rid of as soon as my son was old enough. That makes sense, I guess. Because there was no chance that he'd ever—no kid likes them that much. They don't even have sentimental value.

I've never met a kid who just can't wait to whip out the wooden blocks. It's something that's kind of forced on them because they're so boring. I believe that people, in order to sell them, put letters and numbers on them to make them seem educational and colors when i'm not even sure they are yeah what about like there's also those toys now where you put shapes into the holes like that seems at least that like there's a game to play you know there's something to do i get it feels so one flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, though. Seeing kids do that. Well, I, because I myself, I happen to have two grandfathers who were both way into carpentry. One of them still is. And so I had like pretty nice wooden toys that were just homemade.

And so I'm pretty sure wooden blocks were, like you described, Joel, like a really early step. And then, no, now it's on to the cool trucks and stuff. And my grandpa at one point made me a castle, which was just the most thrilling thing in the world. Like it had a shield with Alex written on it, you know? Whoa. So I don't remember blocks. That's the other reason I'm confident I don't have, I never had wooden blocks is because all my toys were like plastic junk. And I love my parents and they were great to me and I was spoiled or whatever. But like they did not give, like i didn't have any like wooden toys like everything i had

was kind of like disposable and plastic and chunky and that's i think that's true for blackheads yeah but i'm still confused you your grandfather made you wooden blocks wooden toys and so i don't remember like a block set being part of it because i think he was too busy just making like vehicles and and dinosaurs and stuff out of wood it was amazing yeah do you think your parents were just like some blocks would be nice and he was like nah it's gonna be a car and then a dinosaur and they're like just blocks

is good and he was just like so into the carpentry element he's like no no no I think what Alex really wants is several cars with moving wheels and like all these elaborate pieces it is a very classic toy like if you said to someone, draw a baby playing with a toy, I feel like a lot of people are gonna draw a kid

with alphabet blocks. It's just like a very iconic toy. Even though you're right, like they don't seem very popular, you know? So like there's something interesting happened here. I would never have thought too deeply about it myself, but I can imagine there's something secretly interesting happened here. I would never have thought too deeply about it myself, but I can imagine there's something secretly interesting about this, and I'm excited to find out.

Well, I am now remembering what kids do with blocks. And I don't think it's just boys either, but the thing that was appealing about blocks for my son and everyone else I saw in preschool is to build them as high as you can and either knock them down with your own hand or throw another block as if you're a block terrorist and knock them down that is that that actually can occupy kids for quite a while yeah destruction that is pretty fun have you guys ever played kube it's kind of this like game you play it's kind of in like i think you're miss you're mispronouncing that.

No, no, no. It's Koob. It's like Norwegian or something. It's sort of like Viking theme. And it's a game where you kind of, it's like one of those, it's kind of in the can jam family of like games you bring to the park.

And it is actually like for adults, like stacking wooden blocks and throwing them at each other. It's a pretty fun game. There you go. Mystery solved. What's your next topic? I think I wrote a piece.

Maybe I didn't, I don't remember anything anymore for Babel about watching my son knock blocks down. Cause it was, um, it felt like I was worried he was a terrorist because he enjoyed so much bill. The building was in order just to destroy it. The building was the unpleasant work you did for the fun,

which is not a good instinct that kids have. But it's like there is, that is something important. Like you learn the right way to play with the toy, and then you learn like, oh, if I get kind of creative, there's like some extra fun I can kind of squeeze out of this thing, you know? So maybe there's a valuable lesson to learn there. Do you feel that way about terrorism in general i guess it also makes me think of jenga jenga's not they're they're more planks than cues but jenga kind of satisfies that instinct too of like

yeah watching the blocks tumble over right like the game is don't knock it over but you really want to see it fall down like it's pretty great what it does yeah the thing i love about jenga is that it's a game with no winner there is only a loser you can only lose it jenga you cannot win well guys uh i i'm glad we all have you at least some my parallel block experiences and from here we get into the segments on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that is in a segment called Can't Seem to Face Up to the Stats. I'm adding numbers and I can't relax. Wow. So I've heard Alex do this on the podcast, but to watch him do it online is a different experience. You guys like it's like

he knows what he's doing is wrong but he just can't help himself and it was it was great i love it it was like knocking down blocks except to psycho killer is that psycho killer by the talking was yeah uh so uh so that name was submitted by philip reinhardt who explicitly said to the tune of psycho killer and we're gonna have a new name for this segment every week submitted by listeners like you. Make them as silly and wacky as possible. The less good, the better. Submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment to SIFpod on Twitter or to

SIFpod at gmail.com. And yeah, like Jeff said, you guys get an inside look at me performing music, let's say. That's what's going on. It was a little bit like watching a kid, a very sweet kid, knock down that block tower. Like you knew you were doing something wrong and you were thrilling in the fact

that people were watching you do it. So yeah, we have the numbers and statistics here. And the first of the numbers here is $10.4 billion US dollars. Billion with a B. $10.4 billion is the annual global market for construction toys as of 2018, according to Grandview Research, which is a market research firm. Obviously, that includes everything from Legos to K'nex to wooden blocks. Yeah, I want to see that pie chart.

I mean, how much of that is Lego? Like, is over half of it Lego? I assume so, right? Yeah, and Lego is apparently the either first or second biggest toy company in the entire world all of the time. Like, they kind of loom over this topic of, oh, boring wooden blocks, because like you said, Lego is just so dominant and exciting. They made a better mousetrap, kind of. Yeah. Wait, so the very first thing you told us about wooden blocks wasn't at all about wooden blocks?

Well, it includes wooden blocks they're they're considered a construction toy even though you just kind of put them on top of each other yeah can i ask at the risk of derailing this did you guys have any alternate construction toys when you were a kid like i had this thing called capsella which i've looked up and like was around for a few years but it has been since been i'm joel's pointing i'm so you had capsella hell yeah i put it in the bath and yeah yeah yeah i also put in the bath it was like kind of waterproof i am i think about it 38 yeah it's a little older i'm 49 and oh and there is very little on the internet about capsella because i've looked also constructs was another one i had and they were kind of like beams it was

kind of like yes i had those it was kind of likeConnex where it was like beams that would connect. And I guess when you were done, it kind of looked like a construction project because it was all beam-based. Anyway, I just feel like these kind of come and go. Connex is stuck around for a while now. So Connex is the plastic version. The one you're talking about had actual screws and bolts

and little beams of metal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had that as well. Oh, no, no. That's like an erector set. Construx was plastic and they oh no no that's like an erector set constructs was plastic and they they snap together i never had an erector set i never had that i feel like that's a little more old school yeah sorry alex what we're talking about wooden blocks it is kind of cool though just like these there are and i think if you i've been to toy fair and

like there's definitely like construction toy alley in toy fair and there's like all these people like trying to come up with like the next lego or the next wooden block right and like there is something about building that's just like instinctual for kids and it's yeah there's always new building toys out there and it makes sense like if you um if one hits then you're like selling it forever you're selling kids like i can see the attraction and i guess it's an 11 billion dollar whatever that number was market so it makes sense that like it's uh something people are trying to get in i'm trying to get some of that money yeah it's also the the firm that wrote it up has like a whole write-up about exactly what customers want and at one point they describe quote parents and educationists

which is like the most the weirdest market research term i've ever heard like just call them educators or teachers or something what sorcerers would call a kid yeah the uh next number here is more than 60 feet which is more than 18 meters and that's what the guinness book of world records says is the tallest tower ever constructed from like regular wooden blocks is more than 60 feet tall. That seems beatable. Am I wrong? It's like, I feel bad to keep comparing everything to Lego, but I bet the tallest Lego sculpture is like a much more competitive record and is much taller. 60 feet is like how many stories? I guess it's like a six-story building.

Is that right? Yeah, that's about right. Well, and this one, it was built in a climbing gym in Lyon, France. And it was the guy who designed it had a team of people who climbed up and down the climbing wall to like stack more blocks on their increasingly tall tower. So maybe they were limited by like the height of the climbing gym. You know, I don't know. I guess what I think about is a six story building that is reasonably impressive that I will allow it. That is a pretty impressive uh pretty impressive record what are the things in the guinness book of world

records that don't make me sad and why did i read it as a child just to make me feel better about myself that i wasn't like oh i don't have the world's longest nails at least well and jeff i think you've done some podcasting with either guinness records people or like an alternative version right like i it seems like yeah they really pitch themselves hard for it yeah one is my friend scott who's usually on a talk about pizza has uh this company scott's pizza tours and he has the guinness world record for the largest pizza box collection and i think he wrote a book about it he's written him up and he has a lot of interesting insights about pizza boxes, and the other thing is I actually talked to the guy

who says the record for the most Guinness World Records, and it's actually one of my favorite episodes of my own podcast I ever did, because this guy is very interesting. Like, he, it's really about, like, mental, I mean, he actually comes at it from an angle, and I try to describe it as best I can, like, of meditation and, like, challenging himself,

like, mentally and physically and um i mean he's set like these really crazy records like he has somersaulted a marathon like when i heard he said has the record for the most records i assumed he's just like i don't know i just flipped 50 pancakes that's a record like no he has chased like totally insane records and he had to cut the recording short he's like yeah my friend's coming over he's gonna throw watermelon at me and i'm gonna try to cut him with a samurai sword i'm practicing for a new record i was like god bless you slake that's the best excuse for ending early i've ever heard and um yeah he's a really interesting character and i'm not like totally he has a much more intelligent and well um developed way of describing it but uh he's a

really it's really interesting and like it came from an interesting place. He didn't just want to get the most records. It's a way of challenging himself, yeah. Anyway, he never did this one, as far as I know. It's more performative things. He pogo-sticked up the CN Tower, stuff like that. I don't think he ever did any construction-based stuff. I'm not sure, though.

What's his name again? So his name is Ashrida Furman, and his website is ashrida.com. That's A-S-H-R-I-T-A. I'm just going to read some of his records randomly. Milk bottle balancing on head, longest continuous distance, 81 miles. He set that one in April of 1998. Fastest mile somersaulting, 19 minutes, 11 seconds.

That's November 2000. Juggling on a pogo stick. What do you think this record's going to be? Because this is going to surprise you. The metric is greatest distance it's by distance how juggling on a pogo stick how far did he go how far did he go four miles and 30 feet that was in january 2010 also he set that record on easter island of all places just like why not we'll throw that in there too oh yeah i remember he did a lot of balancing things on chins. Milk bottle balancing on head.

Fastest half marathon run with a liter of bottle of full of milk balanced on his head, two hours, 33 minutes. Anyway, he's a really interesting dude and like he's taken Guinness World Records to a really interesting place. And one last number here for the numbers and stats. The number is 74.

And this number comes up because we're going to talk partly about alphabet blocks today. And 74 is the number of letters in the Khmer language's alphabet, which is the most of any alphabet in the world. I was just curious what the biggest set could be. And it's this language spoken in Cambodia, also parts of Thailand and Vietnam. Wait, that's the language that if you were able to read it, Pol Pot may have killed you for knowing all those letters. Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah. Right? I assume that's

the Khmer language, right? From the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Yeah. And it's probably pronounced Khmer, huh? But it's this language, yeah. 74 letters, I guess not all of them are in use today. It's that long. Thanks to Pol Pot. I wonder what their keyboards look like. Oh, if I find one, I'll link it.

I want to see one. Yeah. It's like, do you guys ever see Ghost in the Shell? I'll be very brief. But in Ghost in the Shell, there's this one part where the dude's like, this dude's like using a computer and his fingers like all splinter into like a hundred little mini fingers so he can like use the computer faster because it's like, you know, all cyberpunk-y in the future.

That is how those keyboards work you were right you did keep it brief yeah yeah yeah yeah just like usually when someone invokes ghosts in the show you're like oh here we go but so i wanted to like i was just like i was bringing you in for just like a little taste of it but i had a plan i had an exit route Exactly. Well, I think we can go into our big takeaways for the episode from here. Takeaway number one. Wooden blocks and alphabet blocks were invented in different countries by different people for different reasons, which is just a long way of saying like the wooden kind of block that is mainly for construction was invented saying like like the wooden kind of block uh that is mainly for

construction was invented totally separately from the alphabet block which turns out is like more of a literacy toy huh which is a weird toy history thing wouldn't you have to invent wooden blocks in order to invent alphabet blocks like if you've invented alphabet blocks you've basically invented just want to make sure i'm understanding this correctly right yeah there is there is a little overlap in how they work uh but there is like a especially because they're educational there's like a mindset thing where some people were like i'm creating blocks to be stacked and constructed and other people were like if i put letters on blocks it will fool kids into being literate wait but alex are you saying and again i see everything through

uh on the elitist versus populist lens because of my book but are you saying that there was some people who insisted that wooden blocks were construction toys and they shouldn't be ruined by these people who are trying to co-opt it into some kind of read and write and arithmetic tool? There will be one point in the story where that kind of happens, yeah. So where were they invented? Where and when was each one invented?

Perfect question. So let's do wooden construction blocks first. Obviously, people have stacked wood on top of itself before. But the first intentional wooden block toy that was very popular was created in 1837. And it was created along with the entire concept of kindergarten. So it turns out kindergarten was invented by one guy in Germany. His name is Friedrich Froebel. And our key source here is an episode of a great podcast called 99% Invisible.

It's an episode called Froebel's Gifts, produced by Kurt Kolstadt. But Friedrich Froebel was a forester and a land surveyor and at one point a crystallographer. And crystallography, you study how crystals stack on each other in a in a structure. And they think that in particular helped him be inspired to create what are called Frobel's gifts, which is a whole set of educational toys. And then some of them are wooden blocks that are meant to be stacked on each other in a playful, creative way. So the guy who invented kindergarten, which is was so successful that we still call it kindergarten in america even though it's the most german word imaginable yeah the guy who invented

kindergarten also invented wooden blocks and also several other educational toys am i getting that right yeah that's right he's secretly and what were the other toys like what i know the other ones was it like uh the vacuum cleaner with the balls that pop up or like anything like that i i was about to do a joke of hungry hungry hippos but i don't know how to make that sound german and legible at the same time you get it though uh i like it as one word like hippo hunger ein like i don't know they actually have a word in german to describe hungry hippos it comes up enough yeah yeah the uh the set and uh and I sent you guys a picture of a reproduction of one, but it's basically, they're called Frobel's Gifts because you both gift them to children,

and then also it's supposed to bring out the creative gifts of a child. And so there was a prescribed order of letting the kid have thing after thing after thing. So the first gift is just a soft ball, and then the second one is a wooden ball, and then it's like a cube is the next one. So you go from there, and then one of the sets is a whole batch of wooden blocks, and they're supposed to kind of stack

and be together as a plaything. Wait, we should sell this as a subscription box to parents who have had their first kid. Yeah, that's a great idea. That should officially happen, yeah code sif when do you when did they invent like toys because i feel like once you invent the concept of toys i feel like wooden blocks shouldn't be far behind but it's funny how like hard it can be to invent these things when they don't exist yet i guess what were the first toys like dolls maybe or what were yeah i would think there's you know based on my knowledge

of western movies it seems like dolls were kicking around in the 1800s but like yeah what was before that i will tell you as a parent one of the most fascinating things and you can just go to a park and observe this is no matter how many toys you buy your kid they prefer sticks they prefer collecting them and stacking them breaking them and just like any the kids will just gravitate towards sticks yeah it's still like in their caveman brain like they just still have this survival instinct it's like the same thing that like makes us love sugar or whatever you know it's just part of their brain still reptile and it's just like must play with stick must build and construct with trees they're also just more interesting

than whatever we can come up with. They're just more, they're more variation. There's more stuff you can do with them. They just, they just beat these wooden blocks. And kids will, most kids will take sticks to your house

and want to either bring them inside or stack them outside because they find special sticks that they want to keep. Like kids, kids and sticks are scary. I like that. inside or stack them outside because they find special sticks that they want to keep like kids uh kids and sticks are scary i like that let's just construct a power rankings throughout the episode of best toys and blocks keep going down like we've got legos and then we've got sticks uh ed's i'm trying to think of a worse toy than blocks hoop and stick is pretty bad no actually

hoop and sticks probably better you're running around that's great what's a worse toy than blocks? Hooping Stick is pretty bad. No, actually, Hooping Stick's probably better. You're running around. Hooping Stick's great. What's a worse toy? Slinkies are bad because they get all tangled up. They're good in theory, but they get tangled up really easily, you know?

Really easily, yeah. What's a worse toy? Maybe, like, that Gak that used to come with, like, old Ghostbusters toys, you know, and smelled really bad. I'm trying to think. That was bad.

I'm trying to think like other like real misses though i mean i guess the real misses will just kind of go away but boy blocks yeah i mean it's classic it's classic it is and yeah and the toy market's very darwinian right like if something is really bad people just stop doing it so for blocks to stick around despite badness is pretty cool right i guess baby's not a super discerning audience you know it's like zero to six weeks old is about when you can fool someone enough to be interested in blocks or whatever and whatever age alex is right just throughout the tape i got plagued with blocks it's really loud like

but so we gotta we to make these kinds of blocks collide. And so we've got in Germany, they're starting to do kindergarten. It starts in 1837. And the emphasis is on very creative construction and play-based learning, and a lot of things we know in kindergarten today. And in 1851, the Prussian government bans it because it's Prussia it's not Germany yet and also they oppose like the liberal ideas that they see in it but that doesn't stop kindergarten from spreading and we get the first U.S. kindergarten in 1856 it was in the town of Watertown Wisconsin and was German language 1860 we get the first English language one and then kindergarten kind

of grows from there by 1885 there are over 500 kindergartens in the U.S. And all of them do this specific Frobel method for a while. So they're like, each kid gets a Frobel GIF, each kid gets blocks, and that spreads the wooden block as a toy in America and the rest of the world. But what about the other Frobel's GIFs? Are they not spreading wildly? Yeah, they're just sort of less cool components of, like, maybe that's part of

why they thought wooden blocks were cool, is that the other GIFs were much less exciting. Like, one of them is just a cylinder, and you're supposed to play with the cylinder, and be creative with the cylinder. And that doesn't sound good. Frobel is the perfect name for what I am, I imagine him as a professor, like Professor Frobel.

It's just like the perfect name for a kindly old man who has some crazy theory about being nice to children and gifting them toys to enrich their development. You know, Professor Frobel is just like,

I know you didn't say he was a professor, I did, but it just sounds like such a magical, fun, bubbly person. On the other hand, most stories about people

who did things for children end with them molesting children. So did Frobel? Before I get too excited about this guy. Yeah, nothing. It seems like he just really wanted to do a really nice job of making kids happier and smarter and wiser. But Frobel's clean. Nothing horrible about Frobel. Well, that's just, that's lovely.

Great. I mean, I wish he'd come up with a more fun toy, but, you know, that's clean. Yeah. Nothing horrible about Frobo. Well, that's just, that's lovely. Great. I mean, I wish you'd come up with a more fun toy, but you know, that's, that's a nice thought. I just couldn't. Because also the other, and the 99% visible gets way into it, but kindergarten ended up being really influential for art and also for architecture. And they cite a bunch of people like, like surrealists like paul clee and wasley kantinsky who who went through kindergarten and that was an influence and then uh frank lloyd wright never went to architecture school but credited froebel's gifts as being like an early

influence on him being an architect so it's a spatial toy that really changed how uh apparently the whole thrust of art and architecture went in history, which is very cool. It is crazy that kindergarten is such a big deal that, like, our grade system is 1 through 12, but grade 0 is K. Like, we still haven't quite, like, organized. Like, we haven't, like, bumped the other numbers just up one or something. It is, like, this special thing that stands out. What's our, how, like, how much education does your kid need? K through 12. What? Like, that's not how numbers and letters work but it's kindergarten so big it was it was such it

made such a splash that we're still just like yeah the grade zero is called k and let's look at the alphabet blocks where they come from the alphabet blocks kind of surprisingly date even before these these official frobel wooden blocks and it's partly because they were influenced by dice. And our main source here is a great site called tedium.co. There's an article by Ernie Smith. But he finds that the credit for the first idea of alphabet blocks should go to Sir Hugh Platt, who was an English writer who documented inventions and invention ideas.

And so he wrote a book in 1594 that described alphabet dice as something that kids could be given to play with, where you, quote, cause four large dice of bone or wood to be made, and upon every square one of the small letters of the cross row to be graven. And then from there the kids play with the dice and learn letters by throwing them. That's the idea. Wow. Because dice are, like, ancient, right? Like, dice have been around for hundreds of years is that correct yeah he the the article claims 5000 bc is the first recorded dice yeah it's funny that we had dice but it took a long time to put it together that like oh like stacking a lot

of these dice might actually be fun for kids and And then also, what if we put something on the side? It's like, for thousands of years, we were using them to gamble without stopping to consider that maybe it could be used for education as well. Gambling's way more important than children. I mean, think of the amount of cities on Earth that are devoted to gambling,

and then think of the amount of cities on Earth that are devoted to children's games. It's true. I guess Orlando and Anaheim. I guess I'm wrong. Yeah, that's right. Wherever Legoland is in Denmark. Yeah, I'm totally wrong.

It should be casinos versus theme parks or whatever. That should be the battle. Sounds better than the wooden block episode. Thinking about it, I'm not a religious expert, but there's a lot of gambling in the Bible. The Bible talks about gambling some deal. And I don't know if there's... Are there any toys in the Bible?

Does anyone ever reference Noah's kid as a toy boat or anything like that? The one Bible thing jumping to mind for me is the verse about putting away childish things. Me too. Which is anti-toy. Oh, that's true. That's true. That's true. That is true too. Which is anti-toy. Oh, that's true. That's true. That's true.

That is true. It's an anti-toy book. But it must mean there were childish things. They existed, you know, in biblical times. What if childish things was a brand name at the time and it was product placement? Like, put away childish things. And then there other, there's

one other person who is at least credited widely as being a key alphabet block person, which is John Locke. So another British person, and like the famous philosopher who contributed to the American Declaration of Independence and stuff. Right, the guy from Lost, correct?

Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. 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. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls.

And then here's how this stuff collides, which is you have kindergarten going on in the in the US now. And there was a lady named Elizabeth Peabody, who founded the first English language kindergarten in the US in 1860. And she went to Milton Bradley, which was still a person at the time. It was not just a company. It was the guy. That's one person? I don't know why. I always assumed Milton and Bradley were two different people.

Like, you know, like it was their combined name. Yeah, first and last name. One guy named Milton Bradley. Love it. But she just brought him an actual set of Froebel's gifts and said like you should just manufacture these and they can be for education and it'll be awesome and he said great i'm going to manufacture these kind of blocks and stamp letters on them because then i'll be the only person doing that and i'll make a lot of money and so in 1870 bradley's original kindergarten

alphabet and building blocks uh hit the market and were a huge hit. And from there, we had like mass produced alphabet blocks that were also stackable and also usable as blocks. And they have numbers on them as well, right? Or just the letters? Yeah, I found a picture of like an old set of them from around the turn of the century, around 1900. And they had like some letters and also some entire pictures of animals labeled with the animal's name like it was a really loose system going on and so so milton bradley rolls out alphabet and building blocks and then from there finds that kindergarten is a really successful piece of branding and so from there milton bradley and

other toy companies just start making stuff for children, calling it for kindergarten. And then from there, the toys and the whole concept of kindergarten becomes like, kind of generic, you know, at least it's not tied to this Frobel guy in any specific way. So it changes how kind of education works and toys work. When is that? When did Milton Bradley like live? It might be the 20s. It might be like the 1850s. I have no idea. No, it was 1836 to 1911 was his life. Wow. And 1870 was his first blocks with alphabet on them. He built a company that lasted for so long.

It's still around, you know? Yeah. Like we still know his name and kind of associate it with like what, you know, kids toys. I specifically think of it for board games and not toys. I don't know if that's right, but. Sure. Yeah. And then this takes us into

takeaway number two. Lincoln Logs were inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son designing a Japanese hotel and fighting the whole time. And I'm including Lincoln Logs because they are a stacking wooden toy. Oh, hell yeah, because I do remember Lincoln Logs, like I said before, so I'm excited to talk about this. But wait, did you just say Lincoln Logs were inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and not Abraham Lincoln? Is that correct? That's correct. Yes.

I think Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, who was an architect. Is that wrong? Yeah, you're right. That's the story. Yeah. I don't know why I assumed Abraham Lincoln was like personally involved in the origin of the toy. It's just like. Well, that's the marketing. That's not your fault.

That's what they're trying to sell you. Is Lincoln Logs like a trademark? Is it a copyright or whatever? Like someone owns the name. I can't like produce my own Lincoln. I can produce wooden blocks. I can't produce Legos. Are Lincoln Logs a copyrighted name?

They are, yeah. That someone owns the rights to? Yeah, it's an owned brand name and very specific, yeah. And another company early on tried to knock them off as Frontier Logs, and it just didn't take off, yeah. Well, there's a lot of Lego. Like, you see, it's not hard to find, like, stuff that is exactly the same as Lego, you know,

and, like, just a different company kind of doing their approach to Lego. But it's never quite as good. It really isn't. Like, there's some, like, it's never the same. Yeah. No. Yeah. They click perfectly. What's the deal, is it the Imperial Palace Hotel? Is that

still there? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Joel, you know, you know the story. It's a, yeah, it was a thing called the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan that Frank Lloyd Wright designed with his son helping out and it was demolished in the seventies, but they built it in the twenties. Yeah. And what's there, Is there something there now? I went to Tokyo and this all seems like vaguely familiar. Yeah, I think they replaced it with like a high-rise hotel. So there's this weird thing in Japan, which you wouldn't expect

because of the way they think of history, but I'm not sure if it's because they think in such long expanse of history, but they do not have any respect for their architecture they will tear down anything in fact i met a guy who takes old beautiful post and beam houses that are about to be destroyed in japan and moves them because they're so easy to take apart because they're lincoln logs basically post and beam doesn't have any and he takes them apart at great expense

and moves them basically to this town outside of Tokyo and resells them as houses. That's amazing. But anyway, they will, they have, you can say,

this house is like 300 years old. They're like, whatever. And they just tear them down and build new things. It seems very un-Japanese, but it's all, the whole country's like that. And of course,

so this hotel survived the firebombing of Tokyo? And to take it back one step, the second son of Frank Lloyd Wright is John Lloyd Wright, and he'll ultimately be the creator of Lincoln Logs. It seems like Frank Lloyd Wright was maybe a hard father to be around. Frank Lloyd Wright and his son John fought so much when John was a kid that John left home as a teenager and went all the way to California from Illinois and tried to do like any other career and then just ended up finding he was good at drafting and architecture and getting into it. And then in an attempt to like reconcile, Frank invites John to come along for this trip to Japan to build this hotel. And the hotel is not a high rise at all it is

that kind of post and beam thing and i sent you guys pictures it's like very square very blocky it looks like it's made out of lincoln logs kind of um and so they built this hotel in the 20s and it survived a massive earthquake it survived the u.s bombs in world war ii with only foundation damage and it's because it's an incredibly sturdy structure. And that ended up partly inspiring John to say that's a toy. Wait, I'm looking at it. It doesn't have as much wood as one would expect from either a Frank Lloyd Wright house,

nor a Tokyo house, nor a guy who invented Lincoln Logs house. Because most of Japan was destroyed during World War II. house. Because most of Japan was destroyed during World War... I mean, most of Tokyo was destroyed during World War II because of the firebombing because it was a city of wood. But this looks like it may not have been. Yeah, that one survived it.

And it was also part of a style called Mayan revival where the idea was to imitate Mayan pyramids. And so it's also kind of built in that blocky way for that reason. And I'm sorry, what year was it built? It was built 1923. So I have a house that was built in 1922.

There's a fireplace right near where I'm sitting that doesn't fit in with the house. It's got a shiny blue brick, right? But we saw pictures of the original house. And I'm sure underneath there, although probably destroyed with plaster, is a really cool smaller fireplace made of stone with these monkeys carved into it. And it was part of that Mayan thing. And I'm sure 10, 15, 20 years later, people were like, what a weird fad everyone bought into

that they tried to make their houses Egyptian. I'm sure it looked super, or Mayan, rather. It's a pretty specific LA architecture thing, but this is the other project he was working on with this hotel was the Hollyhock House, which is in Barnstall Park in Lake Los Feliz, LA. I live right next, I live right near there.

Oh, I used to live there when I lived in LA. That place is nice. Yeah. It's great, yeah. I have a question. Are Lincoln Logs fun? Because they seem kind of limited. Like, you can do one thing with them.

It's kind of fun. And I guess if you're a kid, it's pretty satisfying to, like, fit them all together. And they all fit together nice, so you can't really mess it up. But i don't know then you're done like you can't like build multiple things with this like you basically build you know cabins are they fun i think not i think they have very limited appeal i think the reason that they exist for so long kids room is they came in a nice tin so yeah the storage content first of all the tin took up a lot of space so it was likely to just catch your eye in a room uh and secondly it was hard to lose all the pieces compared to most toys because they went into this tin that's true i thought i thought also they're just like big

chunkers you know like yeah like it's hard to it is fun to like oh like tear off that plastic lid and just dump them all out on the ground that That's fun. Well, I am 49. And that was one of the few toys when I was a kid that was not plasticized yet. It came in a metal tin, I believe. And they were actual wood. Now, I've seen them since then. They've become plasticized. But it was like the only like 1950s.

Because everything I bought was plastic. Yeah. And it was like the one thing that still felt like it came from the 50s yeah because i had lincoln logs in one thing in defense of them and this this was in the original marketing too is that like they're a toy you can use with other toys like it's not just that you can build whatever cabin you can think of with them oh it's like the ngi joke exactly and for especially as a boy it like, my action figures can live in a log cabin. Like, yeah, that's masculine. Sure.

So it's that kind of thing, too. It was boy dollhouse. The Ninja Turtles love log cabins. I guess they actually do retreat to that cabin in the first movie, so it's not totally crazy. Based on the events of Ninja Turtles 1, I guess it could work. I guess it could work. It's like Rambo or MacGruber

or something, yeah. they go there to restore. Yeah, exactly. So also there's a thing where Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lloyd Wright kept fighting. And apparently, and the reports vary, but Frank either underpaid John on this Japan trip or didn't pay him at all and said, like, what, you're getting an education. And so this led to more fighting and they became estranged again. And John responded by going from Japan all the way back to Chicago, starting a toy company and starting up Lincoln Lux. They debuted in 1918 and they were successful, but then he struggled to come up with any other hit toys and sold off the brand in 1943 for $800. So it's still a brand. It's still been owned by Milton Bradley and Hasbro and some other companies,

but it was Milton Bradley. There he is again. He's back. But yeah, but it's a toy that, uh, it was marketed as America's national toy. It's in the national toy hall of fame now, uh, which is a thing. And, and it's something that sprang from Frank Lloyd Wright's son having a terrible time with his dad and leaving Japan in anger. It's really fun to me. I don't know. One last question. Is there any real connection to Abraham Lincoln, or is it just marketing? Does Lincoln's cabin, was it actually made of logs?

Did he even have a log cabin? I'm questioning everything now. So the connection was real, but it was just marketing. made of logs like like did even have a log cabin like i'm questioning everything now like so the the connection was real but it was just uh marketing so the other the other weird thing is uh and the reports vary but there are two potential origins of the name lincoln logs and one is that it's a reference to abe lincoln especially because it's a chicago company and it's an illinois thing the other is that apparently Frank Lloyd Wright might have been named Frank Lincoln Wright at birth. And Britannica says that,

a biographer says that Wright's initial middle name, there was confusion whether it's Lloyd or Lincoln, and he settled on Lloyd. But it might be a reference to John's dad having a secret middle name. This is QAnon? This is ridiculous. Nothing about that was believable.

Making it up now. It really sounds like I'm saying Frank Lloyd Wright's a lizard person or something, but that's apparently a potential origin. Yeah. I think from there we can go into takeaway number three. Into takeaway number three. Modern wooden blocks tend to make a statement that's anti-sexism and anti-technology and also often pro-capitalism. Give that to me again.

Give me that list again. I got to. Yeah. Modern wooden blocks, they often tend to be like specifically anti-sexism. Anti-sexism. And also anti-technology. Okay. And then pro-capitalism like i'm just talking about their broad role in the world of toys and and the market and everything that tends to be

the the space they so basically it's a modern toy yeah we're talking about melissa and doug aren't we yeah that's one of the big things yeah yeah that's the one we had i think those are the one they they came from all people in my demo who sent us Melissa and Doug toys. And they were all made of wood, which was supposed to, in that hippie way, reject modernity. So I get that. I don't feel like they're...

I guess they're the one toy that aren't gendered. You're not buying someone a doll or a gun or something. Right. Let's do them one by one. And Melissa and Doug, you're absolutely right, Joel. And for people who don't know, Melissa and Doug is the name of a toy company. It's named after its founders, Melissa and Doug are their names. And they make blocks that have been especially popular since around the year 2000 is one of their big things. I feel like Melissa and Doug, I don't know them personally. I don't know them very well. As a brand, they just seem way

too nice to build a company that's going to last 150 years like Milton Bradley. They seem completely unwilling to steal ideas from old women. It seems like they just want to make nice toy mops. That's lovely and all, but check in in the year 2120, see if Melissa and Doug are still around. If and when, I hope this doesn't happen,

they get divorced, I want to write about that. Oh, yeah. How is their marriage? Seems good. Be specific. Right. Just what's going on? Because in this section, there's two big sources. One of them is a Vox article called How Melissa and Doug Captured the Toy Market, One Wooden Block at a Time by Shavi Lieber.

And then the other source is a book called Designing the Creative Child, Playthings in Places in Mid-Century America by Amy F. Agata. That book in particular brings out this gender element. Like to a lot of different experts, they'll argue that blocks, especially wooden blocks, are a pretty revolutionary toy today because they were one of the few toys that was not gendered and especially was encouraged for like girls to construct there are a lot of like boy toys like erector sets that are for building things but girls were encouraged to build blocks i mean they're literally called

erector sets yeah right like phallus industries was taken so you got to do that. I think this kind of happened with games, and video games as well. Like, video games were initially something that was enjoyed by children of both genders equally, but then for some reason, I think maybe it was related to the video game crash in the early 80s, like, they just kind of ended up in the boy toy aisle, and like, all games became like war games, and you know, like a lot of shooting, and sort of things that are traditionally associated with boys. And that was the case, I think, for a long time. It's starting to come back.

And I think there's like more diversity in the types of games and the audiences people make games for. But for like my childhood, like they really marketed games at boys for what in retrospect was like no really good reason. You know, it was just, sort of sexism. And I guess I wonder if it was similar, is it similar with Blocks, where they were just, like, at some point hit on the idea, like, oh, there's a boy toy? No, they, so Toy Blocks, basically throughout their history, there hasn't really been a push for them to be for one or the other gender. Oh, there is not?

Yeah, and there's also Lincoln Logs, not only because they're wooden stacking toys, but also, I brought them into this, because Lincoln Logs, not only because they're wooden stacking toys, but also I brought them into this because Lincoln Logs advertising from Jump, like the copy said it's for boys and girls. There would be pictures of boys and girls playing with them. Like the wooden block, for some reason, just hasn't had that, like, this is only for boys or only for girls labeling put on it that so many other toys have. But what about you sent us that image that was like this is for attention boys yeah we'll have it linked on the patreon the the first ad campaign

for erector is really funny because almost the entire print ad is just a split like a splash panel from comics of the words hello boys exclamation point uh because it's extremely gendered from yeah like like may west just entered the room a big old hello boys um and yeah we'll also link uh there's a great new yorker piece by emma allen where she talks to juliette kinchin who's a moma curator and an expert in central european modernism uh which is not so important but uh this moma curator says quote one of the revolutionary things about blocks is that girls could be architects builders with these toys as easily as boys end quote because yeah they're just blocks they're not like obviously

for fellas or something that's great cool good for blocks good for blocks yeah our reason to be excited about them yeah so our blocks that's a solid gift to bring to a gender reveal party. That's right. Unless it's one that starts a fire, I guess, then they burn up. But yeah, otherwise, it's really good. No one I know has actually had a gender reveal party. I don't know if that's a compliment to the people I know. I don't know if it's like a regional thing, but I've like read about them, but I've never

actually gotten to experience one. Seems dumb. Are you just not invited to a lot of parties? I guess not. Have you been to a birthday party? All my friends are just sad single men, so that's the other problem. Got it. I gave someone, I'm now remembering, I have two friends that are both into science they're both like you

know really into science and like uh science education and they had a baby and i got them toy blocks with like the um the kind of chemical periodic table symbols on them i don't know you know like that's great rules is it i i i don't know does it like i kind of worry that i got i guess i got that like it's like 70 purse i don't know it's maybe 50 50 who it's for the kids of the adults you know like the baby's not actually going to learn like chemical symbols but you know like the two-letter acronyms for all the chemicals you still got the letters you're fine i guess you got the letter that was good that was a good gift it was a good gift except that they're wooden blocks right right well i think i was looking for something science themed and like there's i guess this is what this kind of is what we've been talking about the whole episode there's not a lot

of science themed gifts for like newborn babies because like they don't have a lot of capacity so like i somehow stumbled on this because this is something that newborn babies can play with they can at least paint science words on it or whatever, you know? With the thing of trying to get, like, toys for a little kid, in modern times and digital times, wooden blocks have, like, ended up becoming something that is accidentally kind of anti-technology or anti-screen time or, you know, anti-making all of your child's toys light up and do electronic things.

Right. And it's partly because apparently, I didn't know this because I'm not buying toys for kids, but apparently like- As a rule, like a moral thing? Or it's just, why don't you buy toys for kids? You just don't think they should have them. I buy them tools for work, that's all.

Yeah. Alex thinks the work of Professor Frobel is actually very controversial and not backed by science. Kids should not receive gifts. They should be strictly disciplined. So, like, apparently some of the newest kids' toys, and this is from this Vox article about Melissa and Doug, they say that there's one child's potty sold by Bye Bye Baby that features an attachment for a tablet. There's a Fisher-Price teething ring that has a slot to insert a smartphone.

There was a Fisher-Price infant bouncy seat where you can snap an iPad into the top of it, and then it hovers over your baby, and they play with that. There's all kinds of things like that out there. Some people say blocks are different. I want that. But no one's made? There's no high-tech block? As far as I can tell, no. Yeah, there must be like some sort of like

smart wooden block out there. They're like, this is wooden blocks, the classic toy. Reimagine for a new generation. These blocks connect to an app and like, you know, track your progress and how high your child's building them. I'm actually surprised somebody hasn't done a minecraft branded wooden blocks that are electronic minecraft i'm surprised that hasn't happened that's i i haven't even thought about minecraft is of course wooden block inspired yeah with the third thing of wooden blocks being kind of pro-capitalism is that because blocks are

in this zone where they are not technological and they are not gendered and they are seen as a very authentic and creative and pure way to play, there is then a lot of money in making wooden blocks. One of the big reasons there's a big market for wooden blocks is that there's a big market for wooden toys in general. And this book by Amy F. Agata really gets into the idea that, like, in the mid-20th century, wood became a high-end toy material because there was so much plastic starting to be around. And so people said, oh, like, if it's an amazing toy, it should be made of wood. She says, quote, among the educated middle and upper classes in the U.S., wood became the material symbol of timelessness, authenticity, and refinement in the modern educational toy, end quote. And so like this block company,

Melissa and Doug, they can charge a premium for just wood because wood is something that especially American parents have come to believe is like special and magic and pure. I think Montessori schools also, all their toys are made of metal or wood. There's no plastic, I believe. Yeah, they have a set of pink stacking blocks that are apparently the core toy of all Montessori education. I feel so lucky to have grown up in the age of just cheap plastic crap from overseas. I had just so many McDonald's transforming robots and just crap just pure junk like that i really did like all my toys are just really junk and i love them very deeply but that's

90 of america we're just talking about this like very woke progressive set that's buying the melissa and doug toys they just happen to have articles in vox and The New Yorker. Yeah. But also, like, when we were kids, you know, that kind of elite coastal group of people still went to McDonald's and Holiday Inn, and we got our plastic toys. Now, like, those kids never even go to a McDonald's. And, you know, they have to, like, separate. They have to have a totally bespoke experience with the wooden blocks. Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah.

So wooden blocks, I guess, still around, persistent. That's what I'm learning. They're like cockroaches. They're just like, they're not going anywhere. So Alex, when you say capitalism, though, what you really mean is like, in the Bernie Sanders way of like the 1% have wooden toys. You don't mean that there's something specifically more capitalist about them? Yeah, yeah, I think that there's like... It's just a defining set of a rich group. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's probably a better way to put it. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, like there's like a set of people who are like, we're the wooden toy folks and we're at that level. There's also, the Vox article also points out that apparently part of the success of Melissa and Doug Block's dovetails with social media taking off because like they look great on something like Instagram in a picture. Makes sense. And they quote a new york city interior designer named jody popowitz who says quote when designing nurseries i use them the wooden blocks for decorating because

they're the perfect toys to go on a bookshelf i do find that some of the toys are even more appealing to the eye than easy for kids to play with end quote because like a wooden block it just looks awesome in a picture versus some kind of weird plastic thing that looks not like that. I feel like if you Google like baby clip art, or just if you play word association with baby, like wooden block,

it's just like the thing you depict babies having. It's just, it's so iconic. I said it before, but it's just like, it's the thing, like along with like baby bottle, it's like one of like the key objects of babydom is wooden blocks. But only when it's, when it has the letters, only if it has ABC, because we're somehow like, we get the double association of both playing and like, they don't even know they're ABCs yet.

Right, right, right. The plain wooden ones I don't picture. That's true. That's true. It's always the first three letters in a perfect like picture perfect way yeah they're never down in the lower part of the alphabet those are the only ones they should sell what kind of that'd be a weirdo kid with the xyz i feel like i see i see abc and i see xyz i never see those middle middle letters like no one ever has an lmno block you know this is part of your q anon

thing isn't it you're not sure those letters even exist q anon right right where is it Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Jeff Rubin and to Joel Stein for being wonderful on this and being wonderful together. Like, they had never met before, and I think they were just bouncing off each other in such great ways. Really cool. Also, 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. 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, the great 1997 Lego spill. So if you wanted more Lego stuff and

less block stuff, head on over to the bonus show. That's where it is. And it's there in the weirdest way possible. Visit sifpod.fun to find out what that is and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring wooden blocks with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, wooden blocks and alphabet blocks were invented in different countries by different people for different reasons. Takeaway number two, Lincoln logs were inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son designing a Japanese hotel and fighting the whole time. And takeaway number three, modern wooden blocks tend to make a statement that is anti-sexism,

anti-technology, and geared toward people at the top of the capitalist structure. Special thanks to Joel Stein for helping me, like, iron out that last one. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. Jeff Rubin hosts his own podcast on the HeadGum Network, which is an amazing network you should check out. And his amazing show is called The Jeff Rubin, Jeff Rubin Show. Also head to liesgame.com to play Jeff Rubin's new game. It's called liesgame.com. And then Joel Stein's book is titled In Defense of Elitism, Why I'm Better Than You, and You Are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book. That podcast and that game and that book are all up your alley. If you like anything I do, or if you like the guests,

you don't even have to be interested in me. Who cares about that guy? Find links for all three of those things in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great podcast episode from the incredible team at 99% Invisible. The episode is called Frobel's Gifts. It's produced by Kurt Kolstad, and it's hosted by the coolest voice in the business, Roman Mars. A great email newsletter slash article from tedium.co. It's entitled Building Blocks Literally, and it's written by Ernie Smith. We also have a digital museum exhibit for you. You don't have to go anywhere out.

You can just see it online. The exhibit is about the Lincoln Logs Company and its Wright Origins, W-R-I-G-H-T. That exhibit is part of the Made in Chicago Digital Museum, and it's curated by Andrew Klayman. Find those and 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 Budos Band's next album is called Long in the Tooth.

It releases October 9th. Pre-order your copy at daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. You make this show a thing. 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.