Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Monopoly Works

Episode Date: March 14, 2020

Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you’re probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don’t know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Join Josh and Chuck as they chase it down in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey there, everybody. It's me, Josh, your old pal. And for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've chosen our classic 2014 episode on the game of Monopoly.

It's a really thorough episode where we explained everything, everything, about the game of Monopoly. And I was apparently on Quailudes throughout the whole thing. Go figure. Anyway, enjoy this episode. I think you will.

Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland, which makes us Step You Should Know. That's right, I got on my top hat and my cane. Your monocle? My monocle, does he have a monocle?

I thought it was, not as Mr. Peanut. Oh yeah, not Mr. Monopoly. And I think Mr. Pringle has a monocle too, doesn't he? Oh. Oh no, he just has a mustache. Yeah. Mr. Monopoly doesn't have a monocle, huh? I don't think so, huh?

You'd think we'd know. We do not, but I do know this. Mr. Monopoly is a nickname for that man. That's right. And born name is given name by his parents is a rich uncle Pennybags, three names. So uncle would be his middle name. Yeah, well, he even has a regular name too.

Oh, not that I saw. Yeah, it is Milburn Pennybags. No. Yeah, there was a book published, and this is one of those after the fact deals called the Monopoly Companion. And they named all the characters on the board, Milburn Pennybags, and then the jail guys,

Jake the jailbird, and the police officer, and go to jail is... I'll bet it's Irish, isn't it? Officer Edgar Mallory. I knew it. Really, you just guessed that, huh? Yeah. That's pretty funny.

We're talking about Monopoly, by the way. Oh yeah. Yeah. This is not about anything else but Monopoly. No, and I was just remarking to you, sir, how I've never seen one of our, this had more supplemental information than most shows that we research.

Yeah, I can explain why, because this was written, there was a whole suite of game articles written, like just how to play certain games. So it kind of came out in this mentality of this is the game, and here's how we explain how to play it, and then this article is done. Whereas Monopoly, it's like,

this is more like McDonald's or Twinkies or something like that. It's like a cultural cog. Yeah, I mean, there's so much extra junk history, and I mean, you talk about the different versions, it's ridiculous. Milburn Pennybags? Yeah, and like I said, that was a post that he wasn't originally called that.

This is, I think Monopoly probably wanted to sell a little book or two. I'm sure they did, because if one thing we've learned about Parker Brothers and now Hasbro, is they love selling different versions of this game. Yeah, they do. They like licensing it off.

A lot of money doing that. They like making some changes here or there, releasing a brand new game, but it's all still the same game, and all of it came from a left-wing Quaker intellectual at the turn of the last century, the Findis Jekyll. Yeah, I think I'm saying that right. Yeah, sure, I think it sounds right.

And it's interesting to me that the game of Monopoly, which is all about capitalism and bankrupting your neighbor, was stolen. The game was stolen. From a leftist intellectual Quaker. In the original version of the game, it was to teach against the Monopolies and how they're bad.

Right, so let's talk about this. Monopoly actually, if you trace it back to about the literal beginning of the 20th century, it's what's considered a folk game. There were a lot of people playing versions like this in cities all over the country, but again, they all shared some pretty common viewpoints. I guess today you would kind of call them socialists,

but for the most part, they were followers of a guy named Henry George. Yeah, George-ism. Yeah, he came up with this thing called George-ism, which is based on some other philosophies, but the idea of it is that if you produce something through your own labor, your own work, you own that. That should not be taxed.

What should be taxed is things that everybody owns. If somebody's taking something that belongs to everybody, say a parcel of land, technically the land belongs to everybody. Well, that was his notion, was that you shouldn't even be a landowner. That whole concept of owning land to him was ridiculous. And that's based on this idea, the law of the commons,

which is around for centuries, if not millennia. And then once people started taking land, he's like, okay, well, if you're gonna own land, it belongs to everybody, so that should be taxed, and then that tax will be given back to the community for the greater good. So that's George-ism, and that was kind of the philosophy

that formed the basis of Monopoly, what was originally called the landlord's game, which is created by a lady named Lizzie Maggie, M-A-G-Y. M-A-G-I-E. M-A-G-I-E. Almost magpie, but without the P, right? Yeah. And she basically-

I think that was on her card. She, right, in quotes. And she came up with this, like you said, to kind of teach, so you could go and be a rich landowner and bankrupt other people and exploit the poor who need your help, who need a decent place to stay, and you could see yourself like the evils of capitalism, but she actually came up with two sets of rules

for the same game. One was where you got as rich as you could at the expense of everybody else. The other was basically the community benefited, and you can kind of see that today in like these weird things like community chess, like why would I wanna pay into this pot? I don't care about the community.

Like now it's a bad thing. In her original version, it was a good thing, like the community won. And that was the basis of the whole thing. Yeah, which is really ironic. It is. Yeah, like you said, she created two versions and she said, one of the quotes from her is,

it is a practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences. So it was kind of to teach people lessons, and she had it stolen from her basically. Luckily, Lizzie Maggie was smart enough to patent this game. It became just kind of a trendy thing.

Again, like if you were into socialism at the time and you were on the East Coast, you probably hung out at a friend's house and played this game at some point in some incarnation or another. Yeah, it was really popular. Like you said, like people made up some of their own rules, but it was, I mean, if you look

at the original landlords game board, it looks a lot like the current monopoly. I mean, similar at least. Yeah, and apparently a lot of the rules that make the game a lot more enjoyable the day came from Lizzie's Quaker friends. Like for example, the original plus of land were up for auction, for bid.

Quakers prefer silence. So they just put a fixed price on a piece of land so there wouldn't be a loud, obnoxious bidding war. They also instituted tokens, fun tokens before they're just boring pawns. Yeah, like household objects, which that's why the thimble is in there and originally the iron, we'll get to those in a minute,

but I know. It's pretty exciting. And then so this thing's being played and Lizzie Maggie holds the patent, but she's not exactly like cracking down on any kind of infringement really. No, well, she pitched it to Parker Brothers and they said no.

Yeah, so she just kind of went on doing her own thing. So there's another lady actually that figures into this, a lady named Ruth Hoskins. And she was one of the ones who caught on in this like Philadelphia Atlantic City area with her Quaker friends, two of them in particular, Jesse and Eugene Rayford. And they are the ones who changed some of the rules

to make it look more like the monopoly we know. They taught it to a friend named Todd and Todd taught it to his friend named Charles Darrow. And that's where the story takes kind of a seedy turn. Well, actually that's where the Parker Brothers official version begins, ironically. Yeah. Things turn seedy, Parker Brothers is like,

hey, this is where our story begins. Yeah, the inventor of monopoly, Charles Darrow. All right, so he was like a radiator salesman during the depression, this is the 30s, right? Yeah, I mean, it was ironically again, during the depression this game really caught hold. Well, supposedly that's what caught the Parker Brothers attention was that this guy

came to him, came to them to sell him this game, which he had stolen. Yeah, apparently he didn't innovate it at all. He kind of just copied it and packaged it and said, hey, what do you think of this? And the Parker Brothers said, we don't think too much of it. Like how does the game end? We don't know what's going on here.

So let's just, you just go your own way. So Charles Darrow went off and started selling it at this Wanamakers department store in Philadelphia. Yeah, without patenting it. Right, and the Parker Brothers said, you know what? It's the depression, can you believe it? We're not gonna have any kind of economic woes like this for another 70, 80 years.

And this guy's selling these things like hotcakes. You know what, sir? We will buy your idea from you. And Charles Darrow apparently said, well, that's great. Give me the money first, and then I'll tell you the second part of the story. And they gave him a bag of money with a dollar sign on it, much like the ones that Rich Uncle Pennybags likes.

And he said, okay, we also need to buy the patent off from this lady named Lizzie Maggie. Yeah, which they did. The game was still stolen, I say, even though that they eventually did pay her money. But part of the deal was they agreed to buy her patent and said, you know what, we're gonna, we'll sell a few of your other game ideas

to none of those ever went anywhere. And she was sort of lost to history, except for people who do a little bit of digging. Yeah, and we actually have a guy named Ralph to thank for doing that digging initially. We'll talk about him later. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, cause he's the one who came up

with the unofficial history and like really tracked it down. Well, there's a lot of teases in this one so far. So the Parker Brothers now own the game and it becomes a huge hit virtually off the bat. In the 30s is when they bought it and started really printing it. Yeah, and the game is based on Atlantic City. Those are the properties and that's because

that was the area where it became popular. But this excellent New York Times article you sent, what was the name of it, Monopoly Goes Corporate? Yeah, it was written by, what's the lady's name? Mary Pillon. She is a monopoly expert. There's a lot of those out there I've learned. She wrote a lot of the articles you'll find.

Oh really? Yeah, she's good. Well, she pointed out that it's interesting that it mirrored sort of the cartography of the day in Atlantic City, like Boardwalk was clearly like a rich area. The Baltic and Mediterranean, the cheapest properties were in African American neighborhoods.

There was a reading railroad that transferred people between Philly and Atlantic City. And little known fact for our friends in the gay community, New York Avenue was one of the earliest gay scenes in the country. So buy that one up and support, support the LBGT community if you're playing Monopoly. That's what I would do.

And maybe just don't charge anybody when they land on it. Just be like, this is a party place. That's right, exactly. And Marvin Gardens apparently is misspelled. Yeah, E instead of an I, or I instead of an E. Yeah, on the board it's an I, and it's supposed to be an E. There's a lot of Monopoly facts dropping all around us right now.

I know, it's raining thimbles. Music On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

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bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, now when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right.

All right, so we were just talking about Atlantic City. I guess we can go ahead and point out now that there are hundreds of versions of Monopoly out there now, one for your hometown probably, one for your favorite sports team. I have, personally, my version as a Star Wars monopoly, which is pretty fun. Nice.

Yeah, I guess Hasbro's like, you got some money. Sure you can license this. Make your own monopoly game. Go ahead. There's a Simpsons monopoly. I haven't played it though. And in addition to the licensed versions that you can find everywhere, they also

have official versions too. There's a US version. There's a UK version. There's a new version that's called Monopoly Here and Now. What does that even mean? Super corporate. Oh, is this the corporate one? Yeah.

Oh, OK. It's like everything is multiplied by, I think, 1,000. So the dollar amounts are way higher. Is this one where they replaced the? The railroads are replaced by airports, including Hartfield. Is this one where they replaced corporations for all the properties though? Yes.

Like McDonald's and Sony and. Yeah. God, who would want to play that? Some people do. You know? Yeah. I mean, I'm not a purist because I have the Star Wars version, but it's no fun to me to play as paramount pictures

and to buy the McDonald's property. Yeah. No, it's just me. So there are a bunch of different versions, but the one we're going to talk about, we'll just talk about the normal version with the 2008 rules. Yeah, and there's actually coming soon, later this year, there you can go online at MyMonopoly

and you can design your own board. Is that right? And do your own neighborhood. Wow. And then they will make it for you. And I think it's like 150 bucks or something. Wow, money bags. You can get, oh, I'm not going to do it.

You can do the East Lake. No, I was talking to whoever went and got it. Oh, sure. Yeah, Rich Uncle Rich, penny bags. That's what you should have said. Rich Uncle Penny bags. Penny bags just sounds not that wealthy. Well, actually.

I have a bag of pennies on me right now. He, Forbes has their silly fictional 15 list of fictional characters' wealth. And he, in 2013, was number 1315. Jeez, is Star's decline term, huh? Guess who the first, the richest fictional character is? The Incredible Hulk. No, he was not rich.

Scrooge McDuck. Oh yeah, well, dude, he had that gold vault. Apparently, 65 billion. Number two was Smaug, which I thought was kind of silly. Smaug from like a. Four of the rings. It's a dragon, I think had like, was sitting on a bunch of gold.

Got you. Carlisle Cullen, number three, Tony Stark, four. Charles Foster Kane, number five. Who's number three? Carlisle Cullen from Twilight. Who's that? He was the dad, vampire dad, of the vampire family. And he's been alive forever.

So I guess he just keeps accumulating wealth. Bruce Wayne, Richie Rich, Christian Gray. Richie Rich, I forgot about him. He's number seven. He had a robot made and a crazy, like a weird scientist friend, didn't he? Sure. Like a Richie Rich robot of himself.

I think he had that too, but no, it was made was a robot, wasn't it? That was the Jetsons. No, he had a robot made too. I thought Monty Burns at number 10 was pretty good. Oh yeah, that's good. Although I would guess Mr. Monopoly would be wealthier than Monty Burns,

but I guess not. Yeah, 13. And they put it out each year and it's dumb. Can we just admit that? I was thrilled by it. We just spent three minutes on it. Yeah, well, that's true. Okay, so Chuckers, you wanna talk about

the rules of the game? Again, 2008 rules, if you are a Monopoly purist and like I'm sorry, that's just what we're going with. Yeah, well, let's talk about the game board itself just so if you haven't played it, I'm surprised. Because I think like a billion people have played the game. But if you haven't, when you get your Monopoly game, you're gonna open it up and you're gonna have a board

with all these different properties in a square. You have two dice, 12, they call them tokens. That's not the right amount either, is it? No, there's eight. Yeah. I don't understand where they got 12 from unless they're counting ones that maybe were retired or something like that.

But when you open the box, there's only eight there. There's a, can we go over? Sure. There's a wheelbarrow, a Scotty dog. Yeah. Top hat, a cat which replaced the iron in 2013. There's a big to-do because Parker Brothers or Hasbro is like, we haven't made a lot of money off of this

for a couple months, so let's just do something. Well, they let people vote at least, which is kinda cool. Right, but it was also, did you see the other ones that they were voting for? Yeah. A pot, like Richie Rich's main. A guitar. A guitar?

Yeah. They didn't make the cut though. No, they got voted out, and the cat got voted in. But the iron got booted. Yeah, I only got 8% of the vote. There's the classic shoe, of course. Or boot. Which is modeled after a 1930s working shoe.

And I think they've kept it the same. Yeah, that's one of the original ones. The Scotty dog was not one of the originals. It came in the 50s. Yeah, and I think that was supposed to be the companion of Milburn Money, Penny, Richie. Is that right? Penny bags.

Penny bags, it's not. I know, it should be cash bags. Fat stacks. Fat stacks, bags. There was a cannon, which has since been retired. Yeah, they thought it was too militaristic. Well, the cannon and the... Battleship?

Yeah, they were from a failed game called Conflict, and they were like, well, we got all these pieces. Oh yeah. So let's just throw them in Monopoly for now. Right. It's pretty smart. It's the cannon out because it's just too overtly violent. It just says without any fanfare or vote or campaign.

So probably, yeah, that'd be my guess. If it's hush-hush, it's probably because of violence. There's a conspiracy afoot. There's the race car. Yeah. It's every little kid's favorite. Which apparently had a number three on the side for a little while.

Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. They learn hard. I guess so. Her purse has been retired. Yeah. The rocking horse was retired. Yep.

The lantern was retired. Oh yeah. I'm doing my best Ben Bowling impression. Did you do, did you get wheelbarrow in there yet? I think I, no, yes I did. It was the first one I said. Did we say top hat? Yeah, that was always my favorite actually.

I don't remember what my favorite was. It fit on my pinky and I used to draw faces on my pinky. The horse and rider, which is retired, which I didn't know. That's one of the best pieces to me. What you didn't know is retired. No, it was kind of sad. Yeah.

And now their, and that sack of money was retired as well. The sack of money and a purse. Those are a little similar. Yeah. The cat, come on. Yeah. Cat people. I'm sure they're like, yeah, that's exactly right.

I guarantee that's why they got cat voted in. And I am a cat person, you know. And even you think it's stupid. Exactly. So those are the tokens, some of those tokens that we mentioned you're going to find in the 2008 set. Yeah. And that is your piece.

That is what represents you in the game. Yes. Again, for the three people who have never played Monopoly. Right. Yeah, because supposedly, at least as far as Hasbro calculates, over one billion people have played Monopoly. And frankly, I'm surprised it's that low. It sounds like an old number.

Yeah. Okay, so you've got the box open. You got the board. You got two dice. You got the tokens. 32 houses and 12 hotels, 16 chance cards, 16 community chess cards, a title deed card for each property.

It's got the information on it, like how much it cost to purchase, how much rent is, depending on how many houses or hotels you have on it. Yeah, what the mortgage value is worth. That's right. And then you've got your play money, your Monopoly money. Which, man.

I think that's where it grabs kids, because, and they even pointed out in this article, that's kind of the first time a lot of kids have money to play with. Yeah, especially the $500 bill ones. Man, that gold bill. I always thought it was orange. Is it gold?

Yeah. Okay. One's definitely golden rod, like yellow. But I remember the 500, it was, yeah, I guess gold is the way to go. Yeah. See, I was a cash order, which is no way to win a Monopoly.

No. I thought it was... Can't save. That just figures for me though. You got to spend money to make money. Yeah, I was like, look at all this cash that I will soon be paying to everyone else. You just keep wandering off from the table

and try to buy stuff with it. Did not work. So Chuck, you've got the board laid out. And if you count them, if you're that kind of person, you're gonna find that there's 40 squares. That's right. I believe 22 of which are, no, 28 of which can be purchased. Yeah, 22 are properties.

You've got your electric company and Water Works. Yeah. Suckers bet. And then you've got the four railroads. Four railroads. Yeah, so that's 28. That's right. There are others that you can't buy.

So for example, there's a luxury tax square. Yeah, you gotta pay, what, $100 when you land on that? I believe so. Just right out of your pocket. There's an income tax square. Yeah, no good. There's the go square, which is where you start. And then when you come back around, you collect $200,

which is in Monopoly called your salary. That's right. I never knew that. I didn't either. And there's a lot of rules in here. And I guess it's a good time to point out. Monopoly is one of those games where house rules are highly encouraged

and a lot of the fun of the game. And in fact, to make more money, Monopoly this year had, or incorporating the top house rules as voted on by fans as official rules for this one version. In a $70 hard back book. I don't see why a lot of people were in cents.

They were like, no one plays by the real rules anyway. So why bother packaging it and selling it? And they went, I think you just said the word sell. Did someone say sell? There and lies the answer. So you've got, oh, and so there's 40 squares, but there's actually 41 places you can go to on the board because jail is divided into two squares.

That's right. You got the jail with the jailbird. What's his name? I can't remember. Johnny Jailbird or something. Jake the Jailbird. Right, okay. Which is where Jake the Jailbird is.

And then you've got the lower part of it. It's just visiting. Yeah. If you want to visit Jake, give him a butt cake with the nail file in it, it'd be very old school. Or Monopoly set with maybe a map with an escape route embedded in it. Hey, that sounds familiar.

Yeah, POWs in World War II were given such Monopoly sets. True. Which is strange to me. It's like where the Nazis allowing Monopoly sets to be delivered to POWs, is that what I'm seeing here? Maybe it's the Burmese. No, I mean, you've seen the great escape

on those, the war prison camps in World War II. It seemed like a lot of them, they let them like garden and they were kind of chummy with them. You saw Hogan's heroes. I saw Hogan's heroes. I didn't put a lot of stock into it. Yeah.

But yeah, no, I just figured. They played soccer. Maybe the Japanese or the Burmese or the Italians I could see like saying, like hey, bring some Monopoly and who cares? But the Nazis I would think would, I just don't see that. Yeah, I'm not saying it was a walk in the park,

but I think from the depiction and like I said, like the great escape, it's not like Vietnam prison camp. Oh yeah. You know, like they weren't playing soccer or Monopoly. They were playing Survive Another Day, that game. Yeah. I'm not making one of that, by the way. Oh, I didn't think you were.

And I'm basing everything on more movies. So I'm probably wrong. I've seen on Common Valor. That was a good movie. That was a great movie. It doesn't age well though. Really? No.

Remember that menu with the gun silhouettes on it? Oh yeah. And when you're 12, you're like, oh my God. Yeah, it's like I would buy that one and that one. Yeah. All right, so where were we? Well, we were talking about the board itself. Yes.

And the different squares. Yes, there are the cards that you can draw as well, community chest and chance squares. When you land on these, you draw a card from one of those two piles and there are various things in there. Like you want a fashion modeling contest, you get $10. And there are dog show one in there too.

I think there's probably a dog show. And there's also street repairs or. Those are big time. General repairs. And that's based on your properties that you own. That's right. A percentage. They can hit you pretty hard.

Yeah. Just like in real life. That's right, you know? And that's funny because the monopoly, what was her name, Lizzie Maggie? Yeah. In an interview, she gave with some leftist magazine at the time, she said,

she basically called the thing the game of life. Yeah. That was already taken out. I don't know. Was it? Yeah. That's around since the mid 1800s. Oh, okay.

And it's old old. I thought she was being prescient. No, she was being glib. She was making a pop culture reference for the time. Yeah, exactly. But did you know apparently there used to be a square on the game of life board for suicide? Really?

Yeah, it was a way that you could go. I never really played that. I think I played it a couple of times. I never did either. I always thought it was kind of like you get the whole family in the car and it's like, whatever. Yeah. We did, I mean, we weren't the biggest game players

as families, but we did monopoly sum and Yahtzee was a big one. Yahtzee was great. That I still enjoyed today. I love Yahtzee. Sure. Yeah. We also played this game called Bull.

And it was like a stock trading game. Oh yeah? With cards. And it's just now occurring to me that all these games are just teaching you about life. Yeah. It's like real monopoly is nothing but real estate. The game of life is everything.

Right. This game Bull was about the stock market. Yeah. Sorry, it was about sarcastic. Sorry. Cause you had to say it like a jerk. Right. Candyland, we know what that's all about.

Yeah. Drugs, right? Probably. Shoots and ladders, taught you to stay away from snakes. Yeah, operation taught you how to be a doctor. Oh yeah, that's right. That's where I got my MD. And then of course, battleship taught you

how to be a warmonger. That's right. So did risk. Can take great pride. Risk taught you to be the antichrist. Yeah, risk we should do. There is an article on risk. I saw, I looked it over.

It didn't seem as interesting as this one. Yeah, I don't know if the history is as interesting for sure. And I mean, isn't that what's interesting about any game, the history of it? Yeah, I think so. So let's talk about the rules, dude. OK. Let's start at the beginning.

We'll start at go. Go is where you start. And that's where, like you said, you collect the 200 every time you land on it or pass it. Sometimes house rules, you get 400 for actually landing on it. Oh yeah. And only 200 for passing it.

We never thought that way. Oh, that makes sense. That's a good rule. But free parking is where we had house rules. That is a space on the corner of the board where you supposedly, per the official rules, don't do anything. Yeah, there's nothing.

It's just a space. But what we did was we donated all the collected taxes and fees and put it under free parking. And if you land it on that, that was like a lottery win. Oh yeah. And a lot of people play that way. I think I've heard of that one before. I liked it because it allowed you more money,

which is my favorite thing. It's cash. It's a lotto. Yeah, exactly. We got ahead of ourselves. Let's start at the real beginning. OK. So everybody sits down at the table.

Yeah. Maybe somebody gets a drink. Maybe you have to wait because somebody has to go to the bathroom so you're all sitting there quietly. And then when everybody's finally at the table, you guys select a banker. And the banker distributes the monopoly money, $1,500 to each player, $2,500, $2,100, $2,50s, $6,20s, and $510s, $5,5s,

and $5,1s, $1,500. And the goal of the game that you're getting to here at 30 minutes in is to bankrupt all of your family and friends. That's the whole point. Pretty much. Some people put a time limit because this game can go on forever. And other people say, no, you've got

to finish it by bankrupting everyone or until the last person is like, I give, jeez, I've got $8. I hate this game. Yeah, that's usually me. And Emily's usually has her foot on my throat. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we play two person monopoly, which is just not fun.

Yeah. Because you know one of you is going to lose. No, that's not why. It's just this is a game that's more fun with more people, I think. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. So OK, so everybody's got $1,500.

You roll the dice to see who goes first, whoever rolls the highest goes first. Classic move. Then you roll, both die, and you start moving. From the go square, and you go clockwise around the board. And when you land on a property, this I didn't know, which is kind of a basic rule, I guess, but I never played it this way.

When you land on a property, you have the option to buy it. I knew that part. But if you declined to buy it, then the property goes up for auction. Not only have I never played it the way, I've never heard of anyone playing it that way. So it's not just me. Not just you.

All right, so I guess during an auction, not only the person, not only everybody else, but the banker and the person who declined to buy it can bid on it. Which didn't make sense, unless you're trying to get it for lower, because can't you start the bidding at wherever? Yes, you can start the bidding anywhere you want.

So you could considerably get it for lower. And if you're playing against somebody who declines to buy something and then starts bidding on it at a lower price, keep an eye on that person. Because that's a sharp. They're out to win. Yeah. Yeah, I hate that rule.

Because to me, it's just like, what's the point in rolling and landing on something, I guess, right at first refusal. But I don't know. I don't like it. No, and plus the Quakers were like, we specifically put a price on these things. So there wouldn't be a lot of yelling.

We don't like yelling. They had another game to follow called the Quiet Roof Raising Ceremony. Those are not Quakers. It was fun. That was the Amish. They're different. Don't you think Quakers raise some roofs?

Yeah, they do. Ain't no party like a Quaker party. That's right. All right, so let's say you buy all of the properties that they're divided into different colors. Like there's three green, green ones, orange ones, blue ones, light blue. If you buy all of the properties that

are tied together by a single color, then you have what's called a monopoly. And that means you can then charge double rent. Although we never do that, we just keep it single rent. And you now have the option to buy houses. And then once you have enough houses, I think three, you can then buy a hotel.

Right, and that's called improvements. You're improving your land. Supposedly. Once you start to do improvements, things change a little bit. Not only can you start making more money, but it's actually harder to mortgage your properties if you find yourself in debt.

Right. Because this is how crazy complicated it is. Like, I don't think I was ever paying that much attention to monopoly that I ever mortgaged a piece of land. Oh, really? I think it started to get into debt or whatever. I was just like, yeah, I'm done. But apparently, so if you find yourself in debt,

and let's say you have a monopoly and you want to mortgage, you can mortgage just one of the spots, right? Yes. But to do so, let's say you have a hotel on that piece of land that you're mortgaging. You first have to sell the hotel back to the bank at half price, and then you can mortgage the land. You're still, I think, are you collecting rent on that land

or does it go right to the bank? No, that's where you just turn the card over, and it's just you still technically own it, but you can't collect any rents on it. But you can collect rent and everything on the other two pieces of property, or the other one, depending on which one you own. I don't know, really?

No, you can. I looked it up. So that doesn't bust up the monopoly? No, it doesn't. OK. So you still own the monopoly. It's just that one is mortgaged, and then to get it back, you have to pay the bank the mortgage plus 10%.

Right. And this is where you can get silly with your house rules if you want, as far as mortgaging and stuff like that. Because supposedly it's a rule, too, where you can't. The only thing that is not allowed is a personal loan. And I did all kinds of personal loaning because I was Mr. Cash. What were your interest rates?

I don't remember. Did you break any usury laws? No. I was a kid, so it was probably just like 10% or something. I'm not the right. I'm not enough of a diehard capital now. You're not the one who declines to buy something so you can bid on at a lower price.

I'm playing Candyland. I loved Candyland. Actually, I never played that. It was a great game, was it? Because of the art. Was it crazy? It was beautiful stuff. And then nowadays you look at the Candyland board

and you're like, poor kids. They don't know what they were missing. I just got a ticket to ride game that I haven't played yet. Have you heard of that one? No. It was a German game that's like one game of the year. It's a train game. Like you establish train routes between cities.

But it's supposedly like, it sounds like really? That's fun, but it's supposedly great. I just bled a tear at the thought of it. Yeah, it does sound pretty bad. But no, it's one game of the year. Why? Those Germans. And watch people ticket to ride enthusiasts will be like,

dude, it's the best ever. Oh, I'm sure. We're going to hear. I've heard like German game night is like a thing now. Yeah, I think they're a little more heady. Is that what it is? I think so. This seems like I read over the rules the other night

just so I would know what to do. And because the purchaser of the game has to be the game explainer as well. Right. You have to listen to Kraftwerk while you play it? Yeah. Well, you don't have to, but it helps. House rules?

Yeah. So I guess we've, oh, and we said you can do anything, but give personal loans, right? That's what the official rules say. So like you can, I can buy from you on the side or something like that, or you can hold something up for auction, whatever anybody's doing. Yeah, and we always played where you had to do that

when it was your turn. That makes sense. And that would take your turn as well. Right, yeah. But again, the whole point is, is to be the person who owns the most stuff so that you can bankrupt all of your family and friends. That's right.

And I mean, those are the rules, but there's actually strategy to it. And people pay a lot of attention to this. You know, there's a Monopoly World Championship, roughly every four years, although it's been, the last one was in 2009. So we're due. An American lawyer won, right?

In 2009, I think? No, I think it was a Swede or a Norwegian man. OK, maybe he was the North American. That's what he was. The North American champ. Yeah, and he represented the US and the World Championships. It sounds so silly. Weird, yeah.

Well, he used the iron, at least that was retired, yeah. Yeah, I think the American used the thimble. Gotcha. Let's talk more. Jerry just laughed. She was like, really? That's the fact that people need? Well, we're trying to really appeal to the purists here too.

We want everybody to be engaged. Yeah. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, now when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. OK, Chuck, so again, the point bankrupt everybody.

Bankrupt everybody. But there's, like, techniques that you can use to more efficiently bankrupt people. Like, the overall, the best strategy, the basic strategy, is to buy everything every chance you have. Yeah, I mean, I looked up, there's a lot of different people's strategies and opinions online. I did find this one from a guy, and that was his strategy,

is buy everything. It doesn't matter what it is. Even the suckers bet the electric company and the water works. Yeah, which I don't pay off, really. He said buy it all and never have more than $100 in cash is his rule. Wow.

He says the number one mistake people make is hoarding cash like I did. Yeah, you're making the number one mistake. That's right. And he says that buy everything and do whatever it takes to get a monopoly, even a bad one. Like, he will trade to get a bad monopoly and give someone a good monopoly even,

as long as he gets the monopoly. Oh, gotcha. And he says, it's fine, because then you too will probably take out everyone else. The point is just to get a monopoly and improve it as fast as you can. So supposedly, though, a general rule of thumb among hardcore monopoly players is

that while you're improving your monopoly, your properties, by adding houses or whatever, you want to stop at three houses. Because the jump from the third house to the hotel is financially, it doesn't pay off usually. It's over improvement. Yeah. Just like in your home.

Like, don't build that $80,000 kitchen, because you're not going to get your money back on that. So three houses. This guy doesn't subscribe to that. He buys everything. And puts hotels on it? Yeah, he says as soon as he gets his first monopoly, he mortgages everything else to get cash back and then

uses that cash to improve. Wow. Which I thought was a little risky. Couple of bad rolls. I mean, it's a game of strategy, but at the end of the day, you're rolling dice. And so it is very much a game of chance. I'll bet that guy feels like he's

on the back of a Pegasus, though, the whole game. Like, he's just thrilled. He claims to have beaten. He's out there on the edge. He claims to have won a game in 12 minutes one time, which I thought was tooting his own horn a bit. Yeah, sure. But real regular strategy, you're right.

They say three houses is the max you should go. And then there's also some that you should avoid, even though they seem like very tempting. We already said the electric company and the water company, the utilities, the most you can get for rent from landing on them is 10 times the roll of the dice, which is $120. But that also means it could be as low as $20. I mean, this guy would probably say, well, hey,

it was worth it. I still own them, and I'm still making money if somebody lands on them. But a lot of, again, the monopoly purists say, just stay away from them. And you also may want to stay away from the most expensive ones, Boardwalk and Park Place. Yeah, there are only two of them,

and they just don't get landed on very much. Yeah, so think about it. Right out of the gate, when you're thinking of probabilities, the fact that there's two of these properties, rather than three, means that another player is less likely to land on your monopoly, because there's three or two instead of three. So that's one problem.

The other problem is placement, where they are. They're right after go, right before go. Yeah, so it's at the end of the board, essentially. No, I'm sorry, they're right before jail? No, they're right before go. They're right before go. Okay, so that means that most players are going to, well, they're going to pass them for sure

whenever they hit that. Go directly to go. Exactly, so that means that your monopoly is going to be passed over. The likelihood of making your money back, recouping it, especially if they're improved to the hilt, like a really fancy hotel, means that- It's a lot of money.

Yeah, you probably sunk a lot of money unwisely into those. You want to go for some other ones? Yeah, supposedly, and there are people that have done, there was this one guy, if you really want to get into monopoly, this dude, I don't even know his name, but just look up probabilities in the game of monopoly. And a scientific American in the mid 90s

said an article that talked about probabilities of landing on different spaces, but they excluded community chest and chance and being sent to jail. So this guy said, I took all of that and included everything. And he has statistical charts, long-term probabilities for ending up on each square, expected income per opponent role,

average income per role, expected number of opponent role to recoup incremental costs, to recoup mortgages. It's the name of his website, by the way, is monopolywasfun.com. It totally should be. But if you just want to do some basic probabilities, the orange properties are landed on more than anyone else.

Yes, and why Chuck? Because they are after jail. Yeah, six, eight, and nine spaces after jail. Yeah, so if you get sent to jail, which is going to happen at some point, and we actually, we didn't talk about jail, we'll talk about that. Then you, yeah, chances are you're going to hit

one of those orange squares on your way out of jail. Yeah, because you're rolling with two dice. So you're much more likely to roll like a six, eight, or a nine than you are like a two, or a three, or a one. It's not even possible to roll a one. Try it, you can't. You can't unless you eat one of the dice. And in which case, unless it's a house rule,

everybody's going to yell at you and have to wait around until you poop it out to keep playing. Actually, our rule was you had to roll the child in. The what? The child who ate the dice. Oh yeah, shake him up, yeah. All right, so jail is in the corner of the board, and you can, there are a few different ways you can go there.

You can draw a go to jail card. Right. You can throw three doubles in a row and go to jail. Yeah. Which I never understood because that's a good thing. I guess, but it's also the sign of the devil. So that's why you have to go to jail for a little while to be cleansed.

That's right. Or there is a square mark to go to jail, and you can land on that and go to jail. You can also get out in three ways. You can have that get out of jail free card. If you draw that, you can hold onto it. We could sell it, although I think that's a house rule. You could sell it to a friend or enemy.

Whoever had the most cash, right? Exactly. And then you basically, the other way is to roll, to either pay your way out with 50 bucks or to roll your way out. The way we played it was each turn, you had one chance to roll your way out of jail. So you, it's rolling doubles.

Rolling doubles, right. Yeah. And then if you, under official rules, if you don't roll doubles for three consecutive turns, like you get three consecutive chances to roll doubles. And if you don't on any of those turns, then you have to pay 50 bucks to get out of jail. We just played where you just got out

and you didn't have to pay. Well, then you guys weren't following the rules. Told you the house rules, the brand house rules. So there's actually a strategy to jail. If you go to jail early on in the game, you want to pay your 50 bucks to get out immediately. Just pay the 50 bucks, because then you can keep going around the board

and there's more stuff available to buy. But later in the game, you want to just kind of hang out in jail. Yeah, like Josh has bought all the orange spaces and you've got hotels on each one. So I'm thinking I might be good to sit in jail for a few rounds. Yeah, because you can still collect rent on your properties.

But the fact that you're in jail keeps you off of my properties. Yeah, and another Bryant rule we played where when you're in jail, you could not collect any rents. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, but according to official rules, you just make as much money as you want there.

And apparently in jail, you can officially, you can also buy and sell properties and improve your and collect rent and build hotels and houses, which I thought, I don't know, if you're in jail, you can lose that right. It seems like in real jail, that's the way it is. No, it's not.

You can own a house and be in jail. I guess that's true. And technically, you could probably charge rent to someone, you could sublet it, like I'm gonna be gone for three to six. No, it's true, but what happens when dishwasher breaks? Try to get light out of jail to go fix it. They're not gonna let you do that.

That's very funny. But it's true too. Probability experts also say you get a good return on buying all of the railroads, because they're pretty cheap. There's one on each side. And once you have each, once you own all of them, they're $200 in rent.

So that's not too bad, not too shabby. But to me, a monopoly is, the reason monopolies are valuable is because they're in a row, whereas the railroads are spaced out. Right. And our friend, the strategist, who thinks he invented the game,

says, but what you have to remember is none of these strategies matter, because you're playing, it's a game of people and personalities. So he said, you gotta sit back and watch the different personalities emerge, and then use, manipulate that. Gotcha.

Like the cash hoarder versus the shark, and he's like, you're really playing against people. Man, that's interesting. I thought so. Okay. So let's talk about another friend, an economist friend. His name is Ralph Ansbach.

Yes. And he, back in the 70s, had a game called anti-monopoly. Yeah, he was an econ professor at San Francisco State. That's right. And like made his own real game. Like he didn't just like draw it up on paper. Like he started a little small business.

Right. And manufactured it. Apparently sold about 200,000 copies of it, like right out of the gate. Yeah. Like it just hit a nerve. Again, it was called anti-monopoly, and the whole point of it was to break up monopolies

rather than build monopolies. Yeah, the beginning of the game is essentially the end of a regular game. Like everyone starts off with monopolies. And instead of real estate and utilities in anti-monopoly, they had their individual businesses that have been brought under a single ownership. And you take the role of federal case worker

and bring indictments against monopolized businesses. That's right. In order to return the board to a free market system. You have to wear sensible shoes. It sounds awesome. Yeah, well, and he came up with this because he was trying to apparently explain to his son what was wrong and bad about monopolies.

Right. And I suspect capitalism to a certain extent. And he came up with this game instead. Like I said, sold a substantial amount, 200,000 copies of a game, especially back in the 70s. That was pretty good. As a startup. Yeah.

And it caught Parker Brothers' attention enough that they sent him a cease and desist letter, took him to court, got a court order for him to hand over his like 37,000 copies that he had in his warehouse. And Parker Brothers went and unceremoniously buried him in a landfill in Minnesota. So Ralph didn't cotton to this very much.

He didn't like that. He doesn't like to be pushed around. I get the impression. No, I mean, a guy who makes anti-monopoly is not gonna cave in to the courts initially. And he did so like very much at his own financial detriment. He had a very expensive team of lawyers at first and spent quite a bit of money fighting Parker Brothers

for the right to use anti-monopoly. And it wasn't really going anywhere and he was losing a lot of money. So he started to do legwork himself, found a lawyer friend who worked on the cheap forum and that's when things started taking off. Yeah, I mean, he basically uncovered the lie that it was invented by Charles Darrow.

He found out that the game was essentially in the public domain or should have been and went all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Yeah, he won at the Supreme Court. This econ professor who came up with a game called anti-monopoly, won in the Supreme Court, won the right to name his game anti-monopoly. Yeah, I mean, he deposed the two Quakers

that were friends of Hoskins, they were old at that point, they took the stand. He deposed the CEO of Parker Brothers and he took the stand and it had to admit under oath, like, yeah, we did kind of steal it, the idea from that lady after all. And so as Ralph says, the whole point to him was for this true story, the true origins of monopoly

and how it came about and the whole point of it originally could still be told openly and that what he said couldn't be bought at any price in his opinion. That's right. So way to go Ralph. Yeah, he wrote a book awkwardly titled The Billion Dollar Monopoly in Swindle, Colin. During a David and Goliath battle,

anti-monopoly uncovers the secret history of monopoly. That's a little clunky. A little clunky. Still around, in 1984, there was a new version called anti-monopoly two, where you could actually be a monopolist or a competitor. So you got to choose, which I thought was interesting. And if you chose the competitor, you charge lower rents

and you can improve property at any time, but if you're a monopolist, you have to own at least two properties in a group before building houses and charge a lot higher rents. So I think you're like playing against the two systems within the same game. That's really interesting. Yeah, I'm gonna, I might grab one of these

and see what it's like. Yeah. Maybe. Tell everybody it's German. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I do, the longest monopoly game of all time, 70 days. I played a game of risk that seemed like

it lasted that long once. It may have. It didn't last that long, but it lasted a weekend. Oh, okay. And monopoly, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just give up. I'll take my fake cash and go home. Yeah.

You're horrid of it? Yeah. You're like, I'll just saved all this money. That's right. And I own the utilities. If you want to learn more about monopoly, including how to play, if you don't like house rules, but you also don't feel like looking

at the official rule book, you can just go on to how stuff works. Yeah. And check out the rules that is in this article which is type monopoly in the search bar at housetofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for Chuck. Facebook questions.

So people, this is what we do sometimes when we don't have a listener or mail prepared. We will go on Facebook, ask for questions, and then over the course of a couple of episodes, we will read those out in rapid fire, like fashion. We don't do anything in rapid fire fashion. I couldn't even explain rapid fire fashion in rapid fire. No.

All right, so I'm going to start this off with Louise Benjamin says, with as many shows as you've recorded, how many would you like to go back and redo? Just a small handful, I would say, that I was literally kind of like, I'm really disappointed with that. Yeah.

You're a little harder on us than I am though. What's weird is like any time I do say, like that was terrible. You're like, yeah, it wasn't bad. And I'll go back and listen to him. I'll be like, it was way better than I thought. That's what Jerry says when you leave the room. She says, they're always better than he thinks.

Oh, really? I didn't realize Jerry talked about me when I wasn't here or spoke at all when I wasn't around. She was not allowed. All right, you got one? I do. Let's see, do either of us have a preference as to what type of vacuum cleaner you use?

That's from Taylor Jean Warner, with the most pedestrian question anyone's ever asked. Not if you were into vacuuming, my friend. Okay. I love vacuuming. I have a Electrolux canister vacuum. Oh, really? I call it Luxy, and Emily's not allowed to operate it.

Wow. Yeah. You mean I have a Dyson, one of the little, not the big one, one of the smaller ones? Yeah. The yellow ball? Just a regular upright back? Yeah.

Yeah, I got on the canister thing years ago. I love them. Yeah. I don't know why. This thing took like, you know, they're like, it never loses suction. It's very powerful or whatever. I accidentally rolled over the cord to charge my phone.

It sucked the rubber off of the cord. Wow. Yeah, I had to put electrical tape back on. Wow. It does suck. All right, that's some buzz marketing. Joseph Campbell, what is your advice on how to have a successful marriage?

Joseph Campbell asked us a question. Yeah. Wow. He should know this question. All right, answer. Mary, Mary, your friend. Yeah. That's my biggest piece of advice.

That's a good one. If you don't like your spouse, then you can't love your spouse. Yeah, Mary, the person you want to hang out with the most. You should write a self-help book. The end. I have another one for you, Chuck. Ready? Yes.

Bethany Jackson asks, are you ever going to get another pet goat? No. Well, never say never. Yeah, one day I will. When I retire, I like to the country, I would love another goat because they're the best. That answer is that.

Josh, Kari Obermack says, what is your favorite Simpsons episode? Oh, that's a tough one. But I'm going to have to go with the old standby of Mr. Sparkle, the Whism Lady. I'm going to go with Monorail. That's a good one, too. Or any of the Halloween, like one through 10 or so.

Yeah. Those are just great. Yeah. Robert Browning, Justice League of Avengers. I don't know what that means. Really? Yeah, you do. As a kid, I was Justice League.

I was way more into that. But here as an adult, that Avengers movie is great. I'm into that. Justice League is DC? Yeah, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman. Although I like the Super Friends. That was all Justice League, wasn't it? Yeah.

OK, well, I have a coherent answer then. OK. For live action animation, well, not live action, but for animation, I prefer Justice League for comic books. I prefer Avengers Marvel universe. Well, in the new movie, they're doing the Superman, Batman movie, and then a full-on Justice League movie is leading up to that.

So we'll see. Jury's out on motion pictures. But it's going to be hard to adopt the Avengers movie. That was pretty good. Not motion pictures, cartoon only. No, no, no, I'm talking about the new movies that are coming out soon. I got you.

Billy Shultz says, were there rejected titles for the podcast before you landed on Stuff You Should Know? Since you named it, I think you should answer. I came up with a bunch of ideas. One of them was McNeil Lair News Hour, if that was already taken. But Stuff You Should Know is in the original list of ideas. Yeah, what, Terminator 2 Judgment Day?

That was one. Yeah. All right, you're next. You want me to go next? Yeah. Let's see. Oh, this is a good one. Christopher Mark Reese says, which of the two

are your favorite person for promoting science? Bill Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's a good one. Man, they're both so great. I say NDT. Yeah? Yeah. Cosmos is awesome.

It is awesome. He also is totally comfortable rocking a shirt unbuttoned at the top, too. Yeah. Like, he's like the Billy D. Williams of science. Plando Tyson. Yeah. Yeah, and he was on our TV show, which is really nice.

You kind of have to go with him. All right. Naomi Hartman Garum. Oh, this is from her son, Jackson, age nine. What was your favorite book when you were kids? My favorite book when I was a kid was around your age or younger was The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. It was about a bunch of mice in New York

that move into Macy's during Christmas time. And Santa is kidnapped, and they solved the case. Wow. It was a great, great book. What was it called? The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. And it wasn't like a little kid's book. I mean, it was my first novel.

It was long, long form. That was your favorite book when you were a kid? Yep. My favorite book when I was a little kid was A Christmas Book. I think it was a golden book called something like A Visit to Santa's Workshop or something. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

It was so cute. And then strangely, the first series of novels that I ever loved were Ramona Quimby books. Oh, really? Man, I used to eat those up. And I would take flak, too, at school. I didn't care. I loved those books.

Yeah, I loved Encyclopedia Brown. Oh, yeah, he was good. And then when I was younger, younger, you can't do better than Dr. Seuss and Chell Silverstein stuff like that. What's the classics? I've got one. All right, go ahead.

If this is from Alejandro Sandy, if you could live in any era of history, which time would you live in why? That's always so hard. I'm going back to what I said before. Me, Yumi, Cuba, 1920s. OK. I'm going to say New York in, I don't know, maybe the 1930s. That'd be pretty fun.

Cool. Lots of drinking and dancing. Yeah. Well, that's Cuba in the 20s, too. Yeah, exactly. He just had the Latin flavor. Kevin Kinsey, which pickle thing do you prefer most, eggs, cucumbers, peppers, or cauliflower,

or anything else? I don't eat pickled things, so that's you. I love pickled everything. It's so good for you, too. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. It helps you digest bats a lot more easily. Nice.

It's just really healthy, like eating pickled stuff. You don't like pickles? No, I don't. I have one more. Alah, Aslan, Bridell. Boy, there's some weird names on Facebook. How do I make a 10-year-old more responsible? You're getting all the heavy questions,

like secret to successful marriage. How do you make your kid good? I think you got to put them to work. Make them, or get them a pet. You make them responsible for something, and that they're interested in, it would be my advice. I agree with both of your pieces of advice. Marry the person that you want to spend time with,

and get your kid a hamster. Yes, put them to work. Charge money. You got any more? Yeah, I got too many more. Pick one. OK, are you ready? Yes.

The one that I pick is as follows from Mike Reels, Arnie or Stallone. It depends on the year. I'm going to have to say, I would go Schwarzenegger. Yeah? 80s Schwarzenegger. Nowadays, who cares? No, but if we're taking the time work back to the 80s, I would say. Conan the Barbarian, the original Terminator.

Total recall? We're all a deal, total recall. Yeah, those are all pretty great. I'm a huge First Blood fan and Rocky fan, so it's tough not to go with Stallone, although he made some really bad movies. Like Tango, Assassin type movies. Tango and Cash and the Dolly Parton one

about when he's a country singer. Oh, Rhinestone? Rhinestone, Cobra, like, I guess, those are awful movies. What? You didn't like Cobra? How did you? Yes. Not for me.

Must have been the age difference. Yeah, so I'm going to go Arnie too. OK, how about that? There you go. Arnold. If you want to ask Chuck or me questions, you can go on to Facebook anytime at facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. That's our Twitter handle. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.