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He was the head of this gang.
You're going to push that line for the cause.
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew.
Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here.
I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom.
And I'm Jordan, the show's producer.
And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long.
I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't.
Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility.
We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.
So check out The Mailroom on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Oh boy, it's time for one of my favorite episodes, How Monopoly Works.
This one was way more interesting than I ever understood.
There's a lot more to Monopoly.
And just as a little aside, if you think that the Monopoly man wore a monocle, you're wrong.
You're thinking of Mr. Peanut.
Plus also, it makes sense that he would be wearing a monocle.
It's a bit of a crime that he wasn't.
At any rate, here's the episode.
I'm Monopoly.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland, which makes this Stuff You Should Know.
That's right.
Got on my top hat and my cane.
Your monocle.
My monocle.
Does he have a monocle?
I thought it was, uh, no, it's Mr. Peanut.
Oh, yeah.
Not Mr. Monopoly.
And I think Mr. Pringle has a monocle, too, doesn't he?
No, he just has a mustache.
Mr. Monopoly doesn't have a monocle, huh?
I don't think so.
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.
His born name is given name by his parents is 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.
Uh-huh.
And they named all the characters on the board Milburn, Pennybags.
And then the jail guy is Jake the Jailbird.
Okay.
And the police officer in Go to Jail is... I'll bet it's Iris, 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's done.
Whereas Monopoly, it's like, this is more like McDonald's or Twinkies or something like that.
It's like a cultural...
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.
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 and there and 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.
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 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, Georgism.
Yeah, he came up with this thing called Georgism, 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.
Right.
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.
The 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 going to own land, it belongs to everybody.
So that should be taxed.
Yeah.
And then that tax will be given back to the community for the greater good.
Yeah.
So that's Georgism and that was kind of the philosophy that formed the basis of Monopoly, what was originally called the Landlord's Game, which was created by a lady named Lizzie Maggie M-A-G-Y.
M-A-G-I-E.
M-A-G-I-E.
Yeah.
Almost magpie, but without the P. Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And she basically... I think that was on her card.
Right.
In quote.
Yeah.
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 these weird things like community chess, like why would I want to pay into this pot?
I don't care about the community.
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.
She did.
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 Landlord's 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 today came from Lizzie's Quaker friends.
Like, for example, the original plots of land were up for auction for a bid.
Yeah, yeah.
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 were just boring pawns.
Yeah, like household objects, which you know.
That's why the thimble is in there and originally the iron.
Yeah.
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 the 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.
If you go to their website.
Parker Brothers is like, hey, this is where our story begins.
Yeah, the inventor of Monopoly, Charles Darrow.
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 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.
Right.
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 Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia.
Yeah, without patenting it.
And the Parker brothers said, you know what?
It's the Depression.
Can you believe it?
We're not going to 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 they eventually did pay her money.
But part of the deal was they agreed to buy her patent and said you know what?
We'll sell a few of your other game ideas too.
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, because he's the one who came up with the unofficial history and really tracked it down.
Boy, 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 Pillan.
She is a monopoly expert.
There's a lot of those out there, I've learned.
Well, 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...
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.
Support the LBGT community.
That's right.
If you're playing Monopoly.
Yeah.
That's what I would do.
And maybe just, you know, don't charge anybody when they land on it.
Yeah.
Just be like, this is the party place, everybody.
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 Yeah.
There's a lot of Monopoly facts dropping all around us right now.
I know.
It's raining thimbles.
Before we go any further, though, you want to do a message break?
Yes.
Okay.
We'll be right back, everyone.
We'll be right back.
I'm Stephen Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut.
I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product.
With every sip, you get a little something different.
Visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or BevMo.
This message is intended for audiences 21 and older.
Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky.
For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com.
Please enjoy responsibly.
Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here.
I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom.
And I'm Jordan, the show's producer.
And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years.
I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't.
Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone.
Depends which bomb.
Well, that's true.
Every week, we're breaking down the unique world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility and things that happen in the bedroom.
You mean sleep?
Yeah, something like that, Jordan.
We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.
It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between.
Men's Health is about more than six packs and supplements.
It's about energy, confidence, and connection.
We don't just want you to live longer.
We want you to live better.
So check out the mailroom, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.
Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths.
Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.
32 years, total law enforcement experience.
But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.
He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do.
He going to push that line for the cause.
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming.
My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about.
Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name, and I just heard one gunshot.
The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way.
Listen to The Brothers Ortiz on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
Yeah.
One for your hometown probably.
Yeah.
One for your favorite sports team.
Yeah.
I have personally my version is a Star Wars Monopoly.
Nice.
Which is pretty fun.
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.
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, okay.
It's like everything is multiplied by, I think, 1,000.
So the dollar amounts are way higher.
Is this the one where they replaced the?
The railroads are replaced by airports, including Hartsfield.
Is this the one where they replaced corporations for all the properties, though?
Yes.
Like McDonald's and Sony and...
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 you can go online at MyMonopoly and you can design your own board.
Is that right?
And do like your own neighborhood.
Wow.
And then they will make it for you.
And I think it's like 150 bucks or something.
Wow, moneybags.
I'm not going to do it.
You can do the Eastlake Monopoly.
No, I was talking to whoever went and got it.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, Uncle Rich Pennybags.
That's what you should have said.
Rich Uncle Pennybags.
Pennybags just sounds not that wealthy.
I have a bag of pennies on me right now.
Forbes has their silly fictional 15 list of fictional characters' wealth and he, in 2013, was number 13.
Jeez, his stars declined to him, huh?
Guess who 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... Lord of the Rings.
It's a dragon.
I think it 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 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 Grey.
Richie Rich, I forgot about him.
He's number seven.
He had a robot maid and a crazy weird scientist friend, didn't he?
Sure.
Like a Richie Rich robot of himself?
I think he had that too, but no, his maid was a robot, wasn't it?
That was the Jetsons.
No, he had a robot mate 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 want to talk about the rules of the game?
Again, 2008 rules, if you are a Monopoly purist, 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 going to open it up and you're going to have a board with all these different properties and 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.
Can we go over?
Sure.
There's a wheelbarrow, a Scotty dog, a top hat. a cat which replaced the iron in 2013.
There was a big to-do, because Parker Brothers or Hasbro was 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 kind of cool.
Right, but it was also, did you see the other ones that they were voting for?
It was like a robot, like Richie Rich's made.
A guitar.
A guitar.
They didn't make the cut, though.
No, they got voted out.
And the cat got voted in.
But the iron got booted.
Yeah, it 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 Rich.
Is that right?
Penny Bags.
Penny Bags, it's not.
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, so let's just throw them in Monopoly for now.
Right.
It's pretty smart.
But they phased the cannon out because it was just too overtly violent?
Yeah.
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, which is every little kid's favorite.
Which apparently had a number three on the side for a little while.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Dale Earnhardt.
I guess so.
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 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 was retired.
No, it was kind of sad.
Yeah.
And now they're, and the 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.
Okay, so you've got the box open.
You've got the board.
You've got two dice.
You've 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 costs 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.
Oh, 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 hoarder, which is no way to win at Monopoly.
No.
I thought it was... Can't save?
No, I just thought... That just figures for me, though, like...
You gotta 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.
Okay.
Yeah, 22 are properties.
You've got your electric company and waterworks.
Yeah.
Sucker's 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 got to 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 are incorporating the top house rules as voted on by fans as official rules for this one version.
In a $70 hardback book?
I don't see why.
A lot of people were incensed.
They were like, no one plays by the real rules anyway, so why bother packaging it and selling it?
Right.
And they went, I think you just said the word sell.
Did someone say sell?
Therein lies the answer.
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 Bundt cake with the nail file in it.
It'd be very old school.
Or a 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, were the Nazis allowing Monopoly sets to be delivered to POWs?
Is that what I'm seeing here?
Yeah.
Maybe it was the Burmese.
No, I mean, you've seen the Great Escape, the prison camps in World War II.
It seemed like a lot of them, they let them garden, and they were kind of chummy with them.
You saw Hogan's Heroes.
Yes.
I saw Hogan's Heroes.
I didn't put a lot of stock into it.
But yeah, no, I just figured.
They played soccer?
Maybe the Japanese or the Burmese or the Italians.
I could see saying like yeah, 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.
Like they weren't playing soccer or Monopoly.
They were playing Survive Another Day, that game.
I'm not making light of that, by the way.
Oh, I didn't think you were.
And I'm basing everything on war movies, so I'm probably wrong anyway.
I've seen Uncommon 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.
All right, so where were we?
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 won a fashion modeling contest, you get 10.
Isn't there a dog show one in there too?
I think there's probably a dog show.
And there's also street repairs.
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.
Just like in real life.
That's right.
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.
That's 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?
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 some and Yahtzee was a big one.
Yahtzee was great.
That I still enjoy today, I love Yahtzee.
Sure.
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.
Monopoly is nothing but real estate.
The game of life is everything.
This game Bull was about the stock market.
Sorry was about sarcastic.
Sorry.
Because you had to say it like a jerk.
Candyland, we know what that's all about.
Yeah.
Drugs, right?
Probably.
Chutes 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.
And 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.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's start at the beginning.
We'll start at go.
Go is where you start and that's where you 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 played 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 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.
Yeah, it was, you know, we were a bunch of beep.
Never mind.
I liked it because it allowed you more money, which is my favorite thing.
Cash.
It's the lotto.
Yeah, exactly.
We got ahead of ourselves.
Let's start at the real beginning.
Okay.
So everybody sits down at the table.
Yeah, you all get a drink.
Yeah, 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.
Two 500s, two 100s, two 50s, six 20s, and five 10s, five 5s, and five 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.
Geez, I've got $8.
I hate this game.
Yeah, that's usually me.
And Emily 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 a game that's more fun with more people, I think.
Yeah, I got you.
Okay, 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.
Yeah.
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 decline to buy it, then the property goes up for auction.
I've never, not only have I never played it that way, I've never heard of anyone playing it that way.
Okay, so it's not just me.
Not just you.
Alright, 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 doesn'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 conceivably 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 shark.
Yeah, 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 write a first refusal, but I don't know.
I don't like it.
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.
That was the Amish, they're different.
Oh, 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.
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.
I don't think I was ever paying that much attention to Monopoly that I ever mortgaged a piece of land.
I think once I started to get into debt or whatever, I was just like, I'm done.
But apparently so.
If you find yourself indebted and let's say you have a Monopoly and you want to mortgage, you can mortgage just one of the spots, right.
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 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't.
I looked it up.
So that doesn't bust up the monopoly?
No, it doesn't.
Okay.
So you still own the monopoly.
It's just that 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.
Yeah.
You know, like as far as mortgaging and stuff like that, because supposedly it's a rule to where you can't.
The only thing that is not allowed is a personal loan.
Right.
And I did all kinds of personal loaning because I was Mr. Cash.
What were your your interest rates?
I don't remember.
Do you break any usury laws?
No, I was a kid, so it was probably just like... Just pay me back whenever.
10% or something.
I got you.
I'm not the right, I'm not enough of a... You're not the shark.
You're not the one who declines to buy something so you can bid on it 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.
Did you?
At the thought of it.
Yeah, it does sound pretty bad.
Yeah.
But no, it's one game of the year.
Hey, those Germans.
And watch people, Ticket to Ride enthusiasts will be like, dude, it's the best ever.
Oh, I'm sure.
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, because the purchaser of the game has to be the game explainer as well.
Right.
You have to listen to Kraftwerk while you play?
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?
Yeah.
That's what the official rules state.
So 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 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?
No, I think it was a Swede or a Norwegian man.
Okay, maybe he was the North American.
That's what he was.
The North American champ.
Yeah, and he represented the U.S. in the world championships.
It sounds so silly.
Weird.
Yeah.
Huh.
Well, he used the iron, the piece that was retired.
Yeah, I think the American used the thimble.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Jerry just laughed.
She was like, really?
That's a fact that people need?
Well, we're trying to really appeal to the purists here, too.
We want everybody to be engaged.
All right, so let's do one more message break, and then we'll come back and talk strategy.
Stuff you should know.
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Stuff You Should Know Okay, Chugger, so again, the point, bankrupt everybody.
But there's techniques that you can use to more efficiently bankrupt people.
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 sucker's bet, the electric company and the waterworks.
Yeah, which 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.
And he says, it's fine, because then you two 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.
Yes.
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.
Don't build that $80,000 kitchen because you're not going to get your money back on that.
Right.
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.
Yeah.
A 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 the whole game, like he's just thrilled.
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 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 bucks.
With a max roll.
It could be as low as $20.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
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 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.
Yeah.
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.
Sure.
It's a lot of money.
Yeah, you've 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 Scientific American in the mid-90s did an article that talked about probabilities of landing on different, But they excluded community chest and chants 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 roll.
Average income per roll.
Expected number of opponent roll to recoup incremental costs.
Yeah. to recoup mortgages.
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 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.
Yeah.
It's not even possible to roll a one.
Try it.
You can't.
You can't unless you eat one of the dice.
Right.
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 then.
The what?
The child who ate the dice.
Oh, yeah.
Just shake him up.
Yep.
All right.
So jail is on the corner of the board and 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 marked 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 on to 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.
And the way we played it was each turn you had one chance to roll your way out of jail by 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.
I told you, the house rules.
The Bryant house rules.
So there's actually a strategy to jail.
Yeah.
If you go to jail early on in the game, you want to pay your 50 bucks to get out immediately.
Yeah.
Just pay the 50 bucks, because then you can keep going around the board and there's more stuff available to buy.
Yeah.
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 it 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 were 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 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 kind of 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 the dishwasher breaks?
Try to get let 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 own all of them, they're $200 in rent.
So that's not too bad, not too shabby.
But to me 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 manipulate that.
Like the cash hoarder versus the shark.
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 made his own real game.
He didn't just draw it up on paper.
He started a little small business and manufactured it.
Apparently sold about 200,000 copies of it right out of the gate.
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.
Everyone starts off with monopolies and instead of real estate and utilities an anti-monopoly there are 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 37000 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 doesn't like to be pushed around, I get the impression.
No, I mean, a guy who makes anti-monopoly is not going to cave in to the courts initially.
And he did so 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 money 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 for him, and that's when things started taking off.
Yeah, I mean, he basically uncovered the lie that it was invented by Charles Darrow.
Yeah.
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...
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 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, the whole point of it originally, could still be told openly.
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 colon.
During a David and Goliath Battle, Anti-Monopoly Uncovers the Secret History of Monopoly.
That's a little clunky.
A little clunky, but it's still around.
In 1984 there was a new version called Anti-Monopoly 2, 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 rent.
So I think you're playing against the two systems within the same game.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
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.
You're horrid of it?
Yeah.
You're like, oh, I 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 HowStuffWorks and check out the rules.
That is in this article.
Just type Monopoly in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com.
And since I said search bar, it's time for what?
Listener mail?
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I want some help, please.
My wife and I are expecting our first kid this summer.
And 13 days ago, we also found out that my wife has stage 4 breast cancer.
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But we're scared and overwhelmed, obviously.
We're doing chemo now, then we'll have the baby get more chemo than bilateral mastectomy, then radiation.
We have great doctors and great friends and family, so even in the face of this, we feel very lucky.
And, by the way, I got a follow-up more recently that says there is no gestational diabetes and the cancer is already shrinking.
Oh, that's great.
So things are going great so far.
Thanks for not keeping us in suspense.
I know.
I was going to wait until the end.
And he asked for a couple of favors.
He said.
First of all, if you want to follow and promote my Tumblr to keep people updated, it is httpgalafrikidikicom.
G-A-L-L-I-F-R-E-E-K-Y-D-E-E-K-Y.tumblr.com.
Okay.
He says we're huge nerds and Doctor Who fans, so that was lost on me.
Some Doctor Who reference, I guess.
Apparently so.
Does it have to do with the phone booth, maybe?
That's the only thing you know about Dr. Who.
Same here.
Secondly, I'm biking 150 miles to raise money.
And could you plug that?
And you can go to goo.gl slash 2WJZXQ.
These people don't like normal words.
Well, that's one of those shortened URLs.
Oh, I see.
It's a goo.
Gotcha.
And then third, how about a shout-out?
I think that's what we're doing here.
My wife is a little shy, so just use her nickname, The Mayor.
Oh, that's hilarious.
She wears a sash during chemo and childbirth.
I guess so.
I mean, I call Emily the boss, so I guess it's the same.
The mayor.
Yeah.
But the mayor is like the boss of several bosses, I would guess.
Yeah, we used to call my friend Justin, who you know, the mayor of Atlanta, because everywhere he went somebody knew him.
He's a sociable fella.
But now we just call him the manager of Atlanta, because everywhere you go he has some improvement to that place.
Oh, okay.
Like the lighting's not quite right, or the door should be over there.
That's hilarious.
The kitchen is not located properly.
Those Brits.
Yeah.
Uh, and then fourth, my wife works in public policy, specifically helping women and families uh get themselves out of poverty and advocating for low income workers.
So there you have it.
An awesome and incredible woman who dedicates her considerable talents to helping others, is pregnant and has breast cancer.
Kind of hard to say no, right?
I'm not above guilt tripping.
So Bob from Swathmore, Pennsylvania, um, There you go.
People should go and check out that stuff and support your bike ride.
And I hope things have continued to progress well for your wife and child.
Yeah.
And keep us updated.
Yeah.
And you keep me updated at the very least, if not everybody listening.
I will.
Okay.
Thanks a lot, Bob and the mayor.
Good luck to you both.
And let's see, if you want to get in touch with us, whether you're a mayor, a provincial governor...
Who knows?
Yeah.
You can get in touch with us on Twitter at SYSK Podcast.
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I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him.
Gabe Ortiz is a cop.
His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.
He was the head of this gang.
You going to push that line for the cause?
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew.
Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here.
I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom.
And I'm Jordan, the show's producer.
And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long.
I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't.
Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility.
We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.
So check out The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
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