The Powerful Benefits of Nostalgia & Why Games Are More Than Just Fun - SYSK Choice

Does your place in the family — firstborn, middle child, or youngest — really shape who you are? Birth-order theory has been debated for decades. This episode begins by exploring what science actually says about how sibling order affects personality, achievement, and relationships. https://psychcentral.com/blog/birth-order-and-personality#birth-order-and-personality Around the holiday season, many of us feel a wave of nostalgia — longing for people, places, and moments from the past. Once thought of as a sign of weakness, nostalgia is now proven to be a powerful source of emotional strength and meaning. Psychologist Clay Routledge, PhD, explains how revisiting fond memories can improve mood, boost motivation, and even help you plan a better future. Clay is author of Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life. (https://amzn.to/3uC1sAs). Why do humans love to play games — from chess to Monopoly? According to mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, games are far more than fun diversions; they’re a reflection of human creativity, problem-solving, and evolution itself. Marcus, professor of mathematics at Oxford and author of Around the World in Eighty Games (https://amzn.to/3MV5Lxm), reveals what games can teach us about life, luck, and strategy — and why Monopoly may be the most misunderstood game of all. And if you share your home with a cat this holiday season, you know what happens when feline meets Christmas tree. Don’t worry — there’s a fix. I’ll share a few clever tricks (involving tin foil and double-sided tape) to keep your tree upright and your cat entertained elsewhere. https://www.petmd.com/cat/care/how-keep-cats-out-christmas-tree PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! AURA FRAMES: Visit ⁠https://AuraFrames.com⁠ and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code SOMETHING at checkout! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! DELL: It’s time for Black Friday at Dell Technologies. Save big on PCs like the Dell 16 Plus featuring Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Shop now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/deals ⁠⁠⁠⁠ AG1: Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/SYSK ⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a FREE Welcome Kit with an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3 plus K2, when you first subscribe! NOTION: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works . It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use! Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://notion.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, this… is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:31Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, does birth order really determine parts of your personality? Maybe. Then nostalgia, looking back fondly on the past. It can be beneficial.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Turns out that nostalgia makes you feel younger than you are, especially after around the age of 40. And that ability to time travel backwards actually helps us deal with our anxieties about the future.

• 0:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how to keep your cat out of your Christmas tree. And the games people play, from tic-tac-toe, chess, backgammon, and our love-hate relationship with Monopoly.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  I think this is a highly flawed game, and I'm really not quite sure why it's become everyone's game of choice, for example, at holiday times. Very quickly, you realize who's going to win, and then you spend hours just grinding out the bankruptcy of all the other players.

• 1:25Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:31Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:54Speaker 04

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. Something you should know. With Mike Carruthers.

• 3:08Mike Carruthers?

  Hello there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. I suspect that you've heard something about the birth order theory. That where you fall in the birth order with your siblings has something to do with your personality. The idea that birth order is a thing was developed by Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychotherapist in the early 1900s. He proposed that the birth order position in which a child is born significantly affects their personality and life outcomes, including career and educational success. However, in more recent years, the theory has come under some scrutiny.

• 3:50Mike Carruthers?

  For example, a 2015 review found that firstborn children had higher levels of intellect than children in other birth order positions, but the researchers found no difference between firstborn children and others in terms of broader personality traits like extraversion, emotional stability, or imagination.

• 4:12Mike Carruthers?

  A 2015 study of US high school students found no statistically significant association between birth order and intelligence or any other personality traits. Now, other studies do support the idea that firstborns have some things in common. Specifically, that firstborns are more likely to be leaders and have personality traits such as persistence and emotional stability. So there may be something to the birth order theory, but it may not be as rock solid as a lot of people believe. And that is something you should know.

• 4:50Mike Carruthers?

  We are getting deep into the holiday season as this episode goes out. And it's a time when people get nostalgic and long for people and places and times gone by. Christmases gone by. Some people are more nostalgic than others, but I suspect it's human nature to look back fondly on times from the past and maybe even wish you could go back. But it also makes you wonder, why do we do this? What does being nostalgic do for you? Because when you long for something you cannot have, it can make you sad. Yet there's something about being nostalgic that can be quite comforting and satisfying. What you may not know is nostalgia is something people study.

• 5:35Mike Carruthers?

  And one of the people who studies it is Clay Routledge, PhD. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CBS. And he's author of a book called Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live A More Meaningful Life. Hey, Clay, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me on. So I've been told more than once that I'm a fairly nostalgic person. And I know what it means to be nostalgic. But as somebody who studies it, how do you define nostalgia?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  If you look at nostalgia in an online dictionary, you'll find a definition that's something like a wistful or sentimental longing for the past, which gives you a good taste of what nostalgia is, but really, there's a deeper understanding of nostalgia, a deeper experience of nostalgia. And I think of, I think the best way to define it is to think about it as two things. One, as kind of an emotion. So nostalgia is a feeling, like it's a sentiment, like it pulls at our hearts, right? But it's also cognitive, right? It's about memories. So when we have, when we experience the feeling of nostalgia, it doesn't, it's not just an emotion. It usually directs us towards thinking about specific experiences

• 6:51Speaker 02

  from our life. So it's that combination of emotion and cognition that's really about our cherished memories.

• 6:58Mike Carruthers?

  I've heard it said, and I subscribe to this theory, that one of the reasons that nostalgia is so comforting and satisfying is that it is in essence set in stone. Looking back on the past, the past is done, it can't change, nothing can go wrong, whatever you remember, you remember, whereas the future is uncertain. And so to look back at the past, that feels pretty good.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's this concept called fading affect bias, which it's just how it happens to be, and this is probably built into us for a good reason. But it happens to be that negative experiences tend to fade from our memory faster than positive ones. So it's easier to remember the good things. So you might have an experience where at the time, you like, oh, I, you know, I'm never going to do this again. And then something good comes out of it. And then later you forget. Women will often say this, you know, going through a pregnancy, right? They'll be like, never again. And then many of them, of course, do. Because, you know, the end result is something that brings them a great deal of joy.

• 8:06Mike Carruthers?

  So you talk about the science of nostalgia, which, you know, I've never heard that expression. And I don't think of nostalgia as something that you would normally study scientifically. It's just kind of a feeling and a thought that people have. So what is the science of nostalgia?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  So nostalgia actually is a really, really long and pretty wild history. Um, where it was once considered a brain disease and a mental illness. Um, and you know, of course, we don't think of nostalgia that way in the modern world. Our, our views of nostalgia are really more shaped by marketing, advertising, can, you know, more consumer culture. Where we think of entertainment, where we think of nostalgia as this kind of just fun thing, like it's a retro aesthetic. Or a type of entertainment that kind of brings us back to youth and childhood. And though that's certainly true, what we've discovered through over 25 years of research now is that there's a lot more going on than just fun. When we experience nostalgia, that we often turn to nostalgic memories.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  When we're going through a difficult time in life, or stressed, or we're lonely, or we're sad, or we're doubting the meaningfulness of our lives. And these memories help reconnect us to things that we have found fulfilling and meaningful. And that serves as a reminder that even though we're going through a tough time right now, um, that life is bigger than this one moment. And it's actually full of very fulfilling experiences that can guide us forward. That can not only offer us comfort in the present, but can help us figure out what we want to do next to improve our situation. And so we've been doing these studies and, um, for, you know, like I said, for, you know, over 25 years now, where we've tried to isolate like the, the causes and the effects of nostalgia.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Like what makes people nostalgic, when they are nostalgic, what kind of effect does it have on their mental life and also on their, uh, on their behavior? And what we've generally found is, um, yes, nostalgia is fun and you can have like a lighthearted nostalgic experience as many as it often do. When we listen to old music or watch old TV shows and movies. But really there's a deeper layer to nostalgia that is, helps us navigate the world when, when we're uncertain. And when we are distressed, it helps us kind of like find a path forward, find the courage, the motivation, the hope and, and the focus to move forward with purpose.

• 10:24Mike Carruthers?

  So I think, you know, we all know that some people are more nostalgic than others. And, you know, some people are probably more nostalgic this time of year than other times of year. But what is the snapshot of nostalgia? How big a deal is it?

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Definitely, it's the case that nostalgia, like other psychological characteristics, does have what you might think of as kind of a personality dimension. And that is, there are some people that are highly nostalgic and some people that are, you know, not nostalgic that much at all. And a lot of us are somewhere in between. The average person tends to be, you know, somewhat nostalgic, though, and have nostalgic experiences, you know, multiple times a month, if not multiple times a week. And some of these are things that aren't coming from within us. They're just, our environment is littered with, with opportunities to feel nostalgic because we get on social media and we see old photos, we watch commercials where they're using retro-themed marketing.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  And we go through our phone and look at our own, you know, look at all the photos we've collected. So there's lots of cues in the environment that make us, you know, that trigger nostalgia in all of us. But there are definitely some people who are, who are very driven by their nostalgic sentiment.

• 11:36Mike Carruthers?

  And is there any sense of what those people tend to have in common besides that? Do they tend to be more male or female or anxious or non-anxious? Or what else do they have in common besides their longing for the past?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  So people who are high in what we call nostalgia proneness, which is that the personality trait we're talking about, do tend to score higher on neuroticism, which is a personality trait that's really like trait anxiety and worry. So people who worry a lot, who are anxious a lot, tend to be more nostalgic. What's interesting about that is that that actually lines up quite well with, with research showing that all of us tend to become more nostalgic when we're anxious. So it makes sense because nostalgia comforts us. So it makes sense that people who are dispositionally more anxious would be dispositionally more nostalgic as well, that, you know, they use that resource more frequently.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  It turns out people are high and spirituality also tend to be more nostalgic regardless of their level of anxiety. And you know, this is a fairly recent finding that spirituality is associated with nostalgia. But in addition to that, what we find is that people in a in a family, and it usually is women, not always, but it's more often women than men. People in a family who have taken on the role of like the keeper of the family memories, the keeper of the family traditions, the person who creates the photo albums, that sends out the birthday cards. So the people who do that tend to use nostalgia more. Regardless of whether they have a kind of a personality disposition towards nostalgia.

• 13:20Mike Carruthers?

  What about what I was saying earlier? Because when I remember hearing this, it just it struck me as being right that one of the reasons to to go back in the past in your head and be nostalgic is because it is so safe. That nothing, you know, what happened, happened, it's all done. Whereas the future is unknown and that, you know, next Christmas could be a disaster, but ten Christmases ago was wonderful.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  That's definitely true. And related to that, when we feel uncertain or when we're worried about the uncertainty of the future, that often triggers us to be nostalgic because we want that sense of security and safety. And so, and so, yeah, I think I think one way to think about nostalgia is we're, you know, across our life, we're collecting all these experiences. And like you said, they've already happened. They're already kind of locked in. But what, but another thing that happens is over time, not only has the experience already happened, that, you know, it can't change, but we've had more time to interrogate it, to make sense of it, to weave it into our life story in a way that's meaningful to us. Another way to think about it is like, like, like making a movie.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Right, like you can record a bunch of footage for a film. You've got this raw footage. Um, no one's gonna watch that. That's an unwatchable movie. Um, but what you do to make a good movie is you edit it, right? You put it together in a, in a, in a fashion that still tells a compelling story, but does it in a way that, you know, kind of makes sense and is, you know, with our, with our kind of storytelling nature. And so I'm not saying like we're doing that exactly because our memories aren't like accurate necessarily, like a hundred percent accurate representations, like capturing like a film would be. Um, but in a way that's what we're doing. We're kind of pulling out of our memories, the specific scenes that we think really capture,

• 15:14Speaker 02

  um, what we find meaningful, what we find important about our life story. And we're weaving that together into our overall life narrative.

• 15:21Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about nostalgia and our longing for the good old days. My guest is Clay Routledge. He's author of a book called Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life.

• 15:35Speaker 05

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• 16:05Mike Carruthers?

  So Clay, when people have nostalgic moments, when they think about the past, what are they thinking about? And what I mean by that is, is it people? Is it places? Is it feelings? What tends to be the, the focus of the nostalgic memory?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Most of the time, it's it's highly social. So typically nostalgic memories involve other people. Though we also do care about place, but the place is usually connected to the people. Um, so people are are very nostalgic about vacations they went on, for instance. But usually it's because it was a special trip they took with their family or they took with a loved one. And so a lot of our nostalgic memories, even though they're about, even though they seem like they're rooted in place, that place is really rooted in in in people.

• 17:01Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem to me that that nostalgia, those feelings of nostalgia and those memories that you go back to have three components to them, people, places and time. And so recently I had the chance to go back to my old childhood home. And I was looking forward to that, being a nostalgic person. I was really kind of looking forward to going back into my old house. And it was fun to go in. It was pretty cool to see my old house. I remember this and I remembered that. I remember what happened in that room and things like that. But because it was just the place and there were no people

• 17:46Mike Carruthers?

  that I remembered from back then, and it wasn't at that time, because it was in present day. It didn't have the magic that a that a nostalgic memory has because it didn't have the people and the time element.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think that's right. I mean, people really do breathe life into the the nostalgic experience. And even when we do things like collect, right? So a a good another, a good example is like objects that people collect. On the surface, that seems almost like a very materialistic nostalgia. Like, why do you, why does anyone collect antique dishes or vinyl records? Or, you know, all the things that people collect. But if you dig a little bit deeper, if you talk to these people, what you'll find out is those those objects really are symbols. They're they're connection points to relationships. You know, I talked to this one journalist who, you know, was collected these antique dishes that her mom actually tried to pass down to her.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Um, but at the time when she was a young woman, she thought these were like dishes for old ladies and she didn't want anything to do with them. And then her mom passed and she really missed her mom and like so she went on this campaign to find, you know, um, to go shop for all these old antique dishes and, you know, and, and, and kind of reboot the collection. And it wasn't because, you know, she cared about the dishes per se. It's because these dishes were a connection to her mom, you know, to that relationship.

• 19:13Mike Carruthers?

  Those memories that we long for seem to be to some degree random. Like, we didn't know at the time this was going to be such a great memory, but now it comes up a lot. Like, can you forecast what you're going to find to be nostalgic later on?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  There's some recent research that shows that if you're trying to cultivate future nostalgic memories, um, to really savor experience and experience, you know, people were, were encouraged to savor experiences anyway. But it turns out the more we really savor something, the more likely we are to feel nostalgic about it. And these nostalgic memories tend to be, tend to be more vivid. In addition to that, something I think that's really cool about humans is actually kind of the reason I, I started studying nostalgia so many years ago was our capacity to mentally time travel. I just thought that was, that was really neat of, you know, how we're, as far as we know, we're the only organism that really doesn't just live in the moment.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Like, we think deeply about the future. Like, we imagine all sorts of things that could happen in the future. Sometimes that, you know, motivates us, that drives us to move forward, to pursue goals that, um, we know will take some time and chat and it will take some, you know, a lot of hard work to, to, to realize. But it also causes anxiety because the future's uncertain and the one certainty that exists in the future is not a great one, which is our mortality. Um, but in addition to that, we can time travel backwards. And you know, and that ability to time travel backwards turns out actually helps us deal with our anxieties about the future because we can go back in the past and we can kind of draw on those memories and experiences to to give us comfort and motivation and guidance. But also that means, you know, as you're pointing out, it it it makes it feel like

• 20:58Speaker 02

  we are actually getting in a time machine, like no time has passed, like I just, you know, showed up in this place and it's just like, oh, like I remembered this quite well. I just think that's a that's a really cool aspect of of of the human brain is our ability to do this.

• 21:12Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any reason to believe that people who are not nostalgic particularly, that if they were more nostalgic, there would be any benefit, or you just are where you are on the spectrum and that's fine?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I think that people would get more benefit, but but I'll back up a little and first say, I'm not, I'm not super convinced that people who say they aren't nostalgic, aren't. And what I mean by that is, yes, there is a personality trait, like some people are naturally more nostalgic than others, as we talked about. But in addition to that, it seems like a lot of people are not, you know, another issue might be they're just not as in touch with their nostalgia. So maybe some people who are nostalgic a lot, um, really understand that and they appreciate it. And, you know, here's one, you know, one quick story. I had this colleague years ago, and when I was doing this research and he was like, I just don't get it.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Like, I just, I guess some people get a lot of nostalgia, um, but I'm just not a nostalgic person. And he was saying this, and I was standing in his office, and he had all this, like, Chicago Cubs, like, sports memorabilia all around his, you know, office. Um, and he'd always talked about, he, um, growing up in Chicago, he would sometimes fly home to see games and, you know, a lot of his life, as far as I could tell, was very much rooted in nostalgic feelings, but he just didn't see it, like, he wasn't in touch with his nostalgia. So I think that's one issue is that some people who say they're not nostalgic, might actually be more nostalgic than they realize, and maybe it would be useful for them to, you know, kind of, um, learn more about, learn more about that.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  But but beyond that, yeah, I think, I think like a lot of things that are are good. For people like exercise, some people just do it, and some people like exercise. But even the people who don't like exercise, you know, actually do benefit from going to the gym, even if they don't like it. So I think, I, I think nostalgia is kind of that way. Even the people who aren't naturally pulled to it, or don't think they are, would actually benefit um from engaging in it more.

• 23:25Mike Carruthers?

  Is there a sense uh as to what time of life or, or how long ago people tend to long and, and go back to? I mean, I, I'm not nostalgic for six months ago. I mean, because it's just six months ago, but uh, but my childhood maybe or uh, is there a sweet spot there?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  So in general, we do tend to be more nostalgic the, the farther we are away from something, both in time and space. And so I think what, what that means, at least in part, is things that we do a lot, or that we, you know, that are sort of routines, or that, you know, we're experienced um all the time, are less likely to feel nostalgic for it, because we have them, you know, we're, we're experiencing them right now, like, we don't need to pull them out of our memory of things. So the further away we are from something in, in, in time and space, I'm the more nostalgic we are for it. In addition to that, people do tend to be um especially nostalgic for their um childhood adolescent sort of teenage years.

• 24:32Mike Carruthers?

  Explain what you mean by when you're nostalgic, it can affect your perception of how old you are, or at least how old you feel.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  You have a biological age, you know your age, but oftentimes, we don't really feel our age, like depending on what's going on, like we could be going through a sickness, and we might actually feel older than we are. We could be dealing with a major transition, or having to learn new technology, and that could make us feel older than we are. But oftentimes, people feel younger than they are, too. And it turns out that nostalgia makes you feel younger than you are, especially after around the age of, of forty or so. That seems to be the, the sweet spot that we found, you know, across a number of studies, is that once you turn forty, um if you, if you engage in nostalgic reflection, um it makes you feel young again.

• 25:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what I enjoy about nostalgia is when you engage in it, when you kind of go back in time and remember those times and those people. It kind of brings it all back to life, if only for a short time and only in your head. But it's kind of nice to, you know, see those people again and visit those places again. I've been speaking with Clay Routledge. He is author of a book called "Passed Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live A More Meaningful Life." And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Clay.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Mike. It's been a pleasure to chat with you.

• 25:59Speaker 05

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• 26:32Mike Carruthers?

  We like games. I mean, think of all the games you've played in your lifetime. Board games, playground games, sports, card games, gambling, rock, paper, scissors, tic-tac-toe. We love games. But why? By their nature, games are fun, but many games are not much more than that. So why are they so important to us? Here to talk about games and why we love them is Marcus de Sotoy. Marcus is an award-winning mathematician, a professor at Oxford. He's been a guest here before, and he's author of a book called "Around The World In 80 Games." Hey, Marcus, welcome. Welcome back.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  It's great to be with you again.

• 27:15Mike Carruthers?

  So why games? I mean, clearly, we like them, but why do you study them?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think, like many people, I love playing games. And actually, I think it's something that our our species loves doing. Some people have even suggested we should be called Homo ludens, the playing species, rather than Homo sapiens, the thinking species. Because I think actually, we've used games throughout our history to kind of almost experiment with trying things out before we put them into reality. And I think that's why games have always been part of our kind of evolutionary development. And but games are played with other people. So I think that's also a very important role that they play. They help you to understand the mind of the other as you share time together. In fact, I just come back from India and I discovered

• 28:05Speaker 03

  that people use games at the beginning of a marriage when often they don't know each other because it's an arranged marriage. And games are a lovely way of getting to know each other.

• 28:14Mike Carruthers?

  Well, there's also, I've always thought there's also something very human about wanting victory and avoiding defeat and that there's some some pleasure in that that games inherently provide.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  It's interesting because I think we make this safe space where we can, you know, exercise our love of competition, yet it is a safe space. And when we come out of it, somehow we're still friends. And I think that's why it's a very games play that very useful role of being somewhere where we can experiment with things, experiment with being competitive.

• 28:53Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of board games, you know, just games you play with people, I think of, you know, Monopoly and Scrabble and those kind of classic board games. And they must be classic because people seem to like them. Although seems like there's a lot of people that don't like Monopoly because it takes so long.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. I think this is a highly flawed game. And I'm really not quite sure why it's become everyone's sort of game to go to their game of choice, for example, at holiday times. And as you say, it takes so long. And what I think is really flawed about this game is that very quickly you realize who's going to win. And then you spend hours just grinding out the bankruptcy of all the other players. In fact, you know, I actually found out about a story of five students who were playing this game and it went on for so long that actually the bank went bankrupt and they contacted the game developers and said, well, what do we do if the bank has no money? And they put a security guard with loads of Monopoly money in the back and delivered

• 29:56Speaker 03

  it to the students and said, no, the bank can't go bankrupt. You've got to carry on. And after five days, the students gave up and said, this is just going around in circles. We've already got in the Guinness World Book of Records, we're going to stop now and just call it a draw.

• 30:11Mike Carruthers?

  Is there a strategy in Monopoly that if you do this, you're more likely to win? Or is it really more chance?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Well, there is obviously elements of chance because of the dice, but yes, there is a strategy. The most visited square on the Monopoly board is the jail square because there are many ways to go to jail. You can just land because of the dice or the square opposite sends you to jail, or you chance cards can send you to jail, or actually if you throw three doubles, very unfairly, I think you get sent to jail, but you can't buy jail. So how can that be useful? But then you're throwing two dice and what's the most common throw of two dice? Well, it's a score of six, seven or eight because there are so many different ways to make that combination. Whilst if you think 12, well, there's only one way to do that. You've got to get a six and a six. So out of jail,

• 31:04Speaker 03

  people are very often landing in the orange regions of properties. And so my tip is to buy those orange properties, stack them with hotels, and then as everyone comes out of that very visited jail square, they land on your properties and you cash in. So there's my little mathematical tip for you.

• 31:23Mike Carruthers?

  I didn't know if you roll three doubles, you go to jail?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you throw a double, you get to go again. But for some reason, they decided if you get three, then they penalize you, which I think, you know, after such great luck, you should get a special prize, not get sent to jail.

• 31:40Mike Carruthers?

  What's the game, if there is a game, that has been around for the longest time that we still play? I'm guessing something like chess, or checkers, or something like that.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Those are ancient games. Chess has its origins in India, but I would actually go back further, that one of the very first board games, which is actually in the British Museum in London, it's nearly 5,000 years old. It's called the Royal Game of Oor. And this is a racing game where you race counters round this beautiful board laid with lots of beautiful shells and things. Now, we don't play that now, but it actually probably gave rise to the game of Backgammon. And I would say Backgammon, which again is a kind of racing game, where, you know, it's a two-player game with black and white pieces

• 32:31Speaker 03

  which you try and race around, and you can capture your other players' pieces if they're on their own, involving dice again. That probably has its origins in this 5,000-year-old game. And that's certainly one that's played today. And I think that is almost, for me, you know, having looked at all of these wonderful games across the world, I think Backgammon almost is the perfect game, because it's got this lovely balance of, yeah, chance, so anybody really could possibly win the game, yet there is strategy involved as well. You don't want pure chance, you want a way to express yourself. It's got very simple rules. You can really learn this game just in two minutes of someone explaining it to

• 33:13Speaker 03

  you. Yet it gives rise to such complexity. There are so many sort of different games that emerge out of it. So for me, I think those are qualities that I'm looking for in a really good game, and I think Backgammon passes all of them.

• 33:25Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about the math of tic-tac-toe.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Tic-tac-toe, yes. I mean, what you're quite often interested in is, is there a strategy which can guarantee you a win? And a lot of games we've analyzed as mathematicians, we do see that, for example, if you go first in Connect Four, there's an algorithm which ensures you can get four counters in a row. Tic-tac-toe is a very simple version of that. And although you can't necessarily guarantee a win, you can make sure you never lose.

• 33:56Mike Carruthers?

  And so if you were to go first in tic-tac-toe, where would you go?

• 34:01Speaker 03

  I would certainly choose either the middle or one of the diagonal extreme points. From both of those points, you can certainly guarantee that you will not lose. And so I think both of those have an algorithm which gives them a best strategy. You will lose if you go in the the middle of the row or the column. That is a losing first go.

• 34:25Mike Carruthers?

  Have you thought much about like, you know, there are games that that are really popular, people really like them and then they kind of fade out. I mean, I remember Backgammon, people still play it, but it used to be like amazingly popular and now it's, yeah, people, you probably have a Backgammon set somewhere in your house, but you probably haven't played it in a long time. Games kind of come and go. Is it just, you know, that's just the way people are?

• 34:51Speaker 03

  I think that games are actually quite like stories. And just in the same way as, you know, there'll be a novel of the moment and people will want to read that. I think games have a similar quality and I think we're in a really golden age of games where there are each year, there are just such exciting new developments in in board games and card games that I think there's quite fierce competition out there. And, you know, one of the powerhouses of game development these days is Germany. And in Germany, they insist on the game developer's name being on the the box because they sort of feel that they are a bit like an author, you know. People look out for the for the next game by particular people like they'll look for

• 35:35Speaker 03

  the next Stephen King novel. Even if people have a Backgammon board in their house, I would recommend going back to that game because it is an absolutely beautiful game. And I think that's the reason it has lasted so long. The same with chess. And if you go to the far east, a game like Go, played on the 19 by 19 grid with black and white stones, again, very simple rules, yet wonderfully complex outcomes when you play that game.

• 36:01Mike Carruthers?

  You say chess is from India. How how long ago? And and a game like chess, do the rules ever change or are they the same rules today as they were back whenever? And I'd like to know whenever it started.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  That is a wonderful question because games do constantly evolve. We now do believe that the game started in India, probably middle of the previous millennium. And we're probably talking 700, 800. But it was a very early game then. It didn't have a queen, for example. So it just had an advisor, which moved very small steps, a bit like the king. The queen is actually a European development. And we recognise that chess is imitating warfare. And in the past, warfare was really hand to hand combat. But as weaponry sort of got better, you were able, for example, to shoot a longbow a large distance across a battlefield.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  And so you start to see pieces that could only move a few steps suddenly being allowed to sweep across the board. Things like the bishop. It's strange, actually, the bishop was modelled on what was in India, a piece which represented an elephant. And when this piece came to Europe, the elephant's tusks, people thought, looked like the hat of the bishop. So in fact, that was an elephant charging around and it weirdly became a bishop. But one really curious fact that I discovered about chess, two facts actually. First of all, it was a four player game. Now, that really surprised me, but then I began to understand, yes, well, actually, in your army, you've got two castles, two knights, two bishops.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  And what happened is that you would capture somebody else's army and it would double up your army. So it went from a four then to a two player game. But second really curious thing is that it used to involve a dice. So you would throw a dice, which would determine which piece you were allowed to move. But when gambling was banned in India, you weren't allowed to use a dice. And so I think the game player said, well, you know, we could actually choose which piece we want to move. And it became the pure strategy game we know today.

• 38:15Mike Carruthers?

  I've always wondered if there is some sort of connection between chess and checkers, only because they're played on the same board and they're really the only games played on that board. So why is that?

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean chess is very interesting because it's probably the first game that emerged where different pieces on the board could do different things. Most games before chess, like in checkers, there's really no difference between the pieces, just where they are. They all move in a very similar way. So this was a real new innovation when it came to developing chess. And of course chess, it does seem that it did emerge out of the idea that somebody planning a war is quite useful to just see the implications if you move pieces around in the territory, what might happen if you move part of your

• 39:09Speaker 03

  army here, what might they respond with and to develop tactics. So a lot of games for centuries have been war games, which allowing people to actually rehearse war before they actually sacrifice lives on the field.

• 39:27Mike Carruthers?

  But are they related other than the board that they play on?

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Well, checkers, there are many very early versions of games like checkers actually that appear all across the world. So you find sort of versions in Africa, in South America, that this idea of having some sort of board on which these things are moving and that the idea that you can leap over things and take them actually is quite a universal idea. So that might have been what chess developed from because people have started to see this sort of game play and perhaps wanted to make it a richer game. And so therefore, these pieces which were just doing the same thing suddenly.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Evolve characters, their castles, their kings, their bishops. So yes, I would say that chess definitely does emerge out of the idea of checkers. But but checkers is interesting because it really is a game which has been rediscovered many times in different forms across the world.

• 40:30Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned Scrabble and and that's one of those games that I've always been interested in because there are some people who are really good at Scrabble and seemingly, you know, you're all kind of on the same playing field here. You get the, you know, the letters you get are the letters you get, yet some people are able to just do amazing things with those letters. What and what is that? What is the strategy of Scrabble other than to, you know, let me try to make a word here?

• 40:57Speaker 03

  I think that a lot of sort of humanities students think that, oh, at last, a game which doesn't involve any mathematics in is all about being a fantastic wordsmith. And I'm very sad to tell anyone out there who believes that that actually this is a highly mathematical game at heart. And there are really good strategies which people have developed. First of all, you have to learn all the two-letter words because that's how you can actually squeeze some clever things into the board and actually, you know, really crank up your your score because you're getting sort of multiple words out of laying just one word down. The other thing that people who become world champion at Scrabble often do is to learn

• 41:39Speaker 03

  seven and eight-letter words with common letters because those are going to give them the chance to to get out in one go and earn that 50-point bonus. I found a story actually, which was one of the world champions in Scrabble in the English language. He was actually from New Zealand and he did, he said, you know, really, I think this is nothing to do with language and all to do with a kind of algorithms and mathematics and scoring. So he decided to enter himself to the French Scrabble Championship and he implemented the way he played Scrabble. He didn't speak a word of French and he became French Scrabble World Champion. So that really gives the lie to the fact that it's all about linguistics and language.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  It's actually all about strategy, maths, counting, scoring, and knowing some basic good batch of words which can really help you to play the game.

• 42:33Mike Carruthers?

  That sounds impossible. How could you be the world champion French Scrabble player and not speak French?

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Yes, it's quite staggering. In fact, even in the English language, it turned out that one year, two Indonesians were world champion that year and that there certainly was not their first language, English. So it really does seem to be not about the words, but about the scoring.

• 42:56Mike Carruthers?

  Rock, paper, scissors. Is there a, is there a secret to that?

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Yes, there is. I in fact implemented this once on a visit to America where I took part in a rock, paper, scissors championship in Philadelphia. And the key here is actually something very close to what mathematics is about because I often call mathematics the science of patterns. You're often looking for patterns. And if you can spot a pattern, that allows you to sort of predict things into the future. And this is the key to playing rock, paper, scissors because very often humans just can't stop putting patterns into everything they do. So when they're playing rock, paper, scissors, they'll often, you know, unconsciously, for example, follow rock by paper. And if you can spot that pattern,

• 43:45Speaker 03

  it's going to give you an edge in playing this game. But conversely, it's very important that you don't have any patterns yourself. So that's the key to how I play is to try and randomize my choices of rock, paper or scissors. So nobody can spot a pattern. So here, I'm going to let you into my secret. I use the decimal expansion of pi, which we believe is random in nature. And so if the decimal expansion starts one, two, three, that's rock. If the next is four, five, six, that'll be paper. Seven, eight, nine, that's scissors and zero, I just choose anything. So I go through the decimal expansion of pi and it determines my choices. And then unless somebody knows that I'm doing that, they really can't spot any patterns.

• 44:29Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I've always wondered, are people more likely, if they pick rock, are they going to pick, likely pick rock the next time? Or are they likely going to not pick rock because they just picked rock?

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's actually what people do. They change what they've just done. So I think you can certainly limit it down. If somebody's done, for example, rock, they're probably going to go to one of the other two. People do not like doing things which are consecutive. And and that actually goes against what we've discovered as mathematicians that randomness likes to do, because randomness actually does like to clump things together. So that's why when you're waiting for a bus, there are no buses, and then suddenly three come along together. Randomness tends to to actually make things repeat. So, for example, in my decimal expansion, there'll be quite a lot of repeats of digits, and that will force me to repeat rock, rock,

• 45:23Speaker 03

  rock. And, you know, people just aren't expecting you to to do rock, rock, rock. And then they suddenly go, oh, he's got a pattern. But then that's when you break it. So so I think one of the strategies is to mix it up with doubling things every now and again.

• 45:37Mike Carruthers?

  What about playing cards? Because I mean, that's not a game, but it is the source of, I mean, countless games. You can play a million games with a deck of cards. Do you take a look at them?

• 45:50Speaker 03

  I do. And I think card games are fantastic. I would say dice are one of the great inventions of humanity. But the pack of cards for me perhaps wins over. But I did look at the origins of cards, because actually, again, a bit like chess, they've changed so much over the years. So cards, early on, they only had two kind of court cards, a bit like chess. They would have a king and an advisor. And it's only later on that we start to see three court cards coming in in the European.

• 46:24Mike Carruthers?

  And the the standard 52 card deck that we have today, how old is that?

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Yes, that probably is medieval time and grows in Europe. So the addition, there was always one to 10, and that probably comes from The decimal counting that many cultures across the world used. And then when it comes to India, you get the addition of the cork cards and there were probably two added, but in India you have eight suits. So there are way more cards than in the 52 card pack that we know. And then it seems like, again, because of the, probably the role of women in society, you start to get the queen being introduced, just like the queen in chess.

• 47:07Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you certainly know your games and it's fun to hear your mathematical perspective on them and your enthusiasm for them. I've been speaking with Marcus de Sotoy. He is a mathematician, a math professor at Oxford and author of the book Around the World in Eighty Games. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Marcus. Thanks for coming back on.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Great. Thank you for having me on again.

• 47:35Mike Carruthers?

  You know, if you have a pet cat, that cat may be very intrigued by that giant Christmas tree you bring into your house with all its lights and ornaments and things. And at some point may want to climb in there and maybe even topple it over. There are some things you can do to discourage that behavior. One is to use a little citrus. Cats don't like citrus. So if you peel an orange and tuck some of the peels into the lower branches, that will help keep the cat away. You probably have to repeat that every few days, but it can work. And there's also a product you can buy in pet stores called bitter apple. If you spray some of it around the base of the tree, it should keep the cat away. Tinfoil.

• 48:19Mike Carruthers?

  Most cats would rather not walk on tinfoil. However, the lure of the tree might be greater than the fear of the foil after a few days. Double sided tape can be helpful. Cats can't stand to walk on anything sticky, so large strips of double sided adhesive tape under your tree could do the trick. And remember too, that rambunctious cats may try for a flying leap onto your tree from nearby furniture. So if possible, move away that furniture and any other potential launching surfaces or put some double sided tape on the furniture to keep the cat away. And that is something you should know. One very simple and effective way to support this podcast is to just take a few

• 49:04Mike Carruthers?

  moments and leave a rating and review. Really, it only takes a second and it really does help us and I read all the reviews and appreciate them. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.