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Hey, everyone. You're listening to Code Switch from NPR.

I'm Bea Parker.

And I'm Gene Demby.

Gene, were there any games that your family would play at holidays or like get-togethers?

Oh, man.

So on Thanksgiving, the old folks are like my aunt Carol, my uncle her, my cousin Mark,

they'll be up to ungodly hours playing peanut at the table. It'd be like 2.30 in the morning, I would come downstairs from playing PlayStation with my little cousins or whatever. And they would still be going at it, like talking trash, carrying on. Were there, like, rituals around it? I don't know. Like, you know how you graduate to the big, the grown-up's? Like, I graduate at the grown-up table when I never learned how to play Pinole. And I kind of regret that now. And my lady's family, though, they play this version of, the way it was described to me was poker from southern India called Pana. But they play with these house rules that are so specific that it doesn't translate

to literally any other place. My wife, none of her cousins, none of them know how to play it. So that's going to, it's going to die with the old heads. Anyway, what about you, Parker? What kind of holiday game traditions do you all have in the Parker compound? I mean, we are, we are a spades playing family. although I don't think I have made it to the grown-up table in all of my years.

Right, right, right.

But it's more... mean, we are a spades playing family, although I don't think I have made it to the grown-up

table in all of my years.

Right, right, right.

But it's mostly like cousins drinking beer with Clamato Juice and calling each other, you know,

not so nice names when you reneg.

Wait, wait, wait, beer and, like, V8?

What?

Look, it's not my ministry.

We can ask my cousin Chunky, but, like, she is an aficionado of all things, spades, and community around it.

Do Chunky know she should be having these wild-ass cameosos?

She's legit, the most interesting woman in the world.

But like Spades and Spike V8,

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