Hello and welcome to the Anthropocene Reviewed, a podcast where we review different facets

of the Human-Centered Planet on a five-star scale.

I'm John Green, and today I'll be reviewing the board game monopoly and a high school

nerd fest called the Academic Decathlon.

By the way, if I sound a little different today, it's because I am recording at home,

and indeed doing everything at home.

Okay, let's begin with monopoly, a board game wherein the goal is to bankrupt your fellow

opponents, leaving you with all of their money and property.

As you move around a square board, you land on various properties in the original game,

where from a fictionalized version of Atlantic City, New Jersey, but that changes depending

on region and addition, for instance in the Pokémon version of the game.

Properties include Tangla and Raiju.

Anyway, if you land on a property, you can purchase it, and then if you establish a

monopoly, you can build houses and hotels on your properties, and then when other players

land on places you own, they have to pay you rent.

There are many problems with monopoly, but maybe the reason the game has persisted for

so long, it has been one of the world's best-selling board games for over 80 years, is

that its problems are our problems.

Like life, monopoly unfolds very slowly at first, and then distressingly fast at the end.

Like life, people find meaning in its outcomes, even though the game is rigged toward the

rich, and insofar as it isn't rigged, it's random.

And like life, your friends get mad if you bankrupt them, and then no matter how rich

...