Take the Monopoly and Run

Scamfluencers

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.1 • 7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the midst of the Great Depression, out-of-work salesman Charles Darrow sold the board game he created, Monopoly, to Parker Brothers. The game was an overnight success, and Charles became a hopeful example of the American dream. But soon, fellow game obsessives questioned Charles’s inventor status. Decades later, another game creator’s tireless pursuit of the truth reveals Monopoly’s subversive origin story and the twisted journey it took before landing in Charles Darrow’s hands.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wonderie Plus subscribers can listen to scam fluencers early and ad-free right now.
0:04.7	Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or Apple Podcasts.
0:13.2	Sarah, are you a big board game player?
0:16.4	You know, I'm not...
0:18.0	I'm not someone who, like, would own a board game or be the one to suggest playing a board game mostly because I don't love the amount of rules you have to remember right off the bat.
0:27.9	But if the night goes there and someone is patient with me to explain the rules, I'm down.
0:34.2	That's fair.
0:35.0	Do you have a favorite board game or a least favorite board game?
0:40.2	I don't think I have a true favorite of like a go-to, but, you know, Scrabble is always fun.
0:46.3	We like Scrabble because we're good at words.
0:48.2	Nobody else likes Scrabble.
0:49.3	It's just us.
0:50.2	Well, today I get to tell you about the humble and complex origins of a board game that, to this day, makes me want to run away screaming every time it's pulled out at a family dinner, a house party, or a long weekend away at a cottage.
1:05.0	We're going to talk about the game that somehow never, ever ends. Monopoly.
1:13.2	In the spring of 1974,
1:15.7	Ralph Ansbach walks into the lobby
1:17.4	of an enormous office building
1:18.9	in San Francisco's financial district.
1:21.3	Ralph is in his 40s on the shorter side,
1:23.5	with blue eyes and a disheveled look.
1:25.6	And today, he's feeling anxious
1:27.3	because he's about to give a deposition
	...

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