Something You Should Know
How We Play: They Story of Fun and Games & The Cost of Not Sleeping Well
Mon, 21 Apr 2025
Since you were a child you have heard that it is important to wash your hands. But even if you do, you may not be doing it correctly and you may be missing some key spots. This episode begins by explaining some often overlooked details of washing your hands. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/hand-washing/art-20046253 There is a human need for fun. And there are a million ways to indulge yourself including amusement parks, board games, sports, toys, festivals, video games or whatever else you can think of. How these fun things came to be makes for a very interesting story. Here to tell it is Russ Frushtick who has written about games and technology for over a decade. Russ is co-founder of Vox Media’s gaming site called Polygon (www.polygon.com) and he is author of The Book of Fun: An illustrated History of Having a Good Time (https://amzn.to/3H2nBdn). A lot has been learned in recent years about sleep – how getting enough of it is crucial and how lack of sleep has some significant negative consequences. Here to explain some important intel on sleep and why it is so important is neurologist Dr. Guy Leschziner, who is head of The Sleep Disorders Centre in London and author of the book, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep (https://amzn.to/2lSckr0). If you care to understand just how important sleep is for your health, you need to listen to this important discussion. If you don’t like where you work, is it better to quit now or stay at least until you find another job? The answer seems to depend on just how much you hate your job. Listen as I reveal the negative consequences of staying at a job that you hate. They are probably worse than you imagined. https://news.osu.edu/lousy-jobs-hurt-your-health-by-the-time-youre-in-your-40s/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! AURA FRAMES: Get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame at www.AuraFrames.com Promo Code: SOMETHING FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How effective is hand washing?
I remember reading that there were several toys that became very popular that were really the result of something else. They were kind of accidental discoveries, like the Slinky is one of them. So where did the Slinky come from?
The guy who created it was a naval engineer, and he was working on submarines, actually, and found the Slinky. just like in his development of various engines and other mechanics that had to exist in these submarines, it was just sort of like on his desk and he accidentally knocked it over and suddenly it did its, you know, classic slinky thing. And he's like, I could probably sell this.
And that's a lot of these classic toys kind of come out from that, just like as accidents, like total mistake.
Since we're talking about fun, um, I think Legos have to be part of the conversation because anyone with kids, maybe people without kids, spend hours building Lego things. They're almost addictive. So tell the Lego story.
They started pretty simply. The guy who created Legos in the first place was just kind of making wooden toys. And he kept at that until his toy factory actually burned down. And he decided maybe we'll try this plastic thing. In the 1950s and 60s, he sort of evolved...
his work into including more plastic devices and toys and and came up with this idea of having these kind of bricks that snap together. Unfortunately, his factory burned down again. Separate factory also burned down. He rebuilt again. Thankfully, the next factory actually stuck around for a while and he was able to build this sort of conglomerate of Lego.
And now the fascinating thing about Lego is today The largest manufacturer of tires is Lego. They make the most tires in the world because of those little tiny rubber tires that they put on the cars in Lego boxes.
One toy that escaped me completely, I didn't get the fascination, is the Rubik's Cube. Well, I guess I get the fascination. I just couldn't do it, and I didn't have the patience to keep trying. Who's Rubik?
So Rubik, after the classic Rubik's Cube, is Erno Rubik, who is Hungarian. And in 1974, he kind of created the cube that we know of. He was a toy maker, but he just came up with this idea of these blocks that you can kind of twist and rotate independently of one another. And out of that came this kind of puzzle box that just took the world by storm.
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