December 3, 2022 • 48 mins
Rubik's Cubes. Ronald Reagan. Jerry Falwell. Just Say No. One of these things was awesome. Take a guess and hop on board this classic episode, aka the 80s train.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select
I've chosen our August two thousand nineteen episode I'm one
of the best selling toys of all time, the Rubik's Cube.
It's an engaging episode on an unlikely global trend sprung
from a Hungarian architects beautiful mind. So enjoy. Welcome to
(00:23):
Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, and we're cubing
it up with Rubic the Cube. Did you see um
that cartoon, Rubic the Amazing Cube? Did you come across that? And? Okay,
(00:49):
I I feel like we are um well within our
rights as far as fair use goes, since we are
talking about this, to at least play the highly disturbing
but also st hugely cute voice of Rubic the Amazing Cube.
Can I play this real quick? Sure? Okay? That is it?
(01:10):
It is awfully unusual, especially when you see this cube
they just basically took do you remember the goblin face
on maximum overdrive on that on the front of that
semi sort of it's kind of like a cuter version
of that that they put onto a Rubik's Cube, put
some feet on it, and then gave it superpowers. That's
Rubic the Amazing Cube. So back to Rubic, Chuck. Yeah,
(01:34):
it was kind of hard to believe that it took
until two thousand fourteen for this thing to be granted
National Toy Hall of Fame inductee status. Uh. It seems
like it would have been much sooner than that because
they have sold hundreds and hundreds of millions of Rubik's
Cube since I had one. I still have one. I
(01:56):
could do it at one point. Oh really, Yeah, I
could do it in a couple of minutes. Wow, Chuck,
I'm impressed. I had no idea. Yeah, I can still do.
I can still do one side and like the top
row surrounding that side on all sides, and that's where
I completely forget. Oh, I see, So you couldn't do
(02:17):
it in a couple of minutes now you just have
you could in the past. Yeah when I was nine. Okay, Um,
I'm impressed. I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube.
I've never been sucked in enough to um like, really
spend a significant amount of time. But um I was
(02:37):
playing with my niece's Rubik's Cube the other day studying
for this, and um I was like, yeah, I could
see how somebody would become obsessed with this kind of
thing for sure. Yeah, it was fun and it was
you know, to call it all the rage as an understatement.
It was one of the most popular toys of all time,
(02:57):
and then in by a math enthusiast in Hungary, an
architect professor named er No Rubik. Appropriately enough, they named
him after the cube. That's right. And if you don't
know what we're talking about, it seems weird to describe
a Rubik's Cube, but we'll probably be taking a task
(03:19):
if we do not. I would say, just come out
from under the rock that you've been living under. But
we may have some young listeners who don't even know
what this thing is, this piece of eighties ephemera, even
though it's not ephemera because they're still pretty popular. But
it is a cube made up of twenty six little
mini cubes called cubs, which is kind of a cute
(03:40):
little name. I think. So you're not as cute as
Rubic the Amazing Cube, but yeah, little cubs and they're
in a three inch by three inch by three inch
well that's not quite true, a three by three by
three grid, eventually creating a cube that measures two point
two five inches or five point seven centimeters per side. Right,
(04:01):
And so what there's six six cube faces because it's
a cube, and each face has a different color. There's orange, blue, green, yellow, white,
and red and um. When you when you mix these
things up, it's just a jumble, a riot of different
colors like you've never seen your life. But the point
(04:22):
is to move these cubes around through the eighteen different
ways you can move any given cube, um, so that
all of the colors are lined up, all the colored
cubes are all the same on each face. And it
sounds easy, friends, it is not easy, not at all.
Like maybe for some people it's easy, but for the
(04:44):
rest of us, normal focus normis, it is not easy
in any way, shape or form. No, it is not.
Uh And in fact, they even suggest that you read
about how to solve the Rubik's cube. It is the
very rare individual that can literally just figure here it
out without any help at all. Um, that's really tough
(05:04):
to do. So it's not like you're not a cheat.
If you look at like how to solve the Rubik's
cube and then memorize these patterns and practice them. That's
sort of the point, right, Yeah, like go look it
up like it's fine. No one will will get mad
at you for that, because it's no fun to never
solve a puzzle. Well, that's why I think I've never
gotten sucked in. I was like, I'm not even there's
no way I'm gonna possibly stumble across this, and I
(05:27):
just don't think like this. My spatial reasoning is terrible.
I'm not great at math. I'm color blind. Everything just
looks white. You. No, it's really not. I can't discern
squares from from circles. It's just I'm off. So um. Originally,
the Rubik's cube was called the magic cube, and it
(05:50):
was invented, like you said, by Erno Rubik, who was Hungarian.
So it was originally called the Beavish Kotzka, which is
magic cube, and the Hungarian means butt head. I believe
it does. The magic butt head was Bevish and butt head.
All right, nice man, It's like, where's he going with
this after all these years? It's good. No, I didn't,
(06:13):
but I was like, I'm I'm going with this, Chuck.
I trust him and I paid off. So Mr Rubik
got his Hungarian patent on the mechanical design of this
in nine and it was in Hungary only for a while. Uh,
and it did pretty well and hungry. Um, but that's
(06:33):
kind of where it stayed. It was. Uh. It was
because of the politics of the time and the fact
that it was hungry. It was not super easy to
get a an American patent or to bring it over
and market it here in the West, so it was
pretty much a Hungarian local sensation for it's early like
probably first year. Yeah, he had like a Hungarian toy
(06:56):
manufacturer make like ten thousand of them, but he wasn't
happy with him, so he cut the runoff at five thousand.
So there were five thousands of these things floating around
Budapest and and maybe Hungry in general. And it was
just total serendipity that there was a guy named Tibor Laxi.
And I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say
his last name, but that's how it's how it spelled.
(07:16):
It's probably like Lucia or something like that. But um,
t Bor, I'm I just love that name. It's a
great name. Um. He was an entrepreneur who had left
Hungry and moved to Austria, so he had really developed
a taste for capitalism. While he happened to be visiting
back home in Budapest when he was at a restaurant
and he noticed a waiter playing with the Beavish kotska,
(07:38):
the magic cube, and um, he said, you there, what
is that? And uh, he said, well, it's the Beavish kotzka.
How about I sell it to you for a dollar?
And I believe he bought that for a dollar, played
around with it for a minute. It was like this
could be big. So he found out who invented it,
and he scheduled a meeting with Erno Rubic. Yeah, and
(07:59):
he would later on that he that Erno Rubik had
a lot to do with why he decided to get
into business with him. Here's his quote. He said, when
Rubik first walked into the room, I felt like giving
him some money. He looked like a beggar. He was
terribly dressed. You gotta remember this guy's a professor, so
they're not known for their sharp attire. He was terribly
(08:19):
dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out
of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius
on my hands, and I told him we could sell millions.
Yeah he was right. Oh man, was he ever right?
He understated it? Actually, um the t Boar, I'm just
gonna call him t Boar. He took this magic cube
(08:42):
and he started going to toy fairs. Uh, And I
think he struck out at a few of them. But
he really hit it out of the park at the
Nuremberg Toy Fair when he met a toy expert who
had connections with Ideal Toy company. Remember Ideal back in
the day. I think I do for sure. I'm pretty
(09:03):
sure they made that um the the uh what was
the daredevil's name, Evil kin? I think they made the
Evil kinevil stunt bike. You know what's funny is um
they make those now for other they have there's like
an incredible stunt bike with plastic girl. It's the same
(09:24):
exact function. We have one in our house and you
load it up and crank it and there she goes.
Is it the exact same mold? They just put like
different pain on it or something like that knockoff toys? Man,
it's slightly different. Uh, in its design, but it's clearly
like the same exact toy. So at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, Uh,
Tibor runs into the guy from Ideal and they end
(09:48):
up purchasing it. They purchased the rights to this, the
global rights, and they they they basically sign up to
create a million Rubik's cubes. Yeah, also we should say
it this toy fair. He did a pretty smart thing.
Instead of like buying a booth, he just came and
worked the floor with Rubik's cubes and got this like
ground buzz going by walking around and giving these things
(10:09):
to people, and like that's genius. Like for something like this,
that's the perfect way to pique someone's curiosity is not
to have some flashy uh like spinning giant Rubik's cube,
is to actually get in the hands of people walking
around the floor. Especially if you say, I'm Tibor, let's party.
Should I bet you want to call it t boards Cube?
(10:31):
It's pretty good name. He probably did, although he was
smart because I remember originally it was called the Magic Cube.
At some point. If it wasn't t Boor, it was
Ideal who said we're gonna rename this the Rubik's Cube.
And I'm sure erno Rubik was like, oh, okay, I
guess if you insist. I wonder if he was into
it or not, or if he pushed forward, or if
he was like, I'm not really into that, but if
(10:52):
you think it'll sell cubes, That's what I'm guessing he
probably did. I don't think he was going to stand
in the way of it, but he was not like
vying for or by any means. That's my impression. But
I'm just totally making that up, but that I have
the same impression, which means that if you put our
two in persons together, it equals fact. So Ideal sells
(11:13):
one hundred million Rubik's cubes in the first two years.
They just signed up to sell one million. They sold
a hundred million in two years. Yeah, I mean, I'm
sure they had problems keeping up with production. Uh. Some
of the accolades and eight and eighty one at won
the UK's Toy the Year Award two years running. Um
In eighty two, there were five books about solving it
(11:36):
on the New York Times bestseller list, one of which
I owned. I owned the classic The Simple Solution to
the Rubik's Cube by James G. Norris. He was a
chemistry student at Stanford And get this, dude, this book
was the number one best selling book of nine one period.
(11:56):
He sold six point seven million books and it is
still the fasting selling book in the history of Bantam Books.
Is that right? Can you believe that out of all
the books that year, that was the number one? I can,
because that really kind of underscores just how nuts the
not just America, the world went for Rubik's Cube, that
(12:19):
the number one selling book was a book about solving
the toy. That that that was it. Yeah, they had
sold five hundred million of them by the time rolled around.
So so talking about the books though for another second.
At one point the number one, two, and four positions
on the New York Times bestseller list where all Rubik's
Cube Solution books. Three he was probably Stephen King or
(12:39):
something probably, and one of those books was written by
a twelve year old named Patrick Bossart called You Can
Do the Cube, which is pretty adorable if you think
about it, and Christians later made a movie called Gleaming
the Cube, one of my all time favorites, which had
nothing to do with Rubik's Cubes. As it turns out,
it was about skateboarding. That's right. Um, So there's a
(13:02):
just a craze going on around the world, like everyone
is into the Rubik's cube. Everyone's buying one. They sold
like I've seen anywhere from three hundred and fifty million.
The highest I've seen is six hundred million. They sold
a ton of these things, hundreds and hundreds of millions
of them. Are those are the official too? There were
(13:22):
plenty of knockoffs. Sure, there was books on the New
York Times bestseller list about this. It was featured in Times, Scientific,
American News, Scientists. Um. There was a paper that was
printed in the New England Journal of Medicine that talked
about cubists thumb, which is a real thing. It's a
type of tendonitis in your thumb that you get in
(13:44):
your non dominant hand because that's the hand that you
used to stabilize the Rubik's cube. And so the edge
of the cube pressing into the heel of your thumb
where it meets the rest of your thumb um, that
could create tendonitis. For people who were staying up for
days on end just playing with this thing, trying to
(14:05):
beat this puzzle. There was a craze like like no other.
I say, we take a break, okay, uh, and we
come back and we talk about uh Mr Rubick, or
maybe he's a doctor. I'm gonna call him Dr Rubik,
and how he created the mechanics of this puzzle. Alright,
(14:46):
So supposedly Dr Rubik, surely he's a doctor. I would
let's call him Professor Ruby because he was definitely an
architecture professor in a math genius. Actually though, I'm I'm
with you, he's got to be doctor, all right, Professor
Dr Rubik. Uh supposedly was not even trying to create
this puzzle in I'm sorry seventy four when he first
(15:07):
started out um, as legend has it, he was trying
to create a mathematical model for three D design class,
which makes sense considering his job. Other people say, no,
he was just really kind of guy to like to tinker.
He was fascinated by geometry and shapes, and he was
trying to just solve a problem of mechanics in three dimensions.
(15:28):
But according to the Toy Hall of Fame, he was
very much trying to invent a puzzle. Uh. And that
may just be folklore. Yeah, he he knew what he wanted.
He wanted to make this three by three cube that
was made up of smaller cubes that could all like
interact and twister around like he had the idea for
the Rubik's cube, which was step one, but step two
(15:49):
was a doozy, and that was figuring out how to
invent a mechanical solution to make this thing work the
way he wanted it to, and apparently was um. There
was a pretty good article on mental floss by a
guy named Noah Davis who recounted that um. One day,
Rubic was walking down the Danube alongside the Danube in
(16:11):
Budapest and looked down and noticed that there was just
a pile of nice, polished rounded river rocks and thought,
I've got it. I've been thinking about a cube. Everything's
got to be a cube. But what if I added
a sphere to the mix two and that these things
rotated around usphere. That would give the freedom of motion
that I need to make this thing work. And that
(16:34):
was that That that that was the solution to the puzzle,
as it were. Yeah, I mean, if you're like me
and probably lots of other kids in the early eighties,
you took your Rubik's cube apart at some point, did you.
I never I never saw one, and lots of video
on this. Yeah, oh yeah, I've got a screw driver
out in pretty short order and put those things apart. Uh.
And it's kind of cool when you look at the
(16:55):
you know, when you take all those cubs out, you
get down to the center and the three x s
um and they have each one is tipped with two
opposing center cubis. It's kind of cool looking. And then
it makes sense how all these things fit together and
how it works. Yeah, another way to think about it
is just think about like a sphere a ball, and
then you've got six arms sticking out in in um
(17:18):
at right angles from it, so that it forms a
three dimensional plus side plus signed and at the end
of each one of these arms is a cube, a
colored cube. And though that's the skeleton of the thing.
And then what what Erno Rubik figured out was that
that's all that needed to be attached to the center.
You could make the other cubes attached to those those
(17:41):
face cubes a center cubes qubis um. You could make
some cubes qubs attached to those cubs, and then other
cubs attached to the other cubs, and then they will
all kind of rotate around each other, but they're all
really rotating on three different axis coming out of that sphere.
It's a gene like this guy has gotten like if
(18:02):
he started a craze and is you know, kind of
viewed as this great inventor for the toy like math, physics, architecture,
um like in the in a number of different fields.
He's ugansical engineering for sure. Yeah, he's viewed as just
a god in some senses for for cracking this this
problem and creating this three dimensional structure that actually works
(18:26):
in in reality that people can learn and study from.
That's right. So he's figured out this the mechanics of
it all, but it's still not a puzzle yet until
he applies these colors. That's what makes it a puzzle, because,
like we said at the beginning, the idea is that
you have all the colors on each side matching one another.
He applies these colored stickers all over, mixes and twisted
(18:48):
up a little bit, and he's like, I've invented the cube.
And he's like, wait a minute, I don't know how
to solve the puzzle. So he actually had built this thing,
stickered it up and looked at it, I imagine, with
some level of accomplishment, and then realized that the biggest,
probably uh, the hardest thing to do in this whole
(19:09):
process still lay in front of him, which was because
there were no books out at this point. Right. He
invented it. So he had to figure out how to
solve his own puzzle. And it took him a while.
It took him a month from what I saw, Yeah,
and I imagine he worked on this pretty much NonStop
to figure this thing out. He he did, and he
(19:30):
would like write down like the different different moves, combination
of moves which now they're called algorithms. Um, it's just
types of moves that if you do them in a
specific sequence, will solve a specific jumbled Rubik's cube. Right, Um,
So he wrote them down. He kind of kept track
of it, and that was like the first the first, um,
(19:52):
first time anyone had kind of applied analysis to this.
But it would not be the last. Obviously. He's the
New York Times bestseller. His shows by the reason why
it's so difficult to solve a Rubik's cube just by
happenstance is that just the sheer number of possible configurations
of the cube. Right, each face has nine cubs, and
(20:16):
there's six um faces, so there's fifty four cubs, but
they all relate to one another, and so if you
move one, that's one configuration. If you move it another direction,
that's another configuration, and so on and so on, and
so with these fifty four cubs, Chuck, are you ready
for this? Yes? The possible number of configurations is forty
(20:38):
three quintillion, two hundred and fifty two quadrillion, three trillion,
two hundred and seventy four billion, four hundred and eighty
nine million, eight hundred and fifty six thousand possible configurations
of a Rubik's cube. And one of them one is
the right one where all six faces are all the
(20:59):
same color. Ubi's just one. So just doing it accidentally,
your chances are one in about forty three trillion that
you're going to stumble upon that right combination that's right,
which is pretty amazing, don't you think. Yes? And by
the way, I think I said in their fifty four
there's twenty cubes. I believe there's fifty four faces. Yeah,
(21:22):
I mean that's a deal. Each QB has three sides
or two sides, depending on if it's a corner or
an edge or one if it's in the center right,
So it's kind of confusing. But but nine times six,
so nine nine squares or nine different colors squares times
six faces is fifty four I think fifty four faces
(21:45):
something qubis This is how good at Matthew Man. It's
it's really because it's so funny, because it's such a
simple little thing. But once you start really breaking it down,
you're like, we could make this super confusing if we
dried hard, for sure. But what people have figured out
is that they're they're like, you may have like a
one and forty three quintillion chance of stumbling across the
(22:06):
right configuration by accident. But what people have figured out
is that there are combination of moves like you know,
um uh front right up, up twice and then down.
That's that's an algorithm. And if you apply that to
a certain kind of scrambled a certain configuration of a
scrambled Rubik's cube, it will bring it back to solved.
(22:27):
And so people have spent a lot of time developing algorithms.
And that's why erno Rubik was originally doing when he
was like, oh, if I do this this and this,
it will make it solved. And he wrote that down
that's what's called an algorithm. Yeah, and I remember in
the book, like each book had their own little shorthand,
I guess, but I remember the one that I had.
It definitely had the algorithms all spelled out with like
(22:49):
shorthand for what each move was called. So it would
sort of look like a math problem made out of letters, right,
like I saw you for up and D for down.
Makes a lot of sense. But then also, um, you
can you know there you can move something to the right.
You can twist one of the rows of cubes to
the right, but you can also twist it to the
(23:10):
left too, So I saw an apostrophe after like l
apostrophe would be counterclockwise left, and then you can add
a number two, so you do that twice, which is
really a d eighty degree counterclockwise turn. So interesting, it
really is kind of interesting. It like at first, you know,
when I first um went over this article the first time,
(23:30):
just taking it in, it's like, how this is pretty neat.
But the Rubik's cube I found has many many layers
to it, and you can really keep going deeply into it. Well,
beyond just playing with the cube and trying to solve it. Like,
there's a lot of math involved. There's a lot of
physics and mechanics involved. You. I mean, you can get
(23:51):
us sucked into it as you like, Buddy, just try
not to go insane like Erno Rubik did. He did
not when he set that that building on fire. He uh.
It's interesting though, how big of a hit this became.
Sort of it flew in the face of a lot
of um like sort of rules of the toy industry
and that it didn't make sounds um It didn't have
(24:15):
interchangeable parts. It didn't have things that you could sell
along with it, like, you know, clothing. You couldn't. I
guess you could dress your little Rubik's cube, but then
you have a special relationship with it, I guess, so
you could dress it up and be like him Ruby.
It didn't have batteries. It was never like well, I
guess it appeared on a TV show. Was that a
TV show? Yeah it was. It was a Saturday morning
(24:37):
cartoon that came on right before pac Man, which was
honestly one of the all time great cartoons. Ever. Yeah,
it just it wasn't marketable though. Like you would think
a toy would be. The reason that it appealed and
endured is because it is a real challenge and you
get a real sense of reward once you've done it right,
and that really hooks people. It really does hook people.
(24:59):
And again there's like not there's no shame in going
and looking up algorithms to solve UM Rubik's cubes, like
just processes. And in fact, if you start doing any
kind of research on rub excutes, you'll find like there's
actually specific UM methods of attack that people suggest for
for beginners to start with. There's one called the White
(25:21):
Cross method classic, which is um entails eating a handful
of white Cross gas station speed staying up for four
days until you until you get done. It's actually you
start with the edge pieces and then you move to
the corner pieces, putting them all in place, and then
you um go on from there starting with the white
(25:41):
face of the cube. That's right, And uh, this toy
was a big hit anyway, but it it is endured,
Uh not because of stocking stuffers or nostalgia, but it
is endured all these years later because of competition. Yeah,
so let's take a break now and we'll talk about
speed cubing right after this. Well, now we're on the
(26:04):
road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
or two from Josh Man. Chuck gets stuff you should know,
all right, Okay, So the Rubik's Cube comes out in
(26:36):
the world basically in night and the next year, the
very next year, countries around the world we're holding national
championships for um solving Rubik's cubes as fast as you
possibly could. It's called speed cubing. Yes. And then a
year after that they all got together, all the champions
of the countries for the very first Rubik's Cube World
(26:59):
Championship in the best which is kind of cool. UM.
And that's what has kept people going for so long,
because there there's people are still trying to beat these records.
I saw a kid and it's kind of hard to
tell what the top times because they list the top
times in these competitions, but I saw a kid on
YouTube do it in like six seconds or four or
(27:20):
five seconds. I saw one do it in three point
four seven. Yeah, I don't know how like how it's
officially judged though. There's a timer UM and one of
those there's one of those mats that you keep your
hands on. But like, why does it say that that
those aren't world records? Then I don't know. That's what
(27:43):
I saw was the world record was in two thousand eighteen.
It was three point four seven seconds by U shang
Yu shang Do sorry of China. So you've seen other
things listed. I just don't know if there's like the
bodies aren't speaking to one another or what. Maybe it's
that was a a non championship uh time, or even
(28:07):
even maybe it was a qualifier or something like that.
So it doesn't count as the world record unless you
get whatever time is done at the world championship that's
considered the world record. Who knows. It's crazy to see
how fast these kids and it's usually kids that win
um I guess with their little nimble fingers and brain sponges. Uh,
(28:28):
it's crazy how fast they're doing. It doesn't look real.
It looks like some sort of weird faked video. Yeah.
And here's the other thing too. I'm glad you mentioned
brain sponges because it is like a um an intellectual pursuit,
like from the beginning of this this toys release in
like they win a different route, like you're saying it
doesn't require batteries. It was you know, um, it doesn't
(28:50):
make a noise or anything like that. So they went
a different route in advertising it and said this is
an intelligent game, like I'm sure Isaac Newton discovered gravity,
but could he solve a Rubik's cube? You know, So
they really kind of play that up, and it's true
because these kids who are solving or people who are
solving Rubik's cubes super fast. It's not just like look
(29:10):
or their fingers are just moving forward them. They have
memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of these algorithms and have
gotten to the point where they can look at a
cube and figure out which algorithm is going to solve
it the fastest, and then when the time starts, they
can also move their fingers really really quick. And that's
how they're getting these amazing times. It's not just speed
(29:32):
and dexterity, it's also knowing what algorithm is going to
work best. Yeah, for sure, you know, it died out
pretty quickly. Like most fad toys, Um, once you sell
a lot of these, you don't need another one unless
you break yours or something. So it's kind of one
of those things where, and which is again why it
flew in the face of the toy industry because they
(29:53):
couldn't sell ancillary products alongside it. But uh, you know,
it died out pretty quickly and the champion and ship
uh two was the last one for about twenty years
until the Internet comes along and all of a sudden
there are people posting faster times than ever before than
twenty years earlier. And in two thousand three UM in Canada,
(30:16):
there was a speed cuber named Dan Gosby who organized
a competition in Toronto, and this is where they're getting
it down to, like twenty seconds, and they have different
categories like blindfolded, fewest moves, one handed, feet feet feet dude.
Last year someone did it in twenty three seconds by foot,
(30:36):
which was about the quickest time by hand at the
first competition. Yes, and it took them longer to figure
out that they had solved it than it did to
actually solve it because they had to use a stick
to turn the Rubik's cube over because they had used
their feet to solve it. And I think, uh, when
you participate, it didn't pay off as well as I
thought it would sorright, Uh, you get fifteen seconds to
(31:00):
look at the cube over. Um they are all started, uh,
like the cubes are all started the same with like
a computer generated random scramble. It's just fair. You get
that fifteen seconds, you check it out, you set it
on your mat, and then you go And it's just
like I said, it's amazing to see these things done
in like sub four seconds. Yeah, because they're they're i mean,
(31:23):
their hands actually do kind of blur, like you can't
really follow where their hands are at any given time.
They barely touch the rubrics cube. And they're using to
be fair, they're using specialized speed cubes. They're not just
using like off the shelf rubrics cubes. We'll talk about those,
go ahead, talk about them. Sure. Yeah. So so people
go to the trouble of getting a speed cube. It's like,
(31:44):
you know, you can get one for you can get
a good one from what I understand, for about seventies
seventy five bucks. And these things are literally well oiled
machines that are just super fast. Some of them use
magnets so that you can tell when they're snapped into place,
and um, they move a lot more easily and quickly. Um.
There you can just look at and be like, that's
(32:05):
a high end Rubik's cube right there. Yeah, Like you
can pay to get your cube serviced, uh and checked
out at speed cube shop. So someone will take it apart,
a technician and they will look at each of those
little cubs for defects and like, has it got a
little bump here that will slow it down? They'll smooth
that out, like you said, sometimes they use magnets, um.
(32:28):
And one of the reasons for the magnets is it
creates that snap when a turn is completed. Because if
you want to move these things really fast, you don't
want it to be you know, even if it's an
eighth of an inch out of whack, you're not gonna
be able to turn it the other way. So you
wanted to snap and lock into place. Uh, you know
you want. It's just amazing how how engineered these things
(32:52):
have become. What in these speed cubing competitions, right well,
I mean just to keep up, you've gotta you've gotta
get yourself a speed cube. If you showed up, like
to an actual competition with just a regular Rubik's cubeb
I don't know if you'd be laughed out of place,
but they would they would certainly feel bad for you.
You know what they should do is like because you know,
(33:13):
I remember them loosening up really well and getting faster
just because you played with it more. Instead of giving
everyone speed cubes and trying to get this ultra red
Bull record, which they sponsored the events now by the way, Uh,
they should give everyone like out of the package. Make
it as hard as possible. I agree. I think that
there would be some um, you know, preteens who are
(33:36):
really high strung that would cry if they were confronted
with that challenge, if they had to put their speed
cube down. Yeah, they'd be like, this is not fair.
No one prepared me in my life for this. I
did mention Red Bull because it was kind of controversial
for many years. Uh. The Rubics World Championships uh were
co hosted by the World Cube Association with the support
(33:59):
of the brand. But then clearly some money changed hands
a couple of years ago. That was the Red Bull
Rubik's Cube World Championship. Uh. You know, red Bull got involved,
the brand, Rubic got involved, which means there was money
changing hands. You're really fascinated with that money changing hands,
aren't too well? I mean sure, because it was I
think everyone saw it as for what it was, which was,
(34:20):
all of a sudden, there's a corporate sponsor attached to it. Yeah,
and that that is like a pretty important point because
like this was there was already a World Championship and
it was like a grassroots organization that had grown up
since two thousand and three and they were doing really well,
and then all of a sudden, fifteen years later, red
Bull comes along attached to the Rubik's Brain is like,
out of the way, nerds, this is the real one.
(34:42):
And so apparently, Um, it was a there was a
lot of controversy, like you were saying, but um, now
they kind of coexist and the Red Bull Rubics sponsored
one changed their name from World Championship to World Cup
so that they don't step on each other's feet at all.
But if you think about it, that's a pretty big
win for this grassroots world cubing association to to be
(35:03):
able to keep their original name and not have to
change their name. You know, Hats off to them. Hats
off indeed. So um, one of the uh, the the
things that I said about the Rubik's Cube Chuck is
that it's it's got a lot of layers too, and
there's a lot of surprising math involved. Specifically, there is
a kind of algebra called um group theory, and um
(35:28):
one of the one of the things that has long
kind of fascinated mathematicians is that there is somewhere in
there a number of moves. There's an algorithm that has
or there's a number of moves associated with any number
of algorithms. Man, I'm making this way harder than it
actually is. Where it represents the maximum number of moves
(35:51):
you would need to use to solve any configuration, any
of the forty three quintillion configurations of a Rubics cube.
And some people figured out that this number must exist,
and brother, they got obsessed with it. From two thousand ten,
some people almost set a building full of Rubik's cubes
(36:12):
on fire. Yeah, I mean they've really researched this stuff
to the point where, uh, like computer scientists are looking
into this. There was a guy named Thomas rakiki Um
who got that the upper limit down to twenty two moves,
and this is like Google is helping him out with
the processing power, so they call it God's algorithm. Uh.
(36:35):
I mean, in the case of Rubik's cube. Um they
got down to twenty is where they landed, right, Yeah,
But God's algorithm can be used for any puzzle really,
uh you know? And that is and why do they
call it God's algorithm. It's what how God would solve
the puzzle. So from what I saw is God's God's
number is that the maximum number of moves that God
(36:57):
would require to solve any configuration of the puzzle. Got
a little confusing in this article because it's a bit
of a brain trick. It's like the fewest moves, but
it's a maximum number of moves right right exactly. It's
it's hard to wrap your mind around. And then there's
(37:18):
actually fewer moves for other algorithms. So I saw God's
number is actually probably more like somewhere between nineteen and twenty.
But because there are algorithms out there that have to
be done in no less than twenty moves, that's still
God's number. And there's also the Devil's number I saw
it too, which is the number of moves in an
(37:40):
algorithm that it would take to go through all forty
three plus quintillion um configurations before you saw it, which
I think that's a pretty good name for that one. Yeah,
now that's the one that they're on the trail of now.
But they're they're done at twenty, right they are. But
I think I think it's interesting that that we're not
(38:02):
entirely certain. It's not like, okay, this has been proven,
it's done. What the reason why they arrived at twenties
because they actually built an algorithm to try to solve
these algorithms. They taught an AI basically how to play
Rubik's Cuba. They said, here's a Rubik's cubo teacherself and
then they had it play just just some mind numbing
(38:24):
number of different Rubik's cubes hands trying to solve it,
and it kept coming up with twenty. And so it
came up with twenty enough times that they're like, well,
our computer God has told us that twenty is the
is God's number. So there you have it. But we
no one, it wasn't proven, it wasn't solved. It was
just like, this thing is so so smart that we're
(38:44):
just gonna go with twenty. So someone still working on
it then, probably, I guess, But I think I get
the impression that they have moved on to the Devil's number. So,
as you would imagine, with the toy of this caliber,
they were bound to be other people saying they invented it,
and battles would ensue. And of course this was the
case with the Rubik's cube. UH in ninety seven, when
(39:07):
Ruby got his Hungarian patent for the Magic Cube, there
was another inventor named Larry Nichols who had already patented
something very similar in the US. Isn't that amazing? Yeah,
this was in nineteen seventy two, but his was for
a two by two by two cube by three by
three by three, still same concept. And at first he
(39:27):
was like this is this is hilarious. You know, I
had the same idea, and now it's become a national craze.
It's kind of satisfying. And somebody said, do you have
any idea how much money you are losing out on
right now? You should sue? He said, oh, my gosh,
you're right, I should sue. And I get the impression
that either the company he worked for or the company
he sold the patent to really lead the charge in
suing for this patent infringement. Um. But he had a
(39:51):
pretty good case. I mean, he had invented it and
patented it years before. It was just the number of
cubes involved was smaller. Yeah. I mean that was another
guy too, a guy named Frank Frank Fox thinking seventy four.
He actually did the three by three by three, but
he let his patent laps, whereas Nichols did not. And
those people like you were talking about that he that
(40:13):
actually owned Nichols patent were called uh Molecular Research Corporation.
That sounds scary, yeah, and litigious, yeah, yeah, they do.
So I want to point out, though, it's definitely worth
saying out right, there is no evidence, and I don't
think anyone's ever leveled in accusation that Erno Rubik stole
this idea. It was just arrived at independently, and he
(40:37):
was working behind the iron curtain at the time too,
so the chances of any exposure are pretty low. It
was just some people kind of came up with the
same idea at the same time, and Erno Rubis is
the one that hit the trite. A federal district court
ruled in favor of Moleculan, but then in eighty six
and appeals court overturned that, saying only that two by
(40:59):
two by two, you uh Rubik's cube, because they started
making different variations. Um, they made a smaller one that
they said in French. In fact, I remember now I
had a little guy on a car key for a
short time. Oh yeah, I remember that. I'm not mistaken.
But then in nineteen nine, another appeals court upheld the
previous appeals court decision. I should I should say. I
(41:20):
read an article by that guy, uh Nichols who had
the original patent, and they were like, you know you,
I think they were suing for like fifty million or something,
and there were you satisfied with the outcome? He said, yeah,
I was satisfied. He's like, I got enough to put
both of my kids through Harvard, So I'm pretty happy
with that. And um, you know, like he invented this
thing that he was able to send his kid through
(41:42):
Harvard with. You know, yeah, that's always interesting when someone
wins something like that. But it wasn't like stolen from him, right,
It was just he had the patent first and they agreed.
You know What's what's even crazier that makes that story
just absolutely insane. He had approached Ideal Toys with and
(42:03):
they had not bought it, and then they went on
years later to buy um the the Erno Rubic version. Yeah,
they put out a bunch of difference. They made big ones,
like the tiny ones I just talked about. I remember
I had a snake. I did too, and I had
no idea what to do with that. I just played
with it like it was a snake. I did the
same thing. Yeah, I just twisted around stuff. I still
(42:25):
don't know what you were supposed to do with that thing.
I think eventually the snake would be put together in
some sort of a three dimensional octagon or something if
I remember, or hexagon. Yeah. I was way off, but yeah,
I didn't know how to I didn't even try to learn.
I just kind of played with it. I taught mine
did drink water. Mine drinks from a cup. It was
(42:46):
very rough. Wickham uh Erno Ruby is still alive and well.
He lives in Hungary, still teaches architecture. Uh I imagine,
has a boatload of money. So he's founded some multiple
foundations for inventure. That's very cool. Yeah, he has a
bowload of money, so much so that his success story
is considered by some to have been the thing that
(43:08):
opened the gates to capitalism in Hungary. Amazing. Um. They
also made him the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy
and he's still I think, shows up once in a
while to the World Championships and maybe the World Cup.
I don't know. He didn't seem like a very controversial type.
Seems like a good guy. And if you really want
(43:29):
to go crazy, if you've solved a ton of Rubik's cubes,
but this has kind of made your nostalgic to try
something harder. They make a thirteen by thirteen by thirteen
Rubik's Cube, and there's something else called the s Cube
as K E W B and it is I don't
even know what you're supposed to do with it. It's
like the Snake times a trillion to make. And there's
(43:50):
also a movie called Cube, which is like math oh
I saw that, Yeah, yeah, has nothing to do with
Rubik's cubes. And there is uh, The Pursuit of Happiness
where Will Smith gets a job as a stockbroker because
somebody sees him solve a Rubik's cuban something like two
minutes or less. And apparently while he was promoting that movie,
(44:13):
he solved one in less than a minute himself in
real life. You mean the movie The Pursuit of Halfwayness.
Did they explain that in the movie. I'm sure I
never saw it. I just always called it Halpwitness. Did
you ever see that one where he was like super
depressed in his his colleagues at work, like just gaslight
him into thinking he's being visited by angels? No? I didn't.
(44:38):
Did you see the one where he went he was
from West Philadelphia and he went to live with his
rich relatives. Yeah, I did, as he dressed very colorfully.
He was I think in bel Air. Uh well, was
it Bell there? I think I was Santa Barbara? You're right, okay.
Uh well, if you want to know more about Will Smith,
(44:59):
you can type his aim into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said Will Smith,
it's time for listener mail. I've got a coconut tree correction. Hey, guys,
correction on something said during the episode The Cult of
the Coconut when you guys talked about the culpa rishka.
(45:23):
First of all, it's not pronounced that way. It is
pronounced culpa rushka. We were way off, all right, She says,
uh rushka or rushka depending on transliteration. Simply means tree
in Sanskrit, also always mispronounced by people in the West.
By the way, Oh well, I don't feel that bad. Yeah,
(45:45):
exactly correct pronunciation is uh sounds screwed. Now she's saying
sanscrit as always mispronounced. Oh oh, I see, so it's
sand screwed sounds crute. That sounds like a French persons
best I can convey, that's what she says. Wow. Okay, yeah,
I've always said say script. This person is a real
(46:06):
really into words though, and very smart. Uh. Second, the
coconut tree is just one of the trees considered a
how do you pronounce it again, college called cold cold
cook scrow cock. There you getting, You nailed it. Not
because it is all you need to survive, though, but
because every single part of the coconut tree is useful
(46:26):
to humans, the bark, the leaves, the fibers, and of
course the coconuts in their entirety. This concept is tied
closely with why Indians culturally revere certain animals e g.
Cow and plants and trees e g. Banyan and coconut. Okay,
I've noticed on the podcast how you too often go
(46:46):
out of your way to correctly pronounce words or names
in foreign languages like which is something I appreciate as
a bicultural, uh penta lingual individual. Perhaps you could explain
your efforts to include not just Western languages, but Eastern
languages too. After all, sal Screwed belongs to the same
language group as German. If you think about it, I
(47:08):
think it would be true to the spirit of your show. Guys,
keep up the good work. And that is from Ruta
our duty a did Ruta say, did she sign off
with later lamos? No? Thanks a lot, Ruta. Yeah, it's
not like we're like, oh, we'll only go to the
trouble of pronouncing something in German or French, which by
the way, we don't very often, and we thought we
(47:30):
were pronouncing it correctly in the Eastern languages. So sorry, Ruda,
I didn't know what sand screwed. I had no idea,
not just us Chuck. Like a million people just learned that, Yeah,
close to a million. I agree. Well, thanks a lot again, Ruta.
And if you want to get in touch with us,
like Ruda did, you can go to stuff you Should
(47:50):
Know dot com and check out our social links, or
you can send us a good old fashioned email to
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Every radio Stuff
You Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select
I've chosen our August two thousand nineteen episode I'm one
of the best selling toys of all time, the Rubik's Cube.
It's an engaging episode on an unlikely global trend sprung
from a Hungarian architects beautiful mind. So enjoy. Welcome to
(00:23):
Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, and we're cubing
it up with Rubic the Cube. Did you see um
that cartoon, Rubic the Amazing Cube? Did you come across that? And? Okay,
(00:49):
I I feel like we are um well within our
rights as far as fair use goes, since we are
talking about this, to at least play the highly disturbing
but also st hugely cute voice of Rubic the Amazing Cube.
Can I play this real quick? Sure? Okay? That is it?
(01:10):
It is awfully unusual, especially when you see this cube
they just basically took do you remember the goblin face
on maximum overdrive on that on the front of that
semi sort of it's kind of like a cuter version
of that that they put onto a Rubik's Cube, put
some feet on it, and then gave it superpowers. That's
Rubic the Amazing Cube. So back to Rubic, Chuck. Yeah,
(01:34):
it was kind of hard to believe that it took
until two thousand fourteen for this thing to be granted
National Toy Hall of Fame inductee status. Uh. It seems
like it would have been much sooner than that because
they have sold hundreds and hundreds of millions of Rubik's
Cube since I had one. I still have one. I
(01:56):
could do it at one point. Oh really, Yeah, I
could do it in a couple of minutes. Wow, Chuck,
I'm impressed. I had no idea. Yeah, I can still do.
I can still do one side and like the top
row surrounding that side on all sides, and that's where
I completely forget. Oh, I see, So you couldn't do
(02:17):
it in a couple of minutes now you just have
you could in the past. Yeah when I was nine. Okay, Um,
I'm impressed. I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube.
I've never been sucked in enough to um like, really
spend a significant amount of time. But um I was
(02:37):
playing with my niece's Rubik's Cube the other day studying
for this, and um I was like, yeah, I could
see how somebody would become obsessed with this kind of
thing for sure. Yeah, it was fun and it was
you know, to call it all the rage as an understatement.
It was one of the most popular toys of all time,
(02:57):
and then in by a math enthusiast in Hungary, an
architect professor named er No Rubik. Appropriately enough, they named
him after the cube. That's right. And if you don't
know what we're talking about, it seems weird to describe
a Rubik's Cube, but we'll probably be taking a task
(03:19):
if we do not. I would say, just come out
from under the rock that you've been living under. But
we may have some young listeners who don't even know
what this thing is, this piece of eighties ephemera, even
though it's not ephemera because they're still pretty popular. But
it is a cube made up of twenty six little
mini cubes called cubs, which is kind of a cute
(03:40):
little name. I think. So you're not as cute as
Rubic the Amazing Cube, but yeah, little cubs and they're
in a three inch by three inch by three inch
well that's not quite true, a three by three by
three grid, eventually creating a cube that measures two point
two five inches or five point seven centimeters per side. Right,
(04:01):
And so what there's six six cube faces because it's
a cube, and each face has a different color. There's orange, blue, green, yellow, white,
and red and um. When you when you mix these
things up, it's just a jumble, a riot of different
colors like you've never seen your life. But the point
(04:22):
is to move these cubes around through the eighteen different
ways you can move any given cube, um, so that
all of the colors are lined up, all the colored
cubes are all the same on each face. And it
sounds easy, friends, it is not easy, not at all.
Like maybe for some people it's easy, but for the
(04:44):
rest of us, normal focus normis, it is not easy
in any way, shape or form. No, it is not.
Uh And in fact, they even suggest that you read
about how to solve the Rubik's cube. It is the
very rare individual that can literally just figure here it
out without any help at all. Um, that's really tough
(05:04):
to do. So it's not like you're not a cheat.
If you look at like how to solve the Rubik's
cube and then memorize these patterns and practice them. That's
sort of the point, right, Yeah, like go look it
up like it's fine. No one will will get mad
at you for that, because it's no fun to never
solve a puzzle. Well, that's why I think I've never
gotten sucked in. I was like, I'm not even there's
no way I'm gonna possibly stumble across this, and I
(05:27):
just don't think like this. My spatial reasoning is terrible.
I'm not great at math. I'm color blind. Everything just
looks white. You. No, it's really not. I can't discern
squares from from circles. It's just I'm off. So um. Originally,
the Rubik's cube was called the magic cube, and it
(05:50):
was invented, like you said, by Erno Rubik, who was Hungarian.
So it was originally called the Beavish Kotzka, which is
magic cube, and the Hungarian means butt head. I believe
it does. The magic butt head was Bevish and butt head.
All right, nice man, It's like, where's he going with
this after all these years? It's good. No, I didn't,
(06:13):
but I was like, I'm I'm going with this, Chuck.
I trust him and I paid off. So Mr Rubik
got his Hungarian patent on the mechanical design of this
in nine and it was in Hungary only for a while. Uh,
and it did pretty well and hungry. Um, but that's
(06:33):
kind of where it stayed. It was. Uh. It was
because of the politics of the time and the fact
that it was hungry. It was not super easy to
get a an American patent or to bring it over
and market it here in the West, so it was
pretty much a Hungarian local sensation for it's early like
probably first year. Yeah, he had like a Hungarian toy
(06:56):
manufacturer make like ten thousand of them, but he wasn't
happy with him, so he cut the runoff at five thousand.
So there were five thousands of these things floating around
Budapest and and maybe Hungry in general. And it was
just total serendipity that there was a guy named Tibor Laxi.
And I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say
his last name, but that's how it's how it spelled.
(07:16):
It's probably like Lucia or something like that. But um,
t Bor, I'm I just love that name. It's a
great name. Um. He was an entrepreneur who had left
Hungry and moved to Austria, so he had really developed
a taste for capitalism. While he happened to be visiting
back home in Budapest when he was at a restaurant
and he noticed a waiter playing with the Beavish kotska,
(07:38):
the magic cube, and um, he said, you there, what
is that? And uh, he said, well, it's the Beavish kotzka.
How about I sell it to you for a dollar?
And I believe he bought that for a dollar, played
around with it for a minute. It was like this
could be big. So he found out who invented it,
and he scheduled a meeting with Erno Rubic. Yeah, and
(07:59):
he would later on that he that Erno Rubik had
a lot to do with why he decided to get
into business with him. Here's his quote. He said, when
Rubik first walked into the room, I felt like giving
him some money. He looked like a beggar. He was
terribly dressed. You gotta remember this guy's a professor, so
they're not known for their sharp attire. He was terribly
(08:19):
dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out
of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius
on my hands, and I told him we could sell millions.
Yeah he was right. Oh man, was he ever right?
He understated it? Actually, um the t Boar, I'm just
gonna call him t Boar. He took this magic cube
(08:42):
and he started going to toy fairs. Uh, And I
think he struck out at a few of them. But
he really hit it out of the park at the
Nuremberg Toy Fair when he met a toy expert who
had connections with Ideal Toy company. Remember Ideal back in
the day. I think I do for sure. I'm pretty
(09:03):
sure they made that um the the uh what was
the daredevil's name, Evil kin? I think they made the
Evil kinevil stunt bike. You know what's funny is um
they make those now for other they have there's like
an incredible stunt bike with plastic girl. It's the same
(09:24):
exact function. We have one in our house and you
load it up and crank it and there she goes.
Is it the exact same mold? They just put like
different pain on it or something like that knockoff toys? Man,
it's slightly different. Uh, in its design, but it's clearly
like the same exact toy. So at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, Uh,
Tibor runs into the guy from Ideal and they end
(09:48):
up purchasing it. They purchased the rights to this, the
global rights, and they they they basically sign up to
create a million Rubik's cubes. Yeah, also we should say
it this toy fair. He did a pretty smart thing.
Instead of like buying a booth, he just came and
worked the floor with Rubik's cubes and got this like
ground buzz going by walking around and giving these things
(10:09):
to people, and like that's genius. Like for something like this,
that's the perfect way to pique someone's curiosity is not
to have some flashy uh like spinning giant Rubik's cube,
is to actually get in the hands of people walking
around the floor. Especially if you say, I'm Tibor, let's party.
Should I bet you want to call it t boards Cube?
(10:31):
It's pretty good name. He probably did, although he was
smart because I remember originally it was called the Magic Cube.
At some point. If it wasn't t Boor, it was
Ideal who said we're gonna rename this the Rubik's Cube.
And I'm sure erno Rubik was like, oh, okay, I
guess if you insist. I wonder if he was into
it or not, or if he pushed forward, or if
he was like, I'm not really into that, but if
(10:52):
you think it'll sell cubes, That's what I'm guessing he
probably did. I don't think he was going to stand
in the way of it, but he was not like
vying for or by any means. That's my impression. But
I'm just totally making that up, but that I have
the same impression, which means that if you put our
two in persons together, it equals fact. So Ideal sells
(11:13):
one hundred million Rubik's cubes in the first two years.
They just signed up to sell one million. They sold
a hundred million in two years. Yeah, I mean, I'm
sure they had problems keeping up with production. Uh. Some
of the accolades and eight and eighty one at won
the UK's Toy the Year Award two years running. Um
In eighty two, there were five books about solving it
(11:36):
on the New York Times bestseller list, one of which
I owned. I owned the classic The Simple Solution to
the Rubik's Cube by James G. Norris. He was a
chemistry student at Stanford And get this, dude, this book
was the number one best selling book of nine one period.
(11:56):
He sold six point seven million books and it is
still the fasting selling book in the history of Bantam Books.
Is that right? Can you believe that out of all
the books that year, that was the number one? I can,
because that really kind of underscores just how nuts the
not just America, the world went for Rubik's Cube, that
(12:19):
the number one selling book was a book about solving
the toy. That that that was it. Yeah, they had
sold five hundred million of them by the time rolled around.
So so talking about the books though for another second.
At one point the number one, two, and four positions
on the New York Times bestseller list where all Rubik's
Cube Solution books. Three he was probably Stephen King or
(12:39):
something probably, and one of those books was written by
a twelve year old named Patrick Bossart called You Can
Do the Cube, which is pretty adorable if you think
about it, and Christians later made a movie called Gleaming
the Cube, one of my all time favorites, which had
nothing to do with Rubik's Cubes. As it turns out,
it was about skateboarding. That's right. Um, So there's a
(13:02):
just a craze going on around the world, like everyone
is into the Rubik's cube. Everyone's buying one. They sold
like I've seen anywhere from three hundred and fifty million.
The highest I've seen is six hundred million. They sold
a ton of these things, hundreds and hundreds of millions
of them. Are those are the official too? There were
(13:22):
plenty of knockoffs. Sure, there was books on the New
York Times bestseller list about this. It was featured in Times, Scientific,
American News, Scientists. Um. There was a paper that was
printed in the New England Journal of Medicine that talked
about cubists thumb, which is a real thing. It's a
type of tendonitis in your thumb that you get in
(13:44):
your non dominant hand because that's the hand that you
used to stabilize the Rubik's cube. And so the edge
of the cube pressing into the heel of your thumb
where it meets the rest of your thumb um, that
could create tendonitis. For people who were staying up for
days on end just playing with this thing, trying to
(14:05):
beat this puzzle. There was a craze like like no other.
I say, we take a break, okay, uh, and we
come back and we talk about uh Mr Rubick, or
maybe he's a doctor. I'm gonna call him Dr Rubik,
and how he created the mechanics of this puzzle. Alright,
(14:46):
So supposedly Dr Rubik, surely he's a doctor. I would
let's call him Professor Ruby because he was definitely an
architecture professor in a math genius. Actually though, I'm I'm
with you, he's got to be doctor, all right, Professor
Dr Rubik. Uh supposedly was not even trying to create
this puzzle in I'm sorry seventy four when he first
(15:07):
started out um, as legend has it, he was trying
to create a mathematical model for three D design class,
which makes sense considering his job. Other people say, no,
he was just really kind of guy to like to tinker.
He was fascinated by geometry and shapes, and he was
trying to just solve a problem of mechanics in three dimensions.
(15:28):
But according to the Toy Hall of Fame, he was
very much trying to invent a puzzle. Uh. And that
may just be folklore. Yeah, he he knew what he wanted.
He wanted to make this three by three cube that
was made up of smaller cubes that could all like
interact and twister around like he had the idea for
the Rubik's cube, which was step one, but step two
(15:49):
was a doozy, and that was figuring out how to
invent a mechanical solution to make this thing work the
way he wanted it to, and apparently was um. There
was a pretty good article on mental floss by a
guy named Noah Davis who recounted that um. One day,
Rubic was walking down the Danube alongside the Danube in
(16:11):
Budapest and looked down and noticed that there was just
a pile of nice, polished rounded river rocks and thought,
I've got it. I've been thinking about a cube. Everything's
got to be a cube. But what if I added
a sphere to the mix two and that these things
rotated around usphere. That would give the freedom of motion
that I need to make this thing work. And that
(16:34):
was that That that that was the solution to the puzzle,
as it were. Yeah, I mean, if you're like me
and probably lots of other kids in the early eighties,
you took your Rubik's cube apart at some point, did you.
I never I never saw one, and lots of video
on this. Yeah, oh yeah, I've got a screw driver
out in pretty short order and put those things apart. Uh.
And it's kind of cool when you look at the
(16:55):
you know, when you take all those cubs out, you
get down to the center and the three x s
um and they have each one is tipped with two
opposing center cubis. It's kind of cool looking. And then
it makes sense how all these things fit together and
how it works. Yeah, another way to think about it
is just think about like a sphere a ball, and
then you've got six arms sticking out in in um
(17:18):
at right angles from it, so that it forms a
three dimensional plus side plus signed and at the end
of each one of these arms is a cube, a
colored cube. And though that's the skeleton of the thing.
And then what what Erno Rubik figured out was that
that's all that needed to be attached to the center.
You could make the other cubes attached to those those
(17:41):
face cubes a center cubes qubis um. You could make
some cubes qubs attached to those cubs, and then other
cubs attached to the other cubs, and then they will
all kind of rotate around each other, but they're all
really rotating on three different axis coming out of that sphere.
It's a gene like this guy has gotten like if
(18:02):
he started a craze and is you know, kind of
viewed as this great inventor for the toy like math, physics, architecture,
um like in the in a number of different fields.
He's ugansical engineering for sure. Yeah, he's viewed as just
a god in some senses for for cracking this this
problem and creating this three dimensional structure that actually works
(18:26):
in in reality that people can learn and study from.
That's right. So he's figured out this the mechanics of
it all, but it's still not a puzzle yet until
he applies these colors. That's what makes it a puzzle, because,
like we said at the beginning, the idea is that
you have all the colors on each side matching one another.
He applies these colored stickers all over, mixes and twisted
(18:48):
up a little bit, and he's like, I've invented the cube.
And he's like, wait a minute, I don't know how
to solve the puzzle. So he actually had built this thing,
stickered it up and looked at it, I imagine, with
some level of accomplishment, and then realized that the biggest,
probably uh, the hardest thing to do in this whole
(19:09):
process still lay in front of him, which was because
there were no books out at this point. Right. He
invented it. So he had to figure out how to
solve his own puzzle. And it took him a while.
It took him a month from what I saw, Yeah,
and I imagine he worked on this pretty much NonStop
to figure this thing out. He he did, and he
(19:30):
would like write down like the different different moves, combination
of moves which now they're called algorithms. Um, it's just
types of moves that if you do them in a
specific sequence, will solve a specific jumbled Rubik's cube. Right, Um,
So he wrote them down. He kind of kept track
of it, and that was like the first the first, um,
(19:52):
first time anyone had kind of applied analysis to this.
But it would not be the last. Obviously. He's the
New York Times bestseller. His shows by the reason why
it's so difficult to solve a Rubik's cube just by
happenstance is that just the sheer number of possible configurations
of the cube. Right, each face has nine cubs, and
(20:16):
there's six um faces, so there's fifty four cubs, but
they all relate to one another, and so if you
move one, that's one configuration. If you move it another direction,
that's another configuration, and so on and so on, and
so with these fifty four cubs, Chuck, are you ready
for this? Yes? The possible number of configurations is forty
(20:38):
three quintillion, two hundred and fifty two quadrillion, three trillion,
two hundred and seventy four billion, four hundred and eighty
nine million, eight hundred and fifty six thousand possible configurations
of a Rubik's cube. And one of them one is
the right one where all six faces are all the
(20:59):
same color. Ubi's just one. So just doing it accidentally,
your chances are one in about forty three trillion that
you're going to stumble upon that right combination that's right,
which is pretty amazing, don't you think. Yes? And by
the way, I think I said in their fifty four
there's twenty cubes. I believe there's fifty four faces. Yeah,
(21:22):
I mean that's a deal. Each QB has three sides
or two sides, depending on if it's a corner or
an edge or one if it's in the center right,
So it's kind of confusing. But but nine times six,
so nine nine squares or nine different colors squares times
six faces is fifty four I think fifty four faces
(21:45):
something qubis This is how good at Matthew Man. It's
it's really because it's so funny, because it's such a
simple little thing. But once you start really breaking it down,
you're like, we could make this super confusing if we
dried hard, for sure. But what people have figured out
is that they're they're like, you may have like a
one and forty three quintillion chance of stumbling across the
(22:06):
right configuration by accident. But what people have figured out
is that there are combination of moves like you know,
um uh front right up, up twice and then down.
That's that's an algorithm. And if you apply that to
a certain kind of scrambled a certain configuration of a
scrambled Rubik's cube, it will bring it back to solved.
(22:27):
And so people have spent a lot of time developing algorithms.
And that's why erno Rubik was originally doing when he
was like, oh, if I do this this and this,
it will make it solved. And he wrote that down
that's what's called an algorithm. Yeah, and I remember in
the book, like each book had their own little shorthand,
I guess, but I remember the one that I had.
It definitely had the algorithms all spelled out with like
(22:49):
shorthand for what each move was called. So it would
sort of look like a math problem made out of letters, right,
like I saw you for up and D for down.
Makes a lot of sense. But then also, um, you
can you know there you can move something to the right.
You can twist one of the rows of cubes to
the right, but you can also twist it to the
(23:10):
left too, So I saw an apostrophe after like l
apostrophe would be counterclockwise left, and then you can add
a number two, so you do that twice, which is
really a d eighty degree counterclockwise turn. So interesting, it
really is kind of interesting. It like at first, you know,
when I first um went over this article the first time,
(23:30):
just taking it in, it's like, how this is pretty neat.
But the Rubik's cube I found has many many layers
to it, and you can really keep going deeply into it. Well,
beyond just playing with the cube and trying to solve it. Like,
there's a lot of math involved. There's a lot of
physics and mechanics involved. You. I mean, you can get
(23:51):
us sucked into it as you like, Buddy, just try
not to go insane like Erno Rubik did. He did
not when he set that that building on fire. He uh.
It's interesting though, how big of a hit this became.
Sort of it flew in the face of a lot
of um like sort of rules of the toy industry
and that it didn't make sounds um It didn't have
(24:15):
interchangeable parts. It didn't have things that you could sell
along with it, like, you know, clothing. You couldn't. I
guess you could dress your little Rubik's cube, but then
you have a special relationship with it, I guess, so
you could dress it up and be like him Ruby.
It didn't have batteries. It was never like well, I
guess it appeared on a TV show. Was that a
TV show? Yeah it was. It was a Saturday morning
(24:37):
cartoon that came on right before pac Man, which was
honestly one of the all time great cartoons. Ever. Yeah,
it just it wasn't marketable though. Like you would think
a toy would be. The reason that it appealed and
endured is because it is a real challenge and you
get a real sense of reward once you've done it right,
and that really hooks people. It really does hook people.
(24:59):
And again there's like not there's no shame in going
and looking up algorithms to solve UM Rubik's cubes, like
just processes. And in fact, if you start doing any
kind of research on rub excutes, you'll find like there's
actually specific UM methods of attack that people suggest for
for beginners to start with. There's one called the White
(25:21):
Cross method classic, which is um entails eating a handful
of white Cross gas station speed staying up for four
days until you until you get done. It's actually you
start with the edge pieces and then you move to
the corner pieces, putting them all in place, and then
you um go on from there starting with the white
(25:41):
face of the cube. That's right, And uh, this toy
was a big hit anyway, but it it is endured,
Uh not because of stocking stuffers or nostalgia, but it
is endured all these years later because of competition. Yeah,
so let's take a break now and we'll talk about
speed cubing right after this. Well, now we're on the
(26:04):
road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
or two from Josh Man. Chuck gets stuff you should know,
all right, Okay, So the Rubik's Cube comes out in
(26:36):
the world basically in night and the next year, the
very next year, countries around the world we're holding national
championships for um solving Rubik's cubes as fast as you
possibly could. It's called speed cubing. Yes. And then a
year after that they all got together, all the champions
of the countries for the very first Rubik's Cube World
(26:59):
Championship in the best which is kind of cool. UM.
And that's what has kept people going for so long,
because there there's people are still trying to beat these records.
I saw a kid and it's kind of hard to
tell what the top times because they list the top
times in these competitions, but I saw a kid on
YouTube do it in like six seconds or four or
(27:20):
five seconds. I saw one do it in three point
four seven. Yeah, I don't know how like how it's
officially judged though. There's a timer UM and one of
those there's one of those mats that you keep your
hands on. But like, why does it say that that
those aren't world records? Then I don't know. That's what
(27:43):
I saw was the world record was in two thousand eighteen.
It was three point four seven seconds by U shang
Yu shang Do sorry of China. So you've seen other
things listed. I just don't know if there's like the
bodies aren't speaking to one another or what. Maybe it's
that was a a non championship uh time, or even
(28:07):
even maybe it was a qualifier or something like that.
So it doesn't count as the world record unless you
get whatever time is done at the world championship that's
considered the world record. Who knows. It's crazy to see
how fast these kids and it's usually kids that win
um I guess with their little nimble fingers and brain sponges. Uh,
(28:28):
it's crazy how fast they're doing. It doesn't look real.
It looks like some sort of weird faked video. Yeah.
And here's the other thing too. I'm glad you mentioned
brain sponges because it is like a um an intellectual pursuit,
like from the beginning of this this toys release in
like they win a different route, like you're saying it
doesn't require batteries. It was you know, um, it doesn't
(28:50):
make a noise or anything like that. So they went
a different route in advertising it and said this is
an intelligent game, like I'm sure Isaac Newton discovered gravity,
but could he solve a Rubik's cube? You know, So
they really kind of play that up, and it's true
because these kids who are solving or people who are
solving Rubik's cubes super fast. It's not just like look
(29:10):
or their fingers are just moving forward them. They have
memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of these algorithms and have
gotten to the point where they can look at a
cube and figure out which algorithm is going to solve
it the fastest, and then when the time starts, they
can also move their fingers really really quick. And that's
how they're getting these amazing times. It's not just speed
(29:32):
and dexterity, it's also knowing what algorithm is going to
work best. Yeah, for sure, you know, it died out
pretty quickly. Like most fad toys, Um, once you sell
a lot of these, you don't need another one unless
you break yours or something. So it's kind of one
of those things where, and which is again why it
flew in the face of the toy industry because they
(29:53):
couldn't sell ancillary products alongside it. But uh, you know,
it died out pretty quickly and the champion and ship
uh two was the last one for about twenty years
until the Internet comes along and all of a sudden
there are people posting faster times than ever before than
twenty years earlier. And in two thousand three UM in Canada,
(30:16):
there was a speed cuber named Dan Gosby who organized
a competition in Toronto, and this is where they're getting
it down to, like twenty seconds, and they have different
categories like blindfolded, fewest moves, one handed, feet feet feet dude.
Last year someone did it in twenty three seconds by foot,
(30:36):
which was about the quickest time by hand at the
first competition. Yes, and it took them longer to figure
out that they had solved it than it did to
actually solve it because they had to use a stick
to turn the Rubik's cube over because they had used
their feet to solve it. And I think, uh, when
you participate, it didn't pay off as well as I
thought it would sorright, Uh, you get fifteen seconds to
(31:00):
look at the cube over. Um they are all started, uh,
like the cubes are all started the same with like
a computer generated random scramble. It's just fair. You get
that fifteen seconds, you check it out, you set it
on your mat, and then you go And it's just
like I said, it's amazing to see these things done
in like sub four seconds. Yeah, because they're they're i mean,
(31:23):
their hands actually do kind of blur, like you can't
really follow where their hands are at any given time.
They barely touch the rubrics cube. And they're using to
be fair, they're using specialized speed cubes. They're not just
using like off the shelf rubrics cubes. We'll talk about those,
go ahead, talk about them. Sure. Yeah. So so people
go to the trouble of getting a speed cube. It's like,
(31:44):
you know, you can get one for you can get
a good one from what I understand, for about seventies
seventy five bucks. And these things are literally well oiled
machines that are just super fast. Some of them use
magnets so that you can tell when they're snapped into place,
and um, they move a lot more easily and quickly. Um.
There you can just look at and be like, that's
(32:05):
a high end Rubik's cube right there. Yeah, Like you
can pay to get your cube serviced, uh and checked
out at speed cube shop. So someone will take it apart,
a technician and they will look at each of those
little cubs for defects and like, has it got a
little bump here that will slow it down? They'll smooth
that out, like you said, sometimes they use magnets, um.
(32:28):
And one of the reasons for the magnets is it
creates that snap when a turn is completed. Because if
you want to move these things really fast, you don't
want it to be you know, even if it's an
eighth of an inch out of whack, you're not gonna
be able to turn it the other way. So you
wanted to snap and lock into place. Uh, you know
you want. It's just amazing how how engineered these things
(32:52):
have become. What in these speed cubing competitions, right well,
I mean just to keep up, you've gotta you've gotta
get yourself a speed cube. If you showed up, like
to an actual competition with just a regular Rubik's cubeb
I don't know if you'd be laughed out of place,
but they would they would certainly feel bad for you.
You know what they should do is like because you know,
(33:13):
I remember them loosening up really well and getting faster
just because you played with it more. Instead of giving
everyone speed cubes and trying to get this ultra red
Bull record, which they sponsored the events now by the way, Uh,
they should give everyone like out of the package. Make
it as hard as possible. I agree. I think that
there would be some um, you know, preteens who are
(33:36):
really high strung that would cry if they were confronted
with that challenge, if they had to put their speed
cube down. Yeah, they'd be like, this is not fair.
No one prepared me in my life for this. I
did mention Red Bull because it was kind of controversial
for many years. Uh. The Rubics World Championships uh were
co hosted by the World Cube Association with the support
(33:59):
of the brand. But then clearly some money changed hands
a couple of years ago. That was the Red Bull
Rubik's Cube World Championship. Uh. You know, red Bull got involved,
the brand, Rubic got involved, which means there was money
changing hands. You're really fascinated with that money changing hands,
aren't too well? I mean sure, because it was I
think everyone saw it as for what it was, which was,
(34:20):
all of a sudden, there's a corporate sponsor attached to it. Yeah,
and that that is like a pretty important point because
like this was there was already a World Championship and
it was like a grassroots organization that had grown up
since two thousand and three and they were doing really well,
and then all of a sudden, fifteen years later, red
Bull comes along attached to the Rubik's Brain is like,
out of the way, nerds, this is the real one.
(34:42):
And so apparently, Um, it was a there was a
lot of controversy, like you were saying, but um, now
they kind of coexist and the Red Bull Rubics sponsored
one changed their name from World Championship to World Cup
so that they don't step on each other's feet at all.
But if you think about it, that's a pretty big
win for this grassroots world cubing association to to be
(35:03):
able to keep their original name and not have to
change their name. You know, Hats off to them. Hats
off indeed. So um, one of the uh, the the
things that I said about the Rubik's Cube Chuck is
that it's it's got a lot of layers too, and
there's a lot of surprising math involved. Specifically, there is
a kind of algebra called um group theory, and um
(35:28):
one of the one of the things that has long
kind of fascinated mathematicians is that there is somewhere in
there a number of moves. There's an algorithm that has
or there's a number of moves associated with any number
of algorithms. Man, I'm making this way harder than it
actually is. Where it represents the maximum number of moves
(35:51):
you would need to use to solve any configuration, any
of the forty three quintillion configurations of a Rubics cube.
And some people figured out that this number must exist,
and brother, they got obsessed with it. From two thousand ten,
some people almost set a building full of Rubik's cubes
(36:12):
on fire. Yeah, I mean they've really researched this stuff
to the point where, uh, like computer scientists are looking
into this. There was a guy named Thomas rakiki Um
who got that the upper limit down to twenty two moves,
and this is like Google is helping him out with
the processing power, so they call it God's algorithm. Uh.
(36:35):
I mean, in the case of Rubik's cube. Um they
got down to twenty is where they landed, right, Yeah,
But God's algorithm can be used for any puzzle really,
uh you know? And that is and why do they
call it God's algorithm. It's what how God would solve
the puzzle. So from what I saw is God's God's
number is that the maximum number of moves that God
(36:57):
would require to solve any configuration of the puzzle. Got
a little confusing in this article because it's a bit
of a brain trick. It's like the fewest moves, but
it's a maximum number of moves right right exactly. It's
it's hard to wrap your mind around. And then there's
(37:18):
actually fewer moves for other algorithms. So I saw God's
number is actually probably more like somewhere between nineteen and twenty.
But because there are algorithms out there that have to
be done in no less than twenty moves, that's still
God's number. And there's also the Devil's number I saw
it too, which is the number of moves in an
(37:40):
algorithm that it would take to go through all forty
three plus quintillion um configurations before you saw it, which
I think that's a pretty good name for that one. Yeah,
now that's the one that they're on the trail of now.
But they're they're done at twenty, right they are. But
I think I think it's interesting that that we're not
(38:02):
entirely certain. It's not like, okay, this has been proven,
it's done. What the reason why they arrived at twenties
because they actually built an algorithm to try to solve
these algorithms. They taught an AI basically how to play
Rubik's Cuba. They said, here's a Rubik's cubo teacherself and
then they had it play just just some mind numbing
(38:24):
number of different Rubik's cubes hands trying to solve it,
and it kept coming up with twenty. And so it
came up with twenty enough times that they're like, well,
our computer God has told us that twenty is the
is God's number. So there you have it. But we
no one, it wasn't proven, it wasn't solved. It was
just like, this thing is so so smart that we're
(38:44):
just gonna go with twenty. So someone still working on
it then, probably, I guess, But I think I get
the impression that they have moved on to the Devil's number. So,
as you would imagine, with the toy of this caliber,
they were bound to be other people saying they invented it,
and battles would ensue. And of course this was the
case with the Rubik's cube. UH in ninety seven, when
(39:07):
Ruby got his Hungarian patent for the Magic Cube, there
was another inventor named Larry Nichols who had already patented
something very similar in the US. Isn't that amazing? Yeah,
this was in nineteen seventy two, but his was for
a two by two by two cube by three by
three by three, still same concept. And at first he
(39:27):
was like this is this is hilarious. You know, I
had the same idea, and now it's become a national craze.
It's kind of satisfying. And somebody said, do you have
any idea how much money you are losing out on
right now? You should sue? He said, oh, my gosh,
you're right, I should sue. And I get the impression
that either the company he worked for or the company
he sold the patent to really lead the charge in
suing for this patent infringement. Um. But he had a
(39:51):
pretty good case. I mean, he had invented it and
patented it years before. It was just the number of
cubes involved was smaller. Yeah. I mean that was another
guy too, a guy named Frank Frank Fox thinking seventy four.
He actually did the three by three by three, but
he let his patent laps, whereas Nichols did not. And
those people like you were talking about that he that
(40:13):
actually owned Nichols patent were called uh Molecular Research Corporation.
That sounds scary, yeah, and litigious, yeah, yeah, they do.
So I want to point out, though, it's definitely worth
saying out right, there is no evidence, and I don't
think anyone's ever leveled in accusation that Erno Rubik stole
this idea. It was just arrived at independently, and he
(40:37):
was working behind the iron curtain at the time too,
so the chances of any exposure are pretty low. It
was just some people kind of came up with the
same idea at the same time, and Erno Rubis is
the one that hit the trite. A federal district court
ruled in favor of Moleculan, but then in eighty six
and appeals court overturned that, saying only that two by
(40:59):
two by two, you uh Rubik's cube, because they started
making different variations. Um, they made a smaller one that
they said in French. In fact, I remember now I
had a little guy on a car key for a
short time. Oh yeah, I remember that. I'm not mistaken.
But then in nineteen nine, another appeals court upheld the
previous appeals court decision. I should I should say. I
(41:20):
read an article by that guy, uh Nichols who had
the original patent, and they were like, you know you,
I think they were suing for like fifty million or something,
and there were you satisfied with the outcome? He said, yeah,
I was satisfied. He's like, I got enough to put
both of my kids through Harvard, So I'm pretty happy
with that. And um, you know, like he invented this
thing that he was able to send his kid through
(41:42):
Harvard with. You know, yeah, that's always interesting when someone
wins something like that. But it wasn't like stolen from him, right,
It was just he had the patent first and they agreed.
You know What's what's even crazier that makes that story
just absolutely insane. He had approached Ideal Toys with and
(42:03):
they had not bought it, and then they went on
years later to buy um the the Erno Rubic version. Yeah,
they put out a bunch of difference. They made big ones,
like the tiny ones I just talked about. I remember
I had a snake. I did too, and I had
no idea what to do with that. I just played
with it like it was a snake. I did the
same thing. Yeah, I just twisted around stuff. I still
(42:25):
don't know what you were supposed to do with that thing.
I think eventually the snake would be put together in
some sort of a three dimensional octagon or something if
I remember, or hexagon. Yeah. I was way off, but yeah,
I didn't know how to I didn't even try to learn.
I just kind of played with it. I taught mine
did drink water. Mine drinks from a cup. It was
(42:46):
very rough. Wickham uh Erno Ruby is still alive and well.
He lives in Hungary, still teaches architecture. Uh I imagine,
has a boatload of money. So he's founded some multiple
foundations for inventure. That's very cool. Yeah, he has a
bowload of money, so much so that his success story
is considered by some to have been the thing that
(43:08):
opened the gates to capitalism in Hungary. Amazing. Um. They
also made him the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy
and he's still I think, shows up once in a
while to the World Championships and maybe the World Cup.
I don't know. He didn't seem like a very controversial type.
Seems like a good guy. And if you really want
(43:29):
to go crazy, if you've solved a ton of Rubik's cubes,
but this has kind of made your nostalgic to try
something harder. They make a thirteen by thirteen by thirteen
Rubik's Cube, and there's something else called the s Cube
as K E W B and it is I don't
even know what you're supposed to do with it. It's
like the Snake times a trillion to make. And there's
(43:50):
also a movie called Cube, which is like math oh
I saw that, Yeah, yeah, has nothing to do with
Rubik's cubes. And there is uh, The Pursuit of Happiness
where Will Smith gets a job as a stockbroker because
somebody sees him solve a Rubik's cuban something like two
minutes or less. And apparently while he was promoting that movie,
(44:13):
he solved one in less than a minute himself in
real life. You mean the movie The Pursuit of Halfwayness.
Did they explain that in the movie. I'm sure I
never saw it. I just always called it Halpwitness. Did
you ever see that one where he was like super
depressed in his his colleagues at work, like just gaslight
him into thinking he's being visited by angels? No? I didn't.
(44:38):
Did you see the one where he went he was
from West Philadelphia and he went to live with his
rich relatives. Yeah, I did, as he dressed very colorfully.
He was I think in bel Air. Uh well, was
it Bell there? I think I was Santa Barbara? You're right, okay.
Uh well, if you want to know more about Will Smith,
(44:59):
you can type his aim into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said Will Smith,
it's time for listener mail. I've got a coconut tree correction. Hey, guys,
correction on something said during the episode The Cult of
the Coconut when you guys talked about the culpa rishka.
(45:23):
First of all, it's not pronounced that way. It is
pronounced culpa rushka. We were way off, all right, She says,
uh rushka or rushka depending on transliteration. Simply means tree
in Sanskrit, also always mispronounced by people in the West.
By the way, Oh well, I don't feel that bad. Yeah,
(45:45):
exactly correct pronunciation is uh sounds screwed. Now she's saying
sanscrit as always mispronounced. Oh oh, I see, so it's
sand screwed sounds crute. That sounds like a French persons
best I can convey, that's what she says. Wow. Okay, yeah,
I've always said say script. This person is a real
(46:06):
really into words though, and very smart. Uh. Second, the
coconut tree is just one of the trees considered a
how do you pronounce it again, college called cold cold
cook scrow cock. There you getting, You nailed it. Not
because it is all you need to survive, though, but
because every single part of the coconut tree is useful
(46:26):
to humans, the bark, the leaves, the fibers, and of
course the coconuts in their entirety. This concept is tied
closely with why Indians culturally revere certain animals e g.
Cow and plants and trees e g. Banyan and coconut. Okay,
I've noticed on the podcast how you too often go
(46:46):
out of your way to correctly pronounce words or names
in foreign languages like which is something I appreciate as
a bicultural, uh penta lingual individual. Perhaps you could explain
your efforts to include not just Western languages, but Eastern
languages too. After all, sal Screwed belongs to the same
language group as German. If you think about it, I
(47:08):
think it would be true to the spirit of your show. Guys,
keep up the good work. And that is from Ruta
our duty a did Ruta say, did she sign off
with later lamos? No? Thanks a lot, Ruta. Yeah, it's
not like we're like, oh, we'll only go to the
trouble of pronouncing something in German or French, which by
the way, we don't very often, and we thought we
(47:30):
were pronouncing it correctly in the Eastern languages. So sorry, Ruda,
I didn't know what sand screwed. I had no idea,
not just us Chuck. Like a million people just learned that, Yeah,
close to a million. I agree. Well, thanks a lot again, Ruta.
And if you want to get in touch with us,
like Ruda did, you can go to stuff you Should
(47:50):
Know dot com and check out our social links, or
you can send us a good old fashioned email to
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Every radio Stuff
You Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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