Podcasts about Scrabble

In this episode of Ferret64 I talk about the significance of 300 Episodes and show off my Video Game Pick-Ups from November 2025! What have I been playing this past week? Surprise, I played EA Sports Madden NFL 26 on the Nintendo Switch 2, finish up my thoughts on Kirby Air Riders, and finally talk about King of Meat. Also a few retro games I've played like Killzone, Captain America Super Soldier, and more!This week's video game news! We get information about the Far Cry TV Show, how much generative AI is in Let it Die: Inferno?, Call of Duty is looking for developers with Switch Experience, Nintendo acquires Bandai Namco Singapore, and more!Finishing it off with What's Coming Soon! A Balatro and Scrabble inspired game called Beyond Words, Dying Light: The Beast gets a major update, a new game from Star Fox Veterans Wild Blue Skies, and more!Thank you for listening and enjoy the episode!Timestamps -00:00 Intro01:22 Episode 300!03:26 November 2025 Gaming Pick-Ups10:44 EA Sports Madden NFL 26 Nintendo Switch 2 (Review)37:51 Kirby Air Riders (Final Thoughts)45:48 King of Meat (First Impressions)53:44 Killzone (Review)57:19 Captain America Super Soldier (Review)1:01:31 Army Men Air Attack (Review)1:04:19 Roundabout (Review)1:07:29 Far Cry TV Series Announced1:09:19 Let it Die Inferno uses a lot of Generative AI1:13:02 Assassin's Creed Shadows DLC Cancelled1:17:09 Call of Duty Seeking Switch Experienced Devs1:19:57 Nintendo Acquiring Bandai Namco Singapore1:21:29 Xbox x Crocs1:23:42 Coming Soon (Beyond Words, Dying Light Update, Wild Blue Skies, + More)1:34:13 ClosingTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/yemmytheferretTwitter: https://twitter.com/YemmyTheFerretBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/yemmytheferret.bsky.socialJoin my Discord: https://discord.gg/b9NaNgp

This week's Wealth Formula Podcast is about the economics of sports—if you are a sports fan like me, you will love it. But before we get to that, I want to give you my two cents on one of the most important elements to financial success in anything: conviction. As I write this, Bitcoin sold off from a high of $126K to under $90K. Other cryptos have lost 50-90 percent of their value in the same time. It's been called a blood bath. Some are even saying it’s over for Bitcoin. I might even believe them if I hadn't seen the same story at least 5 times before over the past decade. True bitcoiners have tremendous belief in what bitcoin means to the world. Someone who bought $1,000 of Bitcoin in 2010 and simply refused to sell would now be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. That is the reward for true conviction. The irony of this bitcoin cycle is that many of those individuals with high conviction are finally cashing in on the fruit of their patience. Almost every day, another wallet that hasn't been active since 2011 is selling off a billion dollars into the market into the hands of Wall Street and governments. That's why prices are tumbling. But don't be fooled into thinking that these buyers are the dumb money holding the bag. The story does not end here. Nor is the Bitcoin story a one-off either. History repeats itself as the story of investments unfolds over time. In December 1999, Amazon stock traded at $106. After the dot-com crash, it fell to $5.97. Every talking head had a eulogy written for the company. But if you were crazy enough to hold through the storm, your conviction paid off spectacularly: $10,000 invested in Amazon in 2001 is worth over $20 million today. Now, moving on to the topics of sports. One of my favorite examples of conviction is from 1920, when George Halas bought the Chicago Bears franchise for $100. The Halas family could've “taken profits” countless times. They lived through multiple depressions, a world war, a dozen recessions, five or six league restructurings, labor disputes, player strikes, and decades of bad seasons. Anybody else would've bailed. But they didn't, and today, the Chicago Bears are valued at over $6.3 billion. These stories have different time periods and different industries, but they all teach the same lesson: Conviction is one of the most profitable assets you can own. That's the message I want to leave you before we move into a perhaps more entertaining topic: the economics of professional sports. Most people think of sports in terms of touchdowns, rivalries, and Super Bowl rings. But the truth is… professional sports is one of the greatest wealth-creation machines in American history. Few people understand those engines better than our guest this week. He's one of the clearest, most respected voices in sports economics today, and he's going to break it all down for us: salary caps, streaming deals, and team valuations. If you are a sports fan, you are going to love this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast! Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com.  Donald Trump pretty much bankrupted the USFL by saying we’re gonna go head to head, uh, with the NFL instead of trying to build a a Spring Sports League. Welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula podcast. Happy, uh, Thanksgiving week, uh, and uh, this week because it is a holiday week in, you know, football and all that kind of stuff that goes along with it. We’re gonna talk. About the economics of sports. And if you’re a sports fan like me, you’re gonna really like this. I really had fun with this interview actually. It was just like me asking a bunch of questions I always had. But anyway, before we get to that, I want to give you my 2 cents. One of the most important elements that I think there is give financial success in anything, and that is conviction. And I bring this up to you in part because Bitcoin sold off. Um, and well at least all the time, I’m recording this from a high of 126,000 and then it, it plunged actually below 90,000. And then of course, there were other cryptos that lost 50 to 90% of their value in the same time. Uh, yeah, it was a bit of a bloodbath. It’s been called a bloodbath and it is a blood bath. And of course, there are some who are declaring Bitcoin dead Again. Um, and you know what? I might even believe them if I hadn’t seen, uh, the same story, at least I’d say, I don’t know, maybe four or five times over the past I, eight years, nine years, whatever. True Bitcoiners though, have a tremendous belief in what Bitcoin means to the world and where this is headed. And some of them, well before I ever got in, right? I mean. That serious conviction because, you know, the people who were buying, you know, back in 2012, 13, I mean, this was completely outta nowhere, had no one’s, uh, no one’s support, nothing. In fact, in 2010, uh, you know, if, if you bought Bitcoin back then simply refuse to sell up until now, um, say you bought a thousand dollars of Bitcoin. You’d be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin, right? That’s the reward for true conviction. And those people, frankly deserve it. Because can you imagine if you just bought a thousand bucks or something and it was already up to a million, it was already up to 10 million and all the way up to 20 million, you still didn’t sell. I mean, I don’t even know if I could, I don’t know if I could do that. I don’t think I could. I mean, at some point I would be like, take the money and run. Right. Um. You know, it’s a funny thing though. The irony of this Bitcoin cycle that we have right now is that many of those individuals with, you know, super high conviction, um, the ones that were in way before any of us and before me, well, they’re actually, a lot of them are actually cashing out sort of the fruit of their patients. Right. Almost every day right now, you’re seeing a another wallet that’s been dormant since like 2011. And all of a sudden it sells. It’s something that has done nothing, but just sit there in storage, selling off a billion dollars into the market, probably, you know, started out as like 10 grand. Right? And where’s that money going? It’s going to the hands of Wall Street’s, going in the hands of, uh, governments. That’s actually the ironic part here. That’s why prices are tumbling. Because I think people are saying, well, gosh, we’re at a hundred grand. I’m sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m sitting on a billion dollars. Uh, I think it’s time to get out, right? But don’t be fooled, in my opinion, to think that these buyers are, uh, you know, they’re the dumb people holding the bag. I mean the, the people holding the bag, it’s Wall Street, right? They’re governments and reserves. And, uh, you know, big treasury companies, the story doesn’t end here. And the other thing is that Bitcoin story is not a one-off in history at all, right? In fact, you know, it, Bitcoin gets a lot of attention. But you even look at something like Amazon, right? December, 1999, Amazon stock trading at $106. Then the.com crash comes, and guess what? It fell down to $5 and 97 cents. That’s a Bitcoin like crash, right? And every talking had a eulogy written for the company. And if you were crazy enough to hold through that storm, your conviction paid off spectacularly. If you had $10,000 invested in Amazon in 2001, it’s worth over $20 million today. So anyway, that’s the point I have though. You know, it’s, the point is about conviction. Uh, and, and I’m not saying that you should just be dumb, buy something and be dumb about it, but especially on these asymmetric things where you think something could be really big, give yourself a time, a period, right? I mean. The only thing other than Bitcoin that I think I, I’m really interested in, in the crypto space is something called Solana. Solana is down like 50% from its ties, and I still think that, you know, when the dust settles, I think this is going to be something that’s gonna pay, pay off. Now if I were to watch it day by day, uh. It’s demoralizing, right? But, but I think the point is, if you have some conviction in something, give it some time. You know, say, I’m gonna watch this for at least five years if I can, if I don’t absolutely get into a situation where I need that money, which hopefully you don’t, because this is not where that kind of money belongs. Right? But give it some time and don’t look, there’s lots of noise, and, and, and then just give it some time and see what happens. Right? Now speaking of giving it some time, you know, a similar story in the sports arena in 1920, George Halas, I think it was Papa Bear, right? George Papa Bear. Halas bought the Chicago Bears franchise for a hundred bucks. Yep, a hundred bucks. Now the Halas family could have taken profits countless times, and they lived through lots of, uh, bad times. Depressions, uh, you know, world War, uh, a dozen recessions, five or six, uh, league restructurings, labor disputes, player strikes, decades of bad seasons. And maybe anybody else would’ve billed at some point if they’d made, you know, millions of dollars from the a hundred bucks. But they didn’t. And the Chicago Bears, as much as I don’t like the Chicago Bears, are valued over $6.3 billion. Now these stories, ultimately, they’re, you know, different time periods, different industries, but same lesson conviction, it’s one of the most profitable assets you can own or attributes at least. Maybe it’s not an asset, I don’t know. That’s a message I wanna leave you before we get into the topic of today, which is the economics of professional sports. Now, most people think of sports in terms of touchdowns, rivalries, super Bowl rings, all that kind of thing. But the truth is professional sports is one of the greatest wealth creation machines in American history, and few people understand those engines better than our guest this week. He’s one of the clearest, most respected voices of sports economics today. And he is gonna break it all down for us. We talk salary caps, streaming deals, team valuations. We talk about the Green Bay Packers and why they’re owned by the city of Green Bay instead of owners. All that kind of stuff that you might have wondered about but you never really knew. So if you’re a sports fan, enjoy it and happy Thanksgiving. We’ll have that interview for you right after these messages. Wealth formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net, the strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account. As your money accumulates, you borrow from your own. Bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you’ve borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying you compound interest on that money even though you’ve borrowed it. At result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investments get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique. It’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its backbone. Turbocharge your investments. Visit Wealth formula banking.com. Again, that’s wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Today. My guest on Wealth Formula podcast is, uh, Dr. Victor Matheson, professor of Economics and Accounting at College of Holy Cross. He’s a leading authority on sports economics, studying everything from the financial impact of mega events like the Olympics and World Cup, to the inner workings of professional sports leagues, lotteries, and public finance. Uh, welcome to the show. How are you? Well, thanks for having me. Great. Always happy to talk some sports economics. Oh gosh, this is interesting. I’m a huge, uh, I’m a huge sports fan, especially NFL and, uh, so, you know, instead of talking personal finance, you know, without, uh, without any, uh, uh, sports in it, this is definitely a, uh, welcome for me. So, um, well, vigor, let’s start, start with this, you know, um. Most of us who are big sports fans, you know, we’re really driven by the idea of the, the, you know, the, the emotion, the entertainment. Taking a step back from your perspective, how should we look at this whole ecosystem of sports as an economic system? Well, uh, first of all, it’s. It’s both bigger and smaller than, uh, than you would imagine. So if we think of the NFL, the NFL ha generat more revenue than any, uh, sports league in the world. Uh, this year it’ll come in somewhere around 22 ish billion dollars. Uh, that certainly seems like a lot of money. On the other hand, a Sherwin Williams paint store comes in at about that same sort of, uh, revenue, you know. On many podcasts talking about talking about paint, right? Um, if we talk worldwide, all the sports leagues all put together, uh, we’re talking about maybe a hundred billion or so, maybe 120 billion, roughly the same size as Johnson and Johnson. So, uh, you know, it’s a big industry. It’s a, you know, billions in with a B, but it’s also a tiny percentage of, of the total amount of economic. Being generated every year, and, and so we can easily get, uh, um, we can easily get ahead of ourselves and say, well, you know, uh, it’s the biggest company in the world, the NFL, it’s, it’s not even 500. Interesting. Um, so let’s talk a little bit about this, um, uh, how value is created in these leagues. So, so, you know, you said professional leagues are built on the economics of controlled scarcity. So talk a little bit about that, if you would, how this scarcity model drives value and, and, and protects, uh, uh, profitability. Right. So let’s compare, you know, let’s compare a Walmart. To the NFL, right? Uh, so Walmart takes a look at all these potential places that you could put a Walmart and they say, oh, this would be a good one. And a Walmart goes in. And now that Walmart’s generating economic impact and generating revenues for the, for the. For the company and all these sort of things. Now let’s look at the NFL, right? Uh, the NFL does the same thing. They said, Hey, uh, let’s look at Las Vegas. Would that be a good place for a, for a team? Uh, is is London gonna be a good place for a team? Uh, and they look at those. Uh, but here’s the deal. If Walmart looks at 50 places and says, Hey, these 35 would be good places. They’re not gonna just pick the best one for a franchise. They’re gonna put. Walmart’s in all of those, right? Uh, the NFL on the other hand, very specifically saying, you know, we actually don’t wanna put an NFL franchise in every place that we could, uh, make a profit in because we want to be in the, in a world where there are fewer NFL franchises than there are cities that want them, and that generates demand for this. Um, Walmart can’t do that because if Walmart doesn’t put in a franchise somewhere, uh, you know, Target’s gonna come in instead. Uh, that’s not gonna happen in the NFL, uh, because there’s no other competitor to that. So they can actually restrict the number of franchises they have, which means that every franchise is selling at a, a super premium price. These are, you know, at the lowest end, we’re talking five, six, $7 billion franchises. Now, uh, they could sell multiple new expansion franchises, but they choose not to. To maximize the value of those existing franchises. It’s been a while actually since the NFL expanded, um, the league. And I’m curious, what are, you know, what is it that drives them ultimately to do that? I mean, again, you just mentioned there’s this whole scarcity issue. I mean, what do you think are sort of the limitations or sort of the. You know, the, the, the points at which they say, well, gosh, maybe we do move to London, or maybe we do that. Like, do you have a sense of that? Yeah. So a couple things they wanna do. So first of all, one of the big things that all of the leagues in the United States have done is they want to be a big enough league to make sure that they cover all of the good spots or most of the good spots for a team. You don’t wanna leave enough good team locations that a rival league could come and start to challenge you. Right? So thinking back to the 1950s, uh, one of the most important sports leagues ever to come about in the United States. Actually never even existed. And this league is what was called the Continental League. And the Continental League in the 1950s arose as a challenger to major league baseball. Major League baseball in the 1950s was exactly the same size as it was in 1901. It was 16 teams. But the United States had grown immensely and the league had started to move, you know, the Dodgers to LA and the Giants to San Francisco, but you still had huge amounts of the country uncovered by baseball. And so this Continental League came about as an idea saying, you know what? We can take on Major League Baseball by putting franchises in places that it doesn’t exist. They said, oh, here’s our new eight league team. And the way Major League Baseball responded to that is before continental baseball could even start, uh, start existing, it said, oh yeah, well we’re gonna put a team in Minneapolis. We’re gonna put a team in Houston. We’re gonna put teams in these Lee in these cities that the Continental Baseball Association was gonna go into. And therefore, uh, continental baseball never got into existence because Major League Baseball expanded into those locations and everyone has taken that, that hit. You need to be big enough to make sure that every place with a, a good chance at having a team, or at least most of them, uh, are covered so that there’s 8, 10, 12 cities out there, uh, a big enough footprint that you could have your own new league. Uh, do that. So, I mean, if you look at the NHL, if you look at NBA major league baseball, NFL, all about 30 teams. There’s about 30 or a few more big cities. But what’s very important is there’s not 10 or 12 big cities out there, uh, without NFL teams, without football teams that. A rival league could move into that space. You know, I’m curious when you, you brought up that Continental league in baseball. It reminds me when I was a kid of, uh, the United States football, like the USFL and all, they got all these, uh, players, like I remember Herschel Walker started there and, and there was a number of actually guys who ended up in the NFL and being big stars there. So they, they definitely, uh, started out pretty strong. What went wrong for the USFL? It’s so funny you say that. Uh, the answer is actually one big, uh, name. It’s actually Donald Trump. Yeah. So, so what USFL did is, is they noticed that their niche was, um, was the spring, right? We play college football, we pay play high school football, and we play the NFL in the fall, which means that, uh, people out there in the spring, there’s no football out there to be had. The USFL said, you know, we could move into this market. So first of all, we’re gonna move into the spring where there’s not a rival. Second of all, we’re gonna take at least some cities where there’s not active, um, football teams either places like Birmingham, right? Uh, so any case, uh, what happened there is the USFL. Kind of got a little, its ego kind of got ahead of itself and it said, Hey, now that we’ve established ourselves in the spring, we do have some big stars like, uh, uh, Herschel Walker, like Doug Flutie, uh, some of these others. We’re gonna try to take the, uh, take the NFL on, uh, head to head and we’re gonna move from the spring to the fall. And the other thing they did that was very important is they filed a lawsuit against, uh, the NFL, saying that the NFL was engaging in antitrust activity that was keeping this rival league down. It was, uh, keeping them off TV by using their market power with some of the broadcasters. It was using its market power with stadiums to keep these teams out. And so they took him to court, and I think the, the hope was that there would have to be a settlement and that settlement would result in the USFL merging with the NFL. And the owners of the big teams in the USFL would kind of get a backdoor into the NFL this way. As it turns out, the court, in fact did find in favor of the USFL. Uh, they said yes, the NFL is engaging in illegal antitrust activity, but they also said. You guys are insane. Uh, going against the NFL in the fall, there was no way you’re gonna make it. So even though the NFL was found guilty, the jury only awarded $1 of damages. Uh, technically in antitrust cases, that’s tripled. So they actually were awarded $3 in damages and the league basically folded the next day. They won their lawsuit, but they folded the next day. But of course, the owner that had most. Most importantly pushed the league to go head to head against the NFL was the owner of the new, uh, New Jersey team, the Generals New Jersey Generals. Right? And it was Donald J. Trump. Donald Trump. Uh, so Donald Trump pretty much bankrupted the USFL. By, uh, by saying we’re gonna go head to head, uh, with the NFL instead of trying to build a, a Spring Sports League. Now, to be fair to Donald Trump, which I don’t necessarily want to be, but to be fair to him, um, there’s no guarantee that the USFL would’ve made it as a spring league either, but I think anyone, again, a jury looking at this said there was just no chance of that league, uh, surviving against, uh, the NFL. If you try to go head to head in the poll. Just, just outta curiosity, uh, you know, there, when you talk about Trump, I know like he’s had an interest in, you know, professional football teams for a long time where he did, at least, there’s a certain politics that goes into buying an NFL team as well, right? Right. So the NFL is a partnership. Yeah. Which means that they can choose who they decide to partner with. And, uh, the presumption was, uh, in the 1980s when Donald Trump was trying to become an NFL owner that Donald Trump, uh, neither had the money, nor had the friendships among other NFL player, uh, NFL owners, uh, to get into that very exclusive club. And so again, he was able to get into the USFL because it was a much lower buy-in, in terms of, of cost. The USFL owners couldn’t be as picky about who they wanted as fellow partners, and again, I think Donald Trump saw the USFL as a way to potentially get into the NFL through the back door through this lawsuit, and, and by moving directly in the, in the fall because the jury just didn’t find that, that there was any plan. By which the USFL teams could have ever become profitable, uh, going head to head in the fall against the NFL. Let’s talk a little bit about sort of valuations, because what’s interesting is, you know, you’ve talked about scarcity and, you know, the way that the leagues have manipulated, uh, that to make sure that there, you know, the values continue to grow, but at some point in the last 30, 40 years, the numbers just really skyrocketed, right? Where these football teams, you know. It wasn’t a straight line in terms of how much they were worth. What, what went into that massive inflection of, uh, of, of valuation? So, first of all, I think you’re exactly right. There has been this massive inflection. Uh, so I’ve been teaching sports economics since the 1990s and, and the 1990s were kind of at the end of an era where this was really one of the sames back in the seventies, eighties, and even as late as the early nineties, that if you wanna become a millionaire. Start out a multimillionaire and then buy a sports team because it was a, it was just a, uh, a dumpster fire that you could just burn up cash without any hope of any sort of real return. And that changed in probably the late eighties, early nineties. That really changed, uh, a couple things. Change that, uh, first of all. By the nineties and certainly by the two thousands, um, most of the big professional sports in the United States had solved lots of their labor relation problems with the, with the athletes. So there was always this question about, uh, you know, do athletes have the ability to bargain with other teams? Are they able to get free agent, uh, agency, are teams going to be constantly fighting and, and spending every dollar that they can down to the point of bankruptcy to buy that superstar team? And what happened again in the nineties, starting in the eighties through the nineties and the two thousands is pretty much leagues have, uh, agreed to a world where. We’re gonna limit the amount of spending, uh, that we’re gonna do on players so that we’re not all bankrupting each other, bidding for players. In order to get the players to go along with that, we come to an agreement that we’re gonna share basically half the money with the players. And that’s exactly how the NHL works, the NBA works and the NFL works. Major League Baseball is not like that yet. And we may see not this season, but the next one, um, them trying to finally join ranks with the other, uh, with the other leagues. Uh, the question is whether we’re gonna see that happen without a gigantic, uh, work stoppage that. You know, some people who are pessimistic think we’re, we may not have baseball at all in 2027. 2026 is fine, but 20, 27 may, may fall. So as soon as like your costs are all covered up, that you know that everyone is kind of playing on a level playing field. Once we know that we don’t have to worry about bankrupting ourselves. We are only paying players, what we’re bringing in as revenue. All of a sudden, this is a fairly safe investment in a way that it never was prior to, you know, this all dying down. Couple other things going on here as well is, of course, the country’s gotten bigger. We have gotten bigger, but without adding additional, many additional franchises, which means, uh, those, those tickets are becoming increasingly expensive. We’ve gotten richer in a, in a skewed fashion, so that, uh, that of course the rich have gotten richer, a lot faster than the poor have. But of course, going to a baseball game, especially with those luxury boxes and things like this, is, uh, an activity that is reserved for the wealthy. And as the wealthy have gotten more, uh, uh, have gotten, you know, increasingly rich, uh, that means that. You know, businesses like Major League Baseball in the NFL that cater to the upper class, uh, do disproportionately well. And the last thing, and I’m sure you’ve talked about, uh, this before, is on your show, obviously you can have, um, you can have investments that are irrational as long as you think there’s someone later that’s irrational, that you can, you can hand it off to, right? This is, this is all the Greater fool theory. Uh, although I don’t think necessarily in this case, the, the owners are fools, but. Sports teams are a toy of billionaires that you say, well, look, I, I am, I’m a Mark Cuban. I’ve made billions of dollars. Now I want to spend some of my, my money on a, a fun asset. You know, you and I might collect a baseball cards. Mark Cuban might collect baseball teams, right? Uh, so, uh, in a world you might be willing to overpay because you wanna be a sports soldier and you wanna rub elbows with. You know, KA Leonard, you wanna rub elbows with, uh, with, with Shhe Tani. Um, and you may be willing to overpay for that asset, but guess what? 20 years down the way, there’s still gonna be another billionaire who wants to rub elbows with that next generation of superstars. And so you’re fairly sure that the next time when it comes to sell your franchise, there will be another person who’s willing to pay a premium for that asset as well. So again, as we’ve gotten more billionaires, more billionaire wealth, um, this is something that, uh, you know, has attracted folks like Steve Ballmer to, to part with, with big money. And, uh, again, as billionaire assets have grown, uh, the ability and the desire to buy these teams has grown as well. I would think a major driver of the value. Is also coming from, um, the, the media sources, uh, that are changing, right? Where, I mean, I remember, you know, again, being a kid and there was this, you know, there was Monday night football and it was on NBC and. And that, that’s how it worked. But now there’s like bidding for these things and you’ve got Amazon, uh, doing Thursday night football, which is a little weird. Um, and you know, you sometimes you have, uh, uh, you have games on Peacock. What’s going on with that? How does it affect the economics? Uh, and ultimately, like where is this headed? So, uh, in a, in a league like the NFL, uh, over 60% of all revenues that they generate is media revenue, right? Because most of us aren’t going to games every day, uh, too expensive for us, or too time consuming or all sorts of other things. But, uh, lots of us tune in on tv. So we’re talking about, uh, well over $10 billion of annual media contracts with the NFL. Um, and those numbers have been going up, uh, at least in part because you have media companies, uh, in a pretty competitive environment bidding against one another for these things. Now, one of the things about, again, things like the NFL or the NBA is it allows broadcasters or other types of TV networks to bring in customers in a way that their regular programming doesn’t. So a, a company may actually be willing to overpay for the NFL, kind of as a way to get people to buy all of your other products. A famous example from early days, uh, is, is Fox, right? So in the old days there were three big networks. So old days, I’m talking, you know, 1970s, there were the three big networks, right? There was A, B, CNB, C, and CBS, and they all competed against one another. And then in the 1980s, this rival network came up and this is Fox. And they wanted to get into all these markets nationwide. Well, how do you make sure that a. A local station decides to pick up the Fox programming. So for example, I grew up in Denver and Denver had a, had a, an independent channel that, you know, played reruns and all sorts of other things, and, and so they have a broadcast license already. Fox goes up to them and says, Hey, would you like to carry our regular programming? And, and that, that channel said, well, I don’t really think so. We’re doing fine showing Gilligan’s Island and Love Boat and things like this, and we don’t need, uh, an entire set of your programming. We’re doing just fine, as as it is. Uh, so Fox couldn’t get a foothold in that Denver market. So what Fox does is they buy rights to the NFL. All of a sudden now they go back and say, Hey, we’ve got all this Fox programming, we’ve got the Simpsons, and we’ve got, I don’t know, uh, you know, uh, you know, these early, these early Fox programming. But, um, they say, but we also have the NFL. You can’t, you can’t turn down the NFL. And then all of a sudden that existing affiliate says, okay, all right, we’ll add the whole line of Fox programming because you’re right, we can’t turn down having the NFL. So what, what basically happens here is the NFL serves as this kind of must stock item. And uh, you know, Fox was willing to overpay for the NFL because now they’re gonna get everyone to be able to buy the Simpsons and everything else they were offering at the same time. Uh, and so media rights have gone much, have gone up much faster. And we see this all over the place, right? How do you get people to buy. Amazon Prime. Well, let’s say that’s the only way you get to watch, uh, football on Thursday nights. How do you get people to buy, you know, apple tv? You offer major league soccer games as part of their package, right? Uh, and so this is how you kinda legitimize yourself as an actual, real, uh, you know, quote real media company is by offering some, uh, live. Live sports. And that gets people who would not otherwise buy Netflix or Amazon Prime or Apple, uh, to actually purchase those because again, they’re offering this secondary item. Then presumably that in turn drives up the value of of the NFL and you know, they’re bringing in a lot more money because they’ve got not just the three major networks bidding on them, but they’ve got all sorts of big companies with deep pockets. Willing to, you know, increase their, their, their revenue is and, and that sort of snowballs. Is that, is that fair? No, and that’s exactly right. And, and for as much as I talk about, you know, that billionaire who wants the an NFL team or an NDA team as a. Prestige asset. Uh, they’re also concerned about having it as an actual functioning asset as well. So I’m willing to pay, you know, a lot more, even if I’m willing to pay a premium. That premium is based on a fundamental value in the first place. And how do you drive that fundamental value? You drive that fundamental value by maximizing the revenue you generate through things like media contracts, and by maximizing. And by minimizing your costs, by making sure that your labor costs aren’t gonna run away with you, uh, because again, hopefully you, uh, most of the leagues have solved kind of their long-term labor, uh, their labor strife between them and the players within each league. There is also some different rules, and specifically, again, being a big NFL fan, I love the fact that the NFL has a salary cap and profit sharing for each team. ’cause it makes for a much more competitive league, basically, you know, for people who don’t know what that means, essentially each team can pay, has a salary cap of how much they can pay players for a given year. But not all of the leagues have that. Uh, I don’t really follow the other ones. I, I’m not sure who has it, who doesn’t, but I know that, like in baseball, I don’t think they have that. And it creates a situation where you’ve got the Dodgers or the Yankees in, in, in the World Series. More often than not, and you know, you’re not getting the smaller teams usually. No. So you’re exactly right. So the NFL has what’s called a, uh, a salary cap, and it’s actually got what’s called a hard cap. So they’re actually quite serious about this, and there are very few exceptions that can be made to go over this cap. Uh, this cap is based on the total amount of revenue that’s being generated by the league. Uh, and again, the cap basically is the way that they make sure that they share. A fair proportion of the money with the players. Uh, what’s also important is they also have a floor. So the, the cap this year is about 225 million, if I remember right, but the floor is about 200 million. So every team in the league basically is spending the same amount on labor this season, which makes for a very even playing field. And we know that some teams are gonna lose and some teams are gonna win. And it seems like the Browns and the, and the jets never win. And it seems like other teams always do. But what’s important about that is it’s not just because they’re in a big city, that they have these gigantic revenue advantages and that they can buy a championship. It really is, you know, who is smartest with their money, who’s smartest with your coaching, who’s lucky with the draft and things like this. And, uh, that makes for a very nice thing here. What’s also super important is the NFL has a gigantic amount of revenue sharing, and the reason for this is every single game you watch on TV is part of a contract that’s being sold by the league, not the team. And because of that, the league is generating all these, all this revenue, and then is equally distributing that money to each of the individual teams. So a, a team playing in little tiny Green Bay is generating exactly the same amount of media revenue as the New York Giants. Or the LA Rams. So that’s really nice. Uh, again, gigantic amounts of, uh, again, even revenue sharing to all the participants. As a matter of fact, of all of the businesses in the United States, the NFL is probably the single most socialist company. In the United States. So this Great American pastime is wildly socialist when it comes to how they distribute their, their income. So what incentivizes a team to be better and to win Then from the ownership standpoint, if there’s revenue sharing, is it just at the, the other sources of income that come, like advertising, things like that. I’m, I’m just curious, like if there’s so much revenue sharing, what is it that drives a team to, you know, try to be better from the ownership standpoint? So first of all is that being bad doesn’t help you, right? This isn’t major league baseball, so we’re gonna go the o. The other extreme, at least for a US sport, is major League baseball. No, uh, salary cap there at all. So you can pay, uh, players as much as you want, although there is what’s called a luxury tax. So as you, as your, uh, salary, your total payroll gets too big, you start getting, uh, uh, paying penalties to the league, which is then redistributed to the poor teams in the league. That being said, you can spend as much as you want. So yeah, the Dodgers, they spent somewhere, uh, by some accounts somewhere around $400 million this year on talent, including, you know, gigantic contracts to folks like Shhe, Tani, right? Um, but there’s also no minimum either. So if you’re a team that decides, hey, we’re not even gonna bother to try to compete this year, uh, you are the. I don’t know to, if I should call them the Oakland A or the Las Vegas a a or the Sacramento A or the Traveling through the desert, sort of a for a while. Um, but, you know, this is a team that made a decision not to compete and had a, had a tiny payroll. Uh, other teams have decided to do this, and the, and the NFL you could decide that you didn’t wanna win. But it wouldn’t save you any money because again, not only is there a salary cap, there’s a salary floor. So if I have to pay $225 million each year anyway, I might as well try to win with that 225 million. Uh, ’cause I don’t have a choice to just collect my paycheck and hire, you know, the Minnesota Gophers for $20 million, uh, for my, for my team this year. ’cause that’s not an option. Right. Um, one of the things I wanted to just kind of, uh, drill down a little bit on is the model of the Green Bay Packers. As you um mentioned, it’s a tiny little town, northern Wisconsin. Uh, not much going on there. I’ve, I’ve been there myself for a game. It is unique in that it is owned, not by billionaires, but it’s owned essentially as by the fans. How, how does that work? And, and I guess the question is like, why, why aren’t other teams modeled that way? So other teams are not modeled that way because the NFL does not want other teams to be modeled that way, nor do any of the other, uh, major leagues out there. Uh, it’s not good for the NFL for a couple reasons. Uh, first of all. They have to open their books. If it’s a public company and they don’t like to open their books, um, you also don’t have a face for that, uh, league in a way that, that a person couldn’t, couldn’t be in there, uh, pouring extra money in as a kind of a, an, an angel investor. Uh, on top of that, uh, you can’t threaten to relocate to another city unless you get taxpayer subsidized. Um, you know, uh, stadiums and things because it’s a publicly owned team and we know that, that those public owners will not ever decide to move that team out. How did they get that status in the first place? That’s an interesting story, and it’s a story that’s not unique to. The Packers, but it is fairly unique to the United States. So, uh, in the rest of the world, this type of ownership model actually is fairly common. Um, teams that your, you know, listeners would’ve heard of, like Barcelona, like Al Madrid, these are club owned teams. Um, there is not an owner there. They are owned by the fans themselves, and they’re in the business of. Trying to stay in business every year while winning as many games as possible. Uh, there is, they’re not trying to win trophies for a, a Steinbrenner or a Mark Cuban. They’re trying to win, uh, trophies for that fan base. That literally, again, the, the season ticket holders are those owners. Um, the NFL itself, you know, was, was a very hard Scrabble league for a long time. It started in 1920, uh, and between 1920 and 1935. Roughly 55 teams played at least one season in the NFL. And of those 55 teams, basically all but about six of them, had gone outta business or relocated at some point in here. Uh, this is why actually we got such a socialist, uh, uh, business model here is because the owners of the big teams, the owners of the bears. Uh, the owners of the Giants, uh, they said, look, you know, this league isn’t gonna work if we can’t actually find someone to play. And yeah, we’re making money here, but we’re not gonna continue making money if we can’t find other teams that are gonna work in this league. So they said, Hey, we are gonna be very generous. We’re gonna make sure that, that we share our revenues with the people, uh, the other people in our league. We would rather have a small piece of a big pie, uh, than a big piece of a pie that is tiny or disappears completely. Uh, so that’s why we ended up with this, uh, revenue sharing. And of course they were very open to any sort of model that kept stable teams around, including a model where rather than some rich owner in, in Green Bay owns that team. Instead, it’s a municipally owned team. As long as that team had stability and conform long-term rivalries and can afford to put forward a product that’s gonna, that’s gonna work on a, you know, on an NFL field to make a competitive product, they were happy to kind of do whatever they needed to do because again, this was a, this was a really tough league to be in. For the first roughly 20 years with, you know, a lot more successes. There’s been a lot of talk, uh, I know about private equity entering the, uh, the NFL. Tell us, give us a little bit of an understanding of that. I mean, obviously, I, I kind of think of these owners in these buying groups as private equity already, so what’s the big deal? Is the point. So in most sports leagues have already allow private equity and already allow ownership groups with multiple owners, uh, to, to own teams. So again, uh, you know, the, the Red Sox, they have multiple owners of, of that team. Uh, again, Celtics, same sort of thing. Um, but in the NFL we have required basically one owner, right? So this is a, a person. That owns the team and is the face of the team and is this controlling majority owner, uh, they’re going to explicitly allow external people unrelated to the ownership group, to own pieces of NFL teams here. Uh, and I think the, the real issue here, uh, has to do with, uh, there are some franchises in the NFL where the owners are asset rich, but cash poor. I’m thinking actually, for example, the Bears. So the bears are still owned by the same group. Who bought the Bears back in 1920 ish. Right? So this, you know, the, the same family, the Halas, uh, have owned this team for a hundred years. Uh, by this point, you know, little pieces of the team have been handed down to all the cousins and the grandkids and the great grandkids and this sort of folks. Uh, so, uh, you know, I think in total there’s something like 86 different owners of the, of the Bears now, but they’re all part of that original ownership group that everyone. You know, has inherited a little, a little share here. Now mind you, you know, one 86th of the, uh, of the bears is like a hundred million dollars. You know, the bears are probably an $8 billion franchise. And so that’s a hundred million dollars of assets that each one of these grandkids has just because, you know, their grandfather made a smart, uh, smart investment a hundred years ago. Um, but it doesn’t mean that they can live the lifestyle of a person with a hundred million dollars. Because they’re not allowed to sell their share to anyone because private equity was never allowed. And the amount of money that that team is actually generating in terms of annual operating profits isn’t super high. So you’ve got a world where you’re wildly rich, but you can’t really do a lot with those riches. So you know, this is a team that would be prime for the idea of, well, let’s sell off 20% of this. 20% of the team is gonna be maybe a couple billion dollars. And, and then we will just share that basically it’s a big Christmas present to each one of these, uh, these kids here. And again, the, the thing here is that’s $2 billion in cash that each of these small minority owners gets rather than, you know, an asset that they can’t actually use. To buy a yacht in Monaco. Right? And so that’s giving these kids, or the, you know, these minority owners an option to basically, uh, you know, get liquidity for their ownership. And, and that’s the big difference, right? And of course the other thing is, is there are lots of wildly rich people who would like to be an owner of a team in a way that you could do that 20 or 30 years ago by being just a, you know, just a multimillionaire or a multi, multi multimillionaire. That was enough. Uh. You know, you can be a billionaire nowadays and not have nearly what it needs to become an owner in one of these big groups. So, uh, you know, if we think about, uh, Arod, right? Arod bought, uh, the Timberwolves, uh, in the NDA, um. But he couldn’t do it alone despite the fact that he was, uh, you know, for 10 years the highest paid athlete in the world, you know, signed the single biggest contract, uh, in the history of professional sports, uh, when he did so. Uh, and even a guy with that sort of money doesn’t have enough money to buy a sports franchise. So, uh, I think the NFL is, you know, looking down the, the road to a, a world where. Someone wants to sell, but there’s not that many folks with $10 billion out there. And so the idea that we were gonna keep a, a world where there’s gonna be one single owner forever, uh, you know that that’s a pretty small pool of people in a world where you’re thinking about selling franchises at $10 billion. But if we allow these to be sold private equity wise. Then people can live their dream of being a sports owner, you know, for a mere couple billion dollars. And of course, that increases the pool of, of potential people by a lot. You know, you, you mentioned, um, during, just a minute ago in, in passing that these teams don’t actually necessarily throw off a lot of cash. They’re not, you know, they’re not super profitable. It’s not like a bunch of money’s being distributed to owners. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? I, I didn’t know that actually. Sure. So a bunch of these teams in, in fact, in terms of operating revenue, don’t actually generate gigantic amounts of, of money every year. Uh, again, taking an an NFL team, so an NFL team is gonna generate, you know, somewhere around $500 million, maybe six or $700 million a year, but you’re already competing about 250 million of that to, uh, to the players. So half of that revenue coming in automatically is going to the players. If you built yourself a new stadium anytime recently, obviously you could have big payments on that. Uh, there’s other operating expenses associated with that. Um, in, in a world where you’re not the NFL, but you’re a world like, uh, major League baseball, where. You have much more variability in your, in your player costs year to year and more variability in your revenue. Uh, you could easily end up with years where you’ve got negative cash flow or at least negative profits, and, uh, and that means that you need, you need to be able to weather that. And so of course that’s one of the reasons, for example, why the NFL, you know, wouldn’t just take anyone as an owner, you need to be for sure rich enough to, uh, to weather both the ups and the downs. Again, if you borrowed any money to, uh, to purchase the team, uh, that’s obviously a big, uh, big interest payment there as well. So you could easily have teams again, depending how the owner purchased that, that are not kicking out gigantic amounts of cash on a year to year basis. One of the things that I’ve been hearing about, I don’t really know how this would work, is the, is of private equity moving into potentially like college sports. So we’ve seen some changes in, uh, for example, in college football where now these players can legally get paid. So it’s, it’s starting to look more and more like a professional. Uh, professional league. So how would that work if you’ve got private money essentially buying, uh, the sports teams of an individual university? Or maybe I’m not, maybe that’s not exactly what’s happening, but that’s kind of the impression I got. So first of all, that is exactly what could be happening and, and what people are talking about. Uh, I am deeply skeptical that this is a good idea for the institutions involved. Um. So basically it works exactly like any other sort of, uh, sports franchise, right? Uh, basically you would have an owner, uh, you know, let’s call him Mark Cuban, although he’s not, you know, he’s, he’s not talking about doing this. But imagine Mark Cuban decided he wants to buy, uh, Ohio State, right? Uh, so he comes up with a a billion dollars hands over a billion dollars to Ohio State. And now Mark Cuban is the recipient of any revenues being generated by the Ohio State, uh, program here. Um, and so this works like, just like anything else, right? So this is, this is basically, um, a person like bringing money in, in exchange for a piece of the action. Uh, the reason I’m highly skeptical about this because. Uh, remember the name of your university is very, very strongly tied with the name of your athletic program, right? So, you know, the Ohio State University is the name of both the educational program as well as the, uh, you know, the sports teams, right? And so, uh, one of the reasons that that schools have sports teams in the first place. Is as a method of advertising for their other things, right? So they, they use spectator sports to bring in the students to, uh, bring in, uh, actually, you know, public taxpayer money, all sorts of things. Um, and of course if the school controls the money from the, uh, you know, controls the athletic program as well as the academic program, then we can presume that the interests of the athletic program and the academic program are aligned. As soon as you’ve sold off your, your athletic program to an external, uh, you know, an external buyer, then you have every reason to believe that the incentives of that athletic program, the incentives of the. Academic program are no longer aligned in, in a way that is useful. Um, for example, you could have that, that equity person say, you know what? I’m gonna make money no matter what, and I’m just gonna tank all of our programs because I’m gonna generate more revenue by spending less. And that’s what maximizes my profit. But that may very well harm the academic side. And so if you allow, you know, private equity to come in and they have any control. Over that, uh, athletic program, you basically outsourced an extremely important part of your business while still meaning that your business in the athletics is, is importantly tied to the other parts of your business that you haven’t outsourced. And, uh, that makes me deeply concerned for anyone who would consider going down this route. Is, is that likely to happen, do you think? I don’t think anyone who makes predictions about college sport to this point, uh, can, can do that with any certainty at all. It’s fascinating stuff. Um, and one last question I guess for you, which is, you know, we talk about like people who own teams, uh, being, you know, multi-billionaires. Um. Is there any way that fans can still get a stake if they’re just simple millionaires? Is that just not something that’s po un unless you’re live in Green Bay, I guess, is that pretty much non-existent? So it depends what you’re interested in doing, right? So if you’re a mere multimillionaire, uh, you’re not gonna become an NFL owner. You’re not gonna become an NDO owner. Right. Mm-hmm. Um, if you’re very famous and a multimillionaire, you might be able to come into an ownership group because they want you as the face of the organization. Right. Um, one example of this was George W. Bush who came in with a very tiny ownership stake, uh, when, uh, he bought the Texas Rangers and he owned about. 2% of that, that team. But he was the face of that because he was the son of the president. Right. Uh, and, and then when the Rangers did well, uh, you know, he, he made a fortune doing that as well. So, um, the answer is generally no. But as long as your heart isn’t wedded to the NFL or NBA, there are certainly options that you can come into. Right. Um, we have seen. One tier down, uh, buying into things like the WNBA or the, uh, NWSL in women’s soccer or, uh, or women’s basketball. Uh, even that’s become pricey nowadays. These are a hundred million dollar franchises now these days. Or you can take chances with lower level, essentially minor league, uh, soccer in the United States or, uh, elsewhere, uh, in, in the world. And I think you know where we’re going here. So if you’re a merely. Multimillionaire, uh, and you’re a, a famous, uh, movie star or two, you could put your money in and buy a football or soccer team in Wales, uh, called Reim. Right? And of course, that’s exactly what Ryan Reynolds did. And Malaney and, uh, you know, they did not have anywhere close to NFL money despite being famous guys, you know, big movie stars, you know, you know, tens of millions of dollars in, uh, in money. They’re nowhere close to being NFL owner money. Guess what they were wreck some owner money and, uh, they get all the fun and excitement of being an owner without needing to be a billionaire. Interesting. Well, listen, uh, I, I appreciate all your time and, uh, it’s, it’s fun for me personally as a sports fan to see how this stuff works. Um, do you have a site where you write, do you have people curious about this stuff or, or how can they learn more? So how people can learn more is, uh, is there is some fun sports economic stuff out there. Uh, the classic, uh, book in sports economics is of course Moneyball by Michael Lewis, who of course is a great writer about all things finance and, and people who are interested in, in general interest books about, you know, all sorts of things related from to the tech boom to, uh, obviously the financial crisis of the two thousands to. His early days in, in junk bonds in the 1980s. Uh, Michael Lewis is one of the, one of the great writers out there. Um, uh, other fun books by colleagues of mine, uh, omics by Stephan Semanski is, is a fun one. Uh, and, uh, you know, you can catch up, uh, with some, uh, some. Other podcasts that, uh, that follow these sort of things, including Freakonomics has often things on sports that are, that are fun as well. Uh, unfortunately if you wanna, you know, hear from me, it’s all textbook stuff and then I’ll have to give you a grade. And so probably that. Uh, but again, it, it’s a great time to be a fan of sports and of economics ’cause there’s just so much good stuff out there. Thanks so much for being on the program today. Again, my pleasure. You make a lot of money, but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties. Now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage, a private school to pay for, and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put out by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s called Wealth Accelerator, and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens. Steve, the concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. And, uh, once again, uh, I wanna just wish you a happy Thanksgiving and, uh, thank you for, you know, being a listener of this show. And one more thing, just a reminder, uh, we are heading into sort of the last month or so. Of, uh, investment possibilities in the investor club. Wealth formula.com is where you go to join that group. And if you’re looking for a last minute tax mitigation type investment, make sure you sign up as soon as possible. Uh, that’s it for this week on Wealth Formula Podcast. Happy Thanksgiving. This is Buck Jre signing off. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealthformularoadmap.com.

In this playful episode, we match each Enneagram type with the classic board game that perfectly captures their vibe. From the strategic masterminds to the peaceful team players, we dive into why certain games just feel like certain types.We unpack everything from the high-stakes intensity of competitive types to the cozy, collaborative energy of the more easygoing numbers. Whether you're the one flipping the Monopoly board, organizing the Scrabble letters alphabetically, or quietly making world domination plans in Risk, we've got a match for you.Get comfy, roll the dice, and find out which board game best embodies your Enneagram personality—because sometimes cardboard pieces and personality types have more in common than you think. Follow us on Instagram @themulemindset to see exclusive video content!

From her living room in Romulus, 94-year-old Ardena Vaughn takes us from Black Bottom to the “tracks” in Romulus, weaving a lifetime of memories that tell the story of Legacy Black Detroit's past and its unfinished future. Born at Herman Kiefer and raised on Cameron Street, Ardena remembers marching in the alley when “Joe Louis would win” with tin tubs and cans, feeling the whole block erupt when the Brown Bomber put Detroit on the map. She recalls walking past the Chesterfield Lounge, hearing Dinah Washington and the hum of Black nightlife she was “too young to understand, but old enough to feel.” In this conversation she breaks down what it meant to move from the heart of the city to Romulus in the 1940s, where “the tracks” literally divided Black and white neighborhoods. Ardena shares how she became the first Black supervisor at a micro-measurements plant supplying airplanes and automobiles—“I don't even know how I got that job.” She talks about Saturdays riding back into the city for piano lessons, eating hot waffles with ice cream Kresge, and then coming home to build a life rooted in AME church, choir, and family. Still, her wisdom for future generations is simple: “Love everybody… try to be a good example… stay busy.” She still drives her 20-year-old Grand Am, still hosts the holidays, and still plays weekly Scrabble. Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different. Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher. Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

There's a Scrabble tournament this weekend in Metairie for all skill levels! Lindsay Crotty, tournament organizer and director, joins us.

* Audubon is rethinking plans for the riverfront project to make sure they “do it right.” * There's a Scrabble tournament this weekend in Metairie. Let's get the details * We spend a little time with Aimee McCarron, the Councilmember-elect for District A, talking about her goals and plans for when she takes office.

Looking to take your gaming to a new level? Try competitive Scrabble. The game is growing in popularity and the competition to find the best is riveting. We sat down with John Chew, the CEO of the North American Scrabble Players Association to learn about the history of the game and how it has grown to what it is today.For more information about the North American Scrabble Players Association and their tournaments, you can check out their website.

Stefan Fatsis joins Drew and Roth to talk about dictionaries! For his new book, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary (out now), Stefan embedded with Merriam Webster, and even drafted some new entries. Then, Stefan and Drew discuss the finer points of the letter V's usage in Scrabble, and they figure out if NFL kickers are too good now. Finally, they open up the funbag to answer a question about begging the question.Do you want to hear your question answered on the pod? Well, give us a call at 909-726-3720. That is 909-PANERA-0!Stuff We Talked AboutSheepleFilling your house with sandNew lettersThou vs youGarden variety swearsThe return of K-ballsSponsors- MeUndies, where you can get get up to 50% offCredits- Hosts: Drew Magary & David Roth- Producer: Brandon Grugle- Editor: Mischa Stanton- Production Services & Ads: Multitude Podcasts- Subscribe to Defector!About The ShowThe Distraction is Defector's flagship podcast about sports (and movies, and art, and sandwiches, and certain coastal states) from longtime writers Drew Magary and David Roth. Every week, Drew and Roth tackle subjects, both serious and impossibly stupid, with a parade of guests from around the world of sports and media joining in the fun! Roth and Drew also field Funbag questions from Defector readers, answer listener voicemails, and get upset about the number of people who use speakerphone while in a public bathroom stall. This is a show where everything matters, because everyone could use a Distraction. Head to defector.com for more info.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Meg Wolitzer sits down with her friend, writer Michael Cunningham. Michael is an American novelist, screenwriter, and educator. He is best known for his novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film and opera. What happens when two writers get together? Well, of course, they talk about writing, specifically his story, “Jacked,” read by Jim Parsons, which we featured on Selected Shorts, but they also nerd out about the semicolon and Scrabble. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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On this episode of One Indescribable Podcast… Adam H, Todd the Librarian, and TV Lindy continue their journey through every episode of Everwood by recapping Season 2 Episode 9: Just Like in the Movies. "Look, Genius Boy, you want to sit here and play Scrabble or you wanna get the dibble dabble?" Thank you for joining us in beautiful Everwood, we can tell we'll get on just fine! Follow the podcast on Twitter @oneCXGpodcast! Find us @pianomanadam1 (Adam), @librariantodd (Todd), and @tvlindy (Lindy)! Follow Whirlwind Podcasts on social media @WhirlwindPods" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My WoW Family (Part 1) - Ep 31 Show Notes  Welcome to Episode 31! – 3:13          After playing World of Warcraft alone for many years, it turns out that I have made some listeners, supporters, and friends along the way.  This episode (and the second half to follow shortly) aims to introduce you to my WoW family, the people who fit into my somewhat unsolo solo WoW life.   “What Have You Done Lately?” – 7:39            Grateful to have guested on Lion's Pride Tavern, episode 450! Roster changes, now up to 66, but still leveling through Headless Horseman and candy buckets Have jumped into Legion Remix, but not quite to the crazy bronze grabbing level – close Couple of Headless Horseman encounter stories   News – 27:52 A second new podcast alert – The Journey – A World of Warcraft Podcast has launched with a couple episodes; Winkari found inspiration for his casual WoW podcast from right here in Solo Queue! 2.7 coming with various features Midnight news includes beta testing on Nov. 11, portal room changes New Xbox will run on Windows, which can run Battle.net, which can run WoW Add-on culling; will I soon have to give up my Elvui? My thoughts on Blizzard's push to reduce WoW complexity, including my Three Game Analogy where I compare WoW with the board games Scrabble, Risk, and my personal favorite, The Longest Day from Avalon Hill   Main Topic:  My WoW Family – 54:04 My first WoW friend Kraise Two partitions on a Dell Precision M6800 17” that were my first two WoW computers Solo from 2015 to 2023 for various reasons Birth of Solo Queue Fellow WoW podcasters begin connect with me beginning with Gershom from TB; also Gin, Ali from LLL, Ease from RM, Denathar from AU, briefly Scott Johnson, and Jason from TSZ Snek of Vol'dun is my far away friend! Running M+2 keys with CasualCoo – check him out on Twitch SQ patron Case runs me through some Legion Remix dungeons and raids, including getting my M+30 achievement transmog!   Announcement Going to split this big topic into two halves and return shortly with a unique Raid of the Month, my profile of a special WoW player in my life, the SQ mailbag, and a big announcement!   Outro – 1:47:51 Thanks to Blizzard for the amazing music and sound, to OGRE for intro/outro music, my lovely and supportive wife, my family, and YOU for listening. Support the show at https://www.patreon.com/soloqueuewow Thank you to contributing patrons, Andrew, Righteous Bandy, ThatSkyGuy, Cyn, Snek of Voldun, Jon, Scott, Jeru, Raven, and Greybeard.  And thanks to free members Max, Eddie, Bear, Friends of Wumpus, Sean, Curro, Aronaar, AedinNahkriin, Guardian Sandy, Alice, Don, Kamil, Case and welcome to Wednesday, Eric, and TJ! Subscribe to the podcast at your podcast feed of choice, Apple, Spotify, and all the rest.  Leave a 5-star rating and a written review to help grow Solo Queue. You can contact me at soloqueuewow at gmail.com, Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Solo Queue will return in My WoW Family (Part 2). “I will see you out there."

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, hold on to your britches because this one is gonna get wild! In this episode of the LAD podcast the boys live the Spinny Wheel life. They scramble some letters, cook them up, and wackiness ensues. Each round a wheel was spun to reveal a letter and the crew had to pick the best things that start with that letter. So pop out your Scrabble board or maybe even your game of Scattergories to get prepped while the boys shoot from the hip in a quick draw edition of the LAD podcast! Vote for the best team here! https://forms.gle/4wz96Eg2dtCs4vgx8

In this episode, Sarah hangs out with her friend David Yazbek again, to talk about things that make life cool, like hotel little shampoo hoarding, ice chips that give you gas, and peeing in fancy bathrooms. They also invent fake Scrabble words, discuss the merits of UK culture, and try to figure out why musical theater people are so animated. Listen to the show and remember, DON’T mess up your adrenals. Watch the podcast on YouTube here. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/sarah. Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarchmoney.com/SARAH Go to thrivecausemetics.com/SARAH for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. Try Mill risk-free – and get $75 off with code SARAH at mill.com/sarah. Follow Sarah Silverman on Instagram @sarahkatesilverman. And stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get ad-free episodes and bonus content. Just hit the 'subscribe' button on Apple Podcasts, or, for all other podcast apps head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jannette Anderson, like many of the people she works with, is #NotDoneByALongShot!She is a business development expert with over 40 years of strategic planning, sales and marketing experience, and she is still stupidly in love with what she does! Jannette is committed to shattering age stereotypes and revolutionizing the face of entrepreneurship!That's why she is so passionate about working with maturepreneurs to identify, claim and position their value so  they can make a meaningful difference and a magnificent living! Her other major passion (besides Scrabble and traveling to 42 countries and counting) is facilitating personal transformation. Jannette is dedicated to helping experts and entrepreneurs master the inner and outer game of business.Links:https://maturepreneur.world/https://jannettescalendar.as.me/VIP-WhyClarityCalldebbiewilliamspodcast.comSupport the show

Nikki needs to desperately go to the toilet, Luttsy has no why idea he's doing today's wordle, and the team discuss Words with Friends. "I wonder if needing to pee will make me funnier?" - Nikki Listen live on the Nova Player. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram & TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pastor Gary Lamb kicks-off a new series with a message about Scrabble and the importance of words.

Writing can be a struggle between joy and pain, but Jennifer Probst seems to have figured out how to pivot during the less enjoyable times. Jennifer is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over fifty books in contemporary romance fiction. Her work has been translated in over a dozen countries, sold over 2 million copies, and was dubbed a "romance phenom" by Kirkus Reviews. Her passions include reading, horse racing, Scrabble, Italian wine and food, shameful reality television, and rescue dogs. Like some of her characters, Probst, along with her husband and two sons, calls New York's Hudson Valley home. She released THE RELUCTANT FLIRT this summer and will release COVET in September. Learn more at Jenniferprobst.com Jennifer's Write Naked Programming can be found here. Special thanks to Net Galley for early previews. Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro RecordingFollow the Writing Table:On Twitter/X: @writingtablepcEverywhere else: @writingtablepodcastEmail questions or tell us who you'd like us to invite to the Writing Table: writingtablepodcast@gmail.com.

That is the corner from which June Rochelle expands her work, joys, and opportunities to teach.  While a good share of her life is singing, such as a periodic vocalist at The Cole Porter Room of The Indiana Historical Society, and as a back up singer for Diana Ross and Celine Dion, she also teaches in library and schools.  The subject?  Use of artificial intelligence in many contexts, such as teaching non-reading five year olds how to play Scrabble.  

Mary Doyle told Dermot about being a Scramble Champion whose love of words has brought her all over the world. The All-Ireland Scrabble Championship is taking place in Waterford City's Dooley's Hotel on October 4th and 5th.

Cette activité proposée se fait en partenariat avec la Bibliothèque de l'Université et la Fondation Vallet. Le Club RFI souhaite organiser des tournois de ce jeu de société emblématique connu par de plus en plus de jeunes au Bénin, pays vice-champion du monde à la Coupe des nations – Classique, 2025. L'invité/cousin : Hervé Boni, président de la Fédération béninoise de scrabble.   Musique :  Titre : «Yayi». Artiste : Zouley Sangaré.   L'équipe du Club RFI Journaliste-producteur : Eric Amiens Réalisation : Cécile Bonici. Collaboration service des auditeurs – suivi des projets Clubs RFI : Audrey Iattoni et Sébastien Bonijol. Coordination L'écume des mots : Myriam Guilhot. Mise en ligne internet : Sonia Borelva.  

John Murray, Ian Dennis & Ali Bruce-Ball talk football, travel & language. They reflect on their trip to Serbia and look ahead to the return of the Premier League. Can John strike lucky again in Clash of the Commentators? What will be added to the Great Glossary of Football Commentary? And there's a brand new feature… Get your suggestions in with WhatsApp voicenotes to 08000 289 369 & emails to TCV@bbc.co.uk01:00 Ian's journey down the tunnel in Serbia 07:00 ‘Memorable' trip as England perform 10:15 How do Bellingham, Saka & Palmer get back in? 13:25 Scrabble boards at the ready! 16:30 5 Live commentaries as the Premier League returns 19:00 Do Liverpool start Isak over Ekitike? 22:40 Most surprising managerial exits? 29:00 Clash of the Commentators 37:40 Great Glossary of Football Commentary 46:25 A new feature… but will it catch on?BBC Sounds / 5 Live commentaries: Sat 1500 Everton v Aston Villa, Sat 1500 Newcastle v Wolves on Radio 5 Sports Extra, Sat 1730 West Ham v Tottenham, Sun 1400 Burnley v Liverpool, Sun 1630 Man City v Man Utd.Glossary so far: 2-0 is a dangerous score, After you Claude, All-Premier League affair, Aplomb, Bag/box of tricks, Brace, Brandished, Breaking the deadlock, Bundled over the line, Champions elect / champions apparent, Clinical finish, Commentator's curse, Coupon buster, Cultured/Educated left foot, Denied by the woodwork, Draught excluder, Elimination line, Fellow countryman, Foot race, Formerly of this parish, Fox in the box, Free hit, Goalkeepers' Union, Goalmouth scramble, Good touch for a big man, Honeymoon Period, In and around, In the shop window, Keeping ball under their spell, Keystone Cops defending, Languishing, Loitering with intent, Marching orders, Nestle in the bottom corner, Numbered derbies, Nutmeg, Opposite number, Park the bus, PK for penalty-kick, Postage stamp, Put it in the mixer, Put their laces through it, Rasping shot, Red wine not white wine, Relegation six-pointer, Rooted at the bottom, Route One, Roy of the Rovers stuff, Sending the goalkeeper the wrong way, Shooting boots, Sleeping giants, Slide rule pass, Small matter of, Spiders web, Stayed hit, Steepling, Stinging the palms, Stonewall penalty, Straight off the training ground, Stramash, Taking one for the team, Team that likes to play football, Throw their cap on it, Thruppenny bit head / 50p head, Towering header, Two good feet, Turning into a basketball match, Turning into a cricket score, Usher/Shepherd the ball out of play, Walking a disciplinary tightrope, Wand of a left foot, We've got a cup tie on our hands, Where the kookaburra sleeps, Where the owl sleeps, Winger in their pocket, Wrap foot around it, Your De Bruynes, your Gundogans etc.

This week Craig comes to you from England where he's currently on set recording the new season of Scrabble. But fear not, for he is answering some questions from the fans. Yep, some good ol' Tweets and emails. Have a question for Craig? Drop him an email at craigfergusonpodcast@gmail.com, send him a message on social media, or drop a comment below. _______________________________________________ Craig is also on the road. Dates and tickets can be found here https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com/tour _________________________________________________  Find Craig: Website - https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craigyferg/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@craigy_ferg X - https://www.x.com/craigyferg Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thecraigfergusonshow

Mark continues his study in the book of 2nd Timothy today with a message titled, The Life Changing Power of Your Words. Under couch cushions and in the corners of storage closets everywhere in America you’ll find little wooden squares with letters on them. Of course, I’m referring to the pieces belonging to the board game… Scrabble. And since we’re talking about words on the broadcast today, I thought we’d point out some interested facts about one of the most popular board games in history. It was invented in 1931 and today the game is sold in 121 countries and 31 languages. The power of words! Let’s join Pastor Mark.Become part of our Advance Team: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/moodypresents/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fully Compatible.In 3 parts, by Member389. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. The next morning he had the hood up on Ellie's car and had tried turning it over a couple times, and the starter took, but it didn't want to fire. He looked into the possible problems and everything looked in good shape, so he figured he'd look up the symptoms online and most pointed to the fuel filter, so he made a quick rundown the parts store and picked up a new one. That seemed to do the trick, once it was installed he was able to start her car several times without any problem.Ellie came trotting down the stairs with a plate and mug. She walked up to Luke and leaned in fast and gave him a kiss. "Thank you! What was wrong?""Fuel filter, I replaced it and now it's turning over first try.""Hungry? I got up earlier than I thought so I baked banana bread."He smiled. "Absolutely, let me go wash the gas off my hands.""Here, this will make sure you come back." She broke off a piece and fed it to him. As he hummed his appreciation."You think that's all that will have me coming back? Remind me to fix the mirror in your bathroom." He leaned in and kissed her again. "That is awesome banana bread though." He grinned as he jogged into the house. He came back out to find her sitting on the hood of her car, half the slice she'd brought out was gone."Do you drink coffee?" She asked, and he nodded. "Guess I should refill this then, huh?" She chuckled. "If you hadn't taken so long to wash up you might have gotten this cup. Come on up, and I'll slice some more of this awesome bread.""Isn't this how the spider lures the fly into its web?" He chuckled."Can spiders even make banana bread? I can assure you that I'll never trap you, but as my dad used to say, 'If you want the honey, you gotta deal with the bees.' I think he meant that you have to take a chance on the bad stuff to get to the really good stuff.""Sounds like a good philosophy. I'm kind of scared though. What's the bad stuff?" He paused for a moment."Have you always been such a deep thinker?" She asked."I used to get called out by my mom for being introverted and quiet. She was always trying to get me out of my shell." He shrugged and smiled. "But quiet doesn't mean stupid.""I never thought it did." She refilled the mug with coffee and added sugar and milk, and sliced off a fresh slice for him and brought it to him."What about you Luke? Are you willing to brave the bees to get the honey?" She asked."I've only been called a coward once, by you.""I called you a chicken, not the same thing." She grinned."So; what are we doing today?" Luke just smiled and drank his coffee."Jeans, comfortable shoes for walking, and a sweatshirt. That's all you get for now. We should head out early, maybe 2:30 or 3. Is that okay with you?""Are we; becoming a 'thing'?" He asked her. The genuine innocence was so sweet."Well we've only been hanging out a few weeks, but so far so good." She smiled, and noted that she'd been smiling a lot around him. That was a good sign too.She was excited and curious. She'd gladly go where ever he wanted right now. She had a quick realization, that her little seduction of Luke was backfiring and without him even trying she was being seduced by him as well. "Do I need to bring anything? Water, snacks?" She asked pushing for a hint."No we'll stop at the store on the way." He smirked popping the last bit of bread into his mouth, washing it down with the rest of the coffee. "Oh, I have something of yours too. I'll bring it up when I come to pick you up." She gave him a questioning look. "Don't look so innocent. I turned redder than your satin top when my dad pulled your panties out of my back pocket last night."Ellie bust out laughing. "I was wondering where they'd gone to. I thought you'd pocketed them you pervert.""Oh no! I know now that when you grabbed my ass last night you stuffed them in my pocket! You were hoping I'd get caught weren't you?"Ellie had tears in her eyes she was laughing so hard. She didn't have a clue but Luke was hooked now. He had never seen her look more beautiful."No, oh my god no. I did sneak them in there, but not for that reason. I figured they'd be a nice little memento of our first date.""I thought tonight was going to be our first date?" He asked curiously."Well I couldn't wait. I invited you to dinner last night, as far as I'm concerned that was our first date." She leaned on her fist smiling at him. "How was it?"He looked at her wide-eyed, slack jawed. She leaned forward and slipped her tongue between his parted lips and they kissed deeply. "It was fun wasn't it?" She asked hoping for a little reassurance."It was fantastic." He whispered urgently and kissed her again. "I'll see you in a couple hours." He gave her another kiss then stood and left looking over his shoulder at her beaming back at him. He smiled as he headed down into the house to spend a little time knocking off schoolwork before going out for the night.He knocked on her door at 2:30 sharp. She called out for him to come in. He heard close the closet door, and she popped out of the bedroom in jeans and a black turtleneck. She held her arms out. "Is this okay?" She asked."Perfect." He smiled. They headed down to his car and once again he opened the door for her letting her settle in before he closed it. He hopped into the driver's seat and they were on their way. He drove out to the shopping center and pulled into a space at the grocery store."When you were a kid, what were the things you remember most about holiday meals. What was that one thing you couldn't wait for?" He asked, he tilted his head indicating they were going inside."This is a first, a date at the supermarket." She chuckled."Seriously. Was there something special that you only had at that time of the year but not usually any other.""Mashed potatoes with a lot of butter and pepper. Oh and my mom only used to make that string bean casserole at holidays. I love that too. Pie is a given, pumpkin and pecan, I'd have both." She smiled."Good, good to know. He grabbed a basket and they started wandering around the store and he picked up the makings of the casserole. A couple boxes of instant mashed potatoes, and some canned gravy. He found canned pumpkin and put some of that in the basket. "What else?" Ellie gave him a curious look trying to figure out what he was doing."Well, she used to make glazed carrots too. If we were lucky, relatives from up north would send her a bottle of real maple syrup, otherwise she would make it from butter and brown sugar. That was awesome." He found carrots and put several cans in the basket as well."Anything else?""Scrabble, well that's what we called it. The rest of the world knows it as party mix with the cereal and pretzels baked with seasoned salt and our secret weapon, Worcestershire sauce." Luke found the cereal aisle and grabbed the ingredients, and made his way to the chip aisle and found pretzels to go with it stating that they always had pretzels and mixed nuts in theirs. He looked down and seemed to be counting."Okay, first thing that comes to your mind when I say, comfort food.""Mac and cheese." She said, and he grinned."Good choice." He stocked up on the blue boxes."Are we stocking a fallout shelter?" She said nervously. He chuckled."You didn't see the big hole we've dug in the back yard?" Ellie just rolled her eyes and grinned, she knew this had to be going somewhere and she was getting more curious. They made their way to the front and got in line at the check-out filling a couple of the re-usable shopping bags with their groceries. He stowed all the groceries in the trunk and held the door open for Ellie once again. They were on the road again heading out of town."Okay, you've got me. I haven't got a clue what we're doing." She giggled. Nearly twenty minutes later Luke turned down a side road following a sign pointing out a fairground entrance. A few miles down the tree lined road the area opened up to fields filled with cars and signs for the county fall harvest festival. He made his way carefully up the dirt path and finding someone directing the parking."But why the store?" She smiled as he handed her the lightest of the grocery bags. They walked towards the gate and she saw the truck and tables. A sign indicating donations for the holiday food pantry in lieu of admission to the park could be made there. Ellie grinned at Luke, finally realizing his plan. They brought the bags up to one of the tables and the older couple behind thanked them and asked how many items they had brought. Luke told them twenty-seven, ten per ticket had been requested. "We went a little crazy remembering what we loved about holiday dinners and lost count." The lady fawned over them while her husband took the bags back to a sorting area near the truck, and thanked them. They took their tickets and went into the fair.They wandered through the attractions. Luke showed off his prowess for carnival games and won Ellie a stuffed tiger. They wandered through the exhibits, marveling at the giant pumpkins and petting the cute animals. They found the food vendors and ate everything that was bad for them, but you only go to the fair once a year, so they indulged. There was even a concert that night and they sat in the grandstand listening to the band. Ellie was glad he told her to bring a sweatshirt because it had turned cooler as the sun went down. She hardly noticed as they sat there with their arms around one another. He rubbed her back as she held him tight."Why didn't you just tell me about the food drive?" She asked."I didn't want you to think I was trying to impress you." He paused. "My folks were pretty lucky. They both had good jobs and made a good living. We've never wanted for anything. Well there was this one time I wanted a dirt bike and they said no, but that wasn't because of the money. I think they just wanted me to live to be twelve at the very least. They never let me get jaded, you know, they always wanted me to know there were people who didn't have. They were much more subtle than the usual, 'Eat your broccoli, kids are starving in Africa' parents. Hell, I never realized that some of those less fortunate families were kids I went to school with until years later. Giving back is just something they taught me to do. Besides it seemed more fun that way." Luke smiled down at her. "I got to tease you for a change.""Well, it didn't work.""Huh?""I'm impressed anyway." She smiled. "You spent almost twice the cost of those tickets filling those bags."After the last song finished a loud whistle screamed out followed by a loud boom. Fireworks had started behind the stage and they sat and watched them arm in arm. Ellie laid her head on his shoulder as they watched, both occasionally jumping at the explosions.Ellie had taken hold of Luke's hand as they made their way home down the dark winding roads. She massaged it with her thumb rubbing in slow circles."Thanks, I had a great time." She said softly. She could make out his grin by the dash lights."Me too." He gave her hand a squeeze."Luke? When I asked the other night if you've ever made out before, you said you hadn't. Have you ever had a girlfriend? I mean, have you ever had sex?" Her voice was soft but with an inquisitive edge to it. His hand flexed a few times in hers."No." He replied with a nearly silent sigh."Any reason?" She pressed. "It can't be that you've never had a chance. You must have had to beat the girls away with a stick in high school." A soft giggle followed the comment."I was pretty quiet, I didn't have a lot of friends." He shrugged. Neither spoke the rest of the way home. Ellie had laid his hand on her lap and continued to rub it gently, and he rubbed her leg through her jeans. They pulled into the drive and parked. With all the lights off in the car Ellie slid his hand further up her thigh, and leaned over to kiss him. She was eager and let it be known in her kiss and he responded in kind gripping her thigh tightly."Would you walk me up?" She asked pulling away from his lips reluctantly. He got out and walked around to her door opening it. She stood, looked into his eyes and took his hand and led him up the stairs. "Would you like to come in?" She wasn't sure if she needed to coax him but he was already in the doorway closing it behind him. A faint smile came to her lips and she tried to hide it. He returned the little smirk in kind. "There's a bottle of wine in the fridge. Why don't you open it up, and I'll be right back." She bit her lip and smiled backing her way to the bedroom. She was giddy because she knew she would have him tonight. She undressed and replaced her every day underthings with the yellow lingerie she bought the day they went shopping together, and dressed again. She wanted to see his face as he peeled her out of her clothes.She entered the room and Luke stood up. "Who taught him this stuff?" Ellie wondered. She turned off the overhead light and put on a small table lamp. They sat down on the sofa, Ellie leaned into him pulling her legs up beneath her."Did you really you have a good time tonight?" He asked. Ellie chuckled and looked him in the eyes. Her smile slipped away as she leaned in to kiss him deeply."The night's not over yet." She whispered.Luke's nervousness was slipping away as he and Ellie began kissing in earnest. He leaned back pulling her on top of him as their hands began to roam over each other. His hand slid up her back slowly lifting the hem of her shirt, he sent shivers up her spine as he caressed her skin. She joined in and reached between them and unbuttoned his shirt pulling it free of his jeans and ran her hand up his t-shirt playing with his nipple.Ellie broke free of his warm lips and came up to a kneel between his legs, and looked down at him as she crossed her arms lifting her turtleneck up and over her head. She shook her hair out as she tossed the shirt onto a side chair and smiled down at him. She grinned showing off the little yellow lace bra, which made him smile. Luke reached up and grasped the front of her jeans pulling her off balance and back onto his chest in a flurry of giggles. His hands not only roamed her back, but now slid between them as he ran his palm up her bra eliciting a soft moan as he massage her breasts through the fabric."The clasp is in back." She said in a clear invitation. Using his other hand he reached down between her legs and dragged her higher up his body, placing her breast within easy reach of him. Rather than unsnap the band he slipped the strap off her shoulder and pulled the cup down revealing smooth white skin and puckered pink nipple to his hungry mouth. He kissed it gently, causing Ellie to gasp as his tongue ran lazy circles around the tip causing it to get even harder. Her breathing was short and quick. She pulled away from his agonizing teasing, placing her forehead against his, and closed her eyes."I don't know if you want this, but I do. Would you take me to bed and make love to me Luke?"He looked her in the eyes for a moment thinking it would be his pleasure. Her eyes closed for a moment, when she opened them, he felt himself fall into their depths, and he was gone. He kissed her deeply.She stood shakily, Luke reached for her steadying her. She smiled as she took his hand and pulled him up too. He wrapped his arms around her taking her mouth with his again. He fumbled a few times with the hook of her bra. She smiled."Don't worry, practice makes perfect.""I hope I get a lot of practice then."She walked backwards pulling him with her into the bedroom. She reached down and unbuttoned her jeans turning and giving her ass a little wiggle as she pushed them off showing her yellow lace panties, which thanks to the heavy petting on the couch were now quite damp. She kicked them aside and turned back to Luke who just stood there staring, his mouth hanging open. She smiled and pushed his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. He reached to take off the tee, and she stopped him."Allow me."She lifted the hem of the shirt and ran her hands up his chest and sides lifting the shirt with it."You don't know how much I wanted to do this yesterday morning when you answered the door." She smiled as she stroked his nipples with her thumbs. "I want you to know how good this feels." She said leaning forward and taking one into her mouth swirling her tongue and flicking it.Luke's breathing got shallow a fast. She took it between her teeth, giving just a light tug before letting it free.Luke gasped at the sensation. She pushed the shirt up and he raised his arms letting her pull it off completely."Damn do you look good without a shirt on." She said."You look pretty fantastic without one too." He replied smiling. They kissed again, their bare chests touching for the first time sent shocks through them both. The heat they were building was intense and made the room feel cool in comparison. He felt hands on his belt fiddling with it to get it loose, soon his jeans were unbuttoned and the zipper slid down. Her hand slid down inside massaging the length of him through his boxers."Hmm , that feels nice." She mumbled into his kiss."It's not very;” She halted him with a firmly planted kiss."Enough of that, you've been watching too much porn." She giggled. "Remember, the pyramids were built with hand tools, it's not the size of your tool, it's how you use it." That made Luke chuckle. She began kissing her way down his chest and stomach and eventually knelt in front of him. She reached up and tugged the jeans down to his knees seeing his boxers strain to contain his hardness. She peered up at Luke from under a fallen lock of hair as she reached slowly for the waistband. She pulled down slowly, revealing it finally. Slowly a grin crept across her face as she looked up again."It's perfect." She said biting her lip. She looked down at it, he wasn't huge, but he was above average. She couldn't wait to have him inside her. She peeked up again. "Mind if I take the edge off for you?" Luke just tilted his head wondering what she meant just as she leaned forward and took him into her mouth.Luke let out a gasp as her lips engulfed him. It's a wonder his knees didn't buckle and land him on the floor. She started slowly taking a little more in with each stroke. She let him free and licked the length of him. He was gasping for air, she knew he wouldn't last, & decided to bring him some relief. She began bobbing her head while stroking him bringing him to the brink."Ellie! I'm.." He didn't get the words out by the time she felt the rush hit the back of her throat. She swallowed quickly hoping she could keep up."I'm sorry! Oh, shit." Luke said looking down at her. As she continued to lick and suck him."Well I'm not. Now that the edge is off we can take our time." She gave him a last lick to clean the tip. "I'm torn between wanting to instruct you and letting you discover on your own. Is there anything you've seen that you've wanted to try?"Luke's expression changed from horror to astonishment. Was this beautiful girl kneeling in front of him. Giving free reign to his sexual fantasies? He reached down taking her elbow and lifted her up so she was standing again, and quickly kicked the rest of his clothing free. Ellie turned and went to the bed pulled back the covers and laid down and looked at him expectantly."Why am I naked and you've still got those on?" He said nodding at her lacy yellow panties.She grinned. "It's because you haven't taken them off yet." She snickered. "Though maybe I should do that myself before you pilfer all of my panties."Luke grinned and walked over to her and sat on the edge of the bed, and reached for the waistband, he gave a quick peek up at her, she just straightened out and lifted her hips off the mattress giving him the go ahead to slip them off. They released from her hips and as he pulled them from between her thighs the moisture held them in place for a moment as he pulled them free, sliding them down her legs."They're soaking." He said surprised.Ellie rolled her eyes a bit and smirked. "You have a, uh, certain effect on me. What can I say?" She sat up leaning into his kiss. "Have you thought about it, or shall I take the lead?""I want to taste you." He said in a whisper. She kissed him deeply."Well you know what I taste like up here. Why not explore a little." She said in a deep voice he'd never heard her use before.He did just that, working his way down her neck leaving a trail of kisses that caused her to sigh deeply. Then laid a trail to her breasts taking an excruciatingly long time to take her nipple into his mouth.She moaned a little deeper and ran a hand through his hair while her other found his still hard cock and massaged it slowly not wanting him to go off in her hand.He lavished attention on her breasts for a while, and Ellie began to wonder if he'd go any further so she gently pulled herself up causing his mouth to land on her rib cage, hoping that would be incentive to continue south. It worked, he made his way down her stomach giving her belly button a little lick causing her to giggle. She gave his hair a tug to get him to stop.He hesitated as he made his way down over her smooth skin kissing his way around, dragging his tongue slowly nearly torturing her. He slipped around pushing her legs apart and lay between her raised knees. He leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue teasing its way up her swollen pink lips causing Ellie to gasp and grip his hair a little tighter. It took all of her reserve to not pull him down into her, as she relaxed her grip he began to explore and he took the cues she gave him very well, as she leaned in and lifted. He was very attentive and gentle, almost too gentle as her climax neared she moaned a little louder, a little quicker.Luke surprised her by slipping a finger into her molten core and taking her clit between his lips causing her to cry out and arch up as she peaked quickly. After a couple minutes of panting she lifted Luke's head by his hair from the task of cleaning up the mess he'd made of her."You've never done that before?" She asked, an edge in her voice.He just looked at her in wide-eyed innocence and shook his head back and forth."Did I do something wrong?" He asked, suddenly worried. She just fell back and laughed."No, you did everything right, that's why I wondered."Luke crawled up beside her and she looked over at his sweet face lacquered in her own honey.She leaned over and kissed him, tasting herself on his tongue. "Listen. I'm on the pill, but I want you to wear a condom anyway. A girl can never be too safe." Luke's eyes went wide."Shit, I don't have any. I mean; I never."Ellie giggled and reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled out a little foil packet. "It's a good thing I was hoping this would happen and prepared for it."Luke's eyes went wide."Oh seriously. Guys can be as thick as bricks sometimes. I've been practically throwing myself at you since I moved in, Luke. Hasn't it been obvious?""Well I just thought you were being friendly, and well a bit of a flirt. I didn't think any more of it until last night." He shrugged."You surprised me with the stakes of that Jenga game." She smiled. "I'm glad I lost.""I'm glad you did too." He grinned."Lay back." She put the packet to her teeth and tore it open. "See how it's rolled. Place it at the tip, and unroll it like this, and voila. Mr. Happy is now properly dressed for the ball." Ellie looked down at it, and her smile faded into a look of need as she looked up at Luke. "Let me." She placed a hand on his chest as she rose up and threw a leg over his body and straddled his hips. She took his length and ran it against her before settling gently down on it. She let out a gasp as he entered her slowly.Luke lay back taking short quick breaths wanting badly to raise his hips and drive himself into her.Ellie was in control of the moment, a hand firmly on his chest as she lowered herself further, as she took him in she sped up burying him into her completely causing them both to cry out."Oh that feels nice!" She said as she clenched down on him causing him to gasp again. She rose up slowly causing her own deep moan. She rode him for several strokes as he took hold of her hips getting into the rhythm of her body. She pressed herself down on him and leaned forward and kissed him. "Luke?""Hmm?""Roll me onto my back and fuck me good and hard." She said biting his lip.He smiled as he wrapped an arm around her and rolled over taking her with him.She adjusted quickly and her legs went around him rocking her hips to get him to start.He was a quick study, and he began thrusting into her in long deep strokes as he attacked her mouth and neck."Harder!" She urged. "Don't stop!"He had no intention of stopping if anything he was scared he was hurting her as the sound of their flesh meeting, repeatedly rang throughout the room."Yes!" Ellie cried repeatedly. He felt his climax approaching again. Ellie began to shudder under him as she let out a series of high pitched moans, he knew then he couldn't hold out any longer and pushed hard into her releasing as she gripped down on him. He collapsed unable to hold himself up any longer.They lay there gasping for breath for a long while when Ellie leaned over and whispered into Luke's ear, in a little sing-song way. "Guess who's not a virgin now?" She kissed his cheek as she heard him laughing into her shoulder."What now?" He asked."Well, first thing you may want to do is go and tie off your little goody bag and trash it." She said. She looked deeply into his eyes. "Will you stay with me tonight?" She asked.He didn't know why but Luke's throat tightened. He looked into her dark eyes, a feeling of falling into them washed over him."Yes." He whispered. "I hope you don't snore though, I'm a light sleeper." He grinned.They both busted out laughing as he rose to go clean up. When he came back the bed had been remade, Ellie lay there wearing his t-shirt which was enticingly short, her long supple legs leading up to the hem, it was obvious that she hadn't bothered with putting her panties back on. He turned off the light and crawled in beside her, they kissed, and explored as they fell asleep.Deep in the night they stirred, this time Luke took her slowly. She looked up, the faint light of a streetlight limned his body. Soft moans and whispers broke the peace as they concluded their lovemaking. The quiet enveloped them as they drifted off again.The rumble of the door opener in the garage woke Luke. His head popped up realizing he wasn't in his room. He looked down quickly and found shining brown eyes smiling up at him."Good morning."The blanket had pulled down and Ellie's breasts were in full view."Pardon the morning breath." He said as he kissed her. "You lost your shirt."She giggled. "More like you peeled it off in the middle of the night.""Oh shit!" He grimaced, looking at her neck."What?""I'm sorry. I had no idea." A panicked look settled on his face."What?!" She started to panic, and she noticed he was looking at her neck. She bolted out of bed and ran to the bathroom. A moment later she busted out laughing. "I look like I was attacked by a gang of vampires." She came back out smiling. "Good thing I like turtlenecks."Luke was somewhat relieved but still worried. "I'm sorry!" He said again concerned that she'd be mad at him for looking like she'd been beaten."You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about." She leaned forward kissing him quickly. "Except maybe waking me up with this a couple times over the last few hours." She said reaching under the blanket and grasping his hard cock. "Let me check I may have a spare toothbrush, unless you want to run down and grab yours." She grinned. "Sounds like your dad just left.""Yea I'm guessing he went to breakfast without me." He smirked. "We like this place in town, it has a large glassed in dining room like a greenhouse. On Sundays they do a jazz brunch." He looked over at the clock noting it was much later than he usually woke.Ellie smirked. "Well we did have quite a workout last night. It's to be expected.""Let me text him. If we hurry we can join him." Luke said. "If you'd like to, I mean.""I'm torn between having my way with you yet again, but we'll have plenty of time later. I'd love breakfast. Let me go clean up and find a way to hide the damage. You brute!""I should probably grab a clean shirt, & clean up myself. Jeans are fine." Luke grabbed his jeans pulling them on and pulling on his shirt and made a beeline for the door. He paused at the bottom of the steps to text his dad then made his way into the house to wash up and change. He bolted out of the house to find Ellie leaning against the garage."Guys, always taking forever to get ready." She shook her head. She looked absolutely radiant in the morning sunshine."What can I say. I don't just roll out of bed looking this good, it takes work you know."Ellie chuckled as she said. "Seeing first hand evidence to the contrary, I'm calling bullshit.""He said he'd just have coffee and wait for us."They walked into the restaurant and were directed to the table where he sat. Derek stood as they approached."Now I see where he gets it. Hi Mr. Page.""Please, call me Derek. What do you mean?"Ellie grinned as she sat down. "I've never seen a guy stand when I walk in the room, or hold the door for me like Luke does. It's nice.""Well chivalry never goes out of style." He smiled. "I ordered us the sticky buns, they should be out soon. They make their own here, and they're endless. Thankfully, after seeing how many of them Luke can eat." They all got a chuckle at that. Luke rolled his eyes."Did you kids have fun at the fair?""We had a blast." Ellie said beaming. "Hercules here won me a stuffed tiger, and everything."They chatted amiably about school, work and the jazz band group playing at the other end of the dining room."What are you doing for the holiday next week?" Derek asked her."I'm going back home for the weekend. My mother and my aunt own a bed & breakfast up on a lake. It's a huge old house which makes it perfect for everybody." Ellie said. "What about you boys?""Not much, we'll probably have dinner out and catch some football." Derek replied."No way! You don't have any family around here?""None nearby." Derek confirmed.Ellie gave them a shrewd look. "Do you work Friday?"Derek shook his head. She already knew Luke was free. She paused for a moment and excused herself to go find the ladies room."Those are some pretty nice shiners." Derek commented. "When she moves, a few of them peek up above the turtleneck." He grinned.Luke turned red. "Uh, yea. Well we went up to her place after we got home."Derek grinned held up his hand, and gave a little shake to his head. "No need to explain, you're both adults."They both stopped speaking and stood as Ellie walked back to the table putting her cellphone in her pocket. She smiled at both of them as she sat down again."You are both now busy for the Thanksgiving holiday. It would be my pleasure if you would join me next week at the Bed & Breakfast. They have satellite so you won't miss any football." She grinned."Thank you, but we couldn't impose." Derek said."It's no imposition, there will be guests there as well. I just called my aunt and asked if there was room and she said there are still plenty of rooms available for you to stay over. It's about an hour away, up near the state park on the west side." She smiled at him then looked at Luke. "Besides, I was going to try and drag him away with me. It doesn't seem fair to leave you all alone. I've already told her you would accept. No backing out now.""You're a regular fireball aren't you?" Derek grinned. "I guess I have no leave but to accept on my behalf. What about you, Luke. Think you can be persuaded to spend an entire weekend in country with a lovely lady?"Luke looked at Ellie grinning. "It'll be tough, but I think I'll manage." She raised an eyebrow slightly and nudged him in the shin with her toe. "Ow!"Derek chuckled deeply. Yes, Ellie was definitely the right choice, there was no doubt in his mind now. By Member389 for Literotica.

Send us a messageHave you ever played Scrabble and felt the rush of laying down the perfect word? Maybe it was one that hit a triple word score or cleverly used up all your letters. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing those points add up, especially when you've been staring at your tiles for what feels like forever not sure if you're ever going to make up a word. Scrabble is more than just a test of vocabulary; it's a game that shows the real power of words.What makes Scrabble fascinating is that every letter and every placement matters. In the same way, in life, the words we choose and how we arrange them can open doors, shape relationships, and even define our reputation. Words are small, but they carry a lot of weight. Today we use Scrabble as a guide to talk about why words matter. We'll look at how they carry power, why strategy and intentionality matter, and how they have the potential to shape our identity and legacy.

Today: Greg is curating his nightmares, AI animals and just why why, scary Washington State snapping turtle and breaking world records, and a new dating fad called.. 'Shrekking"? Have a great night all!

A new week means new questions! Hope you have fun with these!Whose solo albums include Station to Station, Diamond Dogs, and Let's Dance?In Jack London's The Call of the Wild, what is the name of the dog protagonist?What term is defined as the force exerted by a fluid opposing the weight of a partially or fully immersed object?During the chorus of Billy Idol's "Eyes without a Face", there is a woman singing backing vocals. What is she singing?What American rock band has a fan club that goes by the name "The Victims"?Planets located outside our solar system are known by what 4-syllable term?What real life stock broker inspired The Wolf of Wallstreet?WWI's Battle of Ypres occurred in which country?Which Australian is the only male tennis player to have career grand slams in both singles and doubles?How many triple word score squares are there on a Scrabble board?What do you call a baby Alligator?MusicHot Swing, Fast Talkin, Bass Walker, Dances and Dames, Ambush by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Don't forget to follow us on social media:Patreon – patreon.com/quizbang – Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Check out our fun extras for patrons and help us keep this podcast going. We appreciate any level of support!Website – quizbangpod.com Check out our website, it will have all the links for social media that you need and while you're there, why not go to the contact us page and submit a question!Facebook – @quizbangpodcast – we post episode links and silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Instagram – Quiz Quiz Bang Bang (quizquizbangbang), we post silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Twitter – @quizbangpod We want to start a fun community for our fellow trivia lovers. If you hear/think of a fun or challenging trivia question, post it to our twitter feed and we will repost it so everyone can take a stab it. Come for the trivia – stay for the trivia.Ko-Fi – ko-fi.com/quizbangpod – Keep that sweet caffeine running through our body with a Ko-Fi, power us through a late night of fact checking and editing!

Scrabble is more than just a family pastime for Portland resident Nigel Peltier. For him, it’s been a decades-long pursuit. Peltier first entered the tournament scene as a teenager, quickly rising through the ranks to become one of the top-rated players in North America.  This summer, he won his first North American Scrabble Players Association National Championship, dominating the final match with six “bingos,” or seven-letter words played in a single turn. He joins us to share what it takes to compete at the highest level and why the game still excites him after all these years.  

Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there's an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorizing, and it's full of weirdness." In fact, there are TWO established lists, NASPA, the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has currently 107 two-letter words, and Collins Scrabble Words, formerly known as SOWPODS, used by the rest of the world and contains at present 127 two-letter words.And this episode, we're going to hear all those two-letter words. If you don't agree with their Scrabbular validity, don't blame me! Some of the inclusions were a surprise!Visit theallusionist.org/two for more information about today's two-letter words, plus a transcript of the episode.Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes info about every episode, livestreams where I read from my ever-growing collection of dictionaries, and the charming and nurturing Allusioverse Discord community, where we're watching the current season of Great British Sewing Bee and soon the new season of Great British Bake Off.This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The music is by Martin Austwick; download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and on Bandcamp, and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.Find the Allusionist at youtube.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, @allusionistshow.bsky.social… If I'm there, I'm there as @allusionistshow. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want me to talk compellingly about your product, sponsor an episode: contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by:• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running your online forever home. Go to squarespace.com/allusionist for a free 2-week trial, and get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code allusionist.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On Tuesday's show: President Donald Trump wants specialized National Guard units ready to deploy to U.S. cities to quell civil disturbances and ensure public safety and order. We discuss what that means, whether we could see troops deployed here, and whether this is largely a pretense to step up immigration enforcement.Also this hour: A new Texas law expands when someone can be detained for psychiatric evaluation. Some welcome the change while others worry it crosses a line. We discuss the debate over involuntary treatment and its cost.Then, a recent investigation by the Texas Observer explores the murky legal world of some private foster and adoption agencies.And we meet a competitive Scrabble player.

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games. Join our active and welcoming Discord community, Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon), or Leave us a review wherever you find this podcast! Episode 227 - All About Boards Jake and Brendan continue our series on game components with a deep dive on BOARDS!  What types of boards exist?  How do they enhance the experience of playing a game?  What are the best boards?  Are tiles also boards?   Timestamps 5:00- what are boards? 13:30- network boards 27:45- other types of boards 32:05- information on boards 46:15- game progress on boards 48:05- scaling boards 50:35- alternate / expansion boards 53:00- players creating the board 57:05- modular boards 59:35- signposting on boards 1:03:05- favorite boards   Games Mentioned Catan, Quantum, Broom Service, Pax Pamir, Agricola, Ticket to Ride, Root, Castles of Burgundy, Pandemic, Scrabble, Tigris and Euphrates, Blood Rage, Heat, Barrage, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Molly House, Sky Team, Troyes, Santiago, El Grande, Hansa Teutonica, Mexica, Five Tribes, Babylonia, Hey That's My Fish, Arcs, Tikal, Carcassone, Praga Caput Regni, Findorff, Great Western Trail    Preplanners A few deep dives are in the works, so get in some plays of Apiary, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Dominion, and more Root!    Music and Sound Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Thank you to Flash Floods for use of their song Palm of Your Hand as a sting from their album Halfway to Anywhere: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fE6LrqzNDKPYWyS5evh3K?si=CCjdAGmeSnOOEui6aV3_nA Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI Intermission Music: music elevator ext part 1/3 by Jay_You -- https://freesound.org/s/467243/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 Bell with Crows by MKzing -- https://freesound.org/s/474266/ -- License: Creative Commons 0 hammer v2.wav by blukotek -- https://freesound.org/s/337815/ -- License: Creative Commons 0   Contact Follow and reach us on social media on Bluesky @decisionspace.bsky.social. If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Byeee!

« Dis-moi à quel jeu tu joues, je te dirai qui tu es ». C'est une série spéciale de RFI à la découverte des jeux populaires à travers le monde, ces jeux qui, à travers les joueurs, parlent de la culture et de l'identité de chaque pays. En Côte d'Ivoire, le Scrabble est le jeu où les Ivoiriens excellent. En plus de dizaines de milliers d'amateurs du jeu de lettres, le pays compte 800 joueurs de très bon niveau affiliés à la Fédération nationale. Benoît Almeras a disputé une partie au dojo de l'université d'Abidjan. Là-bas, le Scrabble, c'est presque un sport de combat. De notre correspondant à Abidjan, Le soleil se couche sur Abidjan, c'est le début de l'entraînement. Sous le badamier, une demi-douzaine de tables. Deux joueurs, un plateau, le Gborô, le combat peut commencer. Objectif : composer les mots qui rapportent le plus de points avec sept lettres tirées au hasard. En face, celui que l'on surnomme Ipman, comme le maître de Bruce Lee. Mathieu Zingbè, 37 ans, dix fois champion d'Afrique. Une machine. En quinze minutes chrono, le numéro un Ivoirien gagne avec près de 300 points d'avance. Pour lui, le Scrabble c'est une passion qui dure depuis près de 30 ans : « C'est en classe de CM1 quand j'ai fait la trouvaille du Scrabble, ça m'a tout de suite épaté, je me suis vite confectionné un tableau de Scrabble, j'ai commencé à m'entraîner et je suis immédiatement tombé amoureux de ce jeu. »   Professionnel depuis 2006, Mathieu Zingbè est actuellement le capitaine des éléphants scrabbleurs, l'équipe nationale fait la fierté du président de la Fédération Michel Tétialy : « On est trois fois champion du monde, nous sommes actuellement champion d'Afrique en titre. Avec ça, l'engouement grandit et chaque année, on a plus de personnes qui intègrent les salles (...) partout dans nos bureaux, vous voyez, dans les téléphones et autres, les gens ont des "applicatifs" qui leur permettent de passer le temps en jouant au Scrabble. » Intégration du nouchi dans l'Officiel du Scrable Autre motif de jubilation pour Michel Tétialy : l'intégration des mots du nouchi, l'argot des rues d'Abidjan, dans l'Officiel du Scrabble, à l'image de « s'enjailler », une reconnaissance pour l'écrivain Josué Guébo : « On a créé des termes qui étaient à la fois périphériques et marginaux, mais qui sont en train de passer à la postérité, c'est intéressant parce que ça montre que la créativité ici s'universalise, c'est une chose à souligner. » Pour ce poète et philosophe, ancien joueur de Scrabble, les performances des Ivoiriens s'expliqueraient par un « amour pragmatique » du français : « Dans un pays où il y a plusieurs langues, la langue française est un bon moyen de communication. Donc, je pense qu'il y a un amour utilitaire pour ainsi dire. Mais il y a aussi l'amour de l'art parce que les Ivoiriens performent en Scrabble, mais aussi en Slam et aujourd'hui ça paye. » Un outil pédagogique Mais dans un pays où environ une personne sur deux est analphabète selon le gouvernement, le Scrabble reste trop élitiste et réservé aux citadins, pour Josué Guébo. Autre problème : le manque de joueuses, quand deux tiers des illettrés ivoiriens sont des femmes. Pour corriger cela, la Fédération fait la promotion du Scrabble comme outil d'apprentissage de la langue française – Adrien Edoukou, joueur et professeur de lettres : « Les enfants n'arrivent pas véritablement à saisir le sens de certains cours et le Scrabble intervient pour leur apporter une formation d'appoint. Apprendre à jouer au Scrabble pour des enfants ça leur apporte beaucoup, c'est un outil pédagogique complet. » La Fédération ivoirienne propose le jeu comme activité extrascolaire dans une vingtaine de collèges et de lycées cette année et peut-être détecter les futures stars du Scrabble francophone. À lire aussiLe Scrabble, une passion grandissante sur le continent africain

When life gets overwhelming and your brain whispers “a cold beer would fix this,” is it really a craving… or just a memory from the old you?This week, Vic dives headfirst into the wonderfully chaotic world of those bloody annoying cravings — or as she now calls them, ghostly flashbacks from her rosé-soaked past. In this bite size episode, Vic shares her own awkward evolution, from life and soul of the party to calm-ish, crime-drama-watching, Scrabble-playing sober warrior and reframes what cravings actually are.Then, it's time for the countdown:A Top of the Pops–style list (minus the glitter and synth) of the Top Ten Best Ways to Deal With Alcohol Cravings.From star-fishing on the floor to telling your cravings to politely piss off, this episode is packed with honest advice, sharp one-liners, and some very questionable references to injured swamp donkeys.So pop on your headphones, put the kettle on, and remember: cravings aren't commands. They're just echoes of a past self and you don't have to dance to that tune anymore.Enjoy!Sober Awkward Tools and LinksJoin Cuppa – our alcohol-free communityA kind, no-pressure space to connect with others navigating sobrietywww.cuppa.communityRead Vic's memoir – A Thousand Wasted SundaysA brutally honest and hilarious look at booze, motherhood, and self-discoveryhttps://amzn.asia/d/fanNMhaBook a one-on-one session with VicWriting mentorship, sobriety support, or just a good old chathttps://www.soberawkward.com/storeExplore the full podcast archiveCatch up on all the messy, funny, honest episodes of Sober Awkwardhttps://open.spotify.com/show/4qXlSc9lDGStYLeYIjrWPH?si=ece6e75ae4f041f9Follow us on InstagramBehind-the-scenes chaos, awkward moments, and sober inspo@soberawkwardThanks for listening. Your support means everything. Whether you've been here since day one or this is your first toe-dip into the awkward, we're so glad you found us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

RHLSTP #573 - Killer Butterfly - Richard is back at the Podcast Room to chat with actor comedian Ian Smith. They discuss whether Noah's Ark actually happened, favourite Ian Smiths, Goole and what it means and its impact on quarries, competitive jigsawing, the most famous person Richard has given a foot spa to, acceptable Scrabble words and the success of the Northern News podcast and why sometimes northern news is darker than it at first appeared. Plus is a comedy award nom a blessing or a curse.See Ian's show here https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/ian-smith-foot-spa-half-emptySee RHLSTP live at the Fringe http://richardherring.com/rhlstpSUPPORT THE SHOW!Watch our TWITCH CHANNELBecome a badger and see extra content at our WEBSITE See details of the RHLSTP LIVE DATES Buy DVDs and books from GO FASTER STRIPE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin and Zach are joined by star hygienist Maryann McFarland. They kick things off with a competitive discussion about their favorite games, from Maryann's professional-level Scrabble skills to Zach's past as a ranked online poker player. The conversation then shifts to the clinical topic of the day: how Maryann champions the Invisalign workflow in the practice. She provides a masterclass on her process, detailing every step from initial patient contact and leveraging in-office marketing to using photos on a big-screen monitor, discussing financials, and performing the digital scan—all while emphasizing the crucial role of teamwork and efficiency. Key Takeaways: Empower the Hygiene Team: A trained and motivated hygienist can be the primary driver for Invisalign cases, from the initial conversation to the digital scan, freeing up the doctor's time and boosting production. A System Creates Efficiency: The practice utilizes a highly systematic, team-based approach. While one person engages the patient, others prepare financial plans or manages imaging in the background, eliminating bottlenecks and making the process fit within a standard appointment. Visuals Drive Acceptance: Using large, high-quality photos on a monitor is a powerful tool. Showing patients their own crowding, wear, or abfractions and then asking, "Are you happy with your smile?" is more effective than just describing the problem. Make it Easy to Say Yes: Streamline the financial conversation by having payment options prepared in advance. Presenting clear solutions immediately after the patient expresses interest removes a major barrier to starting treatment. Create Urgency (and Follow Up): Offering to scan an interested patient on the spot capitalizes on their motivation. For those who need to think about it, sending them home with a signed financial plan and following up creates a clear path to starting their case. Join the Very Dental Facebook group using the password "Timmerman," Hornbrook" or "McWethy," "Papa Randy," "Lipscomb" or "Gary!" The Very Dental Podcast network is and will remain free to download. If you'd like to support the shows you love at Very Dental then show a little love to the people that support us! -- Crazy Dental has everything you need from cotton rolls to equipment and everything in between and the best prices you'll find anywhere! If you head over to verydentalpodcast.com/crazy and use coupon code “VERYDENTAL10” you'll get another 10% off your order! Go save yourself some money and support the show all at the same time! -- The Wonderist Agency is basically a one stop shop for marketing your practice and your brand. From logo redesign to a full service marketing plan, the folks at Wonderist have you covered! Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/wonderist! -- Enova Illumination makes the very best in loupes and headlights, including their new ergonomic angled prism loupes! They also distribute loupe mounted cameras and even the amazing line of Zumax microscopes! If you want to help out the podcast while upping your magnification and headlight game, you need to head over to verydentalpodcast.com/enova to see their whole line of products! -- CAD-Ray offers the best service on a wide variety of digital scanners, printers, mills and even  their very own browser based design software, Clinux! CAD-Ray has been a huge supporter of the Very Dental Podcast Network and I can tell you that you'll get no better service on everything digital dentistry than the folks from CAD-Ray. Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/CADRay!

Win Donkey Kong Bananza, Xenoblade Chronicles X, or Squeakross! Subscribe to The MinnMax Show and review us on Apple Podcasts (including your social media handle), we're randomly choosing three winners on Monday, July 28th. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-minnmax-show/id1484599827 MinnMax's Ben Hanson, Kyle Hilliard, Kelsey Lewin, Janet Garcia, Jeff Marchiafava, Jacob Geller, and guest cohort Kyle Bosman pile in to unpack our thoughts on Donkey Kong Bananza for the Nintendo Switch 2. Then we talk about Shadow Labyrinth, the new dark and atmospheric Pac-Man metroidvania from Bandai Namco and how to keep arcade franchises around in 2025. After that, we talk about the great new game that's Scrabble meets Balatro called Word Play from Mark Brown at Game Maker's Toolkit! Then we answer questions submitted on Patreon by the community and award the iam8bit question of the week! You can win a prize and help make the show better by supporting us on Patreon and submitting a question! https://www.patreon.com/minnmax Come out to MinnMax's summer community meetup on Saturday, August 9th in Minneapolis at Utepils Brewing from 12-5. https://www.patreon.com/posts/let-us-know-if-134417101 Watch and share the video version here - https://youtu.be/aCGkkkbn6xI Help support MinnMax's supporters! https://www.iam8bit.com - 10% off with Promo Code: WORLDUFODAY https://hellofresh.com/minnmax10fm - Get 10 free meals with a free item for life To jump to a particular discussion, check out the timestamps below... 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:37 - Rumor Meister Tease 00:02:43 - Win a Nintendo game! 00:04:46 - Donkey Kong Bananza 00:48:17 - Hello Fresh 00:50:46 - Shadow Labyrinth 01:07:07 - Word Play 01:24:02 - Pokémon Presents 01:26:14 - Pokémon Friends 01:31:08 - Thanking iam8bit - https://www.iam8bit.com/ 01:33:28 - Community questions 02:19:18 - Get A Load Of This 02:25:20 - Rumor Meister Message #4 Janet's GALOT - https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-07-12/ice-raids-deported-los-angeles-cats-and-dogs-left-behind Jacob's GALOT - https://youtu.be/kRqxyqjpOHs?si=Hm30DZiQR4KuzWNv Hanson's GALOT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUTZ0fY1y0c JeffM's GALOT - http://neal.fun Bosman's GALOT - https://us.mentos.com/products/mentos-mints-with-vitamins Community GALOT - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWI-UVkD_-M Disclosure - Games discussed on MinnMax content are most often provided for free by the publisher or developer. Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/minnmax Support MinnMax directly on YouTube - https://youtube.com/minnmax/join Follow us on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/minnmaxshow Subscribe to our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/minnmax Subscribe to our solo stream channel - https://www.youtube.com/@minnmaxstreamarchives Catch up on the best of MinnMax - https://bit.ly/4gAc6eq Buy MinnMax merch here - https://minnmax.com/merch Follow us on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/minnmax.com Go behind the scenes on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/minnmaxshow This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Hair flips, high kicks, and Y2K fashion sharper than a samurai sword—this week, the ladies are suiting up in wigs and wire-fu to revisit the over-the-top action comedy Charlie's Angels (2000)! Jackie and Danielle are joined by Heather for a no-holds-barred deep dive into the gloriously chaotic world of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu as butt-kicking private investigators. This episode is a high-energy ride full of nostalgia and razor-sharp commentary.The hosts go beyond the glossy slow-mo to unpack problematic tropes, casting what-ifs (Justice for Nia Long!), and the absolute fever dream that is Crispin Glover's villain. They also explore why this movie is more about vibes than plot (honestly, who did kidnap Eric Knox again?), and question the logic of Drew Barrymore's post-sex Scrabble ambush. With laugh-out-loud sister banter, shady film critic takedowns, and a side of Soul Train confusion, this episode is the chaotic good energy your podcast queue has been missing.·Season 5 Episode 14·—No More Late Fees ⁠https://nomorelatefeespodcast.com⁠909-601-NMLF (6653)—Follow Us on Social:Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/nomorelatefees TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@nomorelatefees Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/nomorelatefeesYoutubehttps://www.youtube.com/@nomorelatefees Twitterhttps://x.com/NoMoreLateFees —CONQUERing⁠⁠myconquering.com⁠⁠10% Off Code: JACKIE10—Heather's Previous EpisodesBilly Madisonhttps://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/billy-madison The Sweetest Thing https://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/the-sweetest-thing Back School with Heatherhttps://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/back-school-with-heather Getting Buddy Buddy with Heather https://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/getting-buddy-buddy-with-heather Evolutionhttps://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/evolutionFrom Ghostbusters to Evolution: Ivan Reitman Movie Madnesshttps://nomorelatefeespodcast.com/episode/from-ghostbusters-to-evolution-ivan-reitman-movie-madness

Do you call it "pop," "soda," or "coke"? We look at the interesting history behind these regional names for carbonated beverages. Then, we look at words where you can use a Q without a U, which might help your Scrabble game.The pop, soda or coke segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of "Like Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English." It originally appeared in The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license. You can find Valerie at valeriefridland.com.The Q segment was written by Karen Lunde, a career writer and editor. In the late '90s, as a young mom with two kids and a dog, she founded one of the internet's first writing workshop communities. These days, she facilitates expressive writing workshops, both online and off. Find her at chanterellestorystudio.com. 

CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 1/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Games-History-Oliver-Roeder/dp/1324003774 Checkers, backgammon, chess, and go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasing. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as the evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last gochampion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism.” and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white gostones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language, itself. 1904 KIEL RANCH 

CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 2/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Games-History-Oliver-Roeder/dp/1324003774 Checkers, backgammon, chess, and go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasing. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as the evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last gochampion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism.” and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white gostones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language, itself. 1910 CLARK COUNTY

CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 3/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Games-History-Oliver-Roeder/dp/1324003774 Checkers, backgammon, chess, and go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasing. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as the evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last gochampion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism.” and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white gostones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language, itself. 1940 

CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 4/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Games-History-Oliver-Roeder/dp/1324003774 Checkers, backgammon, chess, and go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasing. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as the evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last gochampion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism.” and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white gostones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language, itself. 1945

The rumors are true… Cynthia Erivo is on the show this week!! Cynthia talks to Drew about living like a monk to prepare for Wicked, manifesting, Capricorn lore, competitive Scrabble, running marathons before Broadway shows, rappelling into caves, and so much more.  Cynthia IG: https://www.instagram.com/cynthiaerivo/?hl=en Cynthia Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cynthiaerivo?lang=en Follow The Comment Section on IG! https://www.instagram.com/thecommentsection/?hl=en eBay is the place for pre-loved and vintage fashion.This episode is brought to you by Sol de Janeiro and the NEW Body Badalada Lotion. Visit soldejaneiro.com today to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jase admits he only learns Scrabble-legal words, and Zach shares a wild story about Phil's Navy SEAL bodyguard making a drunk guy disappear in seconds. The guys dive deep into what it means for Jesus to make all things new rather than making new things, and unpack how believers live with one foot in the old world and one in the new creation. In this episode: John 8; Revelation 21, verse 5; John 3, verse 27; Matthew 5–6; Mark 2, verses 19-22; Colossians 3, verse 10; 2 Corinthians 4, verse 16; Ephesians 1, verse 10 “Unashamed” Episode 1101 is sponsored by: Season 5 of The Chosen comes to Prime Video on June 15th! Watch the incredible story of one unforgettable night that changed the world forever. Get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas when you download the FREE Upside App and use promo code UNASHAMED! https://tomorrowclubs.org/30camps — Join this disciple-making movement by sponsoring 30 Tomorrow Club kids for just $30 a month! XXXXX NOT YET NOW LINKS XXXXXX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever thought a tombstone could kill you? Or leave behind a fudge recipe? This week, we're strolling straight into the graveyard, uncovering the spookiest, weirdest, and most legendary tombstones from around the world. From a cursed grave that may have strangled its victims from beyond the grave, to a Scrabble board headstone, and a bronze memorial turned fertility statue that's become… disturbingly popular. We're talking about how death, folklore, and family tributes collide in the creepiest (and sometimes surprisingly touching) ways. Plus - a graveyard story from a listener that comes with photo evidence!!! Watch the video version here. Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at twogirlsoneghostpodcast@gmail.com New Episodes are released every Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us!  If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you're looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices