Dice!

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Griffin McElroy (authors of the new book ‘Everybody Has A Podcast (Except You)’) for a look at why dice are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

(Alex’s podcast hosting service requires a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, so that’s why this episode’s title has 1 exclamation point)

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You): A How-to Guide from the First Family of Podcasting by Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Griffin McElroy
• The McElroy Family website, with complete links for all podcasts, videos, books, and more!
• My Brother, My Brother and Me
• The Adventure Zone
• Sawbones
• Shmanners
• Wonderful!

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• Museum of Durham History
• Wild, Wondering West Virginia: Exploring West Virginia’s Native American History (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
• Land acknowledgement by the Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati
• The Lost Tribe: Exiled from the Texas plains they once ruled, Comanches are haunted by the richness of their past (Texas Monthly)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• profile of ‘The Adventure Zone’ from The Ringer, by Jordan White
• Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics of Uncertainty by Ian Stewart
• Numberphile: “Fair Dice (Part 1)” by Brady Haran, interviewing Prof. Persi Diaconis of Stanford University
• “The Story Of Dice” by Ricky Jay (The New Yorker)
• Dictionary.com page for “dice”
• Claudius — Roman emperor (Encyclopedia Britannica)
• ‘Wonderful!’ podcast: Episode 136: Mancala on My Mind (Maximum Fun)
• Dungeons & Dragons dice decide the winner of a California election (The Sacramento Bee)
• The Dice You Never Knew You Needed (The New Yorker)
• The Mind-Boggling Challenge of Designing 120-Sided Dice (Wired)
• one Amazon.com example of 2-sided dice, made in that “interlocking letter ‘C’s” shape described on the episode
• A Roman Glass Gaming Die, Circa 2nd Century A.D. (Christie’s Auction House)
• Twenty-sided die (icosahedron) with faces inscribed with Greek letters (The Metropolitan Museum Of Art)
• 11 Casino Dice Security Measures to Keep Players From Cheating (VitalVegas.com)
• Dice Chirality (AlaricStephen.com)
• The Shape of Ancient Dice Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance (The Atlantic)

IMAGE: a set of 120-sided dice, made by The Dice Lab

IMAGE: diagram by Numberphile showing the 30 families of fair dice, as researched by Prof. Persi Diaconis and Prof. Joseph B. Keller