Minecraft! Minecraft! Minecraft!
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. ♪♪♪

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. This is Stuff You Should Know in Way Over Our Heads Edition. The Help Parents Understand What Their Child Is Doing in Their Room All Day Edition. I hope so. But I suspect that more than just parents are going to listen to this. And I've never been more nervous about what a group of eight-year-olds thinks of me than I am right now.

Because I know too much about Minecraft. Like, I can go way too deep in it. But I also feel very clearly I don't know enough to not get hate mail for misspeaking. Yeah. I would maybe not dig too deep on this one. Because the deeper you go, the more you risk.

Oh, yeah. For sure. But one of the key things about Minecraft is like, it's nothing but rabbit holes. You look up one thing and all of a sudden that leads to 10 other things. And those 10 other things lead to 20 other things each.

And it's so fascinating how complex and complicated this whole thing is, especially when you understand the actual mechanics of how these worlds are built, how they originate, how simple it is. It's just, I love it. I love Minecraft a lot. If I didn't get addicted to things that I like, I would probably start playing Minecraft, but I know that that would ruin my life.

Well, I'm glad you're addicted to podcasting with me. I totally am, man. I can't get enough of it. Yeah, I mean, if that wasn't clear, all that we just said, like, this is officially a COA. Like, this will be a broad overview of a very, very, very dense game that neither one of us play. So we're going to get stuff wrong. We're not going to dive into things you want us to dive into. So...

Just prepare to be disappointed. Yeah, like, I can't believe you didn't mention blank. Like, just save it. And thanks to Ruby. We got a little help. Yeah. Sent some questions last night that I guess, you know, we'll pepper in it if they apply. For sure. Yeah. There was a few things that I just couldn't nail down. And I was like, I'll bet Ruby knows this. And sure enough, she did. Yeah. Well, maybe. I mean, she doesn't really play anymore. She played...

I'm kind of glad about this. Minecraft is a wonderful game, and we'll go over the benefits of it because there are many compared to most video games. But it's also a game, and we'll go over the pitfalls,

Uh, it's also a game that can really get under your skin as a kid and, and as an adult, I guess. Uh, but what, it's not great if you're a kid and you have other things like schooling to do. Uh, if you have a kid that's super, super, super, super into it and she never got that into it. She really enjoyed it, but she's the kind of kid if like,

You take it away or if it goes away for a minute, she's like, what? All right, I'll just do something else, which is good. She's not going to give you the satisfaction of punishing. Maybe. I don't know. Honestly, I think she just forgets. Oh, cool. Because she was all into the Roblox game, which is a whole other kind of game.

Uh, and like really into it. And as a punishment for something, we, we wiped it off our iPad along with everything else, except for music. Like, were you yelling when you did it? No, but we just cleaned the iPad free of everything except for podcast and music. And it's like the next day she was like, Oh, all right, whatever.

That reminds me, do you remember Dr. Katz, the 90s cartoon with the squiggly lines? Of course, I loved Katz. And Dom Herrera was a regular on that. Oh, man. He was a bit. Yeah, he is great. He was talking about how cats just never give you the satisfaction of like no matter what you do to them, they're not going to let on that you've bothered them. So like he gave the example of throwing a cat through the air and the cat would be like, thanks, my man. I wanted to go this way anyway. Right.

Well, Ruby's so into cats, too, so maybe that's it. Yeah, for sure. Like she says she's part cat. There you go. I think that's what it is. Maybe so. That's fine. Yeah, for sure. So I think we should give a little bit of background on Minecraft for people who don't know what Minecraft is. Surely, I mean, at the very least, most people walking around know that it's a very, very, very popular video game, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think so. And we'll get into the history, but at its base, it is a

You know, if you look at it, it goes counter to a lot of like the way it got popular is just almost astounding in some ways. It goes counter to most video games these days, which try to make things very, very real looking. And Minecraft is very blocky and pixelated and old school. And it's sort of like an interactive Lego game. It's called the sandbox game where you can just go around and interact.

and build things, you mine things to craft with.

Yeah. I mean, that's the point. And there's plenty of things to do. Like, it's not like there's like nothing happens. Yeah, sure. Like, like you can, because there are so few rules, because there's no real point to it. There's not like a game that you like want to win or conquer or anything like that. Like it's essentially up to the limits of your imagination, what you do in this amazing blocky world. Yeah.

Yeah. And despite those blocks, despite the fact that there is no real plot, it is the best selling PC game of all time. Second to Tetris as the biggest video game. And Tetris, by the way, that's coming. We need to do. That's got a great story to it. OK, so we need to do one of those. But yeah, it's one of the all time giants. And it was created by a.

Not very good dude named Marcus with a K, person of Sweden, a.k.a. Notch. Yeah. And he was a coder from way back. Like he taught himself on a Commodore 128, which came out in 1985. Not quite sure how old he was when he was working on it. But just suffice to say, like, that's like you really had to understand code to code with one of those things. Right. Mm hmm.

So he was like a game developer, a coder from the outset, essentially. And he got a couple jobs at some of the big game companies in Sweden. And he was working at one of them. I think it was King.com when he was inspired to kind of create his own game. And he was playing a game called Infiniminer. Right? Am I saying that right? Like Infinity Miner, but without the T part? Yeah.

Okay. And essentially you mine resources and you build stuff with these blocks that you mine. It's a mining game, essentially. Sounds very familiar. And he's not like shy about saying like, this was a copy, a spoof basically of Infiniminer, but it was also inspired by some other games like one called Dwarf Fortress.

which is really simple, but all of the characters involved and all of the non-player characters kind of have their own drive and decisions. So a lot of random stuff can happen in there. And then also Roller Coaster Tycoon, where you could just build your own roller coasters. So if you put all those three things together, you have kind of the rough outlines of Minecraft, which he really started releasing, I think, in 2009. Yeah, and I went down...

a 20 second rabbit hole of, because once I looked up Infiniminer and I was like, wait a minute, did he just like literally kind of steal that game? And that is a rabbit hole that I was loathe to go down because I found myself on Reddit and it's just like, it's very contentious of people who are like, yeah, he totally stole that game and ripped it off. And people are like,

No, he didn't. He was inspired by it. So I'm not wading into that argument. You can make up your own mind about that. Right. But yeah, however, however it came out.

He released it in 2009 and people just dug on it very, very quickly. Um, I think, uh, that was the alpha version. Yeah. The beta version main release. No, the, the, and he was like, he just put the word out there. And, uh, I think he actually started charging people $13 for just to play the alpha version, but he was also getting lots of feedback and like blogging about it and everything. The whole thing was this side gig. Um,

Um, and, but little by little, it kind of moved his main gig, like off to the side itself. And then until it was like, uh, I can actually support myself with Minecraft. I'm quitting my day job. Yeah. Which, uh, finally in 2010, he founded, uh, the company Swedish for gadget. It's Mojang, M O J A N G. Almost a G, uh, with a couple of coworkers, a name. And here's where I don't know whether to say Jacob or Yakub.

It's not Jacob or Jacob. It's Jacob. It's Papioma? No, it really is Jacob. What was wrong with Papioma? I didn't read that email closely enough. It's Papaloma. Oh. And I knew that, and I heard you saying it, but I was just like, I guess he knows something I don't know because that was such a wild stab. I just figured you were ahead of me. You just found it so enchanting. Yeah.

Anyway, you said it is Jakob. I forgot already. Jakob. Jakob. Jakob Porcer and Carl Manna, M-A-N-N-E-H. They hired some people. They had a gaming company all of a sudden. And the beta version came out.

Not too long after, and they went over a six-month period at the beginning of 2011 to July of that year. They went from a million players to 10 million in that short time, officially launching in November 2011 at MineCon, which was still an ongoing event. I think they do it online now, but for a while it was a live event in Vegas called Minecraft Live.

Yeah, I think they held the 2015 one in London and it set the record for the largest attendance of any convention in the history of humanity, I think. It's big stuff, everybody. It's huge. I mean, it is enormous. I didn't see any statistics on like what percentage of the world plays it.

But I did see that at any point in time, there's as many as like 30, 40, 50 million people playing it at the same time. Not necessarily all together because as we'll see, there's different ways to play it by yourself or with other people. But if you just were able to zoom out and look at what everybody in the world's doing, 30 million of them would be playing Minecraft at that moment. Yeah.

Oh, boy. So starting in 2011, there was a man named or and still is named Jens Jeb Bergenston as lead designer. Watched a few interviews with this guy. Is it pronounced Jens?

It's definitely Jens, but it's also Jeb and not Yeb. It's getting very confusing. Notch stayed on the Minecraft team, but was basically sort of letting Jens run the show, it seems like. As far as being in the weeds, he was developing other games. Notch was. And, you know, kind of living the high life because he got very wealthy very quick.

Yeah. One of the first things he did was buy himself a fedora, which became kind of like a trademark look for him. Sure. And he started just basically joined the international party set. It was like, how much money does it cost to get in here? They're like, you've got enough. Come on in. So that's how he split. So we go mine it. Right. So he kind of got – I got the impression that he was –

not just distracted by this newfound wealth and all the stuff he could do with it, but that he was not really interested in seeing a game becoming a massive, globally dominating blockbuster and all the work that takes and coordination and all that. He was more interested in developing games. So he stepped away, like you said, and handed it over to Jeb. And then when Microsoft came a-calling in 2014, apparently Notch tweeted,

Who does anybody want to buy my share of Mojang because I'm ready to move on with my life? Apparently, like all these companies were like, yeah, we totally will. And that supposedly set up that Microsoft deal for two and a half billion. And at that point, he's like, I'm completely gone now. Yeah, Forbes had him as of like last week at about a one point two billion dollar net worth.

Uh, and that would seems pretty reliable. Not like the, the stupid celebrity net worth. Right. Not too shabby for somebody who wears a fedora in public. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and he stayed sort of associated with the game and the company for a long time, even after the Microsoft purchase. Well, not that long, about five years-ish, when they basically stopped referencing him on the loading page in 2019, stopped inviting him to their Minecraft parties, like their 10th anniversary celebration. Yeah, he turned into Hooper Humperdinck.

Yeah, basically, he started letting everyone know his thoughts about QAnon and far right wing politics and homophobic things and transphobic things and sexist and misogynist things. It was sort of a greatest hits of that kind of guy. And he went public with all of it and issued some pretty lame apologies for some of it. But yeah, so that's what happened. And that's who he is.

Yeah. So Minecraft just kept going on without him. And from what I can tell, like when Jeb took over, is he still the lead game designer, like essentially the showrunner for Minecraft? I think so, but I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure he is. Like even if he stopped like a couple of years ago, that game really flourished under his leadership.

Like oversight, like he, he's really creative also really. And I think Notch was willing to do this too, but Jeb was, or is really willing to be like, Hey, some player, some random person somewhere came up with this amazing invention. We're going to actually release it as a update or add on or something to the game. Like there, and it's just, it's a really creative flourishing game still because of that guy, from what I can tell.

Yeah, totally. So there are three modes. And this is the regular unmodded version, because as you'll learn, you can modify it in all kinds of, you know, creative kind of crazy ways or vanilla mode. But if you're playing just that regular version that my daughter plays on the PlayStation, you can play in survival mode, hardcore mode or creative mode.

Right. So survival mode is like the kind of like the where the game part comes in, like you can actually die. So you're doing all of the interesting stuff that you do in Minecraft that we'll, you know, talk about more extensively. But there's zombies attacking you or there's creepers coming up and blowing themselves up and hurting you or you can drown underwater, fall off a cliff.

And when that happens, all of the stuff that you've gathered that make up what's called your inventory, all the things you can use to make other stuff, all the stuff you've made out of other things already that you want to use to like extend your life or jump higher or whatever, you lose all that. It actually stays in the location that you died at in Minecraft world. But you are teleported back to either where you started the game or your bed if you've made yourself a bed.

And I saw that if you can get there within five, like our reality minutes, five minutes in our reality, you can go pick up your stuff again. But it can be very hard to do if you're really far away from your bed. That's right. And what happens is you start basically with nothing.

If you're a parent and you've wandered through and it looks like, what is that blocky pixelated thing like punching everything for? That's the gameplay. You start with nothing and you basically go at the very beginning and you punch a tree to get some wood. And what you're doing is, you know, you're getting resources to build stuff. So you just keep punching and digging things and finding new things and then transforming them into things.

I mean, all kinds of things from, you know, farms to animals to buildings and oceans and rivers. And, you know, you're building you're literally building your world as you go in all the modes. From what I can tell, you got hardcore mode is next. But you if you if you die like the game is over.

Which is kind of a bummer, I guess. Yeah, because I mean, like you can get really far and develop a lot of stuff. So when you're walking around like punching stuff, like punching a tree, you're punching a tree to get wood. And when you collect some wood, you can actually turn it into say lumber. And if you combine that lumber with something else you've gotten, I don't remember why, I think wool from a sheep.

Sure. You put it together, you build yourself a bed. It's one of the first things you're supposed to do. You're supposed to build a shelter and make a bed in your shelter. And the reason why you want to make a bed is because if you die in survival mode, you basically, it's called respawning. You wake up, you're teleported back in your bed to start over.

The problem is all of that stuff that you've accumulated, all the lumber and all the wool and all the things that you can make by combining those things, they make up what's called your inventory. And your inventory can get pretty extensive the longer you stay alive and play and do stuff in the Minecraft world, and you lose all that stuff.

It's gone. It's actually physically in the Minecraft world where you died. And if you could make it over there in time after you respawn, you could pick that stuff up. But it can be really hard if you're really far away. And then with hardcore mode, like all that's just gone forever. You have to start the game over completely. And the reason that I know that that's true is because Ruby answered that question. Yeah.

That was actually the funniest answer because you said, hey, if you die in hardcore mode, it's like, is that it? Is everything gone that you've ever built? And she said, yeah, it's hardcore, Josh. She doesn't play that mode, though. She plays the third mode almost exclusively, I think, when she plays, which is creative mode. And this is the super cute, fun one that when you see your seven- and eight-year-old daughter playing, you're like, this is the greatest game ever because –

I sat down with her one day and watched, and she's just like, oh, look, this is my farm, and this is my garden, and these are my sheep, and this is my animal pen, and this is my house, and look, I've got a pool on the top floor, and I've got a deck, and it's just really creative and super sweet and fun. You can fly in creative mode. Like, if you want to get up to the top of your thing, you can fly up there. And the best thing is you can't be harmed. There's no zombie coming to kill you. No.

Yeah, you just do fun stuff. Like you said, farm. And it's not like, oh, I built a farm and now this farm's running. Like you build the farm and then you have to operate the farm to keep it going. It's just amazing and neat, all the stuff that you can do in this game. It's just crazy. And we'll talk about some of just the mind-boggling stuff that people make.

But one of the cool things about it is you can build this world by yourself or you can work with others, play with others. You have people in your house using a local area network or there's Minecraft servers to where you're building a world together. And like other people can come in and walk around your world and hang out with you and sometimes mess with you in your world too.

Because it's a giant shared world. Whereas there's also another version, which I take it Ruby was playing, where that is like, that's your world. Nobody else can come in because it's just on that one computer. It's not being shared with the rest of the world. Yeah. And we just didn't know enough about it and said, that's the only version you can play. Because the last thing I wanted was some, you know. Mm-hmm.

You know. I know. I don't want her meeting those people. So I'm sure there's a lot of fun that can be had on those, you know, multiplayer, private server games. I'm sure it's great in most ways. Yeah. There are some very cool versions of that. There's one called Pixel Minecraft where they have recreated the gameplay of Pokemon within the Minecraft world, which is super cool. Yeah. And some of these are like full-on companies. Olivia found this

Boy, God bless Livia for the breadth of things that she helps us with. Yeah, for sure. It's like, how about philosophy and then Minecraft? Right. But there's one called Hypixel, which has like 40 developers on staff and got bought themselves by Riot Games, one of the big companies in 2020. And, you know, these are all just...

modifying this game that was so popular already. It's really, really kind of nuts. Yeah. I would say a cottage industry has grown up around it. About like 50 different cottage industries have grown up around it with a bunch of different companies in each. That Hypixel, to give you an example, they make like games you can play in the Minecraft world. Yeah.

So like there's one called Skyblock where you start out on just a little patch of ground floating in the sky with a single tree and a couple of resources. And you have to build your way out of that. You have to expand it with way more limited resources than you would get normally. There's one called Bed Wars where your point is to like destroy your friend's bed.

So that they can't respawn in their bed again. They have to go back to where they started the game. Yeah, it's fun stuff. But that's on their server. And they modified Minecraft. And the makers of Minecraft, Mojang, don't sue those people. Because you put it all together and it's almost like the Wikipedia of games. Where the entire world has collaborated on making this amazing game that is Minecraft. Yeah.

I wonder if because he so heavily borrowed, let's say, from Infinity Miner or Infiniminer, he was like, yeah, maybe I'll just sit back and be super wealthy and not worry about these people that are doing this stuff. Maybe. But also the mind boggling thing is now Microsoft owns it and they don't sue other people who create mods. Yeah, well, good point. It's nuts. There's something weird going on here, man. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll be right back to talk about who the heck is playing this game and more about the world right after this. So.

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So there's a lot of video games where you pay monthly subscription fees. Sometimes you'll buy the game, but then also subscribe monthly to get extra stuff or whatever. Sure. New additions of the game, things like that. But Minecraft has always been pretty great in that you buy the game and that's it. You own the game. The game is updated for free. The updates just roll out. A lot of games do that as well. It's not the only one. But it was...

Right.

Um, so there are other, there's like in-game purchases and add-ons and stuff you can buy. Um, I think the big hubbub that I picked up on is that, um, a SpongeBob bikini bottom biome is coming along, I think in August. Yeah.

So you can play as SpongeBob. Yeah, it looks like it's going to be pretty cool. There's other things called textures, which take the very standard recognizable Minecraft look

and do all sorts of things to it. Some make it way smoother. Some add different kinds of shading. There's one called pastel that changes the color palette and makes it much pinker and happier. There's just a ton of stuff. You can get an add-on that like is a, it just, it's a mansion. Like you don't have to build it yourself. It's just now you can buy a mansion rather than build it. It seems counterintuitive or counterintuitive.

against the point, I guess. But I'm sure some kids are like, I just want to buy the mansion and farm instead. I don't want to waste my time building my mansion. You're rabbit holing. Sorry. But yes, my point is there's, there are stuff you can buy, but a lot of that stuff is free too. A lot of the mods are free. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to get great statistics on who's playing it, but Livia did found a survey from, geez, like,

seven years ago from Australia, uh, where 50 and you know, I bet it's pretty indicative of, of who's playing worldwide. Uh, 54% of boys ages three to 12 were playing at a 32% of girls. Um, all of them raised on Foster's beer. Yeah.

And early on it started out as more sort of young adult men or older teenagers, but it has since crept down in age, and I'm sure people of all ages still play it. But it's a game that a four-year-old can kind of start playing if they're good with their fingies. There are two different default players from the early years. Steve, well, he was the only default player in the early years, and then in 2014 they added Alex,

They added a man and a woman, and then they rolled out seven more in 2022 with different outfits and different skin tones. But you can skin your character. You can create the stuff yourself. And I believe you can probably buy stuff and get skins that other people have created to make your player look more like you want them to look. Yeah, there's more like you even like there's clowns, Japanese demons, scarecrows.

Um, there's a lot of cool skins out there for sure. You just stopped yourself. I know. Yes, I did. Um, so I guess we should talk about the fact that, and this is another really cool part of it. When you, when you start out, you know, I said, you start out like, and you just punch that tree, uh,

You start out with one chunk of landscape that is a 16 by 16 block square block. And once you reach those edges, you start creating like you build as you go and it's procedurally generated as you go. And eventually, if you're asking, like, is there even a limit? Yes. Sixty million blocks square.

per side, which is seven times larger than the Earth's surface. Yeah. If you consider a block square kilometer of Earth, it's about half the size of Neptune and twice the size of Earth. Isn't that nuts?

Yeah. That's just one world. So I read this amazing post by a guy named Alan Zucconi called The World Generation of Minecraft. I'm going to just dance just along the top of it. But if you're at all interested in how the actual world is generated, and it's quite fascinating, go read that. But essentially what they start with is what's called a seed. It's 64 bits of information.

right, which is nothing. That's so small. But just following a couple of algorithmic rules, the whole world generates from there. And because these 64 bits are, you know, slightly different in each seed, there's something like 18.4 quintillion possible worlds that can develop from a seed. That's how many seeds are possible out there, right? Yeah.

Well, tell them what a seed is. So a seed is that 64 bits that create the world. And when you have a game like Ruby's game where she bought that game, she bought a seed. Well, I bought it. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

Her dad bought it for her. And so if she started over, when she started the game, every time that same world is going to be built because it's the same information following the same rules, so it's going to build the same world. But if she went and bought another one, the seed that it grew from would create a totally different world. And it follows these really simple rules, like if the temperature is this and the altitude is this, this is the biome it's going to create, like a desert, right?

or a tundra, or a forest, or something like that. And so if you've created a forest biome now in this spot, that means it's going to have trees and certain kinds of animals running around. If it's underwater, what's the water temperature? And depending on the water temperature, there's going to be different animals in that biome too. And it's just following like if-then rules that create a world from 64 bits. It's

It's nuts what they've done. And the other thing about it, too, is people play this so much that they'll actually go out and buy another copy because they know that world so well. Can you imagine? Can't you just start over? You can, but it's going to be the same world. That's what I'm saying. Oh, no. I mean, as a different character or something.

I mean, yeah, you could start over, but you're going to be exploring the same world that you did, you know, before. You could buy another copy and it's going to be a totally different world. Oh, I thought if you started over as a new, like if I logged in as me in her game, I could just start as whatever I wanted. No, because it's the same seed. Yeah, you could be a different character, skin it or whatever. I mean, start from scratch. Yeah, the world will still be the same because it's growing from the same seed.

I should probably caveat this that this is Alan Zucconi talking. I'm just amplifying what he's saying.

Well, let's talk about those biomes. There are 64 biome types, 53 in the overworld, which is where, you know, that's sort of the main gameplay area. And then they have a couple of other areas, the nether, which was added in 2010, which is pretty scary, like hellish place. And then the end, which is that was in 2011. That's a very, very dark place.

Um, very bleak place, very bleak landscape. It's kind of Metroid-y. Yeah, you can, you can actually win that game, uh, if you defeat the Ender Dragon. But I believe there are 53, um, biomes in the overworld, um, five in the nether, five in the end, and then one, uh,

That I didn't completely understand. So I'm not even going to get into it, but it gets really, really detailed. Like you said, you know, if you go to the ocean and the water temperature to this, like there are nine oceans, you can do like warm water, ocean, frozen ocean, cold water, ocean. It just, and you know, the different forests that you can drill down very, very specifically within those 64 biomes, which is like only lends to the creativity. I think kids can just, not only are they like,

being creative, but they're learning something about these biomes. For sure. You know, maybe not the most detailed stuff, but they know that, hey, in this kind of biome, these are the plants and trees that you'll have. Right. There's kids walking around that are like, yeah, if you go under the ocean, you'll find abandoned cities that the ancient builders created. That's what they're learning, Chuck.

Uh, mobile entities is another thing, uh, or mobs. Um, these are like the animals and the monsters and stuff. Um, when they're killed, they can drop things that you can pick up. Uh, sometimes you can tame them. Um, they, if you get updates, these mobs expand, I think they're more than 75 now, but the things I've seen, uh, walking through the room are like sheep,

and pigs and things like that. Those were the first animals kind of created that you can use, that you can, you know, get wool from them. If you want to make that bed, you're going to have to get that wool from that sheep.

Right. So, and you talked about different biomes having different animals. And one of the reasons to go to the biomes is not just to explore new cool things, but you can get different things out of different mobs, right? So, if you went to a warm water ocean, you would find pufferfish. And if you get a pufferfish and you combine it with something else, I don't remember, you can create a potion that will let you breathe underwater. So, you can walk around and explore underwater. Right.

So everything that you encounter that's a mob, which is essentially another term for a non-player character, you can get something from and you can combine it with other stuff that you got from other mobs or from punching a tree or from digging up ore with your pickaxe to create new things to do new stuff with. That's what people are doing when they're playing Minecraft. Yeah.

One of the other things that you can find are zombies. It's a very big part of the game. They are kind of like most zombies. They're pretty easy to take care of and defeat. There are different variations of zombies. Creepers are kind of a fun mob because creepers were a mistake. I believe that... What's the guy's name again? Marcus Person? Yeah. He was trying to make a pig, but he coded it wrong and it stretched out tall instead of wide.

And he thought it looked creepy. He liked it. And so Creepers became a very sort of popular monster in the game because he just said, I love that mistake. Let's leave it. And they're considered hostile mobs, right? Because they'll attack you. Yeah, yeah. But they do that by blowing up, I think we said earlier. Yeah. There's also something called Endermen, which is kind of a play on Slenderman. And there are these creepy entities that may or may not attack you depending on whether you look at them or not.

So there's like a, there's definitely gameplay to this, right? Like there's like, you can go off and like defeat these things and fight them and protect villages and stuff like that. Um, but there's also like, you can also just farm and once in a while you have to defend your farm against some zombies or something. Yeah. Uh, you'll also come up on vid, uh, villagers, uh,

And villages where they live and these, you know, look like they don't look like they look like humans, I guess, or their version of humans. Right. And you can get things from them. You can trade with them. They have different jobs. You can change their job.

If you want to, if you need like food or something, you can make them unemployed by destroying their job and then giving them a new job. Then all of a sudden you got somebody giving you food. Right, exactly. And it's just crazy that like people have village farms essentially where they're breeding villagers to make them stuff that they want.

It can get really, really complicated really fast, but in the most basic version, you're just trading with the villagers. You go get emeralds and you come bring them to the villagers and they give you food or wool or something like that. - Yeah, and you learn where to look for different things that you need. Like if you want coal, you can dig down not too deeply for coal. If you want this thing called red, or if you want like diamonds, you gotta dig really, really deep to find the diamonds, just like the real world.

And then Livia pointed out this thing called Redstone, which was, I believe it was an update to the alpha. So it's been around basically from the beginning, but it has a lot of different kinds of functions, but it mainly functions like electrical wire. So you can build an

automate things. Yeah, it makes things go, empowers them, right? Like everything from pistons to doors opening to whatever. People make crazy machines using redstone. There's a kid who made a functioning calculator by arranging redstone and other items in a certain way. He made a calculator in

And it's kind of one of those things you have to see to really understand how crazy that is. But that's really, it's neat. And I think it'd be, I don't know how well the game would work at all if there wasn't such a thing as redstone. Or if, you know, you could just make things work just by pressing them. Right. Rather than having to go mine redstone and using it to make the specific thing work the specific way. That's the whole point though, you know. That's how detailed and involved it is because of choices like that in the development. Yeah.

Totally. Should we take our second break? Sure. All right. We'll take that break and we'll talk about how this is sort of taken over YouTube as well. Right after this.

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All you have to do is sign up for their newsletter. Plus, you'll get free shipping, free bike lock, and a pump with your first purchase. So visit GuardianBikes.com to take advantage of these deals and secure your holiday gifts today. Happy riding. Okay, Chuck, so you mentioned YouTube, and that is basically the official outlet for Minecraft. That's where Minecraft pours out into the rest of the world.

Yeah, you know, we'll go over some of the ways YouTube is utilized. It's very, very, I mean, YouTube is full, full, full of Minecraft stuff. But one of the things that sort of alarmed me and kind of disappointed me with this and Roblox is that kids will just sit around watching people play this game on YouTube. Sometimes it's like to learn how to do things, but

With Ruby and her friends, I will see them just sitting around and watching it instead of playing it. And I'm always like, as a parent, I'm like, oh, God, can you, you know, can you play the game and like get involved? And, you know, but try to pick my battles and just limit it, you know? Well, they've really turned things around on their head. If you're like, man, can you please play the video game?

Seriously. It used to be, can you go outside? Now it's like, can you play the video game rather than watch other people play? Yeah, that's a good point. That's how far we've slipped. I get it though. It's like essentially she's watching an unscripted

TV show or movie or something like that. And there are people that do that. There's something called Survival Multiplayer Channels. There's one called Dream SMP. I think they disbanded. But essentially, they had loosely scripted story arcs that they acted out in Minecraft world as like kind of fictionalized versions of themselves, like our Stuff You Should Know TV show. And there were just...

Plots that that took place and people would watch YouTube videos of these essentially shows created in Minecraft. Yeah, there's a one guy named PewDiePie P E W D I E P I E. It's got 111 million subs.

And is a very, very, very wealthy man. Yeah, he was one of the first genuine YouTube stars. I think he was as big as it got for a while. Good for him. I'm not knocking it, by the way. He was toppled by, I think, a Bollywood record label. There was a competition. Like a four-year-old from Taiwan. Right, exactly. Who opened Minecraft Lego gift sets. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, so PewDiePie got very, very wealthy just essentially from starting out from playing Minecraft videos. And you said people watch people playing Minecraft. They'll watch speed runs, see how fast they can go. There's parody music videos set in the Minecraft world. Like, I think it's one of those things where like you can't get enough Minecraft once it gets under your skin to where if you're like, I don't feel like playing today, I'm going to watch somebody else play and that will satisfy that itch.

Yeah. And you know what? Now that I've said that, save your emails, everyone, because yes, at home, I used to sit around and watch my friends play adventure when they played and it was their turn. And I would hover over the shoulders of my friends at arcades and watch them play the games. So we did the exact same thing and I take it all back. Yeah, but that's a little different because you're sitting there like willing your friend to hurry up and die so it can be your turn.

You know, that's it's a little different. Yeah. You're you're up next. That's the reason. And what else are you going to do? You know, you're on your eighth Orange Julius. You're not going to go get another one of those. So you might as well stand around and watch. Yeah. And your quarter sitting there flat on the on the screen of the arcade game. So you're definitely next. Oh, man. Those were the days. What else? You want to talk about the lore at all or move on?

Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's kind of cool in that if you have a world like this, you're going to, you're going to get some stuff like fan fiction, even though technically Alex and Steve are sort of, uh, until they release the other ones were the only two kind of characters. Um, so it's, you know, it's a little weird to have fan fiction about these two blocky people that really have, that you know, nothing about personality wise. Sure. I guess that's the point of fan fiction. Um, they've also come up with this stuff.

This sort of like fan fiction, you know, where you talked about the ancient builders, like they created this backstory sort of of the ancient ones who created the original structures in the game. And like, where did they come from? So like the creativity is really off the charts, you know? Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about it is we'll see like one of the big benefits of it for kids, but also for anybody, is it?

It really gets your imagination and creativity going along with some other stuff, too. What about Hero Brian? Hero Brian is a legendary character. From what I saw, Notch said unequivocally that Hero Brian doesn't exist in Minecraft world. There was a 4chan post from years back where somebody claimed to have encountered Steve,

But it was Steve with all white eyes. And he was a weirdo doing weird stuff following him around the Minecraft world. And that became the Legend of Herobrine, this character that supposedly is the ghost of Notch's dead brother.

Right. Not just like, I don't even have a brother. I have a half brother I've never met. So no, there's no hero, Brian. Sorry to bust that bubble. Yeah. And I believe like in mods and things, people have created that kind of stuff. But in the official Minecraft game, there never has been one, even though people swear that they've come across hero, Brian. Exactly. Yeah.

So there's a lot of ways that you can modify Minecraft yourself. Again, one of the cottage industries is creating editors to let Minecraft players modify the game to their own specifications, to let them do things like jump really high in survival mode or fly or whatever you want to do. But one of the things that people have done –

is build stuff with or without modifications. And the more, the less you modify, the more impressive your build is, is what they're called their builds. For example, one kid named atmospheric beats. This is incredible. Who, who may or may not be Travis Hicks. I found a YouTube video and a Reddit post. Who's that? I can't, I can't imagine there's too many people running around making one-to-one scale models of Kansas city in Minecraft. And,

Either way, there is a one-to-one scale model of Kansas City. Every building, every tree, every street, and you can go inside every building. It's just completely true to life. In Minecraft, somebody built that.

I want that for Atlanta because I would have fun running around there. Well, there's a whole group called Build the Earth where people around the world are creating like faithful to life. Yeah. Creations of buildings. The point is to recreate every building on Earth. So you can do that. OK. Maybe one day it gets even cooler if you're like, all right.

kansas city one-to-one scale model not bad um scale model of the entire earth not pretty impressive uh there's an 18 year old this is a couple years ago so i guess he's 20-ish now a youtuber named christopher slaton um i think his real name is chris uh dacal or is it the other way it's probably the other way

I thought Slayton was the made up thing, not DeKalb. Slayton. If it was like Slaytor, maybe. Yeah, I had that reversed, but he made a model of the observable universe.

Did you see the video of this? I did. Explanation? Yeah. It wasn't like he was like, oh, I'm going to draw this in Minecraft. The kid did the physics required to create the models of the universe. I mean, like everything from like nebula to galaxies to the sun. Like you can zoom into pixels on the sun. It's just one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in my entire life. Would that be a photon?

I guess so. It'd be a one kilometer square photon. If all that wasn't cool enough, in 2020, the group Reporters Without Borders started a project called Uncensored Library. And this is amazing. In places like...

Saudi Arabia and Russia where the real news is like censored or you don't have access to these news sites. They are burying news inside the Minecraft world because you can play Minecraft there. Yeah, they write books or they create books that have these articles in them. Isn't that cool? Unbelievably cool.

There's another thing, too. I mentioned a kid who made a calculator. You can arrange these redstone, like ore, basically, and make things into logic gates. On, off, if, then, that kind of stuff. And if you arrange different logic gates together, you can create computers. And there was somebody who created a computer that plays Minecraft in Minecraft. Right?

Like you go on to Minecraft, go over to that computer and play Minecraft on that computer that exists only in Minecraft. I just want to make sure it's totally clear what I'm saying here. And it actually works. It's not some, it's not a drawing. It's like it's operating on logic gates that they created with arrangements of redstone ore.

So let's talk about this because I think it's pretty clear, Chuck, that there are a lot of benefits to playing this. Like, yes, it would be really easy for a kid to become addicted and that really can happen. And I've seen that that actually is an actual thing and you have to look out for it. But there's also some real benefits to this, to playing this, especially as a kid. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you're a parent, keep an eye on your kid, monitor their their how

how long they're playing this game because it is great and we're going to talk about the benefits for sure but like if they don't want to do anything but minecraft and if it seems like

they're never satisfied with the amount that they're playing and they're lying about their playing. And if they don't have it, they're, you know, experiencing, you know, the withdrawal symptoms of anything else. And they're grumpy and irritated or depressed, like seriously get involved because it's a real danger. The benefits, you know, we've been talking about how creative it is. It's,

not only is it going to encourage you to just use your creative brain, but you're problem solving. You're using math. You're working with other people like teamwork, potentially learning to code like there. This is the one game where,

I believe I asked Hodgman because I knew his son played and I was like, hey, is this Minecraft thing? And he was like, that's kind of the one game that it's okay for kids to start playing because it's got like plenty of good benefits. Yeah. And even more esoteric stuff, like managing resources. Like it's not like the kids like, oh, I'm learning to manage resources. This is great. Just by virtue of playing Minecraft, you have to learn to manage resources. You have to keep up with your sheep and make sure that they're breeding so that you can get enough birds.

wool. Like, like you have to know what to use, where, where to go get it and then how to use it smartly so that you can get the most out of it. Like that's a huge part of playing Minecraft and that's a great thing to learn. It also teaches kids to like focus on a goal.

You know, well, you want to raise some sheep. I know I keep going to that well, but it's a good one. You have to go, you have to farm the food to feed the sheep and then you have to shear the sheep to get the wool. And then you use the wool to do God knows what with. And you have a goal and it's not just that one goal. That goal is made up of a series of sub goals too. And that's a great thing to learn early on.

Yeah. And, you know, your kids aren't coming to you and asking you how to do it unless you happen to be a parent that really knew Minecraft, because I'm sure, you know, that exists now. It's been around long enough. But generally, like your kids probably in the other room figuring this stuff out. Maybe they're asking friends for help. Maybe they're not. They're they're learning as they go and making like.

what they think are like smart decisions to do better in the game in real time. My advice to a parent is like, it's really easy just to sort of walk by anytime your kid is doing this with zero interest, but just maybe once or twice, sit down and ask them to tell you about their world for,

15 minutes. Just like sit there with them while they play for like 15 minutes and say, show me your world. I did that a couple of times. And it's incredible to see. I mean, she was like five or six at the time. Oh, wow. To see a kid really like I was like, oh, my God. And you figured out that and you figure out you need to do that to get that. And to them, there's like, yeah, that's duh. That's the game. But I'm over here going like, this is incredible. Like you're you're learning. Like, keep at it. That is cool.

And I'm glad she stopped playing it at the same time. There you go.

I feel like we would be grossly remiss if we didn't give a shout out to our little friend from the Medford show. Yeah, that's right. Who requested this. I don't remember his name and I'm very sorry for that. But there was a kid, a guy, a young dude at the Medford show recently, I think in May, who during QA asked us to do an episode on Minecraft. And I think the whole thing started with him asking us about mobs and we're like, what is a mob?

Yeah, yeah. And that kind of kicked the whole thing off. So that's why we're where we are right now. That's right. And if you hear this, kid and parent, and you want us to set the record straight and get that name on the air, like email us and we'll include that in a future correction. For sure. And speaking of email, I think, Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail.

Yeah, this is about salsa. We got a lot of good salsa emails. People love salsa. Because people like to say salsa. Saying and eating. Boy, did you see the one woman who sent in the black salsa from that restaurant in Chicago? No, I didn't see that.

It looked good. I think it was the last couple of days. She posted a picture and it's like charred peppers, basically. Nice. Boy, did it look good. Hey, guys. Great job on the recent episode on salsa. I was born and raised in northwestern Mexico. Being Mexican, I was very interested on how you guys would tackle this. Josh got it right about the fact that salsa is a condiment, mostly. But he did get it wrong that it is, in fact, served at most restaurants in Mexico, along with tortilla chips called totopos.

Or like the tostadas, like Chuck mentioned, being broken apart. It is not an appetizer, nor do you need to order it. It's just served. And you can also use the salsa as a condiment with your food. And I saw someone else wrote in...

a Mexican woman that said a lot of times that's a good way to, to test the salsa, to test, taste test sort of the salsa, uh, or the different salsas you get to see which one you do want to use as a, Oh, I see. I gotcha. Which makes sense. Um, sorry, but the only thing that you, uh, that was innovated in the U S was to charge for something that comes free with your meal of Mexico. Yeah.

Boo, indeed. Also, guys, tortilla chips go back to the pre-Hispanic era with the Mexican word for tortilla chip. Again, Totopo coming from a Nahuatl word meaning to toast or brown.

And finally, for Chuck, pico de gallo, Mexico is any sort of mixed or chopped fruits and vegetables. Pico de gallo that he referenced in the U.S. is usually called salsa fresca. I knew that. I don't know why I didn't say it. Or salsa bandero. Bandera meaning flag. And the chilies, onion, and tomato are green, white, and red like the Mexican flag. Very nice. Great email. That's from Ricardo Llamas Vidales.

Thanks a lot, Ricardo. We appreciate that. It's nice to hear from a local expert. And if you want to be like Ricardo and set us straight on some stuff, we would love to hear that. You can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Toyota's legacy has been standing tall for generations, from pioneering hybrid technology to redefining the standards of safety and efficiency, and with each innovation, a commitment to progress. And with a legendary lineup of in-stock trucks, including the ultra-rugged new Tacoma and heavy-duty half-ton Tundra, you can experience the legacy of Toyota for yourself. Visit BuyAToyota.com, the official website for deals, to find out more. Toyota, let's go places.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Yeah!

Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.