From poker to games played to pass the time, those 52 cards are so ubiquitous it's hard to figure just when we started using them. We go all the way back to ancient China for a possible origin of cards.

images: Cloisters Deck from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and and example of cards from today from pixabay

Show Notes:

The strange coincidence of the Instagram guy & 52 card decks

Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Cloisters Playing Cards

Atlas Obscura: Playing cards around the world and through the ages

JSTOR: an excerpt from The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards

Wikipedia: Chinese Playing Cards

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey there. Trace here. So Amy and I have a couple projects coming up over the next couple months. She's taking some classes. She's got to do homework. I've got some projects, a fiction podcast that I'm working on writing, and a novel that I'm working on editing. And we need a little more space, a little more time. So we're not stopping brain junk. Absolutely not. We love it too much to quit. But we are going to move to every two weeks instead of every week. So that means this week is an episode, and then we won't have another episode until April 2. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get your brain junk fixed. We got lots of old episodes. You can head over to YouTube for the really old episodes. I'm slowly uploading more. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to dial it back a little bit for a little while. So enjoy this episode. Yeah, we'll see you in two weeks.

Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about playing cards.

Are you a card family? Like old school? Not like games, but the traditional four suit deck.

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. Well, you know, it's funny because I grew up as a card family. Chaz did not grow up as a card family. They were a scrabble family. And I have converted him to the crazy eights and the Kings in the know, the old people card games.

[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Now, I have never played kings in the corner. My family is a rummy family. I think there's some cribbage in there, too, with the little pegs. Children were not allowed to touch that. I think it was an adult escape game because they played it out at the lake and they're like, shouldn't you guys be swimming? Grandpa's out watching go swim, so I need to learn to play that one.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, I can teach you how to play cribbage. Chaz and I play cribbage all the time. Neither of my children like to play cards, which is funny. It began and ended with us. That's it. We're done.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: Now.

It's a generational thing in my family because my grandpa was a military fella for a long time, and so it was an officer's. It's a clubby thing. They would have card night. And so that filtered down into my parents play, and we play. Chris didn't play as much, but the kids liked it when they could start playing with the grandparents, and Allie especially, can win.

[00:02:27] Speaker A: See, now, what you have to do is you get your children, because, like Beckett's person, cam likes to play cards, and so you just have to make sure. You have to be like, are you nice to my child? Do you like to play, know,...

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