The monopoly on MONOPOLY

The New Bazaar

This week, we're sharing a special episode of a podcast we think you might like. It's called Cautionary Tales, and it's made by Tim Harford and the team at Pushkin Industries. You may remember Tim from our recent episode on economic storytelling.

On his podcast, Tim draws on history and social science to vividly retell the stories of great crimes, accidents and disasters of the past - pointing out valuable lessons for us all from the dithering, death and destruction.

In this episode, Tim tells the story of Lizzie J. Magie (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter!), who should be celebrated as the inventor of what would become Monopoly - but her role in creating the smash hit board game was cynically ignored, even though she had a patent.

Discrimination has marred the careers of many inventors and shut others out from the innovation economy entirely. Could crediting forgotten figures such as Lizzie Magie help address continuing disparities in the patenting of new inventions?

You can hear more episodes of Cautionary Tales at https://link.chtbl.com/newbazaarcautionary.

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