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So, you shared the ClimateFresque workshop that you had, and that very much reminded me
that I recently listened to an episode from Shortwave, a science podcast from I think NPR,
and they were reporting on a new catan. So, catan for those...
What's the official name of catan? Something of catan, right?
Oh, dear. I mean, everyone just calls it catan. It's probably the world of or something.
Yeah, the world of catan or something. It's a board game where you strategize your resource
and expand on your territory, and I think... Who's the winner? Is it whoever gets the most
amount of territory or most amount of roads? At the end of it, when you run out of all resources,
there's a way to calculate your territory and your territory's worth, and then whoever has the most
point wins, right? Yes.
It's a strategy game. It's also a negotiation game where if you build a road here or a bridge
here, you will also help this other person expand their territory. So, you negotiate,
hey, give me some rocks and I'll build a bridge for you. That kind of thing happens in catan.
What I didn't know is that there's all sorts of flavors of catan out in the world,
much like how Monopoly has Monopoly New York, Monopoly... I don't know. What other versions
of Monopoly do they have? Monopoly... I'm not sure, yeah. There's definitely
Christmas Monopoly. Catan also has it. Catan has catan in the outer space or catan in, I don't know,
jungle or something. You're the explorer of the first person arriving to this island kind of
thing. Well, so the most recent flavor of that is climate-inspired catan where in your resources,
you have things like pollution and environmental disasters that would happen as a result of
overexpansion without negotiating with the environment. So, the consequences are also
interesting because sometimes, let's say you overbuild certain things too quickly and it
triggers the flooding event, but the flooding would impact everyone on the board, not just you,
03:05
right? And depending on how exactly that's triggered, it might actually impact the person
who didn't trigger it more than the person who triggered it. So, there's a little bit more
intricacies in the basic catan game where your incentive isn't just to expand and enrich your
territory. You need to collaborate with the other people on the board in order to achieve your
agenda and your agenda is not single. It's trying to make the most out of other conflicting factors
that you need to think about, which is very much like what they do in COP 20 whatever, right?
And I think it's interesting also that they specifically, the company specifically does
not market this as a climate change solution thing, game. They just want to add extra elements
in, extra sort of difficulties in level, instead of calling this straight up on the box saying
catan the climate disaster or something, right? They're just adding in few elements that will
complicate the problems. And these problems, because of the nature of catan as original game
being like a territory expansion game, it just also includes things like flooding, things like
chemical waste and things like other sort of that nature. And I think it's also interesting,
right, that they don't explicitly market this as a climate conscious game. I think they're very
self aware slash conscious about how that might anger certain population. But also, I think they're
just the, I think the real agenda of this game is just like, getting people used to think
and strategize in a conflicting environment where your two agendas are not necessarily aligned.
And you also have to collaborate, right? I think very few board game actually does that and very
few, like, very few real life events that is as low of a stake as board game would do that for you.
So when I heard that, I thought, Oh, that's pretty sneaky and interesting way to, you know,
slip in the classroom, or, you know, like any public space where you can play board games,
06:01
like ways for people to be like, how do we get the most out of negotiating with each other with
the environment, and with the resources that we're dealt with, you know, get the most out of
it. And I think that's sort of more interesting for me, as a way to tackle climate change. Like,
of course, if we could all stop flying, if we could all like, shoot down the private jets,
and like stop wars, all at once, we would save a lot of carbons. But that's not realistic. And
and the capitalism is not ending tomorrow. So that's also hard. And like, and that's also
not how it should be, I think. And a lot of it is going to be negotiating. And unfortunately,
we have been so shitty at negotiating, to the point where like, really, truly running out of
time. Yeah, we've been we've been negotiating, I would say, poorly, in the face of, perhaps,
you know, large influential powers, but it is right. And it's a hard upward sort of battle.
Yeah, it's a hard upward struggle. And frankly, I don't have answers for whether we can make it or
not. But like, the more I think about this issue, the more I like, like my thinking goes towards
more of a coexisting type where we need to find somewhere like, and this might look different
for different countries, different groups of people, different communities, more of like a
coexistence of consumerism, capitalism, and sustainability, right. And I think
the books I've read recently, that really resonated with me, sort of hint towards
that direction as well. And this board game is a pretty interesting and interactive way to sort of
test out, right? Like, what are the mental blocks you have when you're trying to solve this kind of
problem? Like, what sort of preconceptions do you have when it comes to strategizing this type of
problems? I think it's really good way to find it out in sort of game, like low stake board game way.
Yeah, I agree.
Because, yeah, like, I think that's like the having like finding out your blind spot, right?
Like, where, like, where, where the does your brain stop thinking? Like, where does your brain
09:04
immediately jump on to a certain conclusion or certain, like impression imagery? These are
things that are hard to pinpoint, when you're just reading books and discussing this with other
people in like, a hypothetical way, right? Yep. And yes, board game is hypothetical, but you know,
like winning is not. So like, the stake is a little bit real, but not at all high, the real,
you don't have to suffer your real consequences of your decisions. You just, you know, maybe feel bad
about yourself if you lose the game, like five minutes after, but that's it. I think. So I thought
that was interesting. That's super interesting. That definitely bounces well off of the Climate
Fresk, I think. And I if I could highlight something that you shared about the game to me
that stuck out, it was the, the consequences that are perhaps somewhat unpredictable, but also
affecting others. And so there's, there is an interplay of that in Catan. It's been a while
since I played it, right? Where if you take over areas, and you, you know, don't give resources to
someone, their resources aren't there. But those are very direct, right? Those are those are one
to one type effects for the most part. Yeah, yeah. And the idea of a flood is, although it is not
climate advertised, which is a, I agree, fascinating decision by the marketing team of
the Catan sort of company, that you then sit there and might have an exact situation like you see now
where perhaps maybe your strategy, I don't know how they measure winning in this version, right?
But if your strategy to grow puts you in a position where a flood is a marginal effect for you,
right? But it does, in fact, wipe the rest of the players off the board, right? Like you might
suffer from the consequence of wiping everybody else off from the board. Because, okay, like,
you know, in in some other terms of the events, you might need them to be there, right? That's
okay. Great. Yes, that game sounds so interesting. I want to play this, right? Like, it's adding
another layer to otherwise pretty straightforward Catan game. But I guess Catan is already pretty,
like there are many ways to win Catan, right? Like, you could you could be hated by everybody
and be a tyrant and like, take over everything brute force. Or you could carefully negotiate,
form allies, betray others and like, do your winning in Catan as well. But I think it's
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interesting. And having never played this game, I don't know what it's like in details. But I think
the ways to win is kind of different flavor than the ones that are traditional,
traditional Catan, you know, it has to be some sort of change. Yeah. And I think it makes us
more aware of this mental gymnastics that one has to play when you're dealing with
agendas that are conflicting. And the consequences that could either randomly happen without your
doing or your small action, your decision making impact on your allies or people who you don't care
about. Right? Yeah. And that might in turn hurt you or benefit you. And these are sort of like,
you know, second, third degrees of separation of consequences that maybe you don't normally
think about when you're playing normal Catan. Right. In this version of Catan, I think you can
like you're kind of forced to think and that really is very parallel to the real life climate
problems, issues that we're facing. Yeah. And, and I like I like that it's like
a popular game that people can people enjoy. And it's not preaching to be like,
we're going to teach you about climate change, right? It's not that it's like,
we're going to teach you statistics and up-to-date science of climate change through this
game. That's not what they're trying to do. They're just like going really like they're,
they're not venturing far into what they already do. That is a strategy game,
strategy and negotiation game. Yeah. And they're just demonstrating that. Yeah. They're just like
putting in a context. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting. Oh, there's I went to
the NBR site because you said it was on shortwave, right? That, that had done this. Yeah. And I just,
I happened to find one. Basically, I was looking up the, the maker of the board game of which
I guess it's Klaus and Benjamin Tuber. Okay. Get at us, I guess, for sponsorship, if that's the,
the way we're going here. But in the, in the article that I just saw, it looks like they
actually had a global warming expansion at one point. The 2019, so quote, 2019, Illingworth
co-designed a playable expansion to the original Catan that added climate change and sustainability
to the gameplay. They called it Catan Global Warming and posted the rules and instructions
on how to adapt a regular Catan game online, end quote. Okay. And so that's, that's it. So this was
15:07
there was something perhaps leading up to it. I didn't read the whole article. I don't know if
this is the same. Yeah. Maybe, maybe I didn't listen to it carefully enough, but from my understanding,
it's a new game. Like I think they have either just released or about to release. Yeah. It's
got to be something. It seems very fresh, not fresk, fresh. Yeah. It's, it's not the same as
the previous version and maybe, it looks really cool. Maybe it's based on the feedback of the
previous one that they decided to go non-explicit, uh, covert marketing. That is what I'm wondering.
I'm like, what, I'm not reading the whole thing here. I don't think it goes into it. Right. But
it's like, okay, maybe something, they went in a different direction. I mean, it's very clearly
it, it is, if I'm looking at the right one, this one is Catan New Energies. Does that sound
familiar? I don't know. I think, yeah, that might be it. I think renewable energy is one of the
resources. One of the resource things. Okay. So yeah, I think I'm looking at the same one.
That's super fascinating. I am highly tempted to check this out in detail. Yeah. Like buy one and
maybe like do it in your class, like in your, in your, in your, in your classroom. I certainly
considered it. I was like, I wonder if I could get away with doing this for one of the classes. I'm
pretty sure I could. Yeah, do it, do it like right before the finals as like a de-stressing
session. Like, okay, I know you all have papers to write in other classes. Let's play games.
Let's just play games. Let's just hang out. So yeah, there's, they would certainly enjoy this.
I'll have to think about that. But yeah, what a great addition. Thank you, Osami, for pointing
that out. That was really cool. Yeah. All right. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening
and find us on X at Eigo de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
