Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom

When Ian Frazier was a kid, he (like most 6-year-olds) mastered the art of tic tac toe. Pretty soon, every match was a draw, and the game lost its magic.

Then one day, many years later, he met a 6-year-old named Igor who lived deep in Siberia. On a whim, Ian drew a tic tac toe board in his notebook and showed it to Igor...who had no idea what it was. Ian taught him how to play, then joyfully went about clobbering his new opponent.

Then, Ian started asking around...and it turned out none of the Russians he talked to had heard of tic tac toe. Could it be that huge swaths of the globe just didn't play? Jad and Robert wanted to find out just how widespread this seemingly universal game really is--so they rallied listeners from all over the world to help them do some legwork.

Ian Frazier's most recent book is Travels in Siberia.

Om Podcasten

Welcome, nature lovers, to the home of the Terrestrials podcast and family-friendly Radiolab episodes about nature. Every other week, host Lulu Miller will take you on a nature walk to encounter a plant or animal behaving in ways that will surprise you. Squirrels that can regrow their brains, octopuses that can outsmart their human captors, honeybees that can predict the future. You don’t have to be a kid to listen, just someone who likes to see the world anew. You’ll hear a range of nature stories on this podcast. Sometimes these will be brand new Terrestrials episodes, full of original songs (by “The Songbud” Alan Goffinski) that tell a fantastical-sounding story about nature that is 100% true. Sometimes these will be our very best, shiniest, furriest, leafiest Radiolab episodes about animals or plants or nature. The stories that drop here will always be family-friendly and safe for kids. They will always be sound-rich and full of the vivid, gripping storytelling you’ve come to expect from Radiolab. They will always transport you to the beyond-human world: into the depths of the ocean, into jungles, prairies, forests, space, snow, wildflower fields and beyond. Sometimes we’ll encounter something so wild we just have to break out into song about it! Don’t worry, good voices not required. Join us on this adventure!