WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.899 picture walking through a set of heavy studio 00:00:02.899 --> 00:00:06.599 doors and you know just stepping into a neon 00:00:06.599 --> 00:00:09.480 drenched carnival oh yeah the lights are strobing 00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:12.519 in like every primary color imaginable the audience 00:00:12.519 --> 00:00:14.679 is screaming at a decibel level that literally 00:00:14.679 --> 00:00:18.100 rattles your teeth and there's this massive glittering 00:00:18.100 --> 00:00:21.160 wheel center stage right right and uh on the 00:00:21.160 --> 00:00:24.039 surface it just looks like pure unadulterated 00:00:24.039 --> 00:00:27.399 chaos, like a televised monument to blind luck. 00:00:27.579 --> 00:00:29.640 It absolutely does. I mean, it looked like a 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:32.380 place where logic just goes completely out the 00:00:32.380 --> 00:00:35.179 window. Exactly. Replaced entirely by, you know, 00:00:35.340 --> 00:00:37.740 pure adrenaline and the desperate hope of winning 00:00:37.740 --> 00:00:40.880 a jet ski or like a new blender. Yeah. But then 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:43.159 you peel back the bright paint and you look behind 00:00:43.159 --> 00:00:45.539 those giant glittering doors and suddenly that 00:00:45.539 --> 00:00:48.740 carnival chaos just vanishes. Because what you 00:00:48.740 --> 00:00:51.240 were actually looking at is a meticulously engineered 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:53.890 machine. Welcome to the deep dive. Glad to be 00:00:53.890 --> 00:00:56.390 here. Today we are looking into the hidden architecture 00:00:56.390 --> 00:00:59.329 of the price is right. And we've got a really 00:00:59.329 --> 00:01:01.530 fascinating stack of sources today. It's anchored 00:01:01.530 --> 00:01:04.909 by this massive comprehensive Wikipedia breakdown 00:01:04.909 --> 00:01:07.090 of the show's pricing. It's a huge document. 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:09.569 Yeah. Right. And our mission today is to look 00:01:09.569 --> 00:01:12.709 past all that nostalgia. We are going to unpack 00:01:12.709 --> 00:01:16.269 the game design, the behavioral economics and 00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:19.939 the weird pop culture history that is just hiding 00:01:19.939 --> 00:01:23.000 in plain sight on daytime television. It's all 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:24.859 right there. Okay, let's unpack this. Just to 00:01:24.859 --> 00:01:26.760 give you a sense of the sheer scale we are dealing 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:30.900 with here, out of 113 total pricing games played 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:34.459 in the show's history, 78 of them are currently 00:01:34.459 --> 00:01:37.840 in active rotation. Which is just a massive sprawling 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:41.040 catalog of mini games to manage. It really is. 00:01:41.060 --> 00:01:43.540 It's a logistical mountain. And, you know, what 00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:45.640 we have to understand right out of the gate is 00:01:45.640 --> 00:01:47.780 that the show isn't just throwing these 78 games 00:01:47.780 --> 00:01:49.540 at a dartboard to see what happens. Right, it's 00:01:49.540 --> 00:01:51.959 not random at all. Not at all. The producers 00:01:51.959 --> 00:01:54.519 are curating a highly specific psychological 00:01:54.519 --> 00:01:57.879 experience. It is designed from the ground up 00:01:57.879 --> 00:02:01.420 to keep you the viewer. constantly engaged without 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:03.640 burning out your nervous system. So if the goal 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:07.840 is to keep us hooked without exhausting us, how 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:10.539 do they actually pull that off? Because I mean, 00:02:10.740 --> 00:02:13.240 watching people scream and win stuff for an entire 00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:15.620 hour seems like it would eventually just become 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:17.780 white noise. It absolutely would. Yeah, if it 00:02:17.780 --> 00:02:19.740 weren't for the strict recipe they use for every 00:02:19.740 --> 00:02:22.539 single hour long episode. A recipe. Yeah, there 00:02:22.539 --> 00:02:25.740 is a very rigid ecosystem at play here. Exactly. 00:02:27.049 --> 00:02:29.770 Six pricing games are played per hour. Always 00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:32.969 six. Always. Yeah. No more, no less. And those 00:02:32.969 --> 00:02:36.310 six games, they have to fulfill very specific 00:02:36.310 --> 00:02:39.189 roles. You can sort of think of them as required 00:02:39.189 --> 00:02:41.669 nutritional ingredients in a meal. OK, I like 00:02:41.669 --> 00:02:43.370 that. First off, two games are played for a car. 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:46.009 Always. One in the first half of the show and 00:02:46.009 --> 00:02:47.889 one in the second half. Right. I mean, they severely 00:02:47.889 --> 00:02:51.509 limit the cold, hard cash, right? Exactly. Like 00:02:51.509 --> 00:02:53.849 at most, there is only one game played for a 00:02:53.849 --> 00:02:56.240 cash prize. The rest of the games are strictly 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:58.860 for merchandise or furniture or trips. Exactly. 00:02:59.099 --> 00:03:01.759 And even within those non -car, non -cash games, 00:03:01.879 --> 00:03:04.680 the structure gets even tighter because there 00:03:04.680 --> 00:03:08.439 is usually one game focused strictly on pricing 00:03:08.439 --> 00:03:10.840 everyday grocery products, you know, your soups, 00:03:10.919 --> 00:03:14.039 your antacids, dog food. The boring stuff, yeah. 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:16.479 Right. And then there's another game that involves 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:19.680 using smaller prizes to somehow win a larger 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.639 price package. And I look at the structure and 00:03:22.639 --> 00:03:25.780 I immediately think of like, A casino floor. 00:03:26.020 --> 00:03:28.259 Oh, that's a great comparison. Right. The people 00:03:28.259 --> 00:03:30.819 who design casinos don't just put slot machines 00:03:30.819 --> 00:03:33.439 down randomly. They sequence the floor. Right. 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:35.539 They mat it out. They put the low stakes penny 00:03:35.539 --> 00:03:38.699 slots near the high roller tables to regulate 00:03:38.699 --> 00:03:40.460 your dopamine hits. They want to keep you playing. 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:43.180 Keep you in the building. Yeah. But wait. If 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:46.319 I know there are exactly six games, exactly two 00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:50.599 cars, one cash, one grocery. Doesn't a formula 00:03:50.599 --> 00:03:54.120 that rigid become, I don't know, painfully predictable? 00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:56.259 You'd think so, right? Yeah. I mean, if you've 00:03:56.259 --> 00:03:57.919 seen one episode, haven't you seen the blueprint 00:03:57.919 --> 00:04:00.240 for the last four decades? What's fascinating 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:03.939 here is that the rigid structure is the exact 00:04:03.939 --> 00:04:06.680 mechanism that allows the variety of the individual 00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:09.659 games to actually work. Oh, really? How so? Think 00:04:09.659 --> 00:04:12.900 about cognitive load. If every single game featured 00:04:12.900 --> 00:04:15.819 someone agonizing over the price of a $50 ,000 00:04:15.819 --> 00:04:18.920 luxury car, the audience would become completely 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:21.480 numb to the stakes. Oh, sure. The excitement 00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:23.540 would just flatline. Right, right. If everything 00:04:23.540 --> 00:04:26.680 is an emergency, nothing is. Exactly. By anchoring 00:04:26.680 --> 00:04:29.379 the episode with those massive big ticket items 00:04:29.379 --> 00:04:32.439 in the cars, but then grounding the space in 00:04:32.439 --> 00:04:36.279 between with relatable... daily items. Like the 00:04:36.279 --> 00:04:39.399 dog food. Yes. Literally asking a contestant 00:04:39.399 --> 00:04:42.379 to price a box of rice. The show creates this 00:04:42.379 --> 00:04:45.360 calculated oscillation. A roller coaster. Exactly. 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:48.000 A roller coaster between high stakes luxury and 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:51.199 low stakes domesticity. And that completely prevents 00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:54.220 audience fatigue. I see. You're giving the viewer 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:56.920 moments of relatable low stakes agency before 00:04:56.920 --> 00:04:58.879 throwing them right back into the high stakes 00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:01.629 tension of winning a vehicle. Okay, so the internal 00:05:01.629 --> 00:05:03.509 structure of the show is this perfectly balanced 00:05:03.509 --> 00:05:05.449 casino, but here's the problem. What's that? 00:05:05.750 --> 00:05:08.689 That casino exists in the real world, and the 00:05:08.689 --> 00:05:11.410 real world has an uncontrollable external factor 00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:13.550 that the producers are constantly, constantly 00:05:13.550 --> 00:05:15.410 fighting against. I'm talking about the passage 00:05:15.410 --> 00:05:19.370 of time, and more specifically, inflation. Yeah, 00:05:19.550 --> 00:05:23.560 this is where the brilliant game design... violently 00:05:23.560 --> 00:05:26.240 clashes with reality. Seriously. The entire premise 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:29.100 of the show is based on the quote unquote actual 00:05:29.100 --> 00:05:33.079 retail price of consumer goods. But what happens 00:05:33.079 --> 00:05:35.180 when the American economy just shifts under your 00:05:35.180 --> 00:05:39.600 feet? A game designed in 1974 is mathematically 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:43.560 going to break by 1994. It has to. So the producers 00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:46.740 have been forced into this endless cycle of patching 00:05:46.740 --> 00:05:48.899 their games. Here's where it gets really interesting, 00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:50.480 because I think about video game developers, 00:05:50.699 --> 00:05:52.959 right? Yeah. When players find an exploit or 00:05:52.959 --> 00:05:55.220 get too powerful, developers have to release 00:05:55.220 --> 00:05:57.740 software patches to deal with, like Power Creep. 00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:00.139 They nerf weapons. They change stats. Right, 00:06:00.139 --> 00:06:03.000 to keep it balanced. Exactly. But on this show, 00:06:03.180 --> 00:06:06.120 the Power Creep is the American economy. It really 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:08.819 is. Let's look at a game like Check Game. You 00:06:08.819 --> 00:06:11.000 write an amount on an oversized blank check, 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.360 and if the value of the plus your check amount 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:16.279 falls within a specific target range, you win. 00:06:16.519 --> 00:06:19.160 Very simple. Originally, that target range was 00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:22.740 locked between $3 ,000 and $3 ,500. Right. A 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:25.319 $500 margin of error anchored right around three 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:27.980 grand, which made perfect sense for the prize 00:06:27.980 --> 00:06:30.720 values of that era. Right. But prizes didn't 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:32.980 stay at that value. Well, they did not. The power 00:06:32.980 --> 00:06:36.189 creep set in, so they had to patch it. By 1986, 00:06:36.589 --> 00:06:39.069 the winning range was bumped up to between $5 00:06:39.069 --> 00:06:42.689 ,000 and $6 ,000. Had to be done. And if you 00:06:42.689 --> 00:06:45.370 watch the show in 2019, that winning range had 00:06:45.370 --> 00:06:49.129 shifted entirely to between $8 ,000 and $9 ,000. 00:06:49.589 --> 00:06:53.290 It just keeps climbing. And we see an even more 00:06:53.290 --> 00:06:55.970 extreme version of this mechanical patching in 00:06:55.970 --> 00:06:58.850 a game like Any Number. Oh, I love Any Number. 00:06:59.009 --> 00:07:01.689 Everyone knows this one, right? You guessed digits 00:07:01.689 --> 00:07:04.550 from zero to nine. trying to reveal the price 00:07:04.550 --> 00:07:06.870 of a car before you accidentally reveal the amount 00:07:06.870 --> 00:07:09.089 of money in a piggy bank. Right. The board has 00:07:09.089 --> 00:07:12.370 three items on it. The car, a small prize, and 00:07:12.370 --> 00:07:14.829 the piggy bank. Precisely. And originally, you 00:07:14.829 --> 00:07:17.110 had to guess all the digits in the car's price. 00:07:17.670 --> 00:07:21.050 But eventually, car prices crossed the $10 ,000 00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:23.790 mark. Right. Yeah. Meaning a car's price became 00:07:23.790 --> 00:07:26.470 a five -digit number instead of a four -digit 00:07:26.470 --> 00:07:29.350 number. And once that happened, the game mathematically 00:07:29.350 --> 00:07:31.579 broke. Wait, walk us through the actual math 00:07:31.579 --> 00:07:34.019 of how it breaks. Okay, so think about the digits 00:07:34.019 --> 00:07:36.420 available to guess. You only have 10 digits, 00:07:36.500 --> 00:07:38.540 right? From zero to nine. Right, that's your 00:07:38.540 --> 00:07:40.639 whole pool of numbers. That's your entire pool. 00:07:41.339 --> 00:07:44.639 Now let's say the car is five digits. Maybe it 00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:50.079 costs $24 ,560. Okay. The small prize is three 00:07:50.079 --> 00:07:53.560 digits. Let's say $450. Got it. And the piggy 00:07:53.560 --> 00:07:57.810 bank is three digits, maybe $3 .12. Okay, tracking. 00:07:58.170 --> 00:08:00.370 If you add those up five digits for the car, 00:08:00.790 --> 00:08:03.149 three for the prize, three for the bank, you 00:08:03.149 --> 00:08:05.750 need 11 unique digits to fill out the board. 00:08:06.310 --> 00:08:08.930 But you only have 10 digits to guess from. Exactly. 00:08:09.089 --> 00:08:11.610 You physically run out of numbers on the board. 00:08:12.329 --> 00:08:16.110 The math is literally held hostage by the auto 00:08:16.110 --> 00:08:19.029 industry's pricing. That is incredible. So the 00:08:19.029 --> 00:08:21.529 show's developers had to issue a massive patch. 00:08:21.839 --> 00:08:24.100 They had to start spotting the contestant the 00:08:24.100 --> 00:08:26.639 first digit of the car for free, just to bring 00:08:26.639 --> 00:08:29.560 the total required digits back down to 10. That 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.939 is wild. The actual rules of the game had to 00:08:31.939 --> 00:08:35.059 bend to accommodate Detroit's MSRPs? Yep. And 00:08:35.059 --> 00:08:36.820 we see this in card game, too. You're drawing 00:08:36.820 --> 00:08:40.159 playing cards to build a bid on a car. In 1983, 00:08:40.440 --> 00:08:43.019 just to speed up the game, they introduced a 00:08:43.019 --> 00:08:46.259 starting bid of $2 ,000. Right. You just got 00:08:46.259 --> 00:08:49.600 two grand for free. Exactly. But as cars got 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:51.679 pricier, that starting bid was put pushed up 00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:54.639 again and again to $8 ,000, then $10 ,000, then 00:08:54.639 --> 00:08:58.019 $12 ,000. They couldn't keep up. No, today. The 00:08:58.019 --> 00:09:00.200 starting bid isn't even static anymore. It's 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:02.580 a floating bid somewhere between $15 ,000 and 00:09:02.580 --> 00:09:05.679 $60 ,000, depending entirely on the car's value. 00:09:05.740 --> 00:09:08.139 It has to float now. And even the wild card, 00:09:08.200 --> 00:09:10.720 the Ace, had to be patched. Oh, right. It used 00:09:10.720 --> 00:09:14.299 to max out at a value of $1 ,000. Now, an Ace 00:09:14.299 --> 00:09:16.840 can be literally any positive value the contestant 00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:18.960 wants, just so they have a fighting chance to 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:22.179 jump up to those massive modern car prices. But, 00:09:22.259 --> 00:09:23.720 you know, they don't always fight inflation. 00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:26.320 Sometimes they lean directly into the passage 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:29.700 of time. Oh, like with Back to 76. Exactly. Take 00:09:29.700 --> 00:09:33.200 the game Back to 76. It's a game explicitly designed 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:35.899 around the shock of inflation. The contestant 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.779 uses this massive stylized vintage television 00:09:38.779 --> 00:09:41.980 dial to guess the exact price of three items 00:09:41.980 --> 00:09:45.039 from 50 years ago. And the name of the game literally 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:47.679 updates every single year to maintain that 50 00:09:47.679 --> 00:09:50.720 -year gap. Yes. Like it debuted as Back to 72 00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:53.299 for the show's 50th season, and now it's just 00:09:53.299 --> 00:09:55.580 marching its way through the late 70s. It's brilliant. 00:09:55.639 --> 00:09:57.659 If we look at this from an anthropological lens, 00:09:58.120 --> 00:10:00.679 the show operates as a living, breathing time 00:10:00.679 --> 00:10:03.419 capsule. I love that. By tracking the changing 00:10:03.419 --> 00:10:05.980 rules of these minigames, the adjusting starting 00:10:05.980 --> 00:10:08.799 bids, and the shifting target ranges, you are 00:10:08.799 --> 00:10:11.399 looking at a highly accurate historical record 00:10:11.399 --> 00:10:14.929 of American consumer pricing and economic inflation 00:10:14.929 --> 00:10:18.049 over the last half century. So if the show is 00:10:18.049 --> 00:10:20.029 constantly fighting this external war against 00:10:20.029 --> 00:10:22.929 the economy, how does it keep the internal experience 00:10:22.929 --> 00:10:25.529 feeling fun instead of like, I don't know, a 00:10:25.529 --> 00:10:27.850 stressful accounting exam? Right. Nobody wants 00:10:27.850 --> 00:10:30.309 to watch math homework. Exactly. And that comes 00:10:30.309 --> 00:10:32.470 down to the psychology of the games themselves. 00:10:32.809 --> 00:10:35.309 Let's talk about the undisputed heavyweight champion 00:10:35.309 --> 00:10:39.309 of daytime television, Plinko. Oh, Plinko. The 00:10:39.309 --> 00:10:41.250 greatest. Since everyone listening already knows 00:10:41.250 --> 00:10:44.440 the drill. You know, you drop a chip, it bounces 00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:46.600 down a pegboard, you pray to the gravity gods. 00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:49.419 Let's look at the actual architecture of that 00:10:49.419 --> 00:10:52.059 board. Yeah. Because it is perfectly engineered 00:10:52.059 --> 00:10:54.860 psychological torture. It really, really is. 00:10:55.159 --> 00:10:57.600 Plinko is the ultimate masterclass in blending 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:00.639 agency and surrender. Yes. First, the contestant 00:11:00.639 --> 00:11:03.639 has to earn their chips by correctly pricing 00:11:03.639 --> 00:11:06.700 small items. That's the agency. You use your 00:11:06.700 --> 00:11:08.519 real world knowledge to arm yourself. Right. 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:10.600 But once you stand at the top of those stairs 00:11:10.600 --> 00:11:13.360 and let go of the chip, your agency completely 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:15.559 evaporates into pure chance. And look at how 00:11:15.559 --> 00:11:17.620 the slots at the bottom are laid out. It's perfectly 00:11:17.620 --> 00:11:19.820 symmetrical. From the outside edges moving inward, 00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:23.159 the slots are worth $100, then $500, then $1 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:27.379 ,000, and then zero. A giant, terrifying zero. 00:11:27.700 --> 00:11:31.070 A giant zero. And right in the middle, flanked 00:11:31.070 --> 00:11:34.649 immediately by those $0 slots, is the $10 ,000 00:11:34.649 --> 00:11:37.210 space. Which, by the way, used to be $5 ,000 00:11:37.210 --> 00:11:39.809 originally. Right, patched for inflation. But 00:11:39.809 --> 00:11:42.730 the layout is the same. To hit the maximum dopamine 00:11:42.730 --> 00:11:45.870 rush, your chip has to dance right on the razor's 00:11:45.870 --> 00:11:49.370 edge of absolute failure. It creates an almost 00:11:49.370 --> 00:11:53.470 unbearable tension. But then you contrast that 00:11:53.470 --> 00:11:56.090 with a game that blends pricing with physical 00:11:56.090 --> 00:11:58.679 skill. like hole -in -one. Oh, I remember that 00:11:58.679 --> 00:12:00.559 one. You have to put a golf ball into a hole 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:03.440 to win a car. But you determine where you putt 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:06.909 from. by ordering six grocery items from least 00:12:06.909 --> 00:12:09.330 to most expensive. Right. So the better your 00:12:09.330 --> 00:12:11.250 pricing knowledge, the closer your putting line 00:12:11.250 --> 00:12:13.529 is to the hole. Which is brilliant because it 00:12:13.529 --> 00:12:16.190 visualizes your pricing skill as physical distance. 00:12:16.210 --> 00:12:18.590 Exactly. And I love the inspiration putt they 00:12:18.590 --> 00:12:21.850 do where the host or a model takes a shot from 00:12:21.850 --> 00:12:24.750 the absolute furthest line just to prove to the 00:12:24.750 --> 00:12:26.389 audience that it's physically possible to make 00:12:26.389 --> 00:12:28.250 the long shot. It builds the hype. But wait, 00:12:28.330 --> 00:12:30.350 the game isn't actually called Hole in One anymore, 00:12:30.350 --> 00:12:34.850 is it? No. In 1986, They issued another psychological 00:12:34.850 --> 00:12:37.690 patch. They changed the name to Hole in One or 00:12:37.690 --> 00:12:40.190 Two. Or Two? Yeah, they made the game vastly 00:12:40.190 --> 00:12:42.470 more forgiving. If you miss your first putt, 00:12:42.870 --> 00:12:44.929 you get a second chance from that exact same 00:12:44.929 --> 00:12:47.210 line. That changes everything. It fundamentally 00:12:47.210 --> 00:12:49.450 changed the psychological dynamic of the game. 00:12:49.450 --> 00:12:52.649 Yeah. From sudden death terror to a narrative 00:12:52.649 --> 00:12:55.870 of redemption. Wow. And then there's Golden Road, 00:12:55.929 --> 00:12:58.529 which might be the most potent distillation of 00:12:58.529 --> 00:13:00.529 the show's underlying psychology. Oh, for sure. 00:13:00.549 --> 00:13:03.120 It's like this escalating dopamine line. You 00:13:03.120 --> 00:13:05.899 start the game by pricing something completely 00:13:05.899 --> 00:13:08.960 mundane, like a grocery item worth less than 00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:11.179 a single dollar. Yep. If you get that right, 00:13:11.580 --> 00:13:14.299 you use those digits to fill in the missing numbers 00:13:14.299 --> 00:13:17.659 of increasingly expensive items. It just cascades. 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:20.259 It's an incredible buildup. You physically walk 00:13:20.259 --> 00:13:22.940 from a 90 cent can of beans to a three digit 00:13:22.940 --> 00:13:25.860 prize to a four digit prize, culminating in a 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:28.279 final prize, usually a premium European sports 00:13:28.279 --> 00:13:31.759 car. or a luxury package worth well over $100 00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:35.139 ,000. You are literally walking the psychological 00:13:35.139 --> 00:13:38.039 journey from the mundane reality of the viewer 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:41.059 at home to the extreme fantasy of the game show 00:13:41.059 --> 00:13:44.320 environment. So picture yourself up on that stage 00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:47.139 under the bright lights. Which scenario haunts 00:13:47.139 --> 00:13:50.179 you more? Losing out on a new car because you 00:13:50.179 --> 00:13:52.580 didn't know the exact price of a can of minestrone 00:13:52.580 --> 00:13:55.360 soup. or losing because your Plinko chip took 00:13:55.360 --> 00:13:57.600 one bad bounce at the very bottom of the board 00:13:57.600 --> 00:14:00.840 and landed in the zero. Oh, man. Yeah. That dichotomy 00:14:00.840 --> 00:14:02.340 gets right to the heart of the show's genius, 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:04.500 though. Does it. Yeah. Because the producers 00:14:04.500 --> 00:14:07.309 brilliantly balance games of agency. knowing 00:14:07.309 --> 00:14:09.809 your grocery prices, arranging items correctly 00:14:09.809 --> 00:14:11.769 with gains of absolute surrender like dropping 00:14:11.769 --> 00:14:14.570 a Plinko chip. This ensures that the audience 00:14:14.570 --> 00:14:17.250 sitting at home feels a constantly shifting, 00:14:17.570 --> 00:14:20.809 complex mix of emotions. When a contestant fails 00:14:20.809 --> 00:14:23.830 a game of agency, the viewer feels a surge of 00:14:23.830 --> 00:14:26.960 superiority. Like, I knew that soup was 89 cents. 00:14:27.100 --> 00:14:29.519 They blew it. We've all yelled at the TV like 00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:32.019 that. Exactly. But when a contestant loses a 00:14:32.019 --> 00:14:34.440 game of Surrender, the viewer feels intense, 00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:37.220 empathetic suspense. Oh, that's just a bad balance. 00:14:37.379 --> 00:14:39.340 There's nothing they can do. It's a perfectly 00:14:39.340 --> 00:14:42.940 balanced emotional diet. But here's the thing 00:14:42.940 --> 00:14:46.220 about having 113 games over 50 years. Uh -oh. 00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:49.039 They aren't all masterpieces. No, they are not. 00:14:49.470 --> 00:14:51.730 When you run an experiment for that long, you 00:14:51.730 --> 00:14:54.789 are going to get some very weird anomalies. Definitely. 00:14:55.049 --> 00:14:57.730 We need to look at the strange experiments, the 00:14:57.730 --> 00:15:00.610 retired oddities, and the moments where this 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:04.850 highly controlled, manufactured environment tragically 00:15:04.850 --> 00:15:07.870 collided with reality. Let's start with the auditory 00:15:07.870 --> 00:15:10.269 anomalies. We've firmly established that the 00:15:10.269 --> 00:15:13.230 studio is chaotic and incredibly loud, right? 00:15:13.330 --> 00:15:15.909 Right. Teeth rattling loud. But there were rare 00:15:15.909 --> 00:15:18.269 rules in certain games where the audience was 00:15:18.269 --> 00:15:21.360 mandated to be completely uncomfortably silent. 00:15:21.720 --> 00:15:24.120 The clock game is the famous one, but there was 00:15:24.120 --> 00:15:27.360 a deeply weird long retired game called Professor 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:29.899 Price. Oh, Professor Price. This holds the record 00:15:29.899 --> 00:15:32.440 as the shortest lived game in the show's history. 00:15:32.899 --> 00:15:34.960 It was only played twice. Though for the record, 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:37.559 it does boast a 100 % win rate. The contestants 00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:40.980 won both times. True. But the mechanics were 00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.759 completely bizarre for this show. The contestant 00:15:43.759 --> 00:15:46.320 had to answer general knowledge trivia questions 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:49.120 that resulted in single digit answers. Like what? 00:15:49.340 --> 00:15:51.759 Things like, how many ounces are in half a pound? 00:15:52.179 --> 00:15:55.200 And their progress was tracked by a large animatronic 00:15:55.200 --> 00:15:58.659 puppet named Professor Price. An animatronic 00:15:58.659 --> 00:16:01.960 puppet. Yes. The puppet kept score by pointing 00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:04.460 its mechanical fingers up for correct answers 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:07.720 and down for incorrect ones, all while the studio 00:16:07.720 --> 00:16:11.039 was in dead silence. It's a fascinating failure 00:16:11.039 --> 00:16:13.419 because it broke the core covenant of the show. 00:16:13.629 --> 00:16:16.590 How so? Well, the entire foundation of The Price 00:16:16.590 --> 00:16:19.629 is Right is testing consumer pricing knowledge, 00:16:19.710 --> 00:16:22.070 which everyone engages with in daily life. Right. 00:16:22.110 --> 00:16:23.909 Everyone goes to the grocery store. Exactly. 00:16:24.470 --> 00:16:27.690 But trivia is specialized knowledge. It alienated 00:16:27.690 --> 00:16:29.710 the core mechanic, which is why it vanished after 00:16:29.710 --> 00:16:32.049 two plays. Makes sense. Another retired head 00:16:32.049 --> 00:16:35.049 scratcher was Hit Me. Oh, wow. Hit Me. It was 00:16:35.049 --> 00:16:37.210 an attempt to make a grocery pricing version 00:16:37.210 --> 00:16:39.669 of Blackjack. You had a giant deck of cards, 00:16:39.730 --> 00:16:41.649 but you earned your cards by picking grocery 00:16:41.649 --> 00:16:44.179 items. OK. Sounds all right so far. But the problem 00:16:44.179 --> 00:16:47.059 was the math. It was incredibly convoluted. You 00:16:47.059 --> 00:16:49.600 didn't just guess the price. The grocery item 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:52.860 had a real price, say $1. But the tag displayed 00:16:52.860 --> 00:16:56.720 a fake price, say $5. Oh, boy. Right. So that 00:16:56.720 --> 00:16:59.860 meant the hidden multiplier was 5. So the playing 00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:02.100 card hidden underneath that item was worth a 00:17:02.100 --> 00:17:04.400 5 in your blackjack hand. Trying to track that 00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:06.720 math on live television is a nightmare. Total 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:09.019 nightmare. But the fatal flaw wasn't just the 00:17:09.019 --> 00:17:12.339 math. It was the rule book itself. In real blackjack, 00:17:12.839 --> 00:17:15.160 an ace is a dynamic card. It can be a one or 00:17:15.160 --> 00:17:18.500 an 11. Right. But the show was highly inconsistent 00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:21.079 in how they handled situations where the house 00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:23.960 drew an ace. They couldn't standardize whether 00:17:23.960 --> 00:17:26.619 the house should count its own ace as a one or 00:17:26.619 --> 00:17:29.500 an 11 to beat the player. Oh, that's messy. Very. 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:32.460 It led to endless confusion on stage and its 00:17:32.460 --> 00:17:34.440 inevitable retirement. But you know, the most 00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:36.799 jarring piece of history in the archives belongs 00:17:36.799 --> 00:17:39.720 to a game that is actually still incredibly popular 00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:42.380 today. Everyone knows Cliffhangers. The Yobling 00:17:42.380 --> 00:17:45.960 Guy. Yes. You guessed the prices of three small 00:17:45.960 --> 00:17:49.630 items. You have a $25 margin of error across 00:17:49.630 --> 00:17:52.529 all three items. For every dollar you are off, 00:17:52.789 --> 00:17:55.130 this little mountain climber figure moves one 00:17:55.130 --> 00:17:58.009 step up a 25 -step mountain. If you miss by too 00:17:58.009 --> 00:18:00.369 much, he goes over the edge. Accompanied by that 00:18:00.369 --> 00:18:03.829 very distinct, cheerful, yodeling music. Right. 00:18:04.059 --> 00:18:06.619 It's goofy, it's light -hearted, a lot of fans 00:18:06.619 --> 00:18:09.759 call the climber Hans or the Yodely Guy. But 00:18:09.759 --> 00:18:12.819 back in 1976 during a taping, guest host Dennis 00:18:12.819 --> 00:18:15.380 James referred to the little mountain climber 00:18:15.380 --> 00:18:18.299 as Fritz. And during the game, the contestant 00:18:18.299 --> 00:18:20.480 missed the prices, the climber went over the 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:22.259 edge, and Dennis James yelled out, there goes 00:18:22.259 --> 00:18:25.059 Fritz. Which, you know, in the vacuum of a game 00:18:25.059 --> 00:18:27.460 show seems like a completely harmless ad -libbed 00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:30.480 joke. Except, the vacuum didn't hold. What Dennis 00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:32.680 James didn't know, what he couldn't have known, 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.619 was that one of the show's models, Janis Pennington, 00:18:35.980 --> 00:18:39.019 was married to a man named Fritz. Oh no. Yeah. 00:18:39.619 --> 00:18:41.980 Fritz Stamberger. And Fritz Stamberger was a 00:18:41.980 --> 00:18:43.980 real -life mountaineer who had recently vanished 00:18:43.980 --> 00:18:46.279 during an expedition in the Himalayas. That is 00:18:46.279 --> 00:18:49.420 just awful. The casual joke on stage mirrored 00:18:49.420 --> 00:18:52.740 a real life tragedy so closely that it was profoundly 00:18:52.740 --> 00:18:56.019 shocking. Janis Pennington was so devastated 00:18:56.019 --> 00:18:57.980 by the unscripted moment that she spent the rest 00:18:57.980 --> 00:19:00.759 of the episode crying backstage. If we connect 00:19:00.759 --> 00:19:04.140 this to the bigger picture, it really highlights 00:19:04.140 --> 00:19:06.819 the friction between a manufactured entertainment 00:19:06.819 --> 00:19:09.819 environment and the complete chaos of reality. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:12.740 Yeah, you can't control everything. No, you can't. 00:19:12.859 --> 00:19:15.380 When you run a statistical experiment on the 00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:18.319 scale of the price is right. Airing thousands 00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:22.119 of episodes, playing 113 different games, generating 00:19:22.119 --> 00:19:24.440 thousands of hours of unscripted television, 00:19:25.079 --> 00:19:27.799 you are mathematically bound to experience anomalies. 00:19:27.859 --> 00:19:29.859 You just are. You'll get a trivia puppet that 00:19:29.859 --> 00:19:32.039 breaks the format. You will get a blackjack game 00:19:32.039 --> 00:19:34.500 that implodes under its own rules. And tragically, 00:19:34.519 --> 00:19:36.960 you will inevitably get a heartbreaking million 00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:39.619 -to -one unscripted coincidence that pierces 00:19:39.619 --> 00:19:42.099 the neon bubble of the studio. It really makes 00:19:42.099 --> 00:19:44.400 you pause. I mean, it's wild to think that a 00:19:44.400 --> 00:19:46.559 goofy game with a yodeling mountain climber where 00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:49.319 it holds such a dark, heavy piece of television 00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:51.559 history. It really does. So what does this all 00:19:51.559 --> 00:19:54.099 mean? We started today by looking at a giant 00:19:54.099 --> 00:19:56.519 spinning wheel and bright colors, assuming it 00:19:56.519 --> 00:19:58.920 was all just daytime fluff. Right, just a carnival. 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:01.799 But we've unpacked a machine built on strict 00:20:01.799 --> 00:20:05.359 sequential pacing, inflation economics, and deep, 00:20:05.640 --> 00:20:08.740 symmetrical psychological manipulation. What 00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:11.160 looks like a simple morning game show to pass 00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:13.680 the time when you're home sick from work is actually 00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:17.500 a masterclass in game theory and structural adaptability. 00:20:18.019 --> 00:20:19.880 Absolutely. The next time you are at the grocery 00:20:19.880 --> 00:20:22.500 store deciding between two brands of soup, just 00:20:22.500 --> 00:20:25.000 remember you are essentially participating in 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:27.839 the baseline data collection that powers a massive 00:20:27.839 --> 00:20:30.640 multi -decade entertainment engine. This raises 00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:32.680 an important question, though, as we look to 00:20:32.680 --> 00:20:35.079 the future of consumerism. Well, the Price is 00:20:35.079 --> 00:20:37.420 Right was built in an era of static price tags 00:20:37.420 --> 00:20:39.910 and local grocery stores, a can of soup cost, 00:20:39.990 --> 00:20:41.650 what a can of soup cost, the truth was fixed. 00:20:41.750 --> 00:20:43.930 Right. But today we are living through the rise 00:20:43.930 --> 00:20:46.710 of dynamic pricing. The price of an airline ticket, 00:20:46.890 --> 00:20:49.430 an Uber ride, or even a fast food burger changes 00:20:49.430 --> 00:20:52.150 constantly based on the time of day, your exact 00:20:52.150 --> 00:20:55.390 location, your browsing history, and an invisible 00:20:55.390 --> 00:20:57.970 algorithm. That's true, it changes minute to 00:20:57.970 --> 00:21:01.190 minute. So how can a game show fundamentally 00:21:01.190 --> 00:21:03.569 based on the concept of guessing the one right 00:21:03.569 --> 00:21:07.849 price survive? in a future where the actual retail 00:21:07.849 --> 00:21:10.190 price is different for every single person. Wow. 00:21:10.430 --> 00:21:12.410 That is definitely something to chew on. The 00:21:12.410 --> 00:21:15.109 x -ray machine of retail pricing is getting incredibly 00:21:15.109 --> 00:21:16.990 murky. But, you know, the next time you hear 00:21:16.990 --> 00:21:19.630 that announcer yell, come on down, you'll know 00:21:19.630 --> 00:21:22.450 exactly what kind of beautiful complex machinery 00:21:22.450 --> 00:21:25.450 is humming behind those giant glittering doors. 00:21:26.170 --> 00:21:28.269 Thanks for listening to this deep dive, and we'll 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:28.829 see you next time.