There’s a point in our lives when we’re told it’s time to grow up and stop playing games. To move away from the trivial pursuits of childhood and get serious about how we spend our time. But what if that advice is wrong? What if games are actually one of the best ways to spend our time and one of our best opportunities to learn about our world and even ourselves?

Why are games so embedded in the human experience and how should we think about them as part of our own lives? That’s the topic of our discussion today with author Oliver Roeder.

Oliver is a senior data journalist at the Financial Times who has also written for the Wall Street Journal, FiveThirtyEight, and the Economist. He is also the author of “Seven Games” – a book about the history and culture of seven of the most popular games in the world today: checkers, chess, go, backgammon, poker, scrabble, and bridge.

Show notes, a transcript, and links from this episode are at: http://reconsidering.org/episodes/31