This Dumb Card Game Outsold Monopoly (And Made Shy People Yell “BUTTS!”)

What do you get when you mix a lasagna wizard, a screaming cat, and a burrito you’re legally required to throw at your cousin? You get Exploding Kittens — a card game so dumb it became one of the most successful indie games in history.

In this episode of Dumbify, David Carson dives into the dumb-fueled brain of Elan Lee, the game designer who turned nonsense into a multimillion-dollar game empire. With help from comic legend Matthew Inman (a.k.a. The Oatmeal), Elan didn’t just make a funny game — he rewired game night itself.

You’ll hear how they turned a sandwich bag full of scribbled index cards into $8.7 million on Kickstarter, why Elan believes the people should be the entertainment (not the board), and how this philosophy birthed everything from Throw Throw Burrito to Hurry Up Chicken Butt.

More importantly, you’ll learn the secret behind all great dumb ideas: stop trying to be impressive, and start creating spaces where other people can shine.

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Dumbify celebrates ideas so weird, wrong, or wildly impractical… they just might be brilliant. Hosted by David Carson, a serial entrepreneur behind multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and the go-to secret weapon for companies looking to unlock new markets through unconventional thinking. Dumbify dives into the messy, counter-intuitive side of creativity — the “dumb” ideas that built empires, broke rules, and ended up changing everything.