Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Michigan Control deck and most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. And as you might
Speaker 1: be able to tell, folks, we are recording live on
Speaker 1: the road in Las Vegas. You are listening to stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know, live at the iHeart
Speaker 1: Podcast studio Howard by Bows at the House of Music
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio Music Festival.
Speaker 3: You might be able to hear some bops. There might
Speaker 3: be some mild bops in the background. It's just part
Speaker 3: of the show. Yeah, work live as we say, we're
Speaker 3: on the road. We're right here in this whole plaza thing,
Speaker 3: all kinds of beautiful Las Vegas. What do you call
Speaker 3: a Los Vegan? A Las Vegan?
Speaker 2: Here we go, Oh nice, but hebe But don't worry.
Speaker 2: Paul Mission control decking is going to cut them lows, Yes,
Speaker 2: all them beats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of which, could you temporarily kill your mic?
Speaker 3: I think it's blasting us. I'm feeling blasted.
Speaker 1: I think it might just be the music it was
Speaker 1: off because it's you know what, all right, let's keep
Speaker 1: the whole part of the program. So, so the way
Speaker 1: we thinking we do this, guys we're talking about this
Speaker 1: off air is let's just treat it like we treat
Speaker 1: so many conversations we have when we're hanging out off
Speaker 1: air at a bar somewhere, or at a at a
Speaker 1: restaurant or on the street.
Speaker 3: Uh we were.
Speaker 1: We are recording live and as you know, folks, we
Speaker 1: end up in some strange situations. So, uh, Matt, No,
Speaker 1: maybe we could paint the picture here. This is not
Speaker 1: our usual studio. How would we describe it.
Speaker 3: It's like a hyper lounge situation. We're in the hyper lounge,
Speaker 3: but it's more like a hyper cube. It it's a
Speaker 3: little box in this pavilion. It's wonderful. It's the bows
Speaker 3: house of music from my heart and we're having I mean, honestly,
Speaker 3: the show's been amazing. Yeah, we've spent some time in
Speaker 3: some places we don't typically spend time in the casino, resort,
Speaker 3: hotel multi use compounds.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and it gave us the opportunity to finally
Speaker 1: do an episode that's been on our collective mind for
Speaker 1: some time. The stuffed casinos don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Here are the fact. Well, you know what, before we
Speaker 1: get to hear the fact, since we're live, let's just
Speaker 1: catch up because I think we all now have weird
Speaker 1: Vegas stories already, just being in country for sorry, being
Speaker 1: in a city for a few hours. Now, I am
Speaker 1: going by Greg mcclana. Haha, that is true.
Speaker 3: It's a mouthful man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't choose it. What had happened was I
Speaker 1: went into the hotel room. There was a facilities guys
Speaker 1: are air in the hotel room. Very nice dude, shout
Speaker 1: out Francis, and then he said, uh, look, let me
Speaker 1: give you one hundred dollars voucher for the casino. I said,
Speaker 1: thank you, and then I texted you guys about it.
Speaker 1: The name they wrote was not what they usually call
Speaker 1: me in Atlanta. It was Greg mccleana, ha ha. And
Speaker 1: so now that's how I've been going.
Speaker 3: It's a missed opportunity because it could have been Greg
Speaker 3: mcclana Hannah from Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Oh, that would have been nice.
Speaker 3: But do you think he wrote that on there right
Speaker 3: he wrote it? I think he was going for the
Speaker 3: hat or do you think it was meant to be
Speaker 3: maybe McClanahan like the Golden Girls. Isn't her name? What
Speaker 3: is her name, Rue McClanahan.
Speaker 1: Oh, that is right, right, right, Blanche Duvois.
Speaker 3: Blanch Dubois, exactly iconic character. But you got that hundred
Speaker 3: bucks right, And immediately it was like, huh, what should
Speaker 3: I do with this, this hundred dollars voucher, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, was because of this crazy MGM hack which
Speaker 3: we've all been affected by. In these Vegas hotels, the
Speaker 3: lights and the curtains and everything's like operated by an iPad.
Speaker 3: Their whole interconnectedness between the casino business, part of the business,
Speaker 3: the resort, all of that. It's all you know, owned
Speaker 3: servers and massive IT operation, and this hack shut it
Speaker 3: down like all kinds of issues, including light's not coming
Speaker 3: on engineer.
Speaker 1: Friends of the show, there's a reason that you guys
Speaker 1: are always guys, gals and others are always telling us
Speaker 1: to go analog for things because where we're at there
Speaker 1: are tablets that run everything. It's it's fascinating because it
Speaker 1: helps control the environment. And that's where we start with casinos.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. While everything may look glitzy and
Speaker 1: glamorous and caffrey and spontaneous on the surface of every casino,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, modern casinos are one of the most
Speaker 1: carefully controlled environments you will ever enter. We were talking
Speaker 1: about this a little bit off air. From the moment
Speaker 1: you cross that threshold, a small army of highly trained
Speaker 1: staff is leveraging the latest and surveillance technology. They're wielding
Speaker 1: the newest insights in psychoology, and they're doing it all
Speaker 1: to make sure that you have a great time and
Speaker 1: pay for it every single step of the way.
Speaker 3: It's interesting too, because I mean a lot of these
Speaker 3: techniques and tactics are quite old, but they've just been
Speaker 3: updated and sort of like plused up with all of
Speaker 3: the technology pieces of it that you're talking about. It's
Speaker 3: we all also went to the miow Wolf Omega Mart,
Speaker 3: which is I think ironically a little bit Grocery stores
Speaker 3: are laid out very similarly with the same kind of
Speaker 3: weaponized psychology as casinos, and this Omega Mart thing is
Speaker 3: like this psychedelic grocery store. I think it's very appropriate
Speaker 3: that that's the installation they have here in Vegas.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, it's both a protest against capitalism and
Speaker 1: a celebration thereof. And case in point to when we
Speaker 1: when we talk about controlled environments. We landed last night
Speaker 1: Litstene Noel. I played blackjack with you and Paul, and
Speaker 1: before that, Matt, I played blackjack with you and Paul.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm the one with the problem, but we had
Speaker 1: a pretty whole You ended up up.
Speaker 3: Though, So I don't think. I mean problem is relative
Speaker 3: as we're gonna get into, and it comes to the
Speaker 3: idea of gambling. But I like, I blasted through two
Speaker 3: hundred dollars on blackjack like it was nothing, and that
Speaker 3: is by design. They trick your brain into thinking the
Speaker 3: money's not real. Man, I can go all night and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get back up. I swear to God's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: It's gonna happen for me.
Speaker 2: Well, I've got a really good example of that. Actually
Speaker 2: where I ended up spending I didn't mean to. I
Speaker 2: ended up spending one hundred dollars on the slot machines. Oh,
Speaker 2: but then I won one hundred dollars with that one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars, and I ended up being seven dollars up
Speaker 2: at the end.
Speaker 3: But you felt I felt amazing.
Speaker 1: You felt like you won one hundred and seven dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was incredible because it I did technically win
Speaker 2: like one hundred and twenty. I won like way more
Speaker 2: than I lost, way more than actually one. Basically what
Speaker 2: it was saying.
Speaker 3: See drunk lady trying to get up in the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're loving it. We're loving it.
Speaker 3: This guy did.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, that's really paint. There's a set of glass
Speaker 2: doors in front of us. We're in a cube here
Speaker 2: performing about.
Speaker 1: The size of the Old a little bit smaller and
Speaker 1: the old stuff. You should know performing.
Speaker 3: We're hanging out, man. Yeah, we're vibing, is what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're right, Sorry, I shouldn't use that. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, we're we're making a podcast.
Speaker 3: We're putting on a show for the people outside the right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're And I was talking about this off air,
Speaker 1: you know, I told each few in different conversations that
Speaker 1: I kind of like the setup because I love validation.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but every time I
Speaker 1: walk into a zoo, I'm like, this orangutang gets all
Speaker 1: the attention.
Speaker 3: What if I want some stands nice to mention? If
Speaker 3: they then validate your parking, then that's like double violidation.
Speaker 1: The Orangutang's got validated parking. I knew that.
Speaker 3: I knew it from the Joe, the stars of the show,
Speaker 3: just like us in this particular interesting situation which I'm
Speaker 3: again loving. But you know, the one hundred dollars voucher
Speaker 3: you started off with that I believe as your sort
Speaker 3: of seed money. I busted out instantly.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was just absurd how quickly it went, but I had.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed every second of it, weirdly, all good time.
Speaker 3: It was sitting with my dudes at the blackjack table,
Speaker 3: felt like I was in a movie or something. Felt
Speaker 3: like it was worth the privilege of sitting with you gentlemen,
Speaker 3: that two hundred dollars was the price of admission.
Speaker 1: And also think about the way we would have spent
Speaker 1: the money otherwise. You know, it's it's fascinating because we
Speaker 1: are we're participating in something that is an ancient human pursuit,
Speaker 1: ye are?
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well yeah, because it is, it does
Speaker 2: feel great, even if you do lose a little bit
Speaker 2: of money. But the line is so fine there when
Speaker 2: it comes to the amount of money you've lost, right
Speaker 2: because it very quickly, all of a sudden becomes an
Speaker 2: unsustainable loss.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the time laps. The perception of time, which
Speaker 1: we talked about often, is part of it. And that's like, okay,
Speaker 1: So casinos modern casinos are not actually that old. It's
Speaker 1: so weird. They only date back a few centuries.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The first casinos were in Italy in the seventeenth or
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, so the sixteen hundreds, and they existed
Speaker 1: to provide, get this, a controlled gambling environment, a place
Speaker 1: where you might not get stabbed. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then of course you know into like the the
Speaker 3: boom and bust era, the gold Rush and all that
Speaker 3: stuff in the American West, you know, places that have
Speaker 3: been kind of I guess the film, well, it was
Speaker 3: a film, but the television series Dead Would I don't
Speaker 3: think that was exactly correct in terms of the historical
Speaker 3: figures and the way they all kind of connected in
Speaker 3: that particular series. But what it represents was a very
Speaker 3: specific time and place where you had these saloons that
Speaker 3: also served as of ill repute, and then you know
Speaker 3: games of chance and and restaurants and liquor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what was the thing with sawdust, Well, that's
Speaker 2: what I was getting to.
Speaker 3: I mean, and then in these early days the model was,
Speaker 3: you know, there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 3: You mentioned. I think the Europeans maybe had it figured
Speaker 3: out better, because people got killed all the time, to
Speaker 3: the point where they had to start confiscating people's you know,
Speaker 3: side arms or whatever before they went in. But people
Speaker 3: still got murdered and their blood would just soak up
Speaker 3: into the sawdust that was all over the floor or
Speaker 3: their bodily excretions or whatever it might be theirs yet, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then they just sweep it up at the end
Speaker 3: of the night, and then they just pour another you know,
Speaker 3: sawdust kind of load on the floor the next day.
Speaker 3: And it was so that floors, the sub floors wouldn't
Speaker 3: get soaked through and damaged. But it was obviously super nasty, not.
Speaker 1: A great look. I mean, I'm glad you're mentioning the US,
Speaker 1: because if you fast forward through time, we'll see that
Speaker 1: European settlers and colonists they brought their favorite games along
Speaker 1: with them, but those games were games that are originated
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. Yes, they brought the ancient games like chess,
Speaker 1: but they also bought roulette, and as soon enough, Mississippi
Speaker 1: steamboats picked up gambling, like in that amazing film, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a good way, the Maverick
Speaker 1: starring Mel Gibs.
Speaker 3: So that's roughly Deadwood adjacent a little later, I think
Speaker 3: that was right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's around there. So in like, for another perspective,
Speaker 1: we know that as far back as eighteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: probably earlier, people in New Orleans were playing some version
Speaker 1: of poker for money. And as we learned pretty recently,
Speaker 1: there are way more versions of poker than we thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like in Deadwood, for example, they've got games that
Speaker 3: they don't call it that anymore. Froh was one, which
Speaker 3: I think is a dice game, but there was other
Speaker 3: you know, if you've ever played like Red Dead, Redemption,
Speaker 3: some of the gambling type games like Liars dice and
Speaker 3: you know, games that are have fallen out of fashion,
Speaker 3: but we're kind of the early you know, games of chance.
Speaker 2: Well we're in this country. Oh yeah, we're going to
Speaker 2: get into that. I like that you're talking about different
Speaker 2: kinds of poker, because one of the things we're going
Speaker 2: to get into later is the carnival style games that
Speaker 2: are based upon games we know, like poker and blackjack
Speaker 2: and roulette and.
Speaker 1: All of those. Yeah, yeah, and we can we can
Speaker 1: fast forward here too, because we haven't gotten quite to
Speaker 1: the crazy part. Although this is a very strange story.
Speaker 1: There was another big sea change, a paradigm shift that
Speaker 1: occurred when technology entered the gambling floor. Now, technology had
Speaker 1: always has always been driven by vice.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The reason VHS one over Beta max was due to pornography, right,
Speaker 1: And that's just true. Another vice you could say is
Speaker 1: war and conflict always drives technological innovation. Gambling, while it
Speaker 1: is a recreational thing that is a lot of fun
Speaker 1: and doesn't hurt people usually, it also was driven by innovation.
Speaker 1: The mechanization later, the computerization at gambling meant that casino
Speaker 1: owners could finally do something they always dreamed of doing
Speaker 1: for centuries. They could monitor, predict, and regulate winnings. Right
Speaker 1: in terms of the ability to track people's.
Speaker 3: Behavior using surveillance and all that stuff, and also just
Speaker 3: the ability to scale. You know, once you have machines
Speaker 3: that don't require human input, then you can just dump
Speaker 3: dozens of them onto a giant space like the size
Speaker 3: of an airplane hangar, and just kind of let them
Speaker 3: run themselves. And I think one thing that we all learned,
Speaker 3: and we were looking into this kind of stuff, is
Speaker 3: there's a law in Las Vegas and maybe in other
Speaker 3: states too, or in other cities, where these machines are
Speaker 3: required to pay out a certain amount compared to what
Speaker 3: is put into them. Yes, and the companies these different
Speaker 3: resort hotels and casinos, they know exactly what that number
Speaker 3: is and they're not going to pay out a penny
Speaker 3: more than that. So the jackpots are regulated and paid
Speaker 3: out just to hit that number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that gets to what we call progressive machine. That's
Speaker 1: because they're connected together, uh such that when more people
Speaker 1: are playing them, just like an M M O r
Speaker 1: PG Uh, they pay out the jackpot increases.
Speaker 3: Isn't that how the lottery works too? Like you see
Speaker 3: it on a big billboard, the number keeps getting iron
Speaker 3: it's because of how many people have bought tickets.
Speaker 2: Just say collection, let's stop this recording, let's head back
Speaker 2: to the casino. Let's get crown people let's all go
Speaker 2: play the same slot machines, and let's see how people
Speaker 2: have tried that.
Speaker 1: People have tried that. It goes back to the prisoners,
Speaker 1: the prisoner's dilemma, the old game theory, because everybody will
Speaker 1: be on board when it's fifty folks, you know, all
Speaker 1: going in on a lottery ticket. But what if one
Speaker 1: person is the winner? It's a different will will they cooperate?
Speaker 1: Will they do what they said they will do? With hope?
Speaker 1: One would? I think the three of us will be
Speaker 1: good at it. But the first uh wait.
Speaker 2: Let let's talk about the floor, the casino floor right now,
Speaker 2: the ones that we're in. Okay, all of that, all
Speaker 2: of the video game machines, sure that are allegedly slot machines.
Speaker 2: They're slot machines. They're all video game machines that didn't
Speaker 2: even start until what oh that's right.
Speaker 1: Yes, So the first gambling machine, the early version of
Speaker 1: the slot machine, doesn't come along until nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: The first video slot machine, the first gambling ones. In general,
Speaker 1: people are still fighting over this. If you're playing people
Speaker 1: are still fighting over this. If you're playing trivia and
Speaker 1: someone tells you was definitely in New York or definitely
Speaker 1: San Francisco contest.
Speaker 3: That nineteen hundreds, like ten yeah, yeah, because I got
Speaker 3: to say really quickly. I went on a really neat
Speaker 3: tour yesterday of the Museum of Neon here in Las Vegas,
Speaker 3: and I learned a bunch of very interesting things because
Speaker 3: it's literally all of these old signs from these casinos
Speaker 3: from the back to the founding of Las Vegas kind
Speaker 3: of as we know it in terms of like being
Speaker 3: a gambling mecca. And one thing I learned was that
Speaker 3: Las Vegas was only founded as a city in as
Speaker 3: early as nineteen oh five, and it wasn't until like
Speaker 3: the forties that it really kind of got.
Speaker 1: Going the way really know it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And one thing that was interesting too is I think,
Speaker 3: if I'm not mistaken, Las Vegas was one of the first,
Speaker 3: if not the first city to integrate. And it was
Speaker 3: because of all these black performers that weren't allowed to
Speaker 3: gamble in the casinos where they were singing, you know,
Speaker 3: like Sammy Davis Junior, which now has Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And it was because of that that there was this
Speaker 3: sea change and they made there was originally I think
Speaker 3: one casino where the where black performers were allowed to
Speaker 3: hang out. But then they changed the law and it
Speaker 3: was because of these performers and the kind of power
Speaker 3: they wielded, so very progressive city that interesting way. But
Speaker 3: this guy, Benny Binyon is the reason. He was like
Speaker 3: kind of an old cowboy type guy, grew up in
Speaker 3: Texas and then moved to Vegas in the forties. He
Speaker 3: got went to prison for taxation. But he also is
Speaker 3: the reason that the sawdust thing started getting replaced with
Speaker 3: carpet and that created the idea of kind of crappy
Speaker 3: casinos were known as sawdust joints, and like nice casinos
Speaker 3: were known as carpet joints.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know it's it's weird because I've I've been
Speaker 1: looking around at different houses and stuff, and carpet is
Speaker 1: uh not houses, but it's in for casinos because it
Speaker 1: feels homey.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I want to stick on those slot machines just for
Speaker 2: one more second, just because there's in the casino where
Speaker 2: we're staying, there's this tiny little room in the back
Speaker 2: that has the old manuals, and I just want to
Speaker 2: just really quickly think about the mechanical movement required to
Speaker 2: activate a slot machine versus now with a with a
Speaker 2: physical movement with your arm on a lea like your
Speaker 2: arm like a lever to a lever. Right, so every
Speaker 2: time you put in a coins, at the time pull
Speaker 2: that lever, you made a bet. Right. And now with
Speaker 2: the advent of these video machines, it is literally just
Speaker 2: you touch a button like you would an arcade game,
Speaker 2: or you would, you know, on a remote control somewhere.
Speaker 1: You trigger an RNG or random number generator. Right, that's exactly.
Speaker 2: But but you're the physical action you need to take.
Speaker 1: Is and and this changes things. One could argue the
Speaker 1: reason there are some machines that have ornamental slots, they're
Speaker 1: still clearly video, they're not mechanical. They have that because
Speaker 1: they are leveraging muscle memory. That's part of the crazy
Speaker 1: action here. In nineteen ninety four, Antigua and Barbuda passed
Speaker 1: the Free Trade and Processing Act that let people open
Speaker 1: online casinos, which is a big thing. But right now
Speaker 1: online casinos and online gambling in their own bag of badgers.
Speaker 1: Physical casinos rule the roost. When you think of gambling, Macau,
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo and of course the metropolis of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: You can in each of these places. You can live
Speaker 1: in a city all its own. Las Vegas is not
Speaker 1: one city. It's like multiple huge Matt, we compared to
Speaker 1: cruise ships before. It's multiple self contained cities. You can eat, sleep, drink, shop,
Speaker 1: see shows, gamble, romance, you name it.
Speaker 2: All, wards and bonus points, yes.
Speaker 1: And get apps, all without leaving your casino. And that
Speaker 1: is very much by design. You see, it turns out
Speaker 1: there's plenty of stuff casinos don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Will pause for a word from our sponsors, and then
Speaker 1: we'll roll the dice, pull the lever, push the button,
Speaker 1: push the button. Here's where it gets crazy. First and foremost. Yes,
Speaker 1: as Noel and Matt and Paul Michigan control by far
Speaker 1: the most successful black jackman of us can confer. A
Speaker 1: casino is meant to take your money.
Speaker 2: Paul made so much money on blackjack.
Speaker 1: I don't think that much money.
Speaker 2: I mean, look compare to what I lost.
Speaker 1: I'm a big up.
Speaker 3: I know, I'm proud of you. To Paul, I'm just
Speaker 3: being funny. I'm just I'm bitter. I'm jealous of what
Speaker 3: it is. And then I texted the group. I was like,
Speaker 3: I got a blackjack app. You guys, I figured it
Speaker 3: all out. I'm going back in for seconds. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: win it all back. You guys were saying something interesting,
Speaker 3: and we're obviously jumping around here a lot because we're
Speaker 3: kind of in the midst of this, and it's it's
Speaker 3: very interesting. But the idea of the experiential quality of
Speaker 3: the muscle memory, Ben, you pointed out on the machines
Speaker 3: and since here most of them is just that button
Speaker 3: push that you were talking about, Matt. What you do
Speaker 3: get though, is the same thing that we love in
Speaker 3: video games, explosions of sparkly loot that comes out of
Speaker 3: people you murder in borderlands or whatever. Sounds that you
Speaker 3: know sync up with visuals and clicks and bops, and
Speaker 3: it just really and that is just as much part
Speaker 3: of the whole muscle memory that's almost replaced it because
Speaker 3: it used to be the machines would just go ding
Speaker 3: ding ding ding or whatever. Now it's like a surround
Speaker 3: sound experiential thing and you get micro reward.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, well, you got to keep them strong. The
Speaker 1: log I'm tapping, I'm tapping the inside of my elbow, folks,
Speaker 1: give me another code. It means if you do the
Speaker 1: attic side what we're talking about, right right, Yes, we'll
Speaker 1: get to this.
Speaker 2: The the it's all the same thing with video games
Speaker 2: mobile games where you get in game current, so you
Speaker 2: can pay for one currency in most games, and that
Speaker 2: one can buy you pretty much anything.
Speaker 1: Games have multiple currency, but.
Speaker 2: Then there will be a secondary one that you win
Speaker 2: your crew by playing the game, and with that one
Speaker 2: you can get like lesser stuff, but you still feel
Speaker 2: like you're winning reward.
Speaker 1: Right because it triggers the dopamine. That's why I call
Speaker 1: social media that don't put me casino.
Speaker 3: And eventually, in the situation you're talking about, Matt, you're
Speaker 3: you're going to spend another book, even if it's just
Speaker 3: the one, because no, no, they gave me something for
Speaker 3: my investment. Almosts I got mores. I'm so close. Uh so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's edging into dopamine and reward, and you're
Speaker 1: you know, there's nothing wrong with what's happening. There's nothing
Speaker 1: illegal there either. At base, you're paying for entertainment. It's
Speaker 1: the same way you would pay to go to an
Speaker 1: amusement park. All right, I hear there's the possibility you
Speaker 1: would win a roller coaster. That's the only difference.
Speaker 3: I rarely enjoyed losing my money. It was it was
Speaker 3: like I paid for a ticket to a theme park.
Speaker 3: That's I enjoyed it. I'm not mad.
Speaker 1: No, I want to say I want to point out
Speaker 1: something that a pal Paul said that really stuck with me.
Speaker 1: We walked over to an ATM. ATMs and casinos are
Speaker 1: notorious for having a high transaction fee, similar to that
Speaker 1: you would see in some adult inner atainment venues. And
Speaker 1: I've heard and so what and as shout out, Clairemont
Speaker 1: Lounge And as Paul pointed out, we pulled he pulled
Speaker 1: some cash from a casino ATM before we went on
Speaker 1: our first blackjack four eight. Now, Paul is one of
Speaker 1: the smartest guys we know, and he just shrugged and said,
Speaker 1: with that typical Paul aplom he said, huh, look at that.
Speaker 1: The house is already winning. Yeah, yeah, you remember that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well the whole point is okay, So where
Speaker 2: we are located in Las Vegas, at the casino where
Speaker 2: we happen to be staying in our own happy little
Speaker 2: live level of situation, it would take us. We were
Speaker 2: trying to calculate how long it would take for us
Speaker 2: to get to an ATM that is branded for just
Speaker 2: a bank, right that one of us has an account
Speaker 2: with versus going to one of the in house ATMs
Speaker 2: which are going to charge.
Speaker 3: I think it was tenne idea. It was literally nine ninety,
Speaker 3: which is its own kind of weaponized psychology. Of course,
Speaker 3: you know it's.
Speaker 1: A deal because you read the first number.
Speaker 2: Ben, But what did you put it? Really?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Ben, it was something like they immediately win before you've
Speaker 2: even played.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, I mean, and that's and that's part
Speaker 1: of the great game, right, different great game, the casino
Speaker 1: great game. Like when we look around the floor and
Speaker 1: we were talking about this, we learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the surveillance, the psychology, the matho play. When
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, we notice every possible variable that could
Speaker 1: result in us spending some cash has been accounted for
Speaker 1: and if possible, wherever possible, whenever possible, it has been optimized.
Speaker 1: And maybe we talk about the gaming floor itself, like
Speaker 1: we've been well.
Speaker 3: Remember that guy, Benny, Ben and I mentioned ago the carpet, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like a big part of the feature or a
Speaker 3: bug depending on where you stand.
Speaker 1: Depending on the cleanliness.
Speaker 3: Well that's exactly right. But what you'll notice in any
Speaker 3: of these casinos, as one usually in the gaming areas,
Speaker 3: low ceilings, all these weird, low hanging bizarrow chandelier things to.
Speaker 1: Feel more intimate, as Bill Friedman.
Speaker 3: Low light but not too low. Music that you can
Speaker 3: tap your toe to but isn't distracting. It's weirdly ambient feeling.
Speaker 3: And that carpet weird psychedelic patterns that kind of are
Speaker 3: almost painful to look at for too long, which keeps
Speaker 3: your eyes squarely planted on the game.
Speaker 1: Man, I want to play in a casino that just
Speaker 1: has Tom Waits on the soundtrack. They're in Old Vegas.
Speaker 1: If they do, maybe they're nugget it's got it.
Speaker 3: That's more like a Texas roadhouse. Manon't get that.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll make our own.
Speaker 2: Can I get one that's all prodigy?
Speaker 1: Of course you can.
Speaker 3: That's a little I don't think the house is gonna
Speaker 3: like that very much.
Speaker 1: What do you say? Do you beat me here, Paul?
Speaker 1: Do you say smacked my chup instead of hit me?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I was talking about? I want to I want to
Speaker 2: start fires.
Speaker 4: They're both great songs, they're both songs of their time,
Speaker 4: but the thing is just like the grocery store thing,
Speaker 4: just like the cruise ship, just like the Live Laugh.
Speaker 1: Love, you know, mixed use apartment complex places. The research
Speaker 1: that went into these is amazing, you know, the restaurants,
Speaker 1: the theatrical venues. We walked here. This part of Vegas
Speaker 1: is very much a walkable city, right, there's that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And but also like Vegas in general, it's
Speaker 3: not walkable at all. And to your point about like
Speaker 3: getting caught in these labyrinths, you might look on a
Speaker 3: map and be like, this place I want to go
Speaker 3: to is like right over there, it's across the street.
Speaker 3: But then you go and realize the reality of it
Speaker 3: is you'd have to like it's like walking into the sea.
Speaker 3: It's as well, you know, it's a.
Speaker 1: Family Circus map, you guys, remember Family start.
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly like a Looney Tunes overview when like
Speaker 3: Bugs is running, you know, he's like digging his tunnels
Speaker 3: to Albuquerque or whatever. It's crazy. I had a map
Speaker 3: it said there was a walkings giving me the dotted line.
Speaker 3: I get to a place where it's like there is
Speaker 3: a high way here, and I cannot. It's like when
Speaker 3: Michael Scott drives his car to the lake. It was
Speaker 3: like that, but there was nowhere for me to go,
Speaker 3: so I just I'm not gonna eat here. I'm going elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to all of this design, these
Speaker 1: securitiest roots especially, and these low ceilings. Uh and these
Speaker 1: semile lights.
Speaker 3: The carpets, they all come from h.
Speaker 1: A guy named Bill Friedman. Uh he is also he
Speaker 1: was what he did change the game of human psychology
Speaker 1: and consumer psychology so much that grocery stores started looking
Speaker 1: at designing their their layouts like casinos.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Ben Is he one of these guys that just
Speaker 3: did this research and then people co opted it to
Speaker 3: do these evil things? Or was he mega into this
Speaker 3: road star book?
Speaker 2: Right? And and he was a he just gambled all
Speaker 2: the Shifa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah he was. He was definitely a.
Speaker 3: Ricked himself.
Speaker 2: Then No, he went around to all the casinos and
Speaker 2: he literally looked at individual sections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, subtit exactly. I'm doing research.
Speaker 2: I got to sit in this particular.
Speaker 1: I'm writing a novel about someone addicted to dr I've.
Speaker 3: Been wearing the same pair of socks for five years
Speaker 3: because I'm researching the socks. It's my lucky socks.
Speaker 2: But he came up with some pretty interesting stuff that
Speaker 2: then casinos, after upon reading his book and getting the insights,
Speaker 2: were like, oh well, let's at least test some of
Speaker 2: this out, and they found success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that was my question. Though he wasn't
Speaker 3: necessarily consulting for the casinos, he was just interesting. This
Speaker 3: is his field of interest.
Speaker 1: He did start to consult before because the book gets
Speaker 1: published in the late nineteen nineties, and it's what's the
Speaker 1: book called. It's called Designing Casinos to Dominate the competition.
Speaker 3: To dominate the competition, like in an after colon? Is
Speaker 3: it like the subtitle?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think there's a colon there.
Speaker 1: I would have liked the spacing of it. But to
Speaker 1: rob you, but it sounds very like Laws of Power.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah, it's very sun Zoo. But like Frivolous, I.
Speaker 2: Thought it was just a picture of Bill with a
Speaker 2: cat of nine tails in a casino, and he was
Speaker 2: just kind.
Speaker 1: Of yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got a weird mascot.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, makes that casino your little.
Speaker 1: Lady consensually right. But he doesn't have this chapter on
Speaker 1: safe words. The entire book is about what you can
Speaker 1: do to keep people in a casino and playing for
Speaker 1: absolutely as long as possible. And his metric of success
Speaker 1: is just the percentage of visitors who won actually gamble
Speaker 1: and then two, not just how long they stay, but
Speaker 1: how often they re ter.
Speaker 3: Of course, and this is in the twenties ish or
Speaker 3: later than that, in the sixties, right.
Speaker 1: When he's starting to think about this. Yeah, yeah, when
Speaker 1: he publishes the book, it's the nineties only crap, that's wild,
Speaker 1: because every for like decades I.
Speaker 3: Could see that. So again, like you know, early casinos,
Speaker 3: they they had their like kind of ways that were
Speaker 3: maybe more rooted in like vaudeville, you know what I mean, Well,
Speaker 3: you know, how to keep the butts in the seats,
Speaker 3: old school, So they were probably some of these tricks. Again,
Speaker 3: we're probably starting to happen, but not to this degree.
Speaker 3: This is a sea change, all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And let's also be honest, before financial transactions largely
Speaker 1: moved to electronic media, is possible, well, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: just say, oh, we made a ton off the slots
Speaker 1: and take the money you did from your other legitimate
Speaker 1: work and sanity say wow, this casino is cleaning it up.
Speaker 3: Isn't it funny that we haven't even talked about the
Speaker 3: mob That's really it's the topic of it. It's but
Speaker 3: there's an incredible mob museum here that I think we're
Speaker 3: all hoping to check out town. But okay, so we're
Speaker 3: hedging around this, edging around this, if you will. But
Speaker 3: what were We've mentioned a lot of these, but let's
Speaker 3: hear it like in listical form, like what were his
Speaker 3: prime movers? You know his principles here.
Speaker 1: It was stuff like no clocks, no windows in the game.
Speaker 1: You know, outside light, lose track of time. And you
Speaker 1: know this mattered more when there were ubiquitous smartphones, right,
Speaker 1: and when people were also less likely to have wrist watches.
Speaker 1: But even if you have a wrist watch, you're going
Speaker 1: it's going to be easy to ignore, yeah, because you
Speaker 1: can physically remove it from your site instead of like
Speaker 1: a wall clock will always be there.
Speaker 2: Well, in most games in a casino require one hand. Ah,
Speaker 2: right there in your dominant hand is probably the one
Speaker 2: that doesn't that doesn't have your watch on.
Speaker 3: You notice they have buttons on both sides of all
Speaker 3: the machines. Yeah, because you know, in the entire United States,
Speaker 3: this is the only city I think that still lets
Speaker 3: people smoke inside.
Speaker 1: Oh that's because of a tribal loophole.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, is it really?
Speaker 1: But it's so.
Speaker 3: Old school and people are smoking with their left hand,
Speaker 3: tapping with their hands and drinking in between. And because
Speaker 3: they're just feeding you drinks. As long as you're sitting
Speaker 3: at that machine, slamming that button, mashing that button, can
Speaker 3: we say.
Speaker 2: That we're at the area. Are we allowed to say that?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: It seems like such a bougie casino hotel to me
Speaker 2: when we first walked in and there was one person
Speaker 2: smoking a cigarette immediately upon walking.
Speaker 1: Back and slapped it out of her mouth.
Speaker 2: Well, but again, one of the principles is have gambling
Speaker 2: equipment immediately when you watch in the casino, right, principal number.
Speaker 1: Two immediately, no empty lobbies exactly.
Speaker 2: And my lady is just just hitting that dart and
Speaker 2: then and like I just went, wait.
Speaker 1: Lady, you can't do that here. They have gambling machines.
Speaker 3: When you walk out of the plane. I don't think
Speaker 3: the lady's smoking the airport.
Speaker 1: I didn't at least notice any of that. But no,
Speaker 1: it's I think it depends on how much you win
Speaker 1: anything goes.
Speaker 3: They want you to be as comfortable. These seats are cushy,
Speaker 3: they feel good to sit in. All of these principles
Speaker 3: that you're mentioning still hold true today and they've just
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, improved them. And for example, you
Speaker 3: mentioned the wristwatch and stuff in the no light. But
Speaker 3: also if you guys notice we have a hard time
Speaker 3: reaching each other when we're in and we.
Speaker 1: Get separated, I guess the signal.
Speaker 3: The signal is bad, and it's because of all this
Speaker 3: glass and concrete and steel everywhere. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's by design.
Speaker 1: It feels like it now and everything's by design, also,
Speaker 1: like the Labyriantine design. Even if we're on a even
Speaker 1: if we're in a situation where we know where one
Speaker 1: of us is saying, hey, I'm by the restroom, and
Speaker 1: then another person is saying, hey, I just got off
Speaker 1: the elevator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which one?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, you have to navigate again. The correct word is labyrintine.
Speaker 2: We're just to be in the moment, guys. Ben just
Speaker 2: got a salute from an ar carrying law enforcement officer
Speaker 2: and it weird me out a little bit.
Speaker 3: You're good, sinister, or thank you for your podcast service.
Speaker 1: Just hanging out.
Speaker 3: That's nice, that's nice.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 3: God, he's got our best. But you know, one the
Speaker 3: reason I mentioned the cell phone thing only because you
Speaker 3: know it's someone and let's say you did have a
Speaker 3: horrible gambling problem. You're going to get to really hard
Speaker 3: for someone to call you and tell you, hey, please
Speaker 3: go where are you?
Speaker 1: It's your birthday?
Speaker 3: Why aren't you coming home? Dad?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, we need were talking about on the ATM.
Speaker 2: Before you pull money out. It has the whole warning
Speaker 2: thing like, hey, if you've got a gambling problem, call
Speaker 2: this number. Okay, go ahead and put your thing in
Speaker 2: so you can get more money. Oh also you can
Speaker 2: take a line of credit out if you want. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: But hey, also, yeah, here's the least interesting flyer in
Speaker 1: the city, right next to the eighteen.
Speaker 3: It's in comic sands.
Speaker 2: Immediate serious though, it really does flash up a warning
Speaker 2: about gambling. Of course, it allows you to take money out.
Speaker 1: That's the law, and that's like many laws. It is
Speaker 1: not I think it's the law.
Speaker 3: It could just be Okay, you're right.
Speaker 1: I think you are correct. It's also not not particularly
Speaker 1: helpful for anybody who has struggled with addiction. You know
Speaker 1: that a pamphlet is not going to especially if you're
Speaker 1: in the grips of a period of usage. It's not
Speaker 1: going to change what's happening with you. Also, we're familiar
Speaker 1: with a lot of the basic nudgees. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't have to go through all the principles of design,
Speaker 1: but we should mention the emphasis. The Freedman philosophy, the
Speaker 1: game design and philosophy, says you don't need the accoutrement,
Speaker 1: you don't need the fun things. You need the low
Speaker 1: ce elites to make it feel intimate, and you need
Speaker 1: the games, the slots especially to be the main draw.
Speaker 1: That's why they are.
Speaker 3: Almost yeah, draw like a moth to it.
Speaker 1: And and they're loud, and they're insistent, and they're always
Speaker 1: They're primarily going to be by heavily trafficked areas. You
Speaker 1: literally cannot avoid the slots as a person who who
Speaker 1: goes to a casino and stays at night.
Speaker 2: What was theo that started out with a yellow brick
Speaker 2: road because it was based.
Speaker 3: That was the MGM Grand and the building is still
Speaker 3: green ish. I think it's called something else down I
Speaker 3: can't remember the original mg in the part GYM or something. No,
Speaker 3: it's not even I don't think it's even an MGM property.
Speaker 3: I think another hotel did whatever bought it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: remember let's think about this like MGM, Metro Goldwen mayor
Speaker 3: the film company they got in on the ground floor
Speaker 3: of the hotel casino business. So yeah, in the thirties
Speaker 3: with that hotel open, I think The Wizard of Oz
Speaker 3: was the biggest movie that ever existed. And they had
Speaker 3: apparently like a yellow brick road in there. And I
Speaker 3: learned all this from Trinity by the way, at the
Speaker 3: Museum of Neon, So please if you're in town, check
Speaker 3: it out. And as for Trinity, she was an amazing
Speaker 3: tour guy. Yeah, and again that branding stuff has been
Speaker 3: in the game from the start. But MGM is still
Speaker 3: kind of king.
Speaker 2: But the point is of what we've got in here
Speaker 2: from basically the principles is that as a tourist, the
Speaker 2: yellow brick road is like something astonished, an amazing direction,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter as much as the gaming equipment
Speaker 2: and where it is.
Speaker 3: I see it, I see that.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what Bill's idea was simple, straightforward, very successful.
Speaker 1: Get people in, get them playing as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: remove indicators of time and when they need to eat, sleep, urinate,
Speaker 1: or defecate, kind of punish them for it. Yeah, force
Speaker 1: them to walk past every single other opportunity to put
Speaker 1: money in a machine or to get drunk or to
Speaker 1: get drunk. Weirder decisions when you say it like that.
Speaker 3: No, but I mean, you know, and again, we've talked
Speaker 3: about the people with gambling addiction stuff, and I think
Speaker 3: we all watched I believe it was a PBS special
Speaker 3: about older folks that have gambling problems. Apparently that's a
Speaker 3: real epidemic with with older folks, a lot of Boom
Speaker 3: Boomer era kind of generation folks because they have disposable
Speaker 3: income and they have a lot of time on their hands.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep going till Paul subs is okay.
Speaker 3: Some of the folks that were talking about their problems,
Speaker 3: they catched in their four own k's, they catched in
Speaker 3: their iras and all of this stuff to the point
Speaker 3: of just being completely destitutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's and think about that too, because you're
Speaker 1: looking at people who in this society are often ignored,
Speaker 1: they're isolated, they're relegated right to lonely places. So this
Speaker 1: feels like it's bustling. It's happening. There are people around you,
Speaker 1: You're getting free stuff, people are paying attention to you.
Speaker 1: I think that's the big one. That's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's that sense of community. And and I will be honest,
Speaker 1: we do know that blue zone indicators show us people
Speaker 1: who elderly tend to live longer and have a higher
Speaker 1: quality of life if they feel they are part.
Speaker 3: Of a community.
Speaker 1: So the game does change, though, because there's a guy
Speaker 1: who comes along and says, Okay, Bill Friedman's philosophy has
Speaker 1: taken over Vegas. I'm gonna throw away every rule. He's
Speaker 1: a legendary interior designer and native Las Vegas guy, Roger
Speaker 1: Thomas in Las Vegas. He's uh, he's he's like you
Speaker 1: mentioned Golden Girls earlier. Do you guys remember designing women? Yes,
Speaker 1: it's all about designers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I gotta say I like this guy, even though
Speaker 2: he's kind of I don't know, a magician, the psychological
Speaker 2: kind of evil, but like his ideas are creative as hell,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Like, describe the difference between game design, which is Bill
Speaker 1: Friedman's philosophy and uh and Thomas's which is playground design?
Speaker 2: Well, it is in my mind the way I view
Speaker 2: it is. Friedman established a lot of these standards that
Speaker 2: then Las Vegas and other, you know, major hubs of
Speaker 2: gambling took up.
Speaker 1: Sure, choose a theme for the outside, but then it's
Speaker 1: the same casino over and over.
Speaker 2: You got your color scheme might change a little bit.
Speaker 3: Oh that's funny.
Speaker 2: But then this guy comes along and he goes he
Speaker 2: was working I think it was Bilagio, the first one
Speaker 2: that he was working on. Yes, at least his first
Speaker 2: major project he was working on with Steve. Steve went okay, so.
Speaker 3: That's one of the crazy fountain out front.
Speaker 1: Right, who still runs the town even though he retired
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. We're talking with an uber driver about this.
Speaker 1: You gotta be careful.
Speaker 2: But his concept was to almost flip all of those
Speaker 2: design like principles on their heads, not all of them,
Speaker 2: but several of them on their heads, specifically to give
Speaker 2: the casino patron something different. Really, I think that original concept. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's not make them all cramped, Let's not make everybody
Speaker 2: confused about where they're going, and make it amaze. Let's
Speaker 2: let people see where entrances and exits are. We're not
Speaker 2: going to create an anxiety ridden place the way this
Speaker 2: other dude did. We're going to make it open and
Speaker 2: make you feel opulent.
Speaker 1: We're going to make you feel like you want to
Speaker 1: do this, not that you are pressure.
Speaker 3: Yes, but wait a minute, But isn't what exists now
Speaker 3: and what we've experienced in the Aria kind of a
Speaker 3: combination of both of those.
Speaker 1: Things very much? So, Yeah, it is evolution, and that's
Speaker 1: because it is a newer school organization, right, And Thomas
Speaker 1: did a lot of amazing things he didn't do. He
Speaker 1: threw out all the old rules. He threw all the
Speaker 1: old rules out the window by starting building places with
Speaker 1: you know, windows.
Speaker 2: And or fake windows that appear to be windows, which.
Speaker 1: Is also a good move for any bunker or space shuttle.
Speaker 3: I also haven't been in one, but I've heard that
Speaker 3: some of them have the ceilings painted like the outside.
Speaker 3: Scott is like a cloudy scene.
Speaker 2: Paris, Paris.
Speaker 1: We have to go.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah, great, and it's freaky.
Speaker 3: So is that more the philosophy of what we're talking
Speaker 3: about with this guy again describing, Yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 3: a mix.
Speaker 1: So it's like a I don't want to say pure
Speaker 1: one because all of.
Speaker 3: Them are all white and wicker.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of that. But but are there rooms
Speaker 1: like that? But this stuff is so calculated that each
Speaker 1: room is not measured by a qualitative aesthetic appeal on
Speaker 1: behalf of the designer Thomas himself. It's measured on a
Speaker 1: quantitative return. Yes, day over day, month over month, and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't make that return, then it will or
Speaker 1: year over your possibility. And if it doesn't make that return,
Speaker 1: then that room gets refitted. And he said, look right, yeah, he's.
Speaker 3: Saying with certain games they're monitoring, like if a certain
Speaker 3: type of poker or a certain video machine isn't playing,
Speaker 3: they put it out to past you.
Speaker 2: But but ben's really the important thing is the room
Speaker 2: the sector. Right you imagine how an orange this like
Speaker 2: is really not it's only given.
Speaker 5: Us for.
Speaker 1: Yeah only, or they make so much money, even the
Speaker 1: ones that you think in like your small local casinos
Speaker 1: or regional casinos, they are cleaning up uh millions of
Speaker 1: dollars at a fast clipt.
Speaker 3: We were talking with one of our colleagues about the
Speaker 3: MGM hack and how if they had to shut that
Speaker 3: stuff down for just one day. Yeah, it's like just
Speaker 3: millions of dollars down the tube, not to mention just
Speaker 3: the lost wages and all of the just the costs
Speaker 3: keep it running. But I mean, you see we just
Speaker 3: sit at thatch that that table for the little bit
Speaker 3: we did, she's just shoving that money into a cash box.
Speaker 3: It's like, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: There is a it is a clear slot plastic thing
Speaker 2: that is held by the dealer and a clear plastic receptacle.
Speaker 3: Shut it in there.
Speaker 2: You watch your your fifty or twenty or one hundred
Speaker 2: or ten. Just go.
Speaker 3: But guys, it's almost like they're they're sleight of handing
Speaker 3: it away because they want you to stop thinking about
Speaker 3: that bill quickly.
Speaker 1: That's a good observation. And also I want to say,
Speaker 1: in all fairness, dealers get treated terribly by a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Uh, And that goes into some of the
Speaker 1: Vegas myths. So maybe we take a break for a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsors and we'll be right back just
Speaker 1: to just to bust some myths here towards the end.
Speaker 3: Love it and we're back recording live here from the
Speaker 3: iHeart Podcast studio, powered by both at the House of
Speaker 3: music at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, talking about casinos gonna
Speaker 3: bust some casino myths. We've we've mentioned some of these
Speaker 3: things along the way, but again, let's get right to.
Speaker 1: It, okay, Uh your dealer. Yeah, we're jumping around here
Speaker 1: because we're from amazing. Also we're from Atlanta. You guys,
Speaker 1: we are weirdly nice to every of course, but it
Speaker 1: is but to your point, like they some of them
Speaker 1: are treated. I don't think it's weirdly nice. I think
Speaker 1: it's normal nice. But we are kind of in a bubble.
Speaker 1: We're impressed.
Speaker 3: Also because the skill which they're laying up very it's
Speaker 3: like cardistry, you.
Speaker 4: Know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, but it's okay, but that's part of the psychology, guys.
Speaker 3: Hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that person is an employee of the place that
Speaker 2: is taking our money. Sure, and that person is being
Speaker 2: kind helping us understand. Oh no, actually, you should double
Speaker 2: shit down on this one because you're gonna get a
Speaker 2: better children. Oh whoops, I got a black jack.
Speaker 3: Well that's why. I mean, it's another it did happen
Speaker 3: to me five times.
Speaker 1: It's also it's also it's a common thing you see
Speaker 1: in sales where you know, you start getting. One thing
Speaker 1: I will say is dealers never use the Royal Wii
Speaker 1: where they're talking with you. But sales guys give you
Speaker 1: a little to give you that little touch, that little priming,
Speaker 1: a little in LP. But the the the anchoring and
Speaker 1: stuff aside, the dealer cannot rig the game. No, it's impossible.
Speaker 3: I'd love to just pick your brain about some theories
Speaker 3: that we're talking.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, let's go.
Speaker 3: Well, just like we just had this thing where I
Speaker 3: asked the question like, how is it that it seems
Speaker 3: the edge is always with the dealer every time?
Speaker 2: Like or let's say let's say seventy five percent.
Speaker 3: Okay, fair enough, but practically getting twenty or twenty one
Speaker 3: at the end. And I'm like, why is that happening?
Speaker 1: And I mean again, I'm getting stuck with the fifteen.
Speaker 3: Exactly every time. And even when I did what I
Speaker 3: was supposed to do, I either busted or anyway I
Speaker 3: had some bad luck quote unquote. That's its own conversation.
Speaker 3: But Matt was like, what if there's some way that
Speaker 3: because of the cameras that are looking at everything, that
Speaker 3: are seeing the hands.
Speaker 5: And because of the black box that I'm saying it's
Speaker 5: feeding it and it's like inserting just the right card
Speaker 5: or reordering them, or you're saying this is this would
Speaker 5: be found out immediately by gaming.
Speaker 1: Case high illegal, I would know exactly because it's fraud.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is all you would have to do
Speaker 2: is tell the system how many players there are, sure,
Speaker 2: so that it can be aware of what of who
Speaker 2: it is dealing to.
Speaker 3: You don't think they're they're the smarter people than you
Speaker 3: or I that do this for a living and play
Speaker 3: that just wouldn't stand for that. And well the ones
Speaker 3: that count cards, which again totally out of my right.
Speaker 3: That is a way that you can get the edge,
Speaker 3: speaking of legal versus illegal, that's not technically illegal, but
Speaker 3: it's frowned upon and you will get kicked out, you know.
Speaker 2: That, Ben. The whole thing that we talked about was
Speaker 2: in the absence of transparency thrust and when your shuffler
Speaker 2: is this black box that is opaque, you cannot see
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: You don't.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the person, we're talking about mechanism.
Speaker 1: Yes that shuffles like that's a black box. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just said, like we're not. It's not a figure
Speaker 1: of speech.
Speaker 2: It's a literal Yeah, it's a mechanical thing that does
Speaker 2: the shuffling that the dealer after they've got a little
Speaker 2: thing on the side, at least that once it fills
Speaker 2: up with a number of cards, that they shove those
Speaker 2: cards back in and inside that black box that you
Speaker 2: can't see into, there are like six or more or
Speaker 2: full decks of cars. Yes, so theoretically, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm just it seems possible.
Speaker 3: But Volkswagen cheated on emissions for years, and I also
Speaker 3: used a black box.
Speaker 1: Well then how come how come mission control is I'll
Speaker 1: say it, Paul, it's too late. How come michion control
Speaker 1: is knocking out like five six blackjacks?
Speaker 2: It was just it was his thought experiment where we're no,
Speaker 2: you're still right. But because I've never played blackjack, and
Speaker 2: I went in and I played blackjack with you guys,
Speaker 2: and I loved the experience. But I still lost a
Speaker 2: couple hundred dollars and I should go play after this.
Speaker 3: I'm going to, but I still know I gotta get
Speaker 3: back on top, baby.
Speaker 2: But it's just so crazy psychologically, the feeling that I
Speaker 2: can be manipulated in that way.
Speaker 3: Right, and and god forbid, you had something in you
Speaker 3: that made you really susceptible to that, like a certain gene.
Speaker 3: Maybe that makes you more susceptible to alcoholism or drug addiction.
Speaker 3: And again we're not here to soapbox about the evils
Speaker 3: necessarily of this stuff, but there are people that are
Speaker 3: triggered by that, that dopamine because that rush and they
Speaker 3: can't get enough of it.
Speaker 2: Well, how did they make me feel so good about it?
Speaker 2: Is there something else at play?
Speaker 1: Ah? Yes? Uh, it is definitely not pumping oxygen into
Speaker 1: the air.
Speaker 3: Isn't that funny? How that came up like on every
Speaker 3: listical video about and I believed it for a second.
Speaker 1: You made the excellent point. We're talking Matt, and we
Speaker 1: were talking about this, and Matt said, look, how many
Speaker 1: people are smoking?
Speaker 4: Yeah, how how can the oxygen mix be wellable?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they've got incredible ventilation some of the newer casinos,
Speaker 2: which is a real thing that a dealer confirmed to us,
Speaker 2: is that they the the dealer tables. If you're playing
Speaker 2: black Shaft for poker, one of those games, they've got
Speaker 2: tiny little holes cut into those tables that shoot air
Speaker 2: at the people who are playing at the players, your size, bike,
Speaker 2: its fitness, but it's it's more of a health and
Speaker 2: safety thing. It's should prevent the dealer from immediately or
Speaker 2: directly inhaling the smoke. But if you're a player and
Speaker 2: you're getting that, I don't know that in this case,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't really hit you. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think. I kind of think it would. I
Speaker 3: think you're onto something. And you know, I did see
Speaker 3: in lieu of the whole oxygen quandary, which we know
Speaker 3: is bull crap. They make it.
Speaker 2: Cold in there, and.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to keep you awake. That's right, because a big,
Speaker 1: big it's supposed to keep you awake and then also
Speaker 1: keep you feeling like you're moving. But it's interesting because
Speaker 1: other places like well, depending on your your your incarceration
Speaker 1: mileage may vary, but there are there are concerted efforts
Speaker 1: in some places to keep things you know what, we'll
Speaker 1: keep it in. It's a thing for a different show.
Speaker 1: There is a move to keep you awake. And the
Speaker 1: grain of truth and the oxygen thing is that pleasant
Speaker 1: smells essential. You haven't thought about the smell.
Speaker 2: I forget who it was.
Speaker 1: I think Dennis Reynolds, God, I.
Speaker 2: Freaking love that scene. I think I think it was
Speaker 2: Will maybe. And a couple of our other colleagues who
Speaker 2: commented because they've been to the Aria before where we're staying,
Speaker 2: and they said, the Aria smell is particularly strong this
Speaker 2: year because they've been here before.
Speaker 1: What a weird thing to say. I know, how Victoria.
Speaker 6: Particularly certain stores sort of have a smell smell that
Speaker 6: Abbie Woods or like faked fresh baked cookies or bread,
Speaker 6: or even something legit like the library smell. You know,
Speaker 6: but these things can trigger nostalgia, and they can sugar
Speaker 6: that comfort and that coziness.
Speaker 1: It's the number one way to encode memory, dude. So
Speaker 1: what There was this two thousand and six study that
Speaker 1: found there were some smells that increased casino returns by
Speaker 1: a cartoonish percentage.
Speaker 3: Well, the top smell, the top smell was you bro,
Speaker 3: that's my nickname. They call me the top smell.
Speaker 1: The smell nice. You heard it here first, Maty, two
Speaker 1: heads and they'll top smell brown. The paper said that
Speaker 1: what could be happening is not necessarily a memory that
Speaker 1: people have that triggers gambling, but that the whatever it
Speaker 1: is is generalized enough that when people do smell it,
Speaker 1: they stop and they linger. And while they're lingering, there's
Speaker 1: another opportunity to say, well, I have.
Speaker 3: A dollar that's right.
Speaker 2: Well, it also might smell expensive, which makes you feel expensive.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: The identification, especially if you've got a room there right, like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: i'm a guest here, I show my card. Look out there.
Speaker 2: Just at the elegance that I am inside of as
Speaker 2: a guest.
Speaker 3: It's aspirational for sure.
Speaker 2: And then you you sit down and you're gonna begin
Speaker 2: playing a game and they notice, Oh you've put a
Speaker 2: couple hundred dollars down. They bring you. Oh, sir, would
Speaker 2: you like a drink? Oh?
Speaker 1: They're free. Yeah. The massage was new to me. You
Speaker 1: guys know how I feel about people touching me. I
Speaker 1: do not care for it. So I do not care
Speaker 1: for strangers, even granted very attractive, very kind strangers. I'm
Speaker 1: coming up and I'm like, you're proposing a nightmare to me,
Speaker 1: is what you're saying. Would you I'm a stranger, would
Speaker 1: you like me to rub your lumbar region?
Speaker 3: As a man who loves a good massage, it felt
Speaker 3: like the wrong time I was losing money. But I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, they make the rounds. And then there's these
Speaker 3: you know, cocktail servers that will give you free drinks.
Speaker 3: If you go to the bar and buy one, they'll
Speaker 3: charge you twenty five. But if you just sit there,
Speaker 3: they clock you and they bring it to you and
Speaker 3: they'll keep feeding these ties as long as you're sitting down.
Speaker 1: Put money in, right, and then that means there's a
Speaker 1: safe way to calculate it too, because imagine you are
Speaker 1: just at a regular bar. Then you know, calculate the
Speaker 1: number of drinks you would have over a series of hours,
Speaker 1: and then if you're drinking and playing responsibly, then you're
Speaker 1: basically just paying a bar tab.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, okay, so let's let's do that calculation. What
Speaker 2: if a bar makes a sixty profit on mark single
Speaker 2: drinks you buy?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Okay, if you buy, does somebody have a calculator? But
Speaker 2: if you bought like the concept would be, if you
Speaker 2: bought three drinks and the house comped you a fourth,
Speaker 2: how much they lose? For are they gaining like crazy?
Speaker 2: I think they're still gaining like that.
Speaker 3: They are. Every calculation they're making is you know, to
Speaker 3: point back to the ATM machine. The house is already winning.
Speaker 3: And the thing about the payouts they have to do
Speaker 3: on these machines. They know what that is. They're never
Speaker 3: going to do it a penny over. So they've got
Speaker 3: this big picture calculation down to the booze bill, you know,
Speaker 3: and they know what it is, and it's it's a
Speaker 3: minimal investments and it's not nothing.
Speaker 1: Are not the top shelf, No.
Speaker 3: Of course not. I don't think you can ask for
Speaker 3: a great goose, you know. I think you just say
Speaker 3: vodka kran You.
Speaker 2: Also always tip of course, guys have terrible news.
Speaker 3: Oh no, what happened?
Speaker 2: I just daydreamed about playing a machine so much.
Speaker 3: I really want to get done with this episode so
Speaker 3: we can go jam on.
Speaker 2: I want to do a hand.
Speaker 3: But again, listen, we're being flippant about this. We are
Speaker 3: being honest, I know you know what I mean, though,
Speaker 3: is right, But we're not saying like you should.
Speaker 1: Do this or whatever.
Speaker 3: Obvious we never do that about anything. But I'm saying
Speaker 3: like it's been worth the price of it of admission
Speaker 3: for me because it is fun and even though it's
Speaker 3: like kind of stupid and frivolous and I'm a little
Speaker 3: mad at myself, not that.
Speaker 1: Much, right, It's also it's it's also experiential. And there's
Speaker 1: the aspect. There's the other aspect here, which is that objectively, yes,
Speaker 1: casinos are a conspiracy. They are not necessarily an evil conspiracy,
Speaker 1: you know. But people do win people, Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: they own casinos. They win constantly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did see.
Speaker 2: I watched the lady win four thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1: I saw a lady win in twenty six hundred at
Speaker 1: a slot machine yesterday.
Speaker 3: Do you think though, And again, this depends on the
Speaker 3: person that they just jammed that stuff right back in
Speaker 3: and then walked away with nothing.
Speaker 1: But they put in before they got there. We don't know, right,
Speaker 1: So we are going to end on one thing. We're
Speaker 1: I think we're getting a nod from our producers here
Speaker 1: because we are live and we do have to go
Speaker 1: see little Wayne in a second. That is a true story. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's true. It's very true. We are going to end
Speaker 1: on one last thing. We told you some of the griffs,
Speaker 1: some of the insidious psychological design and calculations. We told
Speaker 1: you some of the myths psych about one state too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: history as well. One of the mysteries is what happens
Speaker 1: when people die at casinos? Oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: a big conspiracy. I think this is our big Disney.
Speaker 3: Is like a Disney. I was about to ask. They
Speaker 3: certainly don't report it. They don't like to talk.
Speaker 1: It's now the headlines at all. Do in Casino dot
Speaker 1: org that has a lot of interesting research on this.
Speaker 1: They pulled some twenty and twenty two data from the
Speaker 1: Southern Nevada or Nevada Health District and this is publicly
Speaker 1: or non exclusive they call it information, and it showed
Speaker 1: that in last year, as we record, one nine and
Speaker 1: twenty eight tourists died in Las Vegas, which is down.
Speaker 2: From the previously, but at least we know the vast
Speaker 2: majority of those are health related complications, which makes sense.
Speaker 3: I mean sure, you literally do see old folks chain
Speaker 3: smoking cigarettes with oxygen tanks. I mean it's a thing.
Speaker 3: So I mean and people again, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: old folks that gambling thingsas people could just to their time,
Speaker 3: you know, it's granny's time and they're.
Speaker 1: In stressful financial situation.
Speaker 3: Sometimes that's correct.
Speaker 1: Seventy seven percent of people die from what you're saying
Speaker 1: about natural causes, but that could be things like heart attacks, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: very easily.
Speaker 3: And then what was it.
Speaker 1: Of the one nine and twenty eight people who died,
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty four were accidents, fifty one were.
Speaker 4: Suicides, not fifty one percent. Fifty one individual that's a
Speaker 4: lot that's terrified.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and twenty six were murders. There were two people
Speaker 1: whose causes of death were indetermined undetermined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, reinder, this is tourists, so not anybody
Speaker 2: living in Las Vegas, I know.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's certainly have to be plenty of locals
Speaker 3: with serious gambling.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, of course, right, like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who live by the shore of Florida,
Speaker 1: California who get skin cancer. But so the the thing
Speaker 1: is that it appears there is, to your point, a
Speaker 1: huge history of keeping this out of the headline. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: law enforcement does investigate. Of course, the families do have
Speaker 1: to be notified unless it's, you know, a lake made vacation.
Speaker 2: And I swear to God, I just saw as Zach
Speaker 2: califan Akis. It wasn't him. It looked like him from
Speaker 2: the hangover.
Speaker 1: It might be he's always trying to hang But the
Speaker 1: idea is that this stuff just doesn't make it into
Speaker 1: the media because Vegas wants us thinking about the possibility
Speaker 1: of untold Riches, an amusement park where I can't just
Speaker 1: ride the roller coasters. I might walk away owning the park.
Speaker 3: You know, you mentioned Disney, and just just to add
Speaker 3: a tiny detail, there was a period when Disney was
Speaker 3: just absolutely blowing up in terms of their theme park business,
Speaker 3: and Vegas wanted in on that. So that's why you
Speaker 3: have a lot of casinos like Treasure Island, Excalibur, you know,
Speaker 3: all of these kind of very circus circus even it's
Speaker 3: very much like a midway for kids and ski ball
Speaker 3: and stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And at this point, folks, we have we've gone
Speaker 1: over our time in the pooth. But luckily I have
Speaker 1: it on good authority that the folks who are recording
Speaker 1: a live show after us are kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Oh who's it?
Speaker 1: Just show call ridiculous History. Hopefully they'll let us slide
Speaker 1: a little bit on our on our schedule as er. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of mits.
Speaker 2: I heard there might be a certain quizt in the
Speaker 2: general vicinities.
Speaker 1: Then I'm leaving. I'm hanging out with Wayne and Zach.
Speaker 3: This is a little about what about little Dirk.
Speaker 2: He's around little Little Poo Bear aka Wayne Maddie, two Hands.
Speaker 1: And top Smell. I suggest we call it a day
Speaker 1: a night this evening as we leave to noctivigate folks.
Speaker 1: Remember there's a lot we didn't get to here, old
Speaker 1: mob stories, the Lake meat Bodies, the strangest, darkest bets
Speaker 1: ever made. Perhaps that's an episode in the future. We
Speaker 1: have to return to Vegas soon, one way or another.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: It is true that when it comes to just how
Speaker 1: tightly controlled this fantasy is, that's the stuff casinos don't want.
Speaker 2: You to know. You just triggered the sh out of me.
Speaker 1: I did that a lot.
Speaker 2: Today. I went on a hike to a place called
Speaker 2: the Red Rock Canyon.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, Yeah, beautiful, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: I think because of my experience with cgied movies with
Speaker 2: physical representations that Disney will create e like at their
Speaker 2: theme parks of like an alien planet or places like that,
Speaker 2: when I was there at that real place with actual
Speaker 2: rocks and stones and mountains, I felt like I was
Speaker 2: on a set and I was not in reality, rather
Speaker 2: than when I was in reality and looking at a set,
Speaker 2: feeling like the opposite. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Wait, do you see the hoover dam bro?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Oh no, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: I feel like our perceptions have been so warped and
Speaker 2: altered by the representations of real things like false real things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a line in Clockwork Orange he says something.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the real world doesn't ever look as real as
Speaker 3: when you vidiot on a screen.
Speaker 1: That's so.
Speaker 2: But we were just inside watching TLC perform right, watching
Speaker 2: te Baws and Chili on stage. Amazing. When I pulled
Speaker 2: up my phone and zoomed it in and looked at
Speaker 2: the big screens, it felt more real than looking at
Speaker 2: the human being who.
Speaker 1: Were their dancing.
Speaker 3: Yes, very well, by the way, but still like tvOS Chili.
Speaker 3: If you if you hear this, are you having a
Speaker 3: mind explosion?
Speaker 2: Man? Look, I didn't do mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, number one number one thing people say when
Speaker 1: they don't do mushrooms. You know what fos or when
Speaker 1: they are doing mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Excuse me?
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna be clear, guys. A lot of stuff
Speaker 1: here is legal in Vegas. I suggest we get to it.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is you can apply that to the casinos,
Speaker 2: and you can apply that to hotels. You can apply
Speaker 2: to if you're out on the sea on a cruise,
Speaker 2: or if you're living in a place that has five
Speaker 2: restaurants on the first floor and you and everybody else
Speaker 2: lives on the second and fifth floors.
Speaker 3: Or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm just I think maybe our perception has been skewed
Speaker 2: so much by the digital world that we inhabit most
Speaker 2: still the time that we can't even see what's really around.
Speaker 1: Us and say, this is the one Omega Omega.
Speaker 3: Market.
Speaker 2: Dude, I'm not invisible.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we are going to call it a night. We
Speaker 1: are venturing forth into the evening, folks, we will, I believe,
Speaker 1: return to this stuff, the stuff casinos don't want you
Speaker 1: to know, maybe in a future episode of Ridiculous History
Speaker 1: or stuff they don't want you to know. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: please check out our live Ridiculous History show coming to you,
Speaker 1: also being recorded at the House of Music here at
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio Festival. Most importantly, what do you think if
Speaker 1: you can't find us in the casino losing crazy money
Speaker 1: on Blackjackie, you could still find us online?
Speaker 3: Right, I'll be the one getting the neck massage and crying.
Speaker 3: You can hit us up on the internet or we
Speaker 3: are Conspiracy Stuff on x nay, Twitter, Facebook, and the
Speaker 3: other one on YouTube. The video one. You can find
Speaker 3: this at Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Hey do you like to use your phone to make
Speaker 2: phone calls? Well, our number is one eight three three
Speaker 2: S T D W y t K. When you call in,
Speaker 2: you've got three minutes. Please give yourself a cool nickname,
Speaker 2: not your government name. Yeah, like like like the Big
Speaker 2: Smell maybe Smell Top Smell, Top Smell and or Greg
Speaker 2: mcconna whatever Ben said earlier. You'll have to go back
Speaker 2: and hear it. Such a good name. I just like
Speaker 2: Greg Greg Greg.
Speaker 1: Wow, Greg has a whole persona Greg.
Speaker 3: What are you saying?
Speaker 2: Greg?
Speaker 3: I think I think you're having a break with reality.
Speaker 5: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I love it. I was thinking, what is that show
Speaker 2: on HBO about with Greg his cousin Greg cousin Greg
Speaker 2: cousin Greg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, that was good. No, that guy's very
Speaker 3: British and he does a very good patrician New Yorker.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to be from Canada. Now it's failed.
Speaker 2: I failed.
Speaker 1: If someone.
Speaker 2: By the way, tell us that we can use your
Speaker 2: name and voice on the air on one of our
Speaker 2: listener mail episodes. If you don't want to do any
Speaker 2: of that stuff of it, you've got something to tell us,
Speaker 2: why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
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