Chris: Okay. We are on a quest. We are on a quest to hopefully not have to do the podcast anymore.
Kayla: We're on a quest for riches.
Chris: Quest for riches.
Kayla: This is truly like the road to El Dorado.
Chris: Yeah, actually, that's more similar to the topic today than you might think. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.
Kayla: Where are we going, Chris?
Chris: We're just going to a liquor store. Hey, Kayla.
Kayla: Hey, Chris.
Chris: Welcome to Culture just weird. You're welcome, actually. Wait, hold on.
Kayla: Welcoming me to Culture just weird.
Chris: Well, I'm welcoming everyone to culture. Just weird. Okay, before we get started, though, hold on. There's just something I forgot to do here. I just. I'm gonna do it live on the show just while people are listening.
Kayla: What are you doing?
Chris: So I have this scratcher ticket, and I'm scratching off these scratchies on the show. Let's see. Can you. Can you guys hear this? Scratching it?
Kayla: You're scratching away scratchies.
Chris: Yeah, I have a California lottery scratcher ticket.
Kayla: What does this have to do with the show?
Chris: Ooh, $99.
Kayla: Wait, really?
Chris: No, I'm not. No, because I didn't get the winning number. I'm sorry. So I'm playing the scratcher called cloud nine. I just want to do it live on the show, because if we win, then I'm just going to drop the microphone and just run out of the room and we're going to stop doing the podcast if I win a million dollars. Fuck this.
Kayla: You wouldn't keep doing the podcast if you won the lottery?
Chris: I wouldn't keep doing any, actually, if I won a million dollars, I would still need to have a day job and everything these days.
Kayla: Yeah, this isn't the world of blank check any longer. And blank check. He only wrote the blank check for a million dollars and somehow managed to buy a mansion and a girlfriend and probably an ice cream bar. Like a bar of ice cream. Not a single ice cream bar.
Chris: Like, there's a place like a buffet that serves ice cream. Okay. Okay. So I'm not. So far, I haven't won anything that'll come as a shock to you if you've played the scratchers before. Yeah, none. I have this one where you have to, like, match winning numbers and it's just not working. Yeah, none of my numbers match nothing. And even more shocking is that there's like, some really, like, big prize money here, but, like, the winning numbers don't match. So there's like a $20,000 prize, but my winning number for that doesn't match. So.
Kayla: And you spent $10 on this?
Chris: Yeah. This is a $10.01, by the way. So, like, this is like, a. Like, a high value ticket, and you got nothing, and I got jack shit. I have one more to. I have one more to scratch. Yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry. We have to still do the podcast for a living.
Kayla: Okay. That's extremely disappointing that you didn't win anything. It is not extremely disappointing that we get to keep doing the podcast, but I'm really sad that you didn't win a scratcher.
Chris: I wonder if we're gonna, like, lose fans now. They're gonna be like, oh, man, that was, like, really? Like. That was a downer. I'm not listening to this shit anymore. All right, well, the scratcher. Yeah, that was fun. Anyway, you should probably get to the show, right?
Kayla: Yeah. Who are you?
Chris: Okay, so I'm Chris. I am a game designer, data scientist, podcaster.
Kayla: I'm Kayla. I'm a television writer currently on Strike. Fuck the amp, TP. Go, WGA and Zag.
Chris: Hell, yeah. Solidarity. And this is cult of. Just weird. Welcome.
Kayla: Thanks.
Chris: Do you have any business? Because I got business out the wazoo.
Kayla: I have no business. So I will sit back, relax, while you business us.
Chris: I have lots. I have, like, just a stack of businesses that I have to get to.
Kayla: You're in everybody's business.
Chris: I have a business client. The business client needs the numbers. So the first thing, first and foremost, we got to do our Patreon shoutouts. So we have two new patrons between last episode and this episode, and that would be one Nicole Carter and one Nicholas Brock. Thank you guys so much for supporting us for becoming cultists on our Patreon. It really means the world to us that you think that we're worth supporting. So thank you so much.
Kayla: I love our Patreon patrons so much. I'm not going to lie to.
Chris: Speaking of Patreon. Well, actually, I'll get to that. I really. I have some soapbox issues, but I just don't have time to get into them today. Like, I think I'm gonna have to, like, put my soapbox. Like, here's what I'm thinking about this. I'm just gonna have to save them for the next episode.
Kayla: We could also do a bonus episode.
Chris: Oh, we could do a soapbox of just Chris's soapbox. The soapbox. The box of soap episode bonus. No, but. So the problem is, I have, like I said, a lot of business here in the business section. We got to talk about discord, Kayla.
Kayla: Discord. Why do we have to talk about discord, Chris?
Chris: Yeah, discord. It's not today's topic, although it probably could be a topic someday. No, this is about the cult or just weird official discord going live as of. You want to say woo?
Kayla: You want to woo?
Chris: Yeah. Wow, that's so. You sound really excited.
Kayla: I don't want to scream and blow everybody's eardrums out.
Chris: Well, it's going live as of right now. Right now while I'm speaking the words, not when you guys are listening to the words. By then it will have already gone live. So if you're listening to this, it's live. You should check it out. Kayla. Now is when you do your reaction roll thingy where you feign ignorance and you ask me what discord is.
Kayla: Chris, what the hell's a discord?
Chris: Oh, I'm so glad that you asked that totally unexpected question. Question. Discord is an online chat and voice hangout place, but like on steroids. So people mostly use it as like a fun chat room. But it's also a place where you can send friends direct messages, kind of like texting. You can make your own chat servers to hang out with said friends or to make new friends. You can use voice channels to chat with your mouth instead of your fingers and so on. But one of the most popular ways to hang out on Discord is in a community server, which is it's just a place where a bunch of those chat functions I just mentioned are all sort of pulled together around some specific community under the banner of some community.
Chris: There are a wide range, wide range of community servers you can join on Discord like a ton. There's like anime fan communities, YouTube channel communities, art communities, software development. There's learning servers, there's video game servers. And in fact, Discord started as a place for gamer chat. Kind of like Ventrilo or Teamspeak, if you're familiar with either of those.
Kayla: Oh my God, I haven't heard of Ventrilo in, that's the name I haven't heard in 84 years.
Chris: And there's like just a shit ton. More like weird niche, whatever communities there. Like there's actually, there's like a bunch that are like NFT scams.
Kayla: But anyway, I'm in currently two Discord channels for show topics.
Chris: Oh, you are?
Kayla: I'm in the year world of text Discord and I am in the Cicada 3301 Solvers discord.
Chris: You gotta shoot me an invite to both of these.
Kayla: I tried and I couldn't figure it out.
Chris: Oh, I also. Did I mention podcasts? Some podcasts have discord servers where fans of the show can hang out, make friends, talk about the show, post funny memes and more. And Drumroll. Now, culture just weird is one of those podcasts. We have an official discord server.
Kayla: Woo.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You're so excited. In fact, remember how I said there are voice channels in discord?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Well, right now, as we speak, we are live broadcasting this very recording in our discord server.
Kayla: What?
Chris: We let our Patreon patrons in the server as early birds. So all of our patrons are already in there, even though it's, like, technically going live, like today. So we let all our patrons in there early, and we scheduled an event for everyone to come listen to this live recording so they can hear all of our fuck ups and loud motorcycles out the window in real time and all that other shit we gotta edit out. They get to hear it live. So if any of this sounds exciting or interesting to you, we would love for you to come stop by the server and hang out and say hello, Kayla, sorry. I need you to feign ignorance and excitement here again real quick and ask me how you join the cult or just weird discord.
Kayla: Chris, how would I even go about joining the cult or just weird discord? I don't know how a discord works.
Chris: You have such good questions. Wow. How do you get these great questions? Thank you for asking.
Kayla: You're welcome.
Chris: All you gotta do. All you gotta do. God, I'm so fucking lame. All you gotta do is find an invite and click on it.
Kayla: And how do I do that?
Chris: Easy. We have an invite link set up on all of our social accounts. So just go to one of our socials and click the discord link. It'll either be like a discord icon or it'll be like a word or like a hyperlink or some combination of those. So we have our invite link. It's up on our link tree, our Twitter account, which, as you probably know if you listen to the show, is ultrjustweird on Twitter. The link is going to be on our Facebook page. Ew, our Instagram page, which, if you want to follow us there, it's ultorjustweirdos on Instagram. And of course, our official website, www.culturejustweird.com. So head on over to one of those places and click the discord invite link and join the party. And, oh, yeah, one more thing. Speaking of party, this coming Sunday, September 3, at 01:00 p.m.
Chris: Us pacific time, we're gonna do, like, a discord launch party. So both yours truly and Kayla over there will be in the discord to chat with you guys, chat with fans. We'll also have our music producer, Ryan there, as, like, a guest celebrity. We're gonna have a little raffle, giveaway for some swag. We'll do a trivia game and even a scavenger hunt, which we'll get to that on the day of the party. We'll explain that later. So check out our social media pages, find an invite link to our discord, and come by and say hello. Okay. Kayla?
Kayla: Yes?
Chris: Do you want to talk about that scratcher ticket that we just did at the top of the show?
Kayla: I would. I. Please tell me all about it. Why did we do that?
Chris: It was just for shits and giggles, and now we're done. Okay, this is the.
Kayla: You're just trying to see if we could.
Chris: Yeah, I was just trying to, like, make us become unemployed.
Kayla: Ugh. I'm already unemployed.
Chris: Oh, yeah, I guess we are. Okay. I was making. I was trying to see if we could survive our unemployment. No. So I think that one of the things I want to talk about before we kind of get into the topic today, we're talking about state lotteries on culture. Just weird. So that actually wasn't the first scratcher that we've done recently.
Kayla: So am I supposed to pretend like I.
Chris: No. Now you don't know.
Kayla: I can stop pretending now.
Chris: You can stop pretending, because we did scratchers.
Kayla: We've done so many scratchers. I could really see myself get into scratchers.
Chris: You can.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: That's what I wanted to take right now.
Kayla: I hate them, but I could see it.
Chris: Okay, first let me explain the difference, because we also did numbers games. So we did some scra. We did a bunch of scratcher tickets, and we also did numbers games. So numbers games are like Powerball. That's like, the thing. Like, when there's, like, a bajillion dollars, like, in California, there was recently, like, a 1.1 and a half billion dollars with billion. With a b payout. Those are numbers games. So that means that you pick a bunch of numbers, and I think with powerball, it's like, six numbers, and then if you get them all right, then voila, you get the jackpot, the prize, or you split it with other people who also had their numbers called. With scratchers, it's just like, there's little games where it's like, you scratch off the little thingy on the front of the card.
Chris: And if you match the numbers or you uncover a, you know, dollar, sign, bag, jackpot, whatever, then you get some money. Okay, so they're both gambling. It's just different types of gambling. It does get kind of complicated, though. Do you remember when were trying to figure out what.
Kayla: Yeah, you kept giving me the more complicated ones. And I have to sit there for. I had to do one where it was like a crossword puzzle.
Chris: Oh, well, so, okay, there's multiple layers of complexity here. So there's. The scratchers themselves are, like, insane. Yeah, they're like, yeah, yours was a crossword puzzle. There was one that was, like, a word find. Like, they all have these, like, weird different rules that kind of, like, I don't know, try to make you feel.
Kayla: Like you're doing something.
Chris: Doing something, I guess. But then do you remember, like, the ecosystem of numbers games, too? Because, like, I thought it was just like, oh, there's Powerball.
Kayla: There's Powerball. There was super power.
Chris: There was mega millions.
Kayla: Super mega. There was mega millions. It was like 17 different things.
Chris: There's fantasy five. There's like a pick three or something, and then there's, like, another one or two that I am currently forgetting. And that's just California. So it's like, I didn't even know. I was like. And I was asking the guys when I was buying the lottery, too, I was asking the vendors, you know, like, so what is the difference between these things? And they were basically like, Like, they were just like, oh, that one is a, you pick the numbers and then you can win. And that one is, you pick the numbers and then the numbers and you can win. So, like, that wasn't super helpful. I I still feel a little bit overwhelmed by all the different things you can do. But complicatedness aside, I want to talk just for a minute.
Chris: Like, how did it feel playing those different games, those different lottery games?
Kayla: Which part? Because there's a lot that goes. There's a lot that went into this because went and got the things, and then we came home and played the things.
Chris: Yeah. So let's talk about scratchers first. How do those feel?
Kayla: Playing the game or going and buying the whole experience?
Chris: I guess either. Both.
Kayla: There's a lot there.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: So, okay, so we're talking about the lottery right now. This is the topic for the day.
Chris: I'm just asking you a question.
Kayla: I need to know how much context to give. So when I was a child.
Chris: There you go. Perfect. Go all the way back. Back in the 14 hundreds. Don't worry, we do that later.
Kayla: When I was a child, my dad played the lottery. He particularly played the numbers games.
Chris: Okay, so you did, like, the powerball thing?
Kayla: He did like the powerball thing. And I would often go with him to purchase the numbers because it's like he would. He's picking me up from school, and then we'd stop by the liquor store on the way home, and he'd get his numbers, and then we'd go home. So I have that context around any sort of, like, lottery or going to the liquor store to buy something. It's like, I don't know if you noticed, time went to buy these lottery tickets, I couldn't. I walked away from you.
Chris: Yeah, but I figured that was just part of your baseline normal. I'm anxious all the time.
Kayla: It just puts you back in the headspace of, like, dad's buying the tickets, and you have to wander around and see if there's anything interesting to look at while you're here. It's just an uncomfortable.
Chris: Oh, Mountain Dew. Oh, porno magazine.
Kayla: Actually doing the scratchers. So this isn't the first time I've done scratchers.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: I have a family friend who oftentimes in, like, birthday and Christmas gifts will throw a scratcher in there for you. And that's always fun. Cause you get a little like, ooh, you didn't have to buy it.
Chris: Okay. Actually. Sorry. No. Can I interrupt you here? Yes. Those are not fun. I don't like getting scratchers as gifts or giving scratchers as gifts.
Kayla: Cause what if you win a million dollars?
Chris: It's like, the quote unquote worst case scenario is like, you lose. You don't get anything that's bad. But then, like, the best case scenario also kind of feels bad. Cause then it's like, yeah, what if you win a million dollars? And it's like, you kind of feel like you have to.
Kayla: You gotta give them some money.
Chris: Give them some. And then, like, they also probably feel bad about, you know, they're like, oh, man, if I just hung onto that, I could be a millionaire. I don't know. It just.
Kayla: Well, I'm just giving you. My context of. Those are fun for me because it's like, ooh, you know, small buy in, doing the scratchers. This time around, stakes are a lot higher.
Chris: Cause we spent our own money.
Kayla: Cause we spent our own money. We bought them. We went and did it.
Chris: We spent the podcasts money on it.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: Which is not. That's our money.
Kayla: We are the podcast.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: But we get expensive but, man, oh, man, did I want to win. Every single time. Every single time. I was like, I really want this to be the number. I really want this to be the number. I really want this to be the number. And then, good Lord, is it deflating when you don't win?
Chris: Yeah, I know. That's, like, my main takeaway.
Kayla: I felt empty and sad and bad and just kind of like any analogy I'm coming up with. I can't say on the podcast.
Chris: Yes, you can. No, no, because we can edit it out. Don't censor yourself just because we're live, Kayla.
Kayla: That's, like, not coming.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: It's like, when that gets ruined, it's lottery blue balls. It's lottery blue balls. Thank you. That's a better way of putting it.
Chris: That's a totally fine thing to say in public.
Kayla: It was like, lottery blue balls. Or it was like, if you eat jack in the box and you're just like, I don't. I guess I'm.
Chris: Wow, those metaphors are.
Kayla: But I'm not satisfied.
Chris: So when you go to jack in the box, you're like, oh, man, I wish I had come.
Kayla: Yeah. Don't you box made everybody sick back in the day.
Chris: I really hope not.
Kayla: That's not why. That's not why. But it's a similar. It's a similar experience of you're just left unsatisfied, and I can see how that can lead to, okay, I have to do that again, or I have to do something more, or I have to try again. Like, well, because you're unsatisfied, and so your brain wants you to seek out satisfaction. It's like. It's like when you are playing World of Warcraft, satisfaction, you're playing World of Warcraft, and you know that, like, the bugbears, one of them is going to drop a rare item, and you keep killing bugbears, and they keep not dropping the rare item, but, you know, one of them will. So you keep killing the bugbears.
Chris: Oh, yeah. We could do a whole podcast on how low probability events drive people. And actually, maybe this is that podcast.
Kayla: Is this that podcast?
Chris: I don't know. We will probably get to that a little bit later. But I agree with you about, like, the deflating thing. I think my, like, follow up from that is maybe different. Like, it doesn't compel me to want to do it again. I think the things that compel me to want to do it again, like, where I kind of get stuck in that. That loop, is when I win a small amount, like a sort of an inconsequential amount, you know, like, free ticket or, like, $3. I probably just gonna convert that $3 back into another ticket. If I. Especially if I'm, like, doing it right there, I'll just be like, oh, give me another ticket.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Cause you're not doing it to get $3. Nobody's playing it to get $3.
Kayla: No, I don't want.
Chris: You're playing it to get the.
Kayla: Whoa.
Chris: Million dollar prize or whatever. So I think that's where it gets me. But, like, yeah, I felt super deflated. It was like. It was a very binary sort of situation where, like, when the tickets were sitting on the countertop, they were, like, just full of potential. They were pregnant with potential. Right, right. And then you do the scratcher, and then it's just. And then it just feels like just a fucking piece of trash in your hand. And the same thing with, like, it's almost worse with the numbers games because we had to, like, wait a few days to check if our numbers won. Like, there's an immediacy to the scratchers, but with the numbers, we, like, waited several days, checked the numbers, and then it was like, it takes you, like, 2 seconds to check. You know, it's like, all right, let's see.
Chris: Like, oh, okay. I already didn't win. Wow, that's disappointing. I guess I didn't get my $200 million.
Kayla: But what if you got, like.
Chris: Yeah, but that's, like, nobody. Yeah, it's so small.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: Anyway, I just want to talk a little bit about how it felt playing the different games just to kind of stir the pot, just to.
Kayla: I really want to win the lottery. Like, it would feel so good.
Chris: Did I addict you to gambling?
Kayla: I want to win the lottery. It would feel really nice if everyone.
Chris: Wants to win the lottery. I think it would feel nice for most people.
Kayla: Like, I know that. Okay. I know. We're probably gonna talk about it.
Chris: We'll get to that.
Kayla: We'll get to that. But it would not fuck me up. I'd be so happy and healthy with a billion dollars.
Chris: Yeah, I actually don't. Well, we might get to that, but just in case we don't, I'll say here up at the top that the idea that lottery winners tend to, like, oh. Think bad things happen to them and their life goes to shit is actually a total.
Kayla: It's a myth. It's a myth. It's a big lotto trying to. I don't know what it is. I don't know. It's big something.
Chris: No, it's more of like, it comes down to something that we will talk about, which is this idea of deservingness. A lot of it is very psychological and very rooted and cultural norms and traditions about who is deserving of wealth and success and reward. And so it comes down to that. But I don't want to jump the gun too much. And what the heck? Why are we even talking about state run lotteries? Yeah, explain cast about cults or just weirds? Well, rather than talk more about this with you, Kayla, actually, I was able to snag an expert that I chatted with about this very topic. And actually, I do have to kind of come clean here. This expert and his book were actually why I wanted to do state lotteries on culture. Just weird in the first place.
Chris: His name's doctor Jonathan Cohen, and he wrote a book called for a Dollar and a Dream State Lotteries in modern America. I actually heard a conversation he had on the 99% invisible podcast, and, well, let's just say it piqued my interest. All right, so can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, I have a PhD in history from the University of Virginia, which formed the basis of my book. I don't know how personal you want to get, I guess to keep it sort of lottery related or lottery esque. I sort of grew up playing board games, which I think sparked my interest in the lottery world.
Chris: Well, that'll just be the interview, because I love board games, too.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. So we should just talk about. We don't even need to talk about lotteries. We can just talk about ideal scythe opening strategies.
Chris: Oh, man. What have you. What's your recent really crunchy board game that you've played?
Jonathan Cohen: So I've been playing a lot of wingspan online. I say that with some embarrassment because it's like, it's not very heavy game. I don't know if serious gamers are into wingspan, but I can play it in like 25 minutes. Spurts when my son is taking a nap or something. Okay.
Chris: That's a good session length. Yeah.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. But I'm trying to get back into great western trail. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think it's trying to do too many things at once, but I'm giving it another try.
Chris: Right? Yeah. I have a little group, so I used to work at Blizzard. I have a little group of friends that, you know, really like the. Like just the really european style. Just freaking engine games.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: So we just played a game called barrage was the most recent one we. We tried. It's. It's a game about, like, building dams and having hydro power in, like, a.
Jonathan Cohen: Sure.
Chris: Post apocalypse. Exactly, exactly. Anyway, see, this is what I meant. Like, we would totally, like, if you allow me to go down the rabbit hole on the. On the board games. So I'm gonna let it. I'm gonna let you get back to your background.
Jonathan Cohen: Am I boring? Background? Yeah, let's just ignore that. 35 minutes digression. Yeah. So my lottery interest, I mean, I think sort of to play the sociologist of myself or to psychoanalyze myself, I think, was sort of born out of an interest partly in games in general, and then also an interest sort of at my moment of sort of political awakening, so to speak, around the financial crisis and sort of what that at the time was an interest, an abiding interest in the. I guess, what you call the american dream, to put it succinctly. And then, I mean, the real answer, how I got here, was sort of flailing around for a year and a half in graduate school, trying to find a dissertation topic.
Jonathan Cohen: And then it turned out, sort of by accident, sort of stumbling into this one, and lo and behold, here I am eight years later.
Chris: Interesting. So when you say by accident, what do you mean? Do you mean, like, this was sort of because you had the background in board games, it was something that interested you, or did you have, like, a graduate advisor that mentioned it or something?
Jonathan Cohen: Right. So some folks come to graduate school, bless their hearts, like, knowing exactly what it is they want to write basically a book about. Right. They already have. They already have, like, a clear vision in their head, and that was not me. In fact, I would think that my advisor jokes that the only thing I wasn't interested in was the one thing that I applied to work on with her, which was racial violence in the early 20th century south. So she also jokes I would come to her office every week with a different dissertation topic and a different idea for something. And these were all worthy ideas. Eventually, I was sort of steering in this direction, and this is actually getting us into the substantive territory.
Jonathan Cohen: I was steering into this direction about the disconnect in american society between class and culture, that we have people who are sort of coded as, let's say, middle class or upper class, but are making $30,000 and work at a Starbucks, but they're coded as upper class because they have a master's degree in English, and folks who are plumbers who are making $170,000, who are coded as blue collar working class, but in fact, are making so much more money. So all this to say is the example of this, of the best example you can think of are lottery winners who are going to be disproportionately lower income people who all of a sudden have extreme wealth, but whose sort of cultural behavior, let's say, doesn't match up with their actual wealth. That was going to be an example of this other thing.
Jonathan Cohen: And then I sort of started digging into the lottery stuff. And speaking of a rabbit hole, I just found myself going deeper and sort of treating the lottery as the thing in and of itself, rather than this example of this whole other phenomenon.
Chris: Now, here we are in the rabbit hole. Now, would you say you won the lottery when it comes to your.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. Topic, they hit the jackpot. Yeah, exactly.
Chris: Sorry, I had to. I just had to.
Jonathan Cohen: There'll be many more of those to come, I'm sure. Yeah.
Chris: I have a terrible sense of humor, so. Yes. Yeah. So, like, I have a vague sense of lotteries today. Like, I have a vague sort of notion just based on, you know, I live in California and, like, the powerball just climbed over a billion dollars, so that's percolated into everybody's mind. And I also, like, I grew up in Florida during the eighties and nineties, so I kind of remember when some of those big rollover jackpots would start happening. And again, the same sort of thing. You'd start hearing about it on the evening news. But that's kind of where my knowledge ends. So I'd really like to know more about the origin of state lotteries in the US. How old are they? Where did they come from? That sort of thing.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. So the origin, it's funny, some people think, when I start sharing the details, some people say, oh, that's a lot more recent than I thought. And some people say, oh, that's a lot older than I thought. But the sort of modern state lottery system, as we know and maybe love it today, started in New Hampshire in 1960. 319 64 was sort of the first lottery pioneer. And I'll just say lotteries are a very old institution. An old idea. There wasn't, like, someone in New Hampshire named John Lottery in the 1960s who, like, invented the lottery, right? This was. He's rekindling an old idea from the 19th century, from turn of the millennium, you name it. But New Hampshire takes the lottery plunge in 1964 with this really old, really crazy game that would be unrecognizable to us today.
Jonathan Cohen: It's rooted in live horse racing. The tickets cost $3, which is equivalent of $15 today, but $3 back then. $3 back then, exactly.
Chris: Wow.
Jonathan Cohen: It's unrecognizable. But it's the first state to take the plunge, and for all sorts of reasons, including the sort of neighboring state phenomenon where lotteries will or different laws will spread like a contact virus from one state to the next once New Hampshire takes the plunge. They sort of, they cover the northeast in the upper rust belt from the 1960s to the late seventies, then they start in the west coast in the mid eighties, the midwest in the late eighties, and then in the south in the nineties. And then here we are today with 45 lottery states and now $100 billion in annual lottery sales nationwide.
Chris: Wow. Wow. That's a lot. Okay. It's interesting. When you mentioned it seems older and also younger. I think when I first. 1963 sounds right to me, but only because I've read your book now, it.
Jonathan Cohen: Cheated a little bit.
Chris: Yeah, I did cheat a little. Don't tell the listeners. I think when I got into it, that did seem a little, I was like, oh, that does seem recent. But then to your point, it sounds like there's a, it's just the latest iteration, maybe, in a long line of human gambling behaviors. Is that kind of what you're talking about with the long term part of it?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And this is actually a big part of the, sort of the modern day politics and the question of, you know, whether lotteries should be regulated. Is gambling a irreducible human impulse that's irrepressible and that no matter what, in all times, at all places, in all ways, people have sort of have this need to gamble and a desire to gamble and that if we don't offer the lottery ourselves, will they just find another way to gamble? In some cases, yes, it is part of this sort of long human trajectory of love of gambling. But there's a lot that's happening with the lottery system today that is way exceeding that sort of natural impulse.
Jonathan Cohen: But, yes, I think it's fair, and I do this sort of, in the very opening pages of my book to sort of put it on this long trajectory of sort of human gambling that goes back to the Old Testament or to ancient chinese dice with different markings on them. It's part of that story. But again, at some point, I think we sort of jump the shark a little bit with the modern iteration of that story.
Chris: Yeah. It's interesting how what you were just talking about regarding this, like, sanctioning. Does sanctioning, an activity that we considered some segment of the population considers to be a vice? I definitely personally have a bias towards, like, well, you know, you can't stop people from gambling. You can't stop people from drinking. That's why prohibition didn't work. The war on drugs is a bad thing, but I feel like the lottery example is maybe a little bit of a check on my bias for that. It doesn't feel like sanctioning. That is necessarily a clear slam dunk.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. I definitely don't think that if were going to get rid of the lottery, that we should criminalize lottery tickets in the way that we did with narcotics. But it's really important to note the ways that the lottery works differently from something like drugs or alcohol, which is with lotteries. The more people who buy tickets and the more sort official and the bigger pocketbooks behind the entity that's organizing the lottery, the bigger the prizes can get, which attracts more people, which makes the prices bigger, and so on. It's not like once more people start doing drugs, the drugs get better quality and cheaper. It doesn't have effect on other people. Once, if you're doing drugs per se, maybe it affects the availability, but that's it.
Jonathan Cohen: But this is the inherent appeal of the lottery is only possible because so many people are participating, and so many people are only able to participate because 711 has decided to sell tickets in all 45 participating lottery states. And because it states and these corporations that print the tickets, that have sort of lent their imprimatur of legitimacy to make the games possible. So it's. Yes, it's irrepressible, but again, like, irrepressible human need to gamble wouldn't get us to $100 billion a year. There's something else going on here.
Chris: Yeah, I hadn't thought about the feedback cycle that you get there. The bigger it is, the better it is, and the better it is, the bigger it gets.
Jonathan Cohen: Which also explains just your point at the very top, how these big Powerball and mega millions jackpots are happening is jackpot gets up more people are like, let me just buy a couple of tickets. They lose. But they're like, all right, I'm already trying to buy tickets. Let me keep going. The big jackpots attract more people who lose, which makes the jackpot get even bigger, which attracts even more people. And then, lo and behold, it's at $2 billion in a matter of a few weeks.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, the way I kind of perceive it is like it doesn't even kind of enter my consciousness until it's hit, like, a couple of rollovers. And then all of a sudden it's, oh, this is worth thinking about.
Jonathan Cohen: So I actually just thought of this with the most recent iteration, that it's also, I think there's sort of a benchmarking that happens. So, okay, Chris has decided that it's not worth his time or money to buy a lottery ticket until it hits 1.25 billion. Okay, so he buys a lottery ticket, but then he loses, because of course he does, and the lottery gets bigger, and now it goes to 1.35 billion. And Chris, being a logical person, Shirley, says to himself, okay, well, I thought that 1.25 was big enough, and now it's even bigger than 1.25, so of course I'm going to buy again.
Jonathan Cohen: And so even though sort of next time your expectations are going to be a little bit higher, you're sort of incentivized or you've sort of already subconsciously made the decision that you're going to keep buying tickets as long as the prize stays at this gargantuan size.
Chris: Right. And then that keeps increasing the size of. Because there's more. More Chris's at 1.25 billion, and then there's more Jonathan's at 2.2 billion or whatever.
Jonathan Cohen: Right, right. Well, and then. And lo and behold, there are 170 million. Chris's at a billion dollars, because 50% of Americans buy a lottery ticket at least once a year. And many of them are doing so only during these big jackpots. One in eight Americans buy a lottery ticket once a week. But again, there are a lot of people who are only buying a ticket once a year. And that's only when there's some record setting jackpot that puts the lottery on their antenna for the first time.
Chris: Right, right. That makes sense. Yeah. The different segments. And there's definitely more in your book about that. That's really interesting. I did want to ask you, though, this gives me a better sense of why players play the lottery. But in terms of, like, you were talking a little bit about the viral spread of it from state to state, why do states do the lottery? What is it on that side that motivates them to initiate lottery?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, so there's like, a hard answer and a soft answer in terms of the concrete answer is it is very rare for states to find ways to raise money that don't require taxes is sort of the simplest answer. And taxes, quote, unquote on gambling, on weed, on sports betting, those are sort of rare opportunities. On cigarettes, those are rare sort of vice taxes, so to speak. So once people decide that culturally they're okay with gambling, it's really hard for a state to justify not getting in on the gambling economy, especially to the example that I mentioned at the top. You know, I live in Connecticut.
Jonathan Cohen: If Massachusetts has a lottery, or Massachusetts has sports betting, or Massachusetts has legal weed, and everyone from Connecticut is just going across the border to participate in their price of choice, how can Connecticut justify not selling these things for itself and keeping the tax money in Connecticut? So that was actually a bigger factor in the first wave of lotteries from 1963 to 1977. There are some other factors that account for the spread afterwards. But that has been a continuous sort of logic that accounts not just for lotteries, but all sorts of political changes across the american landscape over the last 50 years or so.
Chris: And then one of the things I found interesting in your book was the parallel between the sort of the magical thinking of lottery players and the magical thinking of state officials about whether the lottery would bring this sort of windfall of revenue that we never have to tax people again. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of magical thinking?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And this is sort of a real central thesis of the book, which is just to draw out the point that you made, I guess the point that you made that I made, which is that people have this aspersion, this sense that lottery players are poor, irrational, wishful thinkers. And what I found through my research is that lawmakers and voters who enacted lotteries in the first place have these similar, irrational, wishful beliefs that a lottery is going to solve their state's financial problems. So, as I said, it is rare for states to have non tax sources of revenue. But this wasn't a case of politicians getting up there and saying, oh, this is going to be amazing. The lottery is going to raise 1.7% of our annual tax revenue.
Jonathan Cohen: This was politicians getting up there in the 1960s and saying, and there are quotes to this effect, you know, we'll never have to pay any taxes ever again in the state of New Jersey because we are going to have a lottery. Of course, it was New Jersey. Yeah, but that's really what they were saying. And then when that didn't work in the eighties in California, they sort of reduced the promise a little bit, but kept the silver bullet idea. It wasn't. All right, it's not. We're going to never have to pay taxes ever again. But this will single handedly fund the state education budget. And it's like, okay, all right, that didn't work either. So then in the nineties, in the south, in Florida, and, well, really in Georgia, and then Florida copies it.
Jonathan Cohen: Okay, it's not going to fund the entire state education budget, but it will fund scholarships for a couple kids to go to college. So no matter what, they can't just be honest that this is going to be a drop in the bucket for government revenue. They need to sort of couch it in these fantastical terms, these wishful terms to convince people to play and to convince people to enact it in the first place. And that, I think, really parallels, to use the word you used really parallels the beliefs among the lottery players that are convincing them to buy a ticket, too.
Chris: See, that was one of the things that I wasn't, and I guess you kind of answered my question a little bit. So, like when the first wave of lottery of state lotteries hit and the illusion wears off that this is going to be a panacea that will eliminate taxes hereafter forever, then it still spreads. So I was going to ask you about that, but it sounds maybe like your answer to that would be it's still just sort of the magical thinking. Like the same reason that gamblers keep gambling even though they know the odds. Right. Would you say that's why or.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, there's definitely some cognitive dissonance going on. Or it's like that thing in arrested development where it's like these people delude themselves and are thinking it'll work for them, but it might work for us. And it's like, okay, the state Illinois, like, their lottery didn't solve all their problems, but Indiana is like, you know what? It might just work for Indiana. So again, they just can't be honest with what the lottery can do or will actually do for whatever reason. The sort of gambling mentality that makes the games popular has infected the legislators and voters when it comes to gambling as well.
Chris: Okay, I want to switch gears then back to players. So you talked about, and there's kind of like multiple waves of lottery uptake in the US. Why did it explode in the seventies? I kind of get why they started doing it in the sixties. You said it was sort of a continuation of some things that already existed. And then state legislators decided that would be free tax. But in terms of players, what was it that really changed in the seventies and eighties that got them going on it?
Jonathan Cohen: Right. So there are two stories really to tell about sort of why the games took off in the seventies and eighties. The first one is the innovation in the type and the style of lottery tickets that become available. Scratch tickets are introduced for the first time in Massachusetts in 1974, and they're like a huge phenomenon when they're introduced four years later. New York introduces the first Lotto game, which is the rollover jackpot game that we now know as Powerball, Mega millions, and California lottery, things like that. And that's a huge mania in the eighties. That's a huge craze at the time. And then there's also, I should add the daily numbers game, which is sort of a direct copy of the illegal lottery that was really popular in urban african american communities.
Jonathan Cohen: States start adding their own version of it also in the mid seventies. So really the expanding player base. One part of the story is about the innovations in the style and the number of games, not to mention their availability and the fact that more and more states keep adding lotteries, which is going to sort of naturally increase sales. That's one big part of the story. The other part in my telling, and this, again, you wouldn't be a historian if you didn't have this side of it, is the state of the american economy and the access to upward mobility, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
Jonathan Cohen: That the 1970s is notorious as this period of high inflation and high unemployment at the same time, which economic doctrine had previously said was impossible, which again, I think, accounts for not just the popularity of lottery tickets, but particularly why it's northeastern states that are going in on the lottery economy, this sort of manufacturing hotbed that's particularly affected by the rising deindustrialization of the 1970s and the blue collar workers who are most affected by that downturn as well, who are sort of turning to gambling. And this is going to be a trend going forward as sort of an alternative chance, let's say, at the american dream, right?
Chris: Yeah, I think I totally used to be, you mentioned, like, the snobbery earlier. I mean, I was totally like one of those guys, like, oh, yeah, it's attacks on people are bad at math, and I've definitely come around on that. I think partially thanks to your book. I want to read a quote. I just, I love this quote from. This is from your book. Quote from a man whose name escapes me because I didn't copy it over here. The lottery is for dreamers and fools, one Virginia gambler acknowledged in 1991.
Chris: But any way you slice it, the lottery still gives a working stiff a better chance than the big bosses and to me, that really illustrates the rationality, actually, of playing the lottery, because it's not that you are one hand, you have a slow and steady climb out of your social standing into the next rung up, and on the other hand, you have this, like, gambling problem. It's actually, on the one hand, you feel like you have zero chance, and any chance, no matter how infinitesimal, is still a chance. And so that feels way more rational to me.
Jonathan Cohen: That's right. I think it's totally understandable from having talked to a lot of lottery players and, you know, I visited 20 states over the course of my research and spent more time than I should have just sort of hanging out in convenience stores and chatting with people as they were buying tickets. And I think it's totally reasonable for someone, not even necessarily someone who is actually poor and sort of struggling with access to resources. I mean, even someone who's, like, working, has a steady job, has some modicum of financial security, but doesn't see a chance at a better life any other way.
Jonathan Cohen: I think it's totally understandable why that person would be interested in the lottery, maybe might be prone to investing a little bit more money than they should in the lottery as this, I use the phrase last, best and only chance at a new life. And just to finish the story, this is something that happens in the eighties that really changes this, which is the changing definition, let's say, of the good life or of the american dream, which is from sort of this white picket fence story of financial stability to opulence, luxury and wealth as being sort of the definition of success. And I think whatever Gen Z, it seems to be pushing back against that vision, which is all well and good, but for a lot of people that sort of locked in, I think, is that vision of wealth.
Jonathan Cohen: And lo and behold, this is when lotto, these big rollover jackpot games, are starting in different states. And also, as that quote that you read alludes to, it's really hard to get. Not just to get financial security for some people in the seventies and eighties, but to get wealth and opulence like you're seeing on dynasty or on the lifestyles of rich and famous. That's impossible. And the lottery is really the only mechanism these people have. Lots of people have to this day of getting, again, not just security and stability, but actual wealth, which has become synonymous with success.
Chris: Right. It's interesting. Yeah. There's like, there's two. Well, more than two, I'm sure, but there's two different effects. We kind of were just talking about. There's the effect of, like, I don't have any opportunity or chance outside of this. And then there's also the changing definition of what success and wealth means. Part of what I found fascinating in your book was about how the lottery, as you just mentioned, followed that. So the jackpots get bigger and bigger. You mentioned how in the sixties, lottery winnings were. Lottery drawings were more frequent, higher probability, but less payout. Am I getting right?
Jonathan Cohen: They were less frequent but more probable, more likely odds of winning, and then much, much lower payout. Like the first jackpot was nine different jackpots of $600,000 each in 1964. And as you alluded to at the top last week, there was like, a $1.5 billion jackpot. Yeah, we've come a bit of a long way.
Chris: Yeah. So it's like the consistency of the lottery in the sixties matches the sort of, like, desire for the definition of success as being, like, you know, consistently working your way to the next rung, whereas the, like, the windfall of the eighties and nineties, more closely matches the idea of wealth in the eighties and nineties. I think that's really interesting, and I'll.
Jonathan Cohen: Say part of that is demand driven. I think just frankly, I think a lot of the reason the prices are getting bigger is because that's what people want, and even if they don't know what they want. But I think we have this is sort of foundational to the field of behavioral economics, but this overestimation of the belief in good things happening to you. So, for example, I think it's really easy to tell the difference between, like, a $4 million jackpot, a $40 million jackpot, and a $400 million jackpot. But it's impossible for your brain to wrap your, like, wrap your head around the difference between one in 40 million odds, one in 400 million odds, or one in 4 billion odds. You know, you just can't even begin to comprehend one in 4 million odds.
Jonathan Cohen: So it might as well be one in 4 billion, because who cares? And this way, I just get to win more money. But it actually does make a big difference. And we could be making a lot more millionaires, but we've decided instead to make one or two billionaires.
Chris: Yeah, that is interesting, because even knowing statistics and math, I still have that. Like, okay, well, the odds are low. Once it gets to a certain point, it becomes in your brain, it becomes odds low, whereas you actually can kind of conceive, like, well, $400 million, that's maybe two yachts.
Jonathan Cohen: Right, right. It's really easy to, like, fake spend that money in your head. But the number of so winning the mega millions is sticking ant onto four football fields. And step stabbing a pin into the ground and hitting. But, like, maybe we could just do one football field. You know? I don't think anyone, like, even that is hard to comprehend, but that still result in, like, a $50 million jackpot or something. But again, I think our brains are just not suited to think about sums of money that are that big and odds that are that big. We just can't do it.
Chris: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about a conceptual framework that you have in your book. I really liked this idea of culture of chance versus culture of control. So can you tell our audience a little bit about what you mean by those terms?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And I'll just give credit where it's due that I sort of stole or borrowed this phrase from a historian named Jackson Lears, who happened to have been my graduate advisor's graduate advisor. I'm gonna get in big trouble if I don't mention him by name in his book something for nothing luck in America. And the idea behind the culture of control and the culture of chance is that we've had these two competing ethoses, let's say, throughout american history. One is the culture of control, which I think it will be really familiar to people, which is that basically all of life's outcomes are under your control. And that you can, through positive thinking, or I, through any other means, you can affect the things that happen to you. And that fundamentally, you are responsible for your own outcomes in every way.
Jonathan Cohen: And that's the story of, to use lears prototype of the self made man, which is a self made man is not someone who got lucky. He's someone who, through hard work and gumption, who really who made it. And again, it's all through control, by which we mean sort of personal responsibility and hard work. And that is a big through line, I think, in american history. And that it's contrasted in this telling with this culture of chance, which is that all of life is totally haphazard and random, and no one knows anything. And if you're wealthy, it's not because you're better than me. It's not because you're more deserving. It's just because you struck it rich. You bought stocks at the right time, you were born into the right family through any other means. So there's this tension throughout american history between these two ideas.
Jonathan Cohen: There's sort of a push and pull. And the lottery and gambling in general, sort of firmly, obviously falls down on the side of culture, of chance, which is this acknowledgement that all of life's arrangements are just haphazard and don't actually mean anything. And again, the rich people aren't any better than you. They're just luckier than you and wealthier than you. And again, their wealth doesn't mean anything about them, say anything about them. It just says that they were lucky. And the lottery, by offering any person a chance to become wealthy like that, is very much in that line. And this implication, this idea that, yeah, wealth is just a roll of the dice, it's not any ethical, moral, religious. We haven't even gone to the religious side of it. It's not any sort of religious divine blessing. It's just luck.
Chris: Yeah, you said tension. That tension is palpable. And that's part of why I liked that framework, is because it really crystallizes sort of this tension that you can see today. I mean, that's like, you see the bootstraps mentality even today, where if somebody, typically people that are more wealthy, elite, will have this sense that nothing is luck. Right. Nothing is luck. The subtext there being it can't because for me to have gotten where I am, there only could have been my effort. There can't be any luck. So there definitely feels like there's this push and pull, depending on your station. And I'll also say that it seems like, yeah, the lottery just takes this existing tension and pours a bunch of gasoline on it. Right?
Chris: The payout and the chance is so low and the change in station is so great that it just really hypercharges both sides of this coin. So what do people do, like, when they win the lottery? Are they accepted in the, you know, in the nouveau riche type sense, or are they not? And how do they feel about it?
Jonathan Cohen: Right. So we haven't used the word yet, but what we're really talking about is the idea of a meritocracy, which is whether people who deserve it get rich or whether people who are rich deserve it. That's sort of the fundamental question here. And exactly as we've been saying, a lottery spits in the face of a meritocracy. And I do have a bunch of evidence from the seventies and eighties, really mostly from the seventies before lottery sort of really took off into the cultural mainstream of people sort of looking down on lottery winners as someone who, again, whose wealth doesn't match their merit. Because, again, they got their wealth through luck, not through hard work, not through other means. That would say something about their character.
Jonathan Cohen: Anecdotally, I do know, or I know someone who knows someone who won a sort of fairly sizable jackpot, maybe it was very low nine figures, and who sort of has made that their defining moment of their life, so to speak. Like, of course it is. And if I won a hundred million dollars, it would be the defining moment of my life. But I think this person was like a doctor and already had financial stability. But somehow this blessing, and we should be explicit, that a lot of people do see their lottery wins in religious terms as divine blessings, that more than their hard work, more than all their done before saying something about them, maybe just add a better anecdote.
Jonathan Cohen: There's a great quote from Mario Puzzo, who wrote the Godfather series, who talks about how he, when he got a check for his first book, it brought him some amount of joy. But the amount of joy that it brought him did not pale in comparison in the slightest to when he would go to a blackjack table and win half of that amount, because it's somehow winning. Gambling, just like, marks you as blessed, as deserving as a winner, I think, is the word. Whereas other. Getting money through work, getting money other ways, doesn't mark you in exactly the same way.
Chris: That's so interesting because my assumption would be the opposite. My assumption would be the meritocratic idea of, well, winning I kind of feel bad about.
Jonathan Cohen: Whereas the hard, like you cheated the system.
Chris: Yeah. You mentioned how the divine and religious folks tend to have a different way of maybe looking at it when they win. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And this is something that I found going back to the seventies and I think is still with us. And that is lottery winners, especially, who see their jackpots as divine blessings, as gifts from God. And this is, and I know you're interested in this subject, sort of fits in neatly with the prosperity gospel and this belief that sort of God plays, specifically a protestant Christian God plays an active role in the universe and sort of responds to people's requests and will reward them with health, with wealth, especially in response to giving money to the church or the right kinds of prayers. But a lot of lottery winners to this day will thank God for their jackpots. And what is particularly notable here is that this is, as far as I can tell, a yddeh completely unique american phenomenon.
Jonathan Cohen: There are studies from Taiwan, from South Africa, from Sweden that have no or find very limited examples of lottery winners who sort of point heavenward and thank God for their jackpot.
Chris: Do you have a sense of whether they have other sorts of. I don't want to necessarily say supernatural, but something that they point to, or are they more comfortable with the idea? Are they more comfortable with the culture of chance?
Jonathan Cohen: Exactly. And you're getting exactly to, I think, what's important, which is in Sweden, I know, because there's a whole book about lottery winners in Sweden, it really is about chance and just people just sort of shrugging their shoulders and saying they got lucky. And what we have in the United States with these lottery winners are people who are taking the lottery, which is the quintessential vehicle of chance in american society, and they are transforming it into another part of the meritocracy. And they are saying, actually, this looks like the culture of chance, but it's really the culture of control. Because I prayed to win, or I played my dead grandmother's numbers in the lottery and it came up because I'm deserving it and my ship has come in, and this is because I'm being rewarded and I deserve it.
Chris: So wild.
Jonathan Cohen: So this is, again, you're taking the quintessential vehicle of the culture of chance, and you're making it a part of this culture of control instead.
Chris: The american dream is very powerful.
Jonathan Cohen: One hell of a drawing.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. The other thing, though, is, like, I was talking about this with my co host because we read the second chapter, your book is mostly about this. And it's hard for me to frame this really precisely because I'm an atheist materialist, but in this weird way, it kind of feels like extremely low probability events, like winning the lotteries is sort of a divine event. If you take out the requirement of, well, God needs to be this dude in the sky with a beard. And you think about it in a more broad, sort of new agey universe sense, there is something. There's something that feels weirdly divine about something like that happening. Like the doctor you mentioned, who ostensibly has a great career. Everybody wants the doctor, is. That's the top tier right of. I want my kids to be a doctor.
Chris: So the fact that he had that notion of winning the lottery is the defining moment of his life seems to. I don't know, it seems like there is some sort of divine thing, that divine intervention that happens there, even if you don't believe in goddesse.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. I think what you're getting at is sort of goes back to what were talking about before, too, which is just the human mind's ability to sort of wrap your head around insanely improbable events. And if you're not willing to just lean in and say, yep, I stabbed the needle into a four football field and I hit the ant. Like, if you're not willing to just acknowledge that there's sort of really only one thing you can do, which is, say, there must have been some providence, some plan, some. Something else to explain why this happened to me. To put it in the framing of one economist, you know, it's really easy to say, oh, this happened to me. Even though, of course, someone, somewhere, sometime is going to win the lottery.
Jonathan Cohen: But the odds that person is going to be you today with these numbers, seems like it says something more about you than it really does.
Chris: Yeah. Like it breaks your brain a little bit. Right? I mean, what you were just talking about gets almost to, like, it goes beyond lottery and gets into the existential questions of solipsism, where it's like, do other people even exist?
Jonathan Cohen: Am I in the Truman show? Because I want.
Chris: Exactly, exactly. Right, right. And I have to imagine that, yeah, truly huge windfalls must feel that way and must have a psychological effect in that manner.
Jonathan Cohen: Well, I'd love to find out. How's that?
Chris: Yeah, same. Actually, I played the. I was going to ask you. I've been. This week, I'm playing the lottery just as part of the research. So if the numbers come up, if I leave the interview early, you'll know why.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. Exactly. If this never gets posted, we never hear from you again.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. Did you play when you were doing. First of all, how long was the research that you did for a dollar and a dream?
Jonathan Cohen: So I started work on it in, let's say, the summer of 2015, and then the book came out in 2022.
Chris: So did you play the lottery during that time?
Jonathan Cohen: Yes and no. Every state that I went to, I would buy a scratch ticket, because, in part, I'm the only weirdo who's going to, like, read the fine print on the back of every scratch ticket to, like, compare the cash terms. Oh, in Georgia, you have 180 days to catch a winning ticket, but in Connecticut, you only have 90 days, something like that. So just have a. Again, real interesting stuff that definitely made it into the book, but just to have a nice little. Nice little collection. But, yes, I definitely sort of a victim of my own education, my own edification. When I was growing up, my parents.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, every once in a while, would buy a ticket when the jackpot got big, but I definitely became more attuned to the lottery, obviously, from doing research on it, and would buy tickets a lot more frequently than I ever. I don't know if I'd ever purposefully bought a lottery ticket outside of a big jackpot. And maybe even then, I had never done it until I started work on the book. And in part, sort of exactly as you alluded to, I found myself to be 100% victim or prey to the same sort of, like, dreams and imaginations that come when you buy a ticket and you're waiting a day for the drawing to happen. Maybe I can only speak for myself.
Jonathan Cohen: I don't know if this is happening to you this week, but also even just to learn how these scratch tickets work and sort of be able to be conversant when talking with lottery players, you know, oh, wait, why'd you buy that ticket? Blah, blah. Just to sort of see what they're up to and where their mind is at.
Chris: Sure. Yeah, I think I am experiencing that, to be honest. So I bought a scratcher and I bought. It's actually kind of complicated. California has, like, three or four different lotto drawings. And so that was part, I'm like, I needed to figure out how this is going, but I bought three of the lotto tickets. There's, like, one that's weekly, one that's bi weekly, and then another one that I'm still not sure yet, but I definitely have that sort of like, well, you know, this is for the show, but it would be cool if, you know, like, you can't. There's like, this magnetic pull of the, like.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah.
Chris: Of the fantasizing, I guess.
Jonathan Cohen: And I know people, just for the record, who do plenty of fantasizing without ever buying a ticket. They'll, like, see the billboard on the side of the road and be like, oh, man, how would I spend, like, $900 million? And yet, maybe for gamers like you and me, you gotta have that real skin in the game to really feel like you have. You have a chance to. I feel that way a little bit.
Chris: Yeah. I was going to mention the gaming thing, too, because I think that does, because I don't, you know, like, I'm the same as you, where I haven't historically played the lottery. And if I have bought a ticket, I don't even know if I've ever bought a ticket, but if I have, it's been like, oh, you know, everybody in the whole country bought one because it's a billion dollars more of a shared experience. Right? And I think part of that is the mechanics, to me, are more important than, you know, the game mechanics as a gamer, game designer, too. Like, I can't get over the mechanics of the fact that it's, like, negative value and the probability and all that.
Chris: That seems to weigh very heavily in my mind, even though I now have a different, like I used to also say, and it's irrational, but I actually don't think that it's irrational, but I still have that same trepidation. That being said, with the trepidation, I still feel, yeah, I still feel the pull to fantasize.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And I think, I mean, I have the same impulse as you do, is to try to gamify it and say, oh, a $2 scratch ticket is a better value than a $1 scratch ticket, even though I don't have proof of the expected value, but I know that prize distribution is a little bit better. But again, at the end of the day, yeah, your expected value is negative. The scratch ticket was printed six months ago at a warehouse in Georgia, and you're now just scratching it off. And that, yeah, it gives you the illusion of control and that you are involved, but really it's just peeling off a layer of plastic. You're not actually doing anything. But, yeah, this belief that you can gamify it somehow, it's a really strong impulse that is unfortunately totally futile.
Chris: Yeah. This scratch or two that I got, it sat on my counter yesterday for a few hours before I finally did it. And as I've been sort of reflecting, I'm like, you know, I think I was enjoying the ticket for those few hours more than I was after I did the scratch. Right. There's this, like, Schrodinger's jackpot that was, like, sitting on my counter. And then when I actually finally scratched it off, I was like, okay, nevermind, I feel empty now.
Jonathan Cohen: And that took 7 seconds of your life, right, to scratch it. So you can imagine, a lot of scratch tickets, if anyone has ever been to a convenience store, are played on the counter on the spot. And the winnings for small prizes, let's say up to $20, are invariably turned back into more tickets. And the cycle continues until folks run out of money. And there's really just chasing either that Schrodinger uncertainty, as you noted, or they're just chasing that big jackpot, unfortunately never comes.
Chris: Yeah. The gamer in me that wants to min Max this so is thinking like, well, what if I bought a ticket and, like, held onto it for a week? Would I have, like, a week of, like, fantasy enjoyment before I, you know, spent that 7 seconds to crush it. All right?
Jonathan Cohen: Until in a single moment of loss of impulse control, you just scratch it and then. So that's, this is part of the appeal of a game like Powerball, like mega millions, like California lotto, where there's a couple days or maybe a week between drawings and there's not much you can do and control. It is that Wednesday at 11:00 p.m. Is when I'm going to find out if I'm a billionaire or not, right? No.
Chris: And all of the millions of people get to have that same sort of, like, I might be a billionaire for three, four days.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. So there is, and you alluded to a collective experience in the 1980s. The collective experience of buying a lottery ticket was really strong, in part because a lot of states didn't yet have quick pick. So every single person who bought a ticket had to fill out one of those little scantron sheets with their lottery numbers.
Chris: I remember those.
Jonathan Cohen: And then people like you who never buy lottery tickets, like, don't know how those work. So you have to wait. And then the line is like, getting longer and people are getting mad, but you don't know this is your first time buying tickets. You just want to be part of it. But there really was this collective experience to buying lottery tickets at the time. And there still is a little bit today from my spending a lot of time, as I've said, in convenience stores. But what we have, the degree to which there is a collective experience now, it isolated but collective, meaning it is lots of people, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, each in their own homes, looking at their own numbers at the same time, waiting to find out if they're a winner.
Chris: Sure.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, maybe tweeting about it, but probably not really just being private with their dreams, all dreaming at the same time, expectantly and waiting and hoping.
Chris: I mean, that's, yeah, that's super powerful. Before we get to my last couple questions here, I did kind of triggered a thought here with talking about the, you know, gamifying the experience and min maxing and whatnot. I think you mentioned this. You either mentioned this in one of your other interviews or in the book. People tend to like the distribution of guesses. When people don't use quick pick aren't fully random, they tend to be, like, closer to numbers one through 31 because people use their birth dates, for example. So is that something that still happens or most people using quick pick?
Jonathan Cohen: I think for big games like Powerball and Mega millions. Most people still use quick pick. The data on this is hard to access for mortals like me, who don't work at a lottery commission. Gotcha. I'm sort of continuously interested in the phenomenon of people playing numbers that are lucky. I guess they think that their dead grandma will help bring them luck and help them win, or that if they do win, it will be more meaningful in some way if they hit with those numbers. I'm curious for your take on this, but it is definitely a phenomenon that I still see that still happens of people playing numbers, especially for the three and four digit daily games, because those are a lot quicker to process your numbers. And you don't need six or seven numbers, you just need three or four.
Jonathan Cohen: But I'm curious as to why you think that as an outsider, why you think that would have appeal for people.
Chris: I mean, I think it comes down to the sort of like, luck. I was actually gonna ask this too. Like, is luck something that happens to you, or is it like an inherent property of a thing? Right. Like, and I feel like the people that are. That have the lucky numbers and actually. And then sort of like, you know, the post facto, like, I won, therefore I must have been a lucky person. I didn't get lucky. I was a lucky person. I think it just kind of feeds into to that. That, like, luck does feel like it's a. It's a hidden property. Like, you were always gonna win this. It was a hidden property of these magical numbers. Not. It wasn't decided when the balls were selected.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. Well, and there's. And just to take it even further, there are all these examples from the eighties of lottery winners who would become like, quasi celebrities at the time. Like, people, like, rubbing their faces and hands, like, trying to, like, rub off some of their luck, you know, as they. It was inherently them who were the lucky ones.
Chris: Yeah.
Jonathan Cohen: And there is a phenomenon to this day of when a store sells a winning lottery ticket, it sees a disproportionate increase in lottery sales. Even though every ticket number combination can be purchased at any lottery retailer in the country, it is somehow that store is imbued and sort of. Yeah, they get there. Some of the luck has rubbed off on them or they are blessed, even though, of course, they are no more or less likely than any other store to sell a winning ticket going forward.
Chris: Right. Yeah. Huh. That is, yeah. That makes total sense with the, like, the magical stores.
Jonathan Cohen: Like, it makes sense, but it doesn't, you know, it makes.
Chris: It makes psychological sense, but even though it doesn't, make mathematical sense. So is the million dollar advice here then for our listeners is that like. So if I go play numbers, I don't do quick pick, I play numbers and I pick outside of that, like one to 31 range, it's the same chance of winning. However, I have less chance of splitting my winnings because there are fewer picks in that range. Is that not correct?
Jonathan Cohen: That is correct, yeah. Assuming you trust yourself to be a better random number generator than quick pick, which is an actual random number generator.
Chris: Well, isn't any number. I mean, I could pick numbers. 3637-3839 I mean, that still has any chances. Any other serious numbers?
Jonathan Cohen: Absolutely. Okay, well, when I see your name on the news because you won with the first consecutive lottery numbers in the nation's history, I'll be ruing the day that I doubted you.
Chris: Right, right. And I'll say this is dedicated to John Cohen, who never believed in me.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah.
Chris: Why did you title your book? You called it a dollar and a dream. Why did you title it that way?
Jonathan Cohen: So the simplest answer, right, a dollar and a dream is the name of was the slogan of a late 1980s New York state lottery commercial. All you need is a dollar and a dream was sort of the tagline, which is how I got alerted to it. I did not get alerted to it through the J. Cole album called a dollar and a dream. But I don't think people confuse us on Google very often, either our work or our appearance. The subtitle which landed at state lotteries in modern America that changed a lot and had many iterations. But I will say a dollar and a dream, I stuck with it basically from the start, in part because first of all, I really like the inclusion of the word dream. I think that's sort of really what this is all about, fundamentally.
Jonathan Cohen: And for a dollar and a dream, I think, speaks to, and I wanted something that spoke to both sides of this, that speaks to both the players side and the state side in terms of the explanation of their pursuit of gambling.
Chris: Right.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. They're, as we've said, people are playing for a dollar for the money. They're also playing for this dream of what the money would symbolize. States, again, are pursuing non tax revenue, but they're also playing, quote unquote, for, you know, a world where they never have to pay their education for education ever again or something. So again, I think it's all about dreams. And I really wanted something that captured, to use your word, the parallel between the States and the gamblers. And I hope I've done that effectively.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, that's part of why I asked this is, I thought that it was such an apt title after reading it. And it also, like, the whole dream thing is it speaks to that, like, deeper current in America that went to a little bit, too, of, like, part of what drove the growth of this was the crumbling of one dream needed to be replaced with another dream.
Jonathan Cohen: Right.
Chris: Like the crumbling of this post war social contract. People need some sort of dream, so they go to this. And we see that with mlms as well. That's why there's a podcast called the Dream by Jane Marie, and it's the same. The title, I feel like it hits all the same notes, right. Is that it's about this american dream. And what is replacing that when it seems impossible for you to achieve, right.
Jonathan Cohen: And this is something that. That I learned at the feet of my advisor, Grace Hale, who writes about this in her book about how dreams feel like they are ahistorical and just everybody has dreams, and that's it. But they are really socially, culturally, historically grounded. And sort of the circumstances of your life, the circumstances of your era, really shape your aspirations for the future, whether you know it or not. And, you know, there's not a lot of, like, data out there about dreams and about imaginations and what people want. But again, just take our example in terms of what a lottery jackpot represented in the seventies, which was financial stability and sort of upper middle class life.
Jonathan Cohen: And then the eighties, all of a sudden, it represents opulence and being the richest guy person in your town or on your block or whatever, that is a change in the dream. And again, a dream feels like it's just fundamental. And a dream is a dream, but no, it really changes in scope and in scale over time.
Chris: Yeah. And also, like, whether it's being fed or not, you know, like, that seems like that's kind of part of the story here. So we honor show. We have a bunch of criteria for what constitutes a cult or not. It's, by the way, not an academic term, so it's very much colloquial. Right.
Jonathan Cohen: You know that quote that this is from some scholar, a cult. Cult is a four letter word for religion that I don't like.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. We have a criteria for that, actually. We have, like we say, is it. Is it niche within society is one of our criteria. So it's like, if it hits all the other things, but it's niche, then that means it's probably a cult because it's not the mainstream thing.
Jonathan Cohen: Right, right. I listened to your episode about Starbucks. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So there's also some huge undercurrents that cut through a lot of the groups and ideas we discussed. And one of that is this notion we've talked about here about unmet need. And cults tend to provide need, an unmet need. And that's actually our preferred framework for talking about what appeals to people. Brainwashing is something that people talk about, but it isn't really scientifically supported. So this unmet need is a much better framework for understanding why people get into this kind of stuff. And I'll just give her, for example, this can be a social need. So something like QAnon can be so sticky because of the social glue. People spend time online chatting with other like minded people that are interested in the same things, as shitty as they may be.
Chris: But another thing that even QAnon and other cult like groups make them so sticky is that they provide hope, or I guess in the parlance of what were talking about a minute ago, they fulfill a dream that seems otherwise impossible or unattainable in other ways. And really, hopelessness is super intolerable. So it's a powerful draw. So I apologize for the long wind up. But given all of that, would you consider the state lottery apparatus, like both the players and the politicians, to be involved in a type of cult like belief system because of the way that it exploits that lack of hope, that dream?
Jonathan Cohen: I think, to take your framework, I think lotteries are definitely filling unmet psychological need for people and maybe for american society writ large, which is, if you think about it really is the one escape hatch, so to speak, in american society for extreme wealth. Let me take the other examples that often get lumped in with lotteries. Things like sports betting or crypto or robinhood stock trading. All of those are ways to make money through gambling. I would call gambling, but they all require, if you want to win a lot of money, you need to spend a lot of money. There aren't a lot of stocks where you can put a very small amount of money and get a huge return instantaneously.
Jonathan Cohen: And that's what the lottery provides, that no other aspect of american society can offer, which is even someone with a very small amount of disposable income can, however improbable, by a chance at a billion dollars or many millions of dollars. And that is a need that should be met or not, that is a hope for wealth, for stability, for whatever you want to call it that exists nowhere else in society that the lottery is providing to people on a daily basis.
Chris: Yeah, I think you call it transformative wealth in the book. I like that vocab word, because it cuts the idea that the lottery provides this quantum leap that you don't really get via other means.
Jonathan Cohen: So that's my question. Okay. If the lottery didn't exist, right, it wasn't just out there that you knew in the back of your head at all times. Oh, okay, I'm not wealthy, but maybe I'll win the lottery, right? That's sort of in the back of people's heads. Even people who aren't lottery players is like, oh, there's still a chance for me to win. So if that didn't exist, I don't know what the consequences would be, but that, I think, would take away a lot of hope for a lot of people. Or again, at least that's why I use the word sort of this escape hatch, right? Just like the last chance, desperate attempt. People know how improbable it is, but they really don't see another way that it might come about for them.
Chris: Yeah, you just tickled my brain there with the idea of, like, how would. How would I feel if, as a non lottery player, how would I feel if that safety net was taken away? Is that actually providing something for me, even though I don't play? I kind of feel like the answer is yes.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. You might still imagine being rich, but you would probably feel a little bit sillier about it because there isn't a way in american society sort of that you. I mean, maybe you have the side hustle of all. Maybe the podcast takes off, you know? I don't know.
Chris: Yeah, this is my lottery ticket.
Jonathan Cohen: Right. I hope it wasn't this episode, I'll tell you that. But. Right, maybe you just feel a little bit sillier, right? Imagining being wealthy when there really isn't a chance realistic of any part of society that wealth might come about, whereas in this current iteration, you know, all right, I'm gonna buy a lottery ticket. Next time jackpot gets a billion dollars, maybe I'll hit it. You know, who knows? So I wonder. It's an interesting counterfactual, and it may.
Chris: Not even be, like, a sillier thing. It may just be, like in that bizarro world where lottery doesn't exist, it just might be more difficult for me to conceptualize that at all. And is that just having that ability to conceptualize that the ability to fantasize that feels like that is enough of a panacea in some ways and not.
Jonathan Cohen: To bring this sort of too concretely into the boring policy, technocratic world. But that is why one of the solutions, sort of policy proposals that I have for sort of fixing lotteries is putting caps back on the size of jackpots, which we used to have all the time. You know, lottery could, the jackpot couldn't get above 100 million of dollars or whatever. And again, I think we could tamp down people's dreams a little bit or just sort of maintain some slightly more realistic expectations, just ever so slightly, and make a big difference in people's lives.
Chris: Yeah. Well, I mean, given what we talked about in terms of, like, how people behaviorally respond to, like, low probability versus high reward, given the tremendous bias we have in one direction, it feels like that would be a good countervailing force for that.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And again, it's demand driven.
Chris: Right.
Jonathan Cohen: Why we have these big jackpots that are so much more improbable. But I think ultimately we could use, with a little less lottery playing, fewer billionaires and a couple more millionaires would be sort of my ideal arrangement if the games are to continue to exist.
Chris: Yeah. Also everywhere else. That would be nice.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah. And also. Yeah. And also if I was one of the millionaires, that'd be cool, too. But, you know, I'm not asking for too much.
Chris: Right. Just a million. I just want to buy a house in California. All right. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention or talk about? Do you have anything you're working on after post dollar and a dream?
Jonathan Cohen: Well, yeah, his name is Caleb. He's 18 months old. So I'm working on changing a lot of diapers and in my spare time. Yeah. I mean, I have my eyes on, let's say, on the sports gambling world and what this is doing to people, and especially an argument. I can't remember the author's name, but it was an article in the Free Press about basically calling sports gambling the new opioid crisis as something that is happening beneath the surface that not on a lot of people's radar yet, but that is affecting a lot of people who just like the opioid crisis, happen to be disproportionately white and is sort of wreaking havoc on a lot of people's lives in a way that we are all blind to. But in ten years, might be sort of a big issue nationwide.
Chris: Yeah. I think that's actually a great idea. I mean, we had a referendum here in California, I think, last year, the year before about that, I forget. I think it actually. I think we voted no, but in.
Jonathan Cohen: Part because the tribal casinos, which want to preserve their monopoly, mobilized against strange alliances.
Chris: Right? Yeah. Yeah. It was a very interesting sort of like Game of Thrones there that ended up making things go the way that it did. But I think that would be very fertile ground. As someone who has enjoyed sports betting in Vegas, but I don't do it on Fanduel or whatever, I am actually surprised at the rapid growth, and I would love to learn more about what's driven that and where it's going. And, yeah, I hadn't heard the analogy to the opioid crisis. That's interesting.
Jonathan Cohen: And talk about a cult. For the record, I think Las Vegas, if you don't have an episode that's not on your list of potential cults, I think that's fertile ground for you and an excuse for you guys to make a trip. How's that?
Chris: Oh, wow. Okay. You know what? I think you need to be consulting for the show, because that's actually a fantastic idea.
Jonathan Cohen: But, yeah, it's a wild world. And again, definitely filling, and was, until recently, especially filling an unmet need in american society.
Chris: Sure. Yeah. Another dollar. Lots of dollars in dreams going in there.
Jonathan Cohen: Yep, yep.
Chris: Speaking of which. Yeah, just plug the book one more time, because not. Not because you're here, even, but because I liked it. I thought it was super interesting, and there's a lot we didn't even cover. So maybe I'll talk about that more with Kayla, my co host. But there's other chapters that we didn't even really touch on here, so there's still plenty to read for folks who want to go grab it. And it's also, for a historical academic book, it flows. It's pretty much a page turner. You know, sometimes with books like that, it's kind of, you know, this is a bit of a slog, but yours wasn't. I really enjoyed it.
Jonathan Cohen: Well, I'm glad that you were able to turn your page through half of a chapter about the 1960s budget crisis in the state of New Jersey, which I've never heard described as a page turner, but I'm very glad to hear it.
Chris: Well, you do, I think, part of what it is, you do a really good job of bringing in, like, a lot of personal narratives to kind of ground everything, and that's just gonna be compelling. So.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah, no, I think it's all about the people, and even the stuff that's about politicians. Right. Is really about these people. People are creating a system and putting a game in place. It is a game that is going to affect a lot of people. And so what did that affect? That's sort of, I think, the story that we have to tell.
Chris: So there's a lot to unpack here.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Where do you want to start? Actually, first thing I'll note is that were having a cool conversation in our live broadcast room where were broadcasting this on discord. So we're going to try to bring up a couple of the points that some of our patrons made. So you have to. So if you're a patron, then you get access to this discord channel where you can listen to us live record. I mentioned that at the top of the show, and you can also chat. And so there were some cool chats in here that people were talking like, oh, this is an interesting part of the interview. You. I don't know.
Chris: I think for me, the most interesting part is maybe that chance culture versus control culture, or I guess he called it culture of chance versus culture of control, because I think that framework underpins a lot of, I don't know, a lot of the way we think about economic success and whether people are truly deserving of the money they make. I think we talked about that before we even listened to the interview. I forget if we talked about that.
Kayla: Yeah, I think about this a lot because I work in a field that is inherently very lucky. If you get into it. Like, it's inherently. There is a lot of chance that goes into being able to sustain a career as a creative in any field, and particularly as a creative in film and television. It is notoriously very difficult. Like, I think that the. The kind of numbers that are thrown around every year when somebody is admitted into the BGA is that there are fewer people admitted into the writers Guild of America each year than make it into major league Baseball. Like, that's the kind of numbers that we're talking about, obviously. Still, you know, low probability that we can wrap our minds around, so, you know, we can comprehend it, but still low probability.
Kayla: And it requires so much talent and skill and work and also the luck. And the chance is an inextricable part of it.
Chris: It.
Kayla: And so I, in myself, know, like, hell, yeah, I worked really hard to get where I am, and I deserve this money when I have a job. And also it's, good lord, am I lucky to be here, and I do not deserve this any more. Than anybody else who I came up with assistant who hasn't been able to make the jump yet, or somebody who doesn't live in Los Angeles or any other schmuck on the street. I don't deserve it, quote unquote, more than them. I'm not the best writer. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'm a good writer.
Chris: Yeah. No, I am, but I'm not.
Kayla: It's you.
Jonathan Cohen: Yeah.
Kayla: I do not have the job that I have solely based on control. It is so much chance.
Chris: Yeah. I feel like in, like, our daily lives, it's like, kind of obvious that's true. But, like, when it starts getting into the realm of rhetoric, sure. There's just, like, why do we just go to the extremes of it, you know, like, why? And I guess I can answer that for billionaires, because, like, their wealth is so extreme that they have to have, like, a very extreme view of, like, what, you know, whether they got, whether any luck played any role in that at all. But, yeah, it just, it feels like once you get to that discourse, all of a sudden it's like, there's no, like, well, you know, some of it's luck and some of it's work hard. It's like all one or all the other. It's like you just got completely lucky, or like, you just.
Chris: There's no such thing as luck, and you are poor because you deserve it.
Kayla: If we give luck the credit that it's due, then it shatters the framework necessary to keep this broken system going.
Chris: And it sounds like it shatters this american mythology, too, because one of the interesting things he said was how other countries don't have the same compulsion, they don't feel the same compulsion to explain their winnings in these religious, I deserved it terms. You mentioned Sweden or China, any other, these other countries that have. Because everybody gambles. And some countries also have lottery systems, state run lottery systems. And it seems to be that. Yeah, according to Doctor Cohen, those cultures don't have as much problem saying, like, yeah, I just got really lucky and got a lot of money. They don't have the same compulsion to explain the meritocracy.
Kayla: I think they also just have a different. He said something about, I wrote it down. He talked about how our dreams are actually socially and historically shaped.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And I think that in thinking of western european countries, people that grow up in western european countries, obviously there's the same thing of, like, oh, if I work hard or, oh, if I get lucky, the dreams of fantastic wealth are still there. And it is a different type of society in which I could be wrong, but from an outsider perspective, people are being born on more equal playing fields than they are in the United States. Whereas in the United States, it feels like the only way to get out of certain classes or certain conditions is divine intervention, is luck, is somebody bestowing a lottery upon you.
Kayla: But if you come up in a country where you're not constantly under the threat of, like, medical bankruptcy, I wonder if that just changes how you feel about luck and what it means and chance and those things.
Chris: Right. It's like, okay for luck to exist if that's sort of the environment that you live in and also, like, not just geographically, but temporarily. Right. One of the interesting things that he brought up and that comes up in his book is how in the sixties, the lottery sort of matched society a little more. Like, even american society was more like, had more of a social safety net, and it was more about, like, living comfortably and, like, having your basic american dream of owning a house and 2.5 kids.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And then the american dream sort of, like, transformed into, yeah. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. You need to have five supercars and a yacht, and greed is good. You need to have, you know, the name Trump needs to go on all of your buildings and jetse. And so we kind of moved into this world where it's like winner take all capitalism, as it's been called. And the lottery seems to have followed suit, right, because the lottery in the sixties was. It was more consistent that you win, but the winnings were less, and now it's the opposite. Now it's like, way, way less likely that you win. But then the jackpots are, like, insane.
Kayla: That, like, makes me depressed, but it's like.
Chris: But I get it, though. Cause, like, it's hard to conceive what when you get. I think we mentioned this in the interview once, you get to, like, I don't know, like one out of a million, probably even less than that. You know, like, your brain just sort of, like, buckets that all into very unlikely, right? Like, anything beyond that. Like one in a billion. Very unlikely. One in a trillion. Very unlikely. Like, it's just there's no real way for your brain to conceive, like, the differences between those probabilities. So you might as well, if you're the lottery system, you might as well go super low chance and super high payout because that's what it's easier for your brain to absorb. And. Yeah, I also want to, like, just, I guess I'll just sort of restate the quote.
Chris: But like, that one lottery players quote of, like, he understands that the lottery is like a dumb thing to believe in. Like, like, you play the lot. Lottery players play the lottery. They're not dumb. They know that it's infinitesimal odds and that it's sort of like a fool's, what do you call it? Like a fool's dream. But he still feels like that's his only chance to change his life station.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And that's like, when I read that, I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That kind of feels like that explains a lot of what we're talking about.
Kayla: If you're somebody who is living in techno feudalism, you see this discourse all the time around capitalism of, like, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Chris: Yeah. Because capitalism would monetize the end of the world.
Kayla: Absolutely. So it's easier to imagine winning the lottery as a means to escape poverty than it is to imagine, oh, you're going to work your way up the, like, hierarchy ladder business.
Chris: Yeah. As irrational as it is to believe that you're going to win the lottery, it is even more irrational to believe that you're going to change your station in life by putting your head down and working a nine to five.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: That's what's crazy here. And that's what I think the lottery capitalizes on. And there's sort of, like, another side to that coin that I had never really thought about. Is that sort of, like, psychological safety net that he was talking about. Like, even for me, as a non lottery player, does the existence of the lot, does the fact that just, it's there have some sort of soothing effect, the opiate of the masses effect, for my brain to think, like, well, even if I get super poor, I could fantasize about being rich. I'm fantasizing about being rich. Even as a middle class person.
Kayla: Absolutely. I dream about, we're constantly going like, ooh, if you won the lottery, what would you do? And we don't play the lottery. Yeah, but having that idea of, like, one day I could just happen upon a bunch of cash, right. Is like, I don't. It would be really depressing without that. I mean, like, I come up with non lottery ways of, like, ooh, what if I just, like, got a bunch of money? And, like, when I do come into money randomly, it's like the, I got $500 because I listed something on depop, and I randomly got selected in a drawing of, like, you posted something on depop, and we're giving away $500, and I actually got $500, and it was the greatest thing in the entire world.
Chris: That is amazing. It was incredible sounds, and just, like, the best day of your entire life.
Kayla: I thought it was.
Chris: Another thing he was talking about is, like, how much, like, I don't even know what the right word is. Like, joy, excitement, like, just how much of an impact it is psychologically for people who, when they win stuff like this, it's, like, bigger. Like, Mario Puzo was like, yeah. It was like, when I win at blackjack, it's, like, bigger than when I sold the godfather to paramount. I'm just like, holy shit. That is both crazy. But it also makes a weird amount of sense, too.
Kayla: Yeah. It's a bigger life changing event in some ways. It's certainly the luckier event.
Chris: Do you.
Kayla: The less likely to happen event in some ways.
Chris: Yeah. Do you, like, if you won, let's say you won the, like, the big one.
Kayla: 1.5, bill.
Chris: Would you feel like Truman, do you think. Do you feel like you'd be in the Truman show? Would it break your brain?
Kayla: I think it would break my brain, but I don't know if it would break my brain in that way. But probably. I mean, it would definitely. Okay. That voice would be there. Like, I think about things I have in my life felt, like on the Truman show, or felt like there was some cosmic entity out there targeting me specifically.
Chris: Sure.
Kayla: In a negative way, in like, a why do you keep doing this to me? God kind of way. And I think that if I won $1.5 billion, that thought would absolutely come up, of there's some sort of cosmic entity that is doing this to me. I don't know. I would have multiple feelings about it. I think that my rational brain would push back against it, but that impulse would absolutely be there. I think it has to be. I think that's how the brain copes.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I would feel, because I have all of this background and training and statistics and probability, and I would sit here, and I would love to sit here and think. Yeah. That's going to insulate me from having these magical thinking, irrational thoughts of, like. Like, something's up, something's weird. Am I in the matrix? Am I God?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But I don't know. The pull of that would be very strong, especially for something so absurdly extreme, like a billion dollar jackpot.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And this kind of dovetails a little bit into what one of our patrons was talking about on discord here. Joy was talking about how it made her think a lot about this sort of like focus on the individual and this, it's like, I don't know, it's just inherently solipsistic in nature, right? Like, because, like somebody has to win. Like the guy, like Doctor Cohen was saying, somebody has to win. But also, so, like, it's like this inherent knowledge, this inherent, you're inherently admitting that people, other people exist, right. Because somebody's got to win. But then, like, if you're the one that wins, all of a sudden that flips and it's like, am I the only one that exists? Like, it's just, how did it just fucks with your brain?
Kayla: Yeah, it's kind of like what were talking about yesterday of like, you know, somebody who is born into a religion that they believe and think is, you know, the divine promises of that religion are like the one true reality, right? How do you square that with like, there's 8 billion people on the planet. Why was I the, why was I so lucky to be born into the.
Chris: Right one, into the correct religion?
Kayla: And I think that if you do, I'm sure that people grapple with that all the time of like thinking about why was I this lucky? Why was I this fortunate? Why was I chosen to be born into the group? That's right.
Chris: Yeah. And actually, I'll just add part of the discussion that we had yesterday, I was just saying how curious I was about that. So if any of you listeners out there want to email us culture or actually come into our discord and talk about it, but you can always email us too@culturejustweirdmail.com. I personally am very curious how people, if you're a religious person, what is it that you like? How do you square that? What do you think about the idea that yours is the one true religion and the other religions are wrong? Is that the mindset or is the mindset more like. Well, they're misguided? I'm really curious if you are somebody who is of a religious nature listening to this podcast, please. Yeah, please let us know because I'm super curious about that.
Chris: But to come back from that branching topic there, to come back from that.
Kayla: I have a comeback from that tangent.
Chris: That's a tangent. That's a tangent. To come back from that tangent.
Kayla: Just continuing in this conversation of the divine and religion and yada, I just want to point out that the you guys talked about, well, in some sort of, like, new age woo sense, isn't like improbable chance just the same thing as divine intervention? I just want to point out that was my. That came from me.
Chris: Oh, that's the important thing is that you want to take credit.
Kayla: I said that first. I said that to you before you did your interview, and then you added it to your interview questions.
Chris: I just so impressed.
Kayla: Want credit where credit is due. And also, I think that I am nothing like, I have no change in position. Even after listening to this interview, it.
Chris: Still feels divine in a way.
Kayla: Chance is the finger of God. It's the finger of God without there being a bearded man in the sky, without there being a conscious.
Chris: So it's a disembodied hand. It's kind of like in smash brothers and you fight the hand.
Kayla: I'm saying that chance is not the result of a super conscious entity making decisions, but the utterly improbable happening to you is just the unconscious universe's version of divine intervention. If you are so lucky that you have the improbable thing happen to you, what's the difference between that and. Yeah. Beard man going, and you are now talking to a burning bush. You know what I mean?
Chris: Rngesus.
Kayla: Rngesus.
Chris: That's what it is.
Kayla: That's why you taught me that term.
Chris: Yep. One of our patrons, our same patron, actually, Joy mentioned the sort of calvinist thinking that's in this as well. And that is actually, you totally should read his book. It's so good. And there's a section in it where he does talk about the historical roots of calvinism and predestination and how he traces that in through the puritan notions of the US, puritan notions that feed into prosperity. Gospel of I deserve this money. The reason I got this money must because I was initially deserving. That's exactly the sort of the mentality that a lot of lottery winners bring to that event of it winning. It's like, well, I wouldn't have won this if I wasn't predestined, if I wasn't chosen by God, if I wasn't deserving.
Kayla: See, I don't think that I would fall into that system of belief, but that's because I don't have that pre existing system of belief.
Chris: Right. There's two more things I want to get to. One, I'm going to try to be quick about this because this is a huge thing to unpack its own whole episode.
Kayla: Maybe in the beginning?
Chris: No, the fact that numbers games and the lottery. So numbers games are these sort of just grassroots lottery systems. Numbers games are typically played in african american communities, and that's, like, basically the exact prototype for numbers games that state lotteries run. So, like, you know, the. The pix six, the powerball, the blah, blah. And so it just. It's funny that, like, we're even. We're even culturally appropriating gambling.
Kayla: That's what hegemonic white supremacist culture does.
Chris: Good stuff. And actually, he gets into that more in the book, too. I keep saying he gets it into the book. I promise he didn't pay me to advertise any of this stuff. But there is a whole part of the book where he talks about the genesis of these numbers games. And it goes from being something that is used, it's actually a really bad appropriation, because it's not that another appropriation is good, but in this case, it's, like, even worse because it's illegal activity. So it is used as a cudgel by law enforcement to, like, when they want to go. When they want to go in somewhere and punish a community, they can use numbers games because they know that it's going to be happening, right? And simultaneously, it's also, like, a major, like, source. It's a major, like, inflow of corruption.
Chris: It's a major inflow of corruption for police forces, too, because you go and you're like, you guys better break up this numbers game unless I get a cut.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: So it's. I don't know. I don't know. Like, maybe it was good that it got, like, stateified. Like, there's this whole other aspect of, like, the transformation of numbers games into, like, a state run system that's also really fascinating in the book. And then the second thing, the final thing I want to talk about is just, do you remember? So this. We actually read this one, this part together, and I just. I gotta share it on the podcast. Do you remember the lawsuit?
Kayla: Please talk about the lawsuit. The lawsuit was amazing.
Chris: Okay. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna do it justice, but I'm gonna try. So apparently there was a lottery winner at one point who she had asked a friend, or maybe it was a family member, or it was, like, a close friend. Hey, can you buy me a lottery ticket? And also, like, with my money, like, you know, I'm gonna give you $5 to go buy the ticket. You're gonna go buy it. And I also. I've been praying on this for months and months. I really need you to pray on this for me, too. I want you to pray and to a specific saint.
Kayla: To a specific saint. I have been praying to God. I know that you are into this specific saint or entity. I need you to pray.
Chris: Pray to that.
Kayla: I want you to pray to that you buy the ticket for me with your. With my money, and pray to your saint because you have a relationship with them. And that prayer will, you know, maybe it'll win me the lottery.
Chris: Right? And now this probably happens hundreds of times, thousands of times a day. So why are we talking about this one? Well, this lady ended up winning on that ticket, and she, for whatever reason, decided not to share any of her winnings with this other person, which, you.
Kayla: Know, it's the person who prayed to saint.
Chris: The person who prayed to the saints. I mean, as uncool as that is, I think, I guess it's her prerogative. It's her right as the person who owned the lottery to technically purchase the lottery ticket.
Kayla: But it's not right.
Chris: But is it her right? It turned into a lawsuit, so the guy actually sued her, saying, I deserve part of these winnings because I helped you win. I prayed to the saint. And then she, of course, defended the lawsuit. I forget exactly what it ended. Do you remember what happened with the.
Kayla: I think originally it was, like, thrown out, and then, like, you know, you appeal or whatever. And the second judge was like, mm, no, actually, it doesn't matter. We don't have to be proving that the saint helped. You can't prove that the saint helped you win. You can't prove that. But we don't need to prove that. What we need to. What we are litigating here is whether or not the lottery, every player believed that praying to the saint would help them win.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: That is what was being litigated is do I, as the person who's asking you to buy the ticket, believe that praying to that saint will help me win? If I believe that and that happens, then the court did. I believe, did say, okay, yeah, you.
Chris: Have to forget what the percentage, I.
Kayla: Think was, like, 30% or 30 70, something like that.
Chris: Something like that. Yeah. But it's. It was just a fascinating story. The book's full of those. And it also reminded me of, like, the Ramtha lawsuit, too, where, like, Jay Z Knight, somebody else was saying that they could channel Ramtha. This is, if you're a longtime listener, you know, our episode on the Ramtha School of enlightenment, so there's this channel, or Jay Z Knight channels Ramtha. Somebody else is like, oh, I'm also channeling this ancient spirit, Ramtha. And she was like, no, you're not. And Jay Z was, like, sued her, basically saying, but it was for copyright, which is inherently saying, well, I'm making this up for money.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And she won the lawsuit. So it's like, but how can you have your, like, this is a real thing. This is a real spirit cake and eat it, too. It kind of feels like the same here. Like, how can you have your I deserve all these lottery winnings while also still believing that the prayer mattered? Just felt very similar to me. Anyway, I wanted to say that story because it's so good, and now we can talk about whether we think it's a cult or not.
Kayla: I want to say one more thing.
Chris: No one said two more things, and you didn't say one more thing.
Kayla: It's very fast.
Chris: That makes three things, Caleb.
Kayla: This is the third thing. Just one more thing that was pointed out by Jonathan Cohen in your conversation was the need to use fantastical terms to not only convince people to play, but to enact a lottery system. The fantastical, almost too good to be true terms of all of the rhetoric that's used to get people to play. We talked about that, like, dreams and blah, blah, but also the promises of, like, you'll never have to collect taxes again in order to get states to enact a lottery system. I just thought that it was interesting to point out how important language and appealing to the fantastical, the divine, the kind of the too good to be true. That kind of doesn't make sense how important that is across the.
Kayla: Not just for the lottery, but, like, for a lot of the groups and the systems that we discuss.
Chris: Yeah. And, like, that magical thinking that. That these, like, state entities engage in and actually, like, if you read the book, like, some of the same causes, some of the same underlying causes are there, too. So, like, the same way that, like, individual humans are, like, you know, get into sort of, like, a desperate economic situation, state governments can kind of get into their own desperate economic situation where the taxes that they have aren't covering all of the things that people want and all of the services that we need to provide. So we better start gambling on it. It's kind of some of the similar reasons, too. Let me talk about my sources real quick, and then we'll do the criteria. It will be quick because my sources this time were just my own damn experience playing the California lottery.
Chris: I think I ended up being down. I think I spent $60 and 110.
Kayla: Okay, that's not.
Chris: That's not too bad. So that was one of my sources, obviously. The book a dollar and a dream by Jonathan D. Cohen, the interview with Mister Cohen, and a variety of online articles about lottery winners. I won't go into every single different outlet, but, you know, there's a bunch.
Kayla: Of them and every 711 smoke shop, liquor store in like, a five mile radius.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Owner who was willing or catch register operator who was willing to talk to us about. About how the lottery is played in their specific location.
Chris: So, Kayla, is there a charismatic leader?
Kayla: I think we need a lottery system to find our terms. Are we talking about the California lottery? Are we talking about lottery systems in general?
Chris: I would say that the cult in this case is maybe it's twofold lottery players. I would say it's either. It's the lottery players and Orlando. We could even say state officials who create and manage lottery systems. I think we could go. We could talk about either of those. Maybe. For the sake of clarity, let's stick with the first one. Like the lottery playing public and their beliefs about the lottery.
Kayla: Then the charismatic leader is clearly, without a doubt, Rngesus.
Chris: I thought you were going to say the monopoly, Mandy.
Kayla: Well, when I picture Rngesus, that's who I picture.
Chris: That's who you picture. You picture the monopoly guy.
Kayla: I don't know. What do you think? What do you think of charismatic leader is like, the personification of hope enough to be a charismatic leader?
Chris: Yeah, I think that it kind of.
Kayla: Doesn'T exist because the lottery does feel kind of faceless.
Chris: Yeah, it does. That's what I'm saying. I think you can definitely point to some spiritual entities here, like R and Jesus, or like, the personification, the avatar of hope. But if we must have a charismatic leader be like an actual real human being, like Mary Kay or Jay Z Knight, then I would say it doesn't really exist here.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Okay. Expected harm.
Kayla: Oh, that's hard, because it's like, harm, you can say, oh, well, it's like taking advantage of people who don't have money to part with or spending their money on this. They can put them into financial situations. It can become addictive, blah, blah. And also, how do you weigh that against the hope that is maybe provided by a lottery system?
Chris: I think that this is where it really starts to feel similar to other groups we've covered. And one of the reasons why it made me go, like, oh, we could talk about this on the show is because it feels very similar to something like, let's say, qanon, where there's this underlying problem that is the real problem. There's this breakdown of trust and misinformation and the algorithm society that pushes rage and blah, blah. All of the things that underlie QAnon, and that's the carcinogens. And then QAnon is the cancer, and so the cancer is bad. And then you also need to address the fact that you're getting cancer.
Chris: And it kind of feels like that here where it's like, yeah, there's some expected harm in terms of, like, people just throw money at it and, like, the vast majority, vast majority are just going to keep throwing money into it and not get anything out of it.
Kayla: It's such a small number of people who get something out of it that it might as well be none.
Chris: Yeah. Encourages gambling. I mean, and you can say, like, yeah, taxes. But, like, obviously it was never a panacea for that in the first place.
Jonathan Cohen: Right.
Chris: So I think that there's definitely expected harm with the sort of caveat that the reason that it's able to do this is because there's this underlying. All these underlying social economic changes that have happened in this country where there's very little to no safety net, where you can go bankrupt from a medical bill, where the definition of success has changed from comfortable middle class to having your name on a private jet. So I think that I'm gonna go with, like, medium to high on this one. Medium to high. Expected harm.
Kayla: I'll write down medium.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Me.
Chris: High to medium. Medieval. Okay. Presence of ritual.
Kayla: Oh, I think that there's not even a single presence of ritual in this. It's the least ritualistic thing I've ever imagined.
Chris: I mean, we have people.
Kayla: We talked about people. That was sarcasm, was it? Yeah.
Chris: Oh, my gosh. Thank you for explicitly explaining the sarcasm.
Kayla: You're welcome. I know you needed it.
Chris: I do. I'm very. I'm not super with.
Kayla: You're not good at picking things up.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. But yes, obviously very high. Right. Because you have people doing their, like, birthday numbers or, like, what was the story told about, like, somebody like, physically, like, rubbing on, like, lottery winners to, like, get some of their luck charge luck ions to rub off onto.
Kayla: When you started talking about. When you started talking about buying lottery tickets for this episode, I was like, oh, we should find places that have had.
Chris: I know.
Kayla: Specifically, I was like, oh, we got to go to the places that have had winners already.
Chris: Wait, was that for the story value or because you thought that it was.
Kayla: Going to like, little column a, little column b.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And if you noticed, most of the places that went to to buy lottery tickets from, probably four or five different places had a sign out front that said like, oh, this. Like, this is how much money has been won in the lottery at this place. And some of it was like tens of thousands dollars. Some of it was hundreds. The place went to, I was actually shocked. We went to a place nearby which we don't live in, a super crazy wealthy area of Los Angeles. Middle class, upper middle class. That 711 did have the sign. And it was like, I don't know, dozens of tens of thousands of dollars. The place went to and fucking.
Chris: Beverly hills, which, by the way, we specifically went to that one in Beverly Hills to be like, I wonder, like, do people play the lottery in Beverly Hills? And the guy that count, I asked the guy at the counter that, and he's like, yeah, we get a lot of people in here playing lottery.
Kayla: Their sign had hundreds of thousands of dollars of lottery payouts.
Chris: Hundreds. That's some fucking bullshit right there.
Kayla: It was really interesting for me to see that. And then just also talking to the ritual of it all. Like, yeah, my dad totally used to play birthday numbers. He had, I think he had like, a set of numbers that he would always play. He would like, he would buy his numbers and then he would, like, do different number, like, you know, try different things each time. And it was birthday numbers. And then it was also like, when I was a very little kid, I was like, ooh, mom, dad, I can totally hear angels. I think I just.
Chris: Oh, shit. Were they lottery angels? Were they money?
Kayla: I think I was just a small child with ADHD and didn't know what that meant. Like, my brain was doing crazy things and I was like, oh, I'm listening, Dayton. I don't know, whatever it was, but, you know, my parents humored me. And my dad even one time was like, you can hear angels. You want to ask him what I should. He literally for the numbers. He asked me to ask them for lottery numbers and I told him numbers to. To buy them.
Chris: The lottery there also filled on the little scantron every single one of that quintessential chinese american dessert, the fortune cookie.
Kayla: This is true.
Chris: All the fortunes in the fortune, if you turn it over, they got your lucky numbers. And guess what people use those for presence of.
Kayla: I thought those were explicitly for lotto.
Chris: They might be. I don't know, like they say lucky numbers. But it did have that feeling to me, too. Okay. Presence of ritual, extremely high niche within society. Obviously, this is very low at this point because there's.
Kayla: Oh, my God, it's a religion.
Chris: And the only way that these jackpots get up to such extreme numbers into the billions is because there is a extreme participation. So not niche at all, which means that it's going to be a religion if we decide anything. Okay. Anti factuality. I think. I think it's high for this one. I think there's a. Because there's. How many times did we say magical thinking in this episode? Episode. How many times? There's anti factuality at the player level. There's anti factuality. There's magical thinking.
Kayla: Is using fantastical language the same as.
Chris: It's not the language, it's the. Like, it's the Indiana saying. Well, it didn't work for New Jersey, Michigan, Kentucky, Florida, Alabama, but it might work for us. That's the anti factuality.
Kayla: Okay, but what about individuals playing? I don't know if individuals playing are necessarily, like, buying into antifactual.
Chris: Absolutely, they are not for the. Like, I definitely think there's not, like, I was saying that the, you know, there's not like the tax on people who are bad at math. That's not true. I don't think any. I don't believe that anymore. I believe that there's a rationality to the. I'm not going to get a chance any other way to improve my station. That's not anti factual to me.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: But I do think that the, like, the post hoc God chose me.
Kayla: Sure. Yeah, you're right.
Chris: Is some magical thinking to, like, take this quintessential culture of chance thing and, like, hack it into being a culture of control thing.
Kayla: Yep. I think you're right.
Chris: So I think it's high life consumption.
Kayla: This always ends up depending on the individual. Like, it's like you could just, you.
Chris: Know, there's no lottery compound, but some people do. Like, the people that play will spend a lot of money again.
Kayla: My dad played every week but never put our family in the debt for it and didn't spend an inordinate amount of time going and buying scratchers and standing there and doing it. But it was a daily, weekly habit.
Chris: I think there's potential here.
Kayla: There's potential low to high.
Chris: Yeah. Dogmatic beliefs. We're right, you're wrong.
Kayla: I don't sense that.
Chris: I don't have a sense of that either. I don't have a sense of people that play a lottery, especially, actually, again, keep going back to that guy's quote. That guy was very self aware that what he was doing was the guy that said, this is a dumb hope, but I'm doing it anyway. That, to me, is the opposite of dogma. Dogma is like, this is correct. And if you think that playing the lottery is stupid, then you're wrong. He's like, no, I know it's stupid. It's just less stupid.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So I think that dogmatic beliefs is very low here. Chain of victims, chain of recruits are we calling it now?
Kayla: We are calling it chain of recruit.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: I don't get a chain here.
Chris: Yeah. Do you feel like you want to play the lottery because your dad did? No, I don't feel like. I mean, my parents didn't really play the lottery.
Kayla: And there's not the, like, oh, I need to get more people into this. So that. This thing.
Chris: Yeah, that's true.
Kayla: That's kind of. That's part of the motivation for chain of recruits. Like, obviously that's in mlms, but that's also in, like, you know, more. We were just having this conversation in the discord. Not to keep throwing it back to the discord, but were just having this conversation about how there can be in more, especially in more religious type cults or cult like groups, there's encouragement to have children in the group, and that's like a very clear chain that is in order to sustain the group. You don't get that with the lottery.
Chris: Right, right. Although the advertising, I guess it's not really chain, but I do want to call out how Doctor Cohen talked about the importance of. There is an importance of getting a lot of people involved, because nobody cares about, like, $1,000 jackpot. So the more people that are involved, the bigger the jackpot, the more people want to get involved. I don't think that's a chain necessarily, but there is a feedback effect going on there.
Kayla: It's different than a chain, though.
Chris: Yeah. I'm going to say this one's relatively low because I don't see the recruiting element.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And finally, safe or unsafe exit. If you stop playing the lottery, if you're a part of the lottery community, you play the lottery a lot. You go down to your local 711 every Thursday, which is something people do. There's, like, communities that all go to the same place, and then you stop. I didn't ever, and I read his whole book, did not get the impression that was, like, a bad thing to do.
Kayla: That feels pretty safe to me.
Chris: Yeah, it feels like there's safe exit. So what do we got? What's the. What does the ticker say?
Kayla: Charismatic leader, no harm, medium, ritual, high as hell.
Chris: Jackpot on ritual.
Kayla: Niche, low. Antifactuality, high. Life consumption, low to high. Dealers choice, dogmatic, no chain of recruits, no exit is safe.
Chris: This is feeling like, I think based on the criteria, it's feeling like a no to me.
Kayla: So the ritual is high, the antifactuality is high, the harm is medium, the life. Consumption is low to high. Yeah, but there's no.
Chris: There's no charismatic leader there. Yeah, there's. Everything else is no.
Kayla: So I think it might be just. I don't even think it's a religion. I think it's just weird.
Chris: It's just weird.
Kayla: I think if there was a charismatic leader, and I think if maybe there was either more dogma or more chain or more unsafe exit, then it would potentially fall into the religion. But I think that the lottery is just weird.
Chris: Yeah. And now that we're sort of through the criteria, it's kind of what made me think about it as a topic for the show in the first place is kind of what we're circling back to, which is like, it has a lot of underlying trends and forces and cultural elements to the lottery that also apply to cult like groups. I just don't think it quite gets there in terms of being a tangible, coherent group of people that I can call a cult, but a lot of that same, like, prosperity, gospel, culture of chance versus culture of control, anti vex, economic conditions, anti factor. A lot of those things that generate cults also seem to generate interest and participation in the state lottery system.
Kayla: Just weird.
Chris: Just weird. So I really am interested in what all you guys think as listeners. Kayla and I are both interested in your thoughts, and now we have a great place to come. Just, like, casually chat about that. Come join our discord. So go check out our socials. There'll be a discord invite there to our server, and then, yeah, I'd love to have a conversation with you guys about what you think about this episode or the ideas that we talked about here. If you read the book, I'd love to know. Go check out our discord and have a chat. Come in. Say hello.
Kayla: Being able to record our episode while also simultaneously being in a chat room has been extraordinarily soothing for my ADHD. And so if you are somebody who also falls on the ADHD neurodivergent spectrum, come check it out. Because this was a great. This was a great way to kind of be able to focus.
Chris: Yeah. And actually, I'll say that it was, since I had already interviewed the guy. Obviously, I heard the interview. Listening to it again while having people to chat with about it also helped.
Kayla: Me go play the lottery this week.
Chris: Just so go play the lottery if you want.
Kayla: If you want. As just a.
Chris: How about this? Don't feel guilty if you do play.
Kayla: The lottery and maybe try it if you've never done it before, just to. Just to have the experience. I think it's a good experience to have just once, just to see.
Chris: I can. I think I can get behind that.
Kayla: I didn't know you're so anti lottery after this.
Chris: No, I just don't want to, like, give people gambling problems from our podcast.
Kayla: The only way to get out of the system. Chris Truman show.
Chris: All right, sounds like we need to have a different chat. Maybe that'll be the bonus episode. Is like, is the lottery something that we should encourage or not encourage people to do?
Kayla: There you go.
Chris: This is Chris, this is Kayla, and.
Kayla: This has been cult or just weird cult or jackpot.