Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / History Series 2: David Schwartz / Vegas & Gambling / Rise & Fall of the Mob / Conflict Resolution

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History Series 2: David Schwartz / Vegas & Gambling / Rise & Fall of the Mob / Conflict Resolution · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together,
• 0:15
  Doctor Dave Schwartz. I saw the I saw on your website
• 0:19
  that you occasionally go by Doctor Dave with your but not to
• 0:22
  be confused with the medical Doctor Dave.
• 0:24
  Yeah, No, no, not, definitely not a medical doctor.
• 0:28
  Well, thanks so much for joining.
• 0:29
  I I found your information online when I was looking a
• 0:33
  little bit into I was, I was really curious about the history
• 0:37
  and I guess the of gambling and corruption.
• 0:42
  I always have loved, you know, the mafia type scene and the
• 0:46
  people that kind of take, you know, take their own ways in
• 0:49
  society and, you know, choose to live by their own standards.
• 0:53
  And so that's why I found you to begin with.
• 0:56
  But then you, you know, when what you and I were talking in
• 0:58
  our instructor recall, we got into conflict resolution, which
• 1:02
  is the most recent part of your, I guess, career or the most
• 1:05
  recent phase and a little bit of the EMT stuff.
• 1:09
  So I kind of want to touch on a little bit of everything.
• 1:11
  But yeah, tell me a little bit about yourself.
• 1:14
  Oh, yeah. So my, my name is Dave Schwartz.
• 1:16
  I grew up in Atlantic City, NJ. That's I guess where I got
• 1:20
  interested in casinos. I was just, I was born at a time
• 1:24
  where some of my earliest memories was them imploding some
• 1:27
  of the old hotels. So made a big impression to me
• 1:32
  as a kid and seeing the new casinos open up.
• 1:35
  So a lot of my academic work was or is trying to figure out, you
• 1:40
  know, why they would do this and why does gambling have such
• 1:43
  power to to destroy and rebuild? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48
  And when, and I mean, I'm sure that you could delve into this
• 1:51
  from a million different perspectives psychologically and
• 1:53
  culturally and, you know, societally and even in terms of
• 1:57
  I bet different economic classes I'm sure have different patterns
• 2:00
  and, and behaviors. You know what are What are some
• 2:03
  things that have surprised you that you figured out along the
• 2:05
  way? Yeah, You know, a lot of it's
• 2:08
  just that this impulse to gamble seems pretty innate for a lot of
• 2:12
  people. You know, some people have the
• 2:14
  gambling gene, some people don't.
• 2:17
  And who knows, it might be something, you know, I think a
• 2:20
  lot of it goes back to our need for risk.
• 2:23
  You think back about humans and evolution, all that we evolved
• 2:27
  in a hunter gatherer lifestyle where there's a lot of
• 2:31
  unpredictability. So it makes sense that we would
• 2:35
  kind of be hooked on risk and hooked on the unknown and not
• 2:37
  knowing what's going to happen. And gambling is 1 one way to
• 2:41
  indulge that hook. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 2:46
  I think it's, I think that people are also attracted and
• 2:50
  especially the way that it's presented with the notion of
• 2:52
  investing a little for the potential of making a lot.
• 2:55
  And so you feel like you're not losing that much and you know,
• 2:58
  this experience that you're going to partake in, hey, you
• 3:00
  know what, it's an experience and it's a fun time.
• 3:03
  And even if I lose 5/10/20 bucks, you know, like it was
• 3:06
  worth the potential and the excitement and the experience of
• 3:10
  being able to get that $500 payout, that $100 payout,
• 3:13
  whatever it is, you know? Yeah.
• 3:15
  And and some of it also has to is more social where it's about
• 3:18
  bonding together with people. You know, think about games like
• 3:20
  poker, think about football pools and stuff like that and
• 3:24
  brackets and things like that. So there there are a lot of
• 3:27
  motivations that people could have.
• 3:29
  Yeah, Yeah. I think the one of the cooler
• 3:31
  things that's happened is the development of how gambling has
• 3:34
  kind of or how technology has kind of wrapped its tentacles
• 3:38
  around around gambling. You know, because this, and it's
• 3:43
  funny because, and I'm sure you've talked a lot, I'm sure
• 3:46
  you've thought a lot about this or people have asked you about
• 3:48
  this. But this whole Chauncey Bill
• 3:49
  UPS, you know, recent NBA fed, you know, I guess arrest, you
• 3:56
  know, in the whole, the whole story over here.
• 3:59
  I was listening to a podcast about it and one thing that
• 4:01
  people were talking about was how, how parlay bedding made it
• 4:07
  so easy to become corrupt for, for athletes.
• 4:11
  You know, that like you can like really morally justify to
• 4:16
  yourself to say, if my team's up 10 and you know, the spread is
• 4:20
  on me getting 5 rebounds and I, you know, and I got my 5
• 4:23
  rebounds and my team's going to win anyway.
• 4:25
  And everyone, you know, it doesn't hurt anyone.
• 4:27
  Let me say my toe hurts. Let me say, I pull the
• 4:29
  hamstring, let me sit and, and everyone I know collect a couple
• 4:32
  100,000, you know, a couple $1000, you know.
• 4:34
  So I thought that's it's cool how the development of gambling
• 4:39
  has kind of kept up with times. Yeah.
• 4:42
  And that's kind of a, again, it's sort of a universal
• 4:45
  something kind of fascinating that I've seen in studying the
• 4:48
  history of gambling where you look at the Paleolithic era,
• 4:53
  you've got the, the way they gamble is pretty much with dice
• 4:58
  made out of the, they call them hucklebones, or it's actually
• 5:01
  the talus, which is part of the ankle anklebone of goats and
• 5:05
  sheep. So you've got that which is kind
• 5:06
  of more primitive. You have the Neolithic era come
• 5:09
  in, which is ground stone technology.
• 5:11
  Snower does not just doing like Flint mapping.
• 5:13
  We're doing ground stone technology, which also sounds
• 5:16
  like it would be a good kind of bread like ground stone and
• 5:18
  split sweet bread. But it's a it's a form of litho
• 5:22
  technology, I think. And you now have the development
• 5:26
  of ivory dice. They're cubicle, they're shaved
• 5:29
  down in the cubicles cubes shaving the cubicles shaving not
• 5:33
  not working some drone job there in cubes, not chemicals.
• 5:37
  So yeah, you have that evolution.
• 5:39
  You look at the development of block printing in Asia in like
• 5:43
  around the year of 1011 hundred that eventually develops into
• 5:47
  playing cards, which was a new technology that hit Europe, you
• 5:50
  know, about 200 years later. So you every also another one
• 5:55
  that people maybe don't think about so much these days, but
• 5:58
  was very important at the times the Telegraph.
• 6:01
  The Telegraph was used for gambling, for sending horse race
• 6:05
  information. And that was really.
• 6:08
  And yeah, I like to argue that was the first remote
• 6:10
  entertainment in, at least in the United States, where you
• 6:15
  could go to what they call the pool room or horse room and sit
• 6:21
  there and the announcer would be reading the description of the
• 6:24
  race. So you it, you know, before
• 6:25
  there was radio, before there was TV, it was this remote
• 6:28
  entertainment and you could batten it and people got really
• 6:30
  excited. So yeah, gambling has really
• 6:33
  always moved with technology. So it's not surprising it's
• 6:36
  still doing that today. Not at all.
• 6:39
  That's so cool. And it's such an interesting
• 6:41
  point that you brought up about also the development of what our
• 6:45
  what we can even use to gamble, you know, like it makes me
• 6:49
  think, you know, I mean, I guess, I guess that would even
• 6:55
  further emphasize that the notion that it is deeply
• 6:58
  ingrained in human nature, that it's not something that just
• 7:00
  arose from circumstance, you know, oh, we just happen to have
• 7:03
  something around. So we find a way to do it.
• 7:05
  Like we're actively looking for whatever tools we have, however
• 7:09
  primitive we have, however advanced, we have to find a way
• 7:12
  to participate in this, you know?
• 7:14
  Yeah, I think so. You know, I think realizing that
• 7:17
  is this innate human impulse for a lot of folks, probably not for
• 7:21
  everybody, but for a lot of folks, I think can help us
• 7:23
  understand it a little bit better.
• 7:26
  Yeah, yeah. So, so I want to talk hopefully
• 7:30
  a bunch about the history of gambling at least in the States
• 7:35
  because, but I mean, I'm happy to actually go like I'm very
• 7:38
  interested everything you just said in terms of the cars and
• 7:41
  the dice and everything. But you know, I was recently
• 7:44
  originally reaching out about was so gambling I know today is
• 7:48
  generally reserved for Native Americans unless the state that
• 7:53
  you're in makes it legal. Is that correct?
• 7:57
  Somewhat. I mean, it's definitely a
• 7:59
  complicated story. Pretty much as the United States
• 8:02
  developed gambling regulation is a power that's reserved to the
• 8:07
  states. So if the state says it's
• 8:09
  illegal, it's illegal. So in Utah, for example, there
• 8:12
  is no gambling because the state says this is legal.
• 8:15
  You know, in some states there are, you can have a compact
• 8:18
  between the state and tribes which would allow for what they
• 8:21
  call class 3 gambling or, you know, full scale gambling.
• 8:24
  You also have Class 2 gambling and other states, you know, but
• 8:28
  basically a lot of it, since it's left of the state, each
• 8:32
  state determines what they want. And you know, some states it's
• 8:35
  everything. Some states it's some things.
• 8:37
  Right. So how did organized crime get
• 8:40
  involved in like when, when, let's say with Vegas, right,
• 8:45
  which is the most famous and notorious case, You know,
• 8:47
  obviously Vegas, the state of Nevada made it legal to gamble.
• 8:53
  And then the mafia folk moved in and started their operation.
• 8:58
  Or did they pull some strings to make the to, to let the state,
• 9:02
  you know, to pressure the state to make it legal?
• 9:04
  How'd that work? It's a complicated story, so let
• 9:07
  me go back to not quite the beginning.
• 9:10
  And if you could you would you like a little history lecture
• 9:12
  here? Please, please.
• 9:13
  Yes, definitely. About the origins of organized
• 9:15
  crime in the United States. Absolutely.
• 9:17
  I would love. That So basically, let's go
• 9:19
  back, let's go back like 300 years.
• 9:21
  So now we're in 1725, OK, There is no organized crime because
• 9:29
  there is no organized police. You know, in this era, pretty
• 9:33
  much, you might have the night watchman, you might have the the
• 9:36
  constable. Sometimes if your house got
• 9:39
  robbed, you have to pay somebody to try to track them down.
• 9:42
  There really was no need for organized crime.
• 9:46
  Then Fast forward to the 1830s. There's a wave.
• 9:50
  You have more people moving into cities.
• 9:52
  You have the breakdown of the old systems of Labor.
• 9:55
  You know where let's say, you know, again, back in the 18th
• 9:59
  century, at least early 18th century, somebody made shoes.
• 10:04
  You have the Shoemaker and Shoemaker would have journeyman
• 10:08
  and an apprentices living in his house with him and his family.
• 10:11
  There's very close surveillance there.
• 10:13
  You then have the rise of the market revolution and factories
• 10:16
  and stuff like that. Workers are no longer living
• 10:18
  with their bosses. They're just doing what they
• 10:20
  want. You also have reactions against
• 10:23
  immigration from places like Ireland to the US If you've ever
• 10:28
  seen the movie Gangs of New York, it is a very accurate
• 10:31
  depiction of this. Yeah.
• 10:32
  So that opening scene, the the battle of the five Points there,
• 10:35
  it's very, it's very accurate and based in actual characters
• 10:38
  too. So yes, so in you because of
• 10:42
  stuff like that, because there's things like race riots,
• 10:45
  religious riots and things like that.
• 10:47
  People say, whoa, you know, we want to have people with
• 10:52
  uniforms and guns telling other people what to do.
• 10:55
  London is one of the they they have the Metropolitan Police of
• 10:58
  the bobbies in in London that are adopted there.
• 11:01
  And that's the model. I think Boston has a first.
• 11:05
  I think Boston has a first professional police force, but I
• 11:08
  could be wrong in that. But basically it spreads around
• 11:10
  the country. 1840s, eighteen 50s.
• 11:12
  Now you have people professionally trying to fight
• 11:15
  crime. So you now need to organize
• 11:17
  crime. So that's the birth of organized
• 11:20
  crime in the United States, and it's around a lot of things.
• 11:22
  But one of the things that people like to do that was
• 11:25
  either illegal or not quite legal was gambling.
• 11:28
  And gambling really was the ideal crime for organized crime
• 11:33
  because it wasn't that socially stigmatized.
• 11:37
  You know, there's a difference between like, hey, yeah, I give
• 11:40
  people black tar heroin and like, help school kids shoot up
• 11:44
  and stuff versus, yeah, you know, I'm going down there and
• 11:47
  I'm a bookie and I'm taking baths at the bar after work,
• 11:50
  after the factory gets off work. So yeah, there's a big
• 11:53
  difference with that. So it's generally tolerated and
• 11:57
  it's generally pretty popular. So there's a lot of that
• 12:00
  development going on in the 19th century.
• 12:04
  Again, if you watch Gangs of New York, a really great example
• 12:07
  there. And again, that's based on the
• 12:09
  book by Herbert Asbury called Gangs in New York, That is a
• 12:12
  great source. In the Gilded Age, it gets
• 12:16
  bigger, it gets more organized. You have syndicates forming and
• 12:21
  they're basically solving, you know, sort of dividing, dividing
• 12:25
  the pie in a lot of different ways.
• 12:26
  You have technology like telegrams.
• 12:28
  Then in 1920, you have the passage of the Volstead Act,
• 12:33
  which causes prohibition, so it's no longer legal to drink.
• 12:37
  Suddenly you got a bunch of more hungry guys.
• 12:40
  Yeah, who suddenly again, it's guys in their early 20s, teens
• 12:46
  and early 20s, maybe up to 30, and they jump in and they are in
• 12:51
  charge of bootlegging all kinds of stuff with liquor.
• 12:56
  And they're young, they're hungry, they become very rich,
• 12:59
  and they either take over or join forces with the existing
• 13:03
  gambling, you know, crying people.
• 13:06
  And that's how it happens. Then 1933, prohibition is
• 13:09
  rescinded. They need something to do.
• 13:12
  And a lot of them, hey, let's go into gambling full time.
• 13:15
  And many of them then in the 40s and 50s, they're in their 40s
• 13:18
  and 50s. They're seeking respectability.
• 13:21
  Well, hey, what business do I know?
• 13:23
  I know the gambling business where it's legal, it's legal in
• 13:25
  Nevada. I better move out there.
• 13:29
  So that's kind of in a in a nutshell where that happened how
• 13:33
  that. Happened really, really cool.
• 13:35
  It's really, really cool. I would have, I guess I never
• 13:38
  would have made that connection between the first, you know, the
• 13:41
  first, I guess, implementation of some kind of legal force,
• 13:46
  right, with organized crime. Because I mean, you know, I
• 13:50
  mean, I, I mean, do you know the shows, have you watched the
• 13:53
  Taylor Sheridan shows, you know, 1919241892, whatever it's
• 13:59
  called, They're great shows. American Primeval was also a
• 14:04
  great show. But all these great shows are,
• 14:07
  you know, really highlight and emphasize that the lawlessness
• 14:11
  of what the of what the world was, of what the country was.
• 14:16
  Yeah. If someone shot someone else.
• 14:17
  Well, I'm really sorry about that, man.
• 14:19
  You know, that stinks. Yeah, that's the extent of it.
• 14:21
  There's no FBI knocking down your door.
• 14:23
  There's no news, you know, caster or podcast to go on and
• 14:26
  emphasize that, you know, and talk about it and try to try to
• 14:29
  oust them. You know, you got to, you got to
• 14:32
  kind of make your own justice or move on with your life.
• 14:34
  You know, So I got and I, I think the root of at least the
• 14:41
  Italian mafia for my understanding was, you know,
• 14:43
  that feeling like a government was not protecting and
• 14:46
  supporting people the way that the people, the original people
• 14:48
  felt they should have. So they wanted to look for
• 14:50
  another, for another form of, I guess self governance or
• 14:54
  protection. Yeah, it's been.
• 14:57
  It's been somewhat romanticized because there's been a lot
• 14:59
  written about that. You know, basically it is sort
• 15:02
  of this extra legal force, which is awesome.
• 15:05
  If you're like, hey, you know, the government's being mean to
• 15:08
  me. I need somebody to step in.
• 15:09
  But also they now have the power to say, hey, look, you know, you
• 15:12
  want to run your candy store, we need $100 a week where you're
• 15:16
  going to have problems. So it's not always as beneficial
• 15:21
  as it's made to seem. And it's kind of interesting
• 15:23
  too, because a lot of people's, you know, point of reference for
• 15:26
  this and pop culture is The Godfather by Mario Puzo.
• 15:30
  And, you know, in the book, the Godfather isn't quite, you know,
• 15:35
  he even though he was based in part on Puzzo's mom, he found
• 15:40
  when he was right, like that was that was his, you know,
• 15:43
  emotional emphasis of it. He wasn't he, he was he was kind
• 15:46
  of shady. He did some stuff.
• 15:48
  So it's kind of interesting, you know, and just look the way he,
• 15:50
  and if I can digress here for a second, you know, opening scene,
• 15:55
  you know, you've got the undertaker who wants justice for
• 16:01
  his daughter. You've got the Baker who wants,
• 16:04
  they also kind of wants justice for his daughter in a way, wants
• 16:07
  a favor to get the Italian prisoner of war here so he can
• 16:10
  marry the daughter. He does the he does the job for
• 16:14
  the undertaker for free to keep him in his debt.
• 16:16
  His friend who grew up in the same village as him, that the
• 16:19
  Baker who's always been loyal, always has paid dues to the
• 16:22
  union. He charges him $2000 and the
• 16:25
  Baker gladly pays it. So it's kind of interesting how
• 16:28
  like, yeah, he's awesome, but he's not in this for, he's not
• 16:31
  in it for funsies. He wants his cut.
• 16:34
  So yeah, I think that's it's just fascinating.
• 16:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot the story is Donnie
• 16:43
  Brasco and Johnny, what's his name?
• 16:45
  Pistone Pistone. Joe Pistone.
• 16:49
  You know that reading that book, you know, about the wise guys
• 16:53
  and then, you know, watching The Sopranos and then watching, you
• 16:56
  know, any of these shows and you realize that like it's so it's
• 17:01
  not a particularly great way of living.
• 17:03
  You know, like it's not a particularly, you know, like you
• 17:06
  live large while you can and then you try to maintain that
• 17:11
  living large and it just becomes harder to do.
• 17:13
  And then eventually all kind of just collapses on itself.
• 17:16
  And, you know, and, and the entire time you're lucky if you
• 17:19
  get ahead for a couple of years, but there's very little
• 17:21
  distance. There's very little like in
• 17:23
  terms of, you know, the extent of how long you could last on
• 17:27
  top or even in that level, you know.
• 17:29
  And yeah, and it's, you know, generally not happy or easy, you
• 17:33
  know, for the most part. Yeah, so it is romanticized, but
• 17:36
  again, it certainly is its downside.
• 17:39
  Yeah, I'm really curious what people find so attractive about
• 17:42
  it, other than maybe just like everyone loves the idea of the
• 17:45
  guy that doesn't play by everyone else's rules or the
• 17:47
  people that don't play by the guy's rules.
• 17:48
  And I think our fantasy is like, oh, I'd be best friends with the
• 17:51
  mob boss, not I'd be paying, you know, protection money to the
• 17:55
  mob boss and kind of grudgingly and, like, all right, all right,
• 17:59
  you know, So yeah, it's kind of interesting.
• 18:02
  Yeah, yeah. So, so they so they come to
• 18:05
  Vegas and and I know there's generally the Jewish and the
• 18:09
  Italian mafia were primarily the people that were running that
• 18:12
  right. How'd they get along?
• 18:14
  You also had a lot of local folks, and it's kind of this
• 18:16
  fusion of the locals, you know, in Nevada.
• 18:20
  And then you have the people moving in from out of town as
• 18:22
  well, and they really have an understanding where the idea
• 18:26
  was, hey, look, whatever's going to make Vegas build up Vegas,
• 18:30
  make Vegas grow, that's good. And, you know, just don't cause
• 18:33
  any trouble here and you'll be fine.
• 18:35
  And it worked well for a lot of people.
• 18:37
  Yeah, so they all got along for the most part.
• 18:41
  Yeah, yeah, pretty much. You know, obviously there's
• 18:43
  going to be tension around some things, but pretty much it was
• 18:45
  it was agreement like, hey, let's like the rising tide lifts
• 18:49
  all boats. So yeah, let's just invite
• 18:52
  people to come to town and build casinos.
• 18:55
  On the, on the notion of conflict resolution, I was
• 18:58
  actually, I was recording an episode yesterday and with, with
• 19:02
  a psychiatrist. He's a very, very nice man, very
• 19:06
  sweet man. And one thing they were talking
• 19:09
  about was that conflicts tend to start when the part when
• 19:16
  individual parties feel like there's not enough resources,
• 19:19
  you know, and like, as long as things are going well enough for
• 19:21
  everyone, everyone's very happy. And then as soon as, you know,
• 19:24
  someone feels as though the potential lifeline or, you know,
• 19:27
  whatever that whatever, you know, their, their resource,
• 19:29
  their income is potentially going to be compromised.
• 19:32
  That's when things kind of go a little downhill.
• 19:35
  I'm sure for the first many, many years of Vegas, there was
• 19:39
  a, an abundance of money tourism like, you know, and, and also
• 19:44
  Vegas wasn't Vegas, you know, like it was, you know, it was
• 19:47
  relatively cheap to build up, at least at the beginning, for my
• 19:50
  understanding. And it was just a money printing
• 19:53
  factory, you know. And so I'm sure that a lot of
• 19:56
  the tensions started happening, you know, or at least even, you
• 19:59
  know, the removal of the mafia or organized crime within it
• 20:02
  when people started detecting, hey, we, you know, we have a lot
• 20:05
  of hotels and casinos around here and resources are getting
• 20:08
  low and there is more competition.
• 20:10
  Do is there a trend like that that you've never that you've
• 20:12
  ever noticed? I'm going to yes, end you with
• 20:14
  the conflicts. I also also do improv so I'm
• 20:17
  going to pull out my SN card here.
• 20:18
  Yes, excellent. Yeah, it can arise from from
• 20:21
  limited resources, but it also arises from from unmet
• 20:25
  expectations. So, you know, for example, I in
• 20:30
  an organization, you, you can have people making six figures
• 20:33
  whose jobs aren't threatened and yet they find themselves in
• 20:36
  conflict with each other. And you know, I find a lot of
• 20:39
  times it's if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs with
• 20:42
  the physiologic safety, I forget the other one.
• 20:46
  And then self actualization. And a lot of times it's around
• 20:50
  self actualization issues. Like, you know, I want to, I
• 20:53
  want this honor, but they won't give me this honor.
• 20:55
  I want to do this work, but they won't fund my work to do this.
• 20:58
  So it's kind of interesting what people can get in the conflict
• 21:01
  about pretty much anything, you know.
• 21:03
  So resources does have a big part to do, but I would say it's
• 21:07
  also to a large part unmet expectations, especially in the
• 21:10
  workplace. Especially in the workplace.
• 21:12
  But yeah, it'd probably be a lot less polite to each other if,
• 21:16
  you know, we didn't have food. I think we, I think I've heard
• 21:19
  it said like we're we're four meals away from anarchy, like
• 21:22
  civilization. I've heard that somewhere, don't
• 21:24
  know where. But yeah, I mean, so conflict
• 21:28
  can be resources, but also I find a lot unmet expectations,
• 21:32
  which is why when I work with people, I've got a can you see
• 21:35
  the sign here? You can't see the sign here.
• 21:37
  I got to sign this out of my office.
• 21:38
  It says in addition to the what will make you happy sign, it
• 21:42
  says, what are your unmet expectations?
• 21:44
  Like what what do you need from other to kind of what make you
• 21:47
  happy? What do you need?
• 21:49
  And when people can't articulate that we need to stop and really
• 21:52
  think, OK, well, why, why are you upset here?
• 21:57
  Isn't being. There it's really, really
• 22:00
  interesting, really, really, really fascinating because I
• 22:04
  don't think, you know, there are certain questions that are
• 22:06
  really useful to, you know, to ask yourself.
• 22:11
  You know, for example, I, I teach high school part time.
• 22:13
  And yesterday and a couple of days ago I gave my students a
• 22:16
  prompt. If you didn't have to work ever,
• 22:18
  you woke up tomorrow with all the $5 billion, you know, yeah,
• 22:22
  what are you going to do the rest of your life?
• 22:24
  And then the it's, it's two-part question, right?
• 22:26
  So the first part was that and the second part was now that now
• 22:30
  that you gave me the dumb answer about what you would do for the
• 22:32
  first six months, what are you going to do for the next 50
• 22:34
  years of your life? You know, because like most
• 22:36
  people think, well, I'll buy a car and I'll, you know, go
• 22:39
  travel the world and I'll give a bunch to charity and I'll buy,
• 22:42
  I'll retire my parents. I'm like, you'll be 20 by the
• 22:45
  time you're done with that, you know, like, what are you going
• 22:47
  to do, you know, to the age of 100.
• 22:50
  And so the question of what do you find meaningful in your life
• 22:52
  or what do you find, you know, what's the purpose in your life?
• 22:56
  That's a very fun like, it's not a, it's an important question
• 22:59
  that's not very complicated to get to.
• 23:01
  But I don't think we, we ask ourselves often enough in a
• 23:04
  similar sense, what are your unneed expectations?
• 23:07
  Like what are you looking for in your, you know, what are you
• 23:08
  looking for in your life? And if you don't know, doesn't
• 23:12
  that like, wouldn't it be really, really useful to have
• 23:15
  something to kind of direct your efforts and energy energies
• 23:18
  toward, you know? Yeah, which is my other tough
• 23:21
  question I ask people, which is what outcome do you want?
• 23:26
  You know, so they'll be in a dispute with somebody else, say,
• 23:28
  what outcome do you want? Do you want them to change their
• 23:31
  behavior? Do you want an apology?
• 23:33
  Do you want to get them fired? Like what do you want?
• 23:35
  What do you usually hear from that?
• 23:36
  Is there a common? Is there a more common answer?
• 23:38
  I will say this is a question that usually stops people like
• 23:41
  what they really have to think. I'm like, OK, think about it,
• 23:43
  you know, and I only need an answer now.
• 23:45
  But if you don't know what you want, you're pretty much
• 23:50
  guaranteed not to be happy. And, you know, like, just make
• 23:55
  clear what your expectations are going into this.
• 23:57
  Like, yeah, I want this. I want XI will be satisfied with
• 24:01
  Y, but I definitely don't want Z.
• 24:04
  It just makes it way better. And a lot of it is just trying
• 24:06
  to break it down. And OK, let's break this down
• 24:08
  into small pieces. What can we change?
• 24:12
  What can we not change? What can we, what can we put up
• 24:14
  with? Yeah, you pretty much want to go
• 24:17
  there. So can you tell me a little bit
• 24:20
  how you got into this whole conflict resolution industry?
• 24:24
  Because I think it's super cool and I think we live in a world
• 24:26
  today that it's probably the most useful skill that you can
• 24:30
  have with social media and news and the world as polarized as it
• 24:34
  is. How'd you get into it, and when
• 24:37
  and how are you hoping to apply it?
• 24:39
  Yeah, so I was doing the academic thing.
• 24:41
  I had a tenure rank of a professor and all that.
• 24:47
  I answered a lot of the questions I had about gambling,
• 24:49
  you know, history. I kind of answered a lot of
• 24:50
  those questions and was looking for something new.
• 24:54
  Went into the administration here at UNLV, University of
• 24:57
  Nevada, Las Vegas, where I work and liked it, but then went to a
• 25:02
  development day session. And there, there were
• 25:05
  development day and there was a session on mediation.
• 25:09
  And it just absolutely blew my mind with a, a teacher and
• 25:12
  mediator named Margaret Crowley. And this just totally blew my
• 25:15
  mind. It's like, wow.
• 25:17
  So I enrolled in the 40 hour course they had on our law
• 25:21
  school, which Professor Crowley also taught and so became
• 25:27
  trained as a mediator. And a little while later, and
• 25:30
  that was in January of 2020. And then something big happened
• 25:35
  in February, March of 2020. So there was the the pandemic
• 25:38
  hit and then when we were coming, when we were on the
• 25:41
  other side of that, the university announced they were
• 25:43
  bringing back the ombuds office. And I applied, I was selected
• 25:48
  and I just threw myself into that, you know, kind of learning
• 25:54
  how to do ombuds work. You know, an ombuds does
• 25:56
  informal conflict resolution for people.
• 25:59
  That's how I would explain it in a single sentence for the
• 26:02
  International Ombuds Association we have.
• 26:05
  And you can see how much I care about it because I keep the code
• 26:07
  of ethics and standards of practice right next to my desk
• 26:10
  at all times right there. So I can see it.
• 26:12
  Hopefully I'm centered again. Hang on a second, let me see.
• 26:15
  Yep, that's not bad. So basically they're
• 26:17
  independent, informal, meaning they don't keep records, you're
• 26:21
  not part of formal processes. They're impartial, they don't
• 26:24
  take sides, and they're confidential.
• 26:26
  So people can pretty much tell you anything.
• 26:27
  There's No Fear that you're going to tell somebody else.
• 26:31
  So it really is different. And you know, for me, a lot of
• 26:35
  it involved just abandoning any preconceptions I had and jumping
• 26:40
  into this. And you know, no, you're not
• 26:42
  solving people's problems there. You know, you're helping them
• 26:46
  solve their, they are solving their problems.
• 26:48
  You are just kind of kind of in video game.
• 26:50
  In the video game stuff is like you're the NPC, you know, I'm
• 26:53
  this little vendor back in town, like hey, you want to buy a new
• 26:57
  axe or something? You're the one out there going
• 27:00
  out and having those adventures. I'm not having the adventures.
• 27:03
  Wow. So and who tends to come in?
• 27:06
  What kind of friends? Is it business partners?
• 27:08
  Is it couples? What?
• 27:09
  Who tends to come in? Well, here because it's a
• 27:11
  university, it's pretty much university folks.
• 27:13
  So it could be anything. You know, generally everybody
• 27:16
  has has conflicts, but I think it's good.
• 27:18
  I also do mediation for the Neighborhood Justice Center here
• 27:22
  in Clark County, which sound like Neighborhood Justice
• 27:24
  Center. It sounds like some kind of
• 27:26
  vigilante thing or something. But it's, you know, it's
• 27:29
  basically through the court and it's just a way for people to
• 27:31
  mediate and you could have all kinds of people trying to
• 27:34
  mediate anything. Could be like a pet issue, could
• 27:37
  be landlord tenant, could be contract stuff.
• 27:40
  So pretty much anything. And you know, my, my personal
• 27:43
  philosophy as a mediator is that, you know, they're the ones
• 27:48
  basically the mediator just guides the process.
• 27:51
  The parties are the one driving everything.
• 27:53
  And I also feel like if one of the parties drives home and is
• 27:56
  thinking like, wow, that mediator said something really
• 27:59
  clever, I've done a terrible job because they should be think
• 28:02
  they should be focusing them. It's like kind of like in
• 28:05
  sports, you know, if you know who the umpire or the referee
• 28:08
  is, they might not be doing the best job.
• 28:10
  You know, you just want them to kind of be invisible.
• 28:13
  And that's how you feel about mediators too, where it's not
• 28:15
  all about them, it's really about the parties.
• 28:18
  I think a lot of people approach good therapy like that, too.
• 28:21
  I've heard that people describe good therapists as people that
• 28:25
  don't. You know that they're not
• 28:27
  answering the questions for you. They're prompting you to get
• 28:29
  yourself to the right place. Yeah, because like you think
• 28:33
  about it, let's say, first of all, as a mediator or as an
• 28:37
  ombuds, am I ever going to know everything about the situation?
• 28:41
  No, no. So number one, I have imperfect
• 28:44
  knowledge #2 I've got all my own biases and assumptions and stuff
• 28:48
  I bring with it #3 I'm probably at a different place than they
• 28:52
  are in life. So, you know, and you know, as
• 28:55
  ombuds, a lot of times people ask me, what would you do?
• 28:57
  I'm like, it's not about what I would do, what you could do.
• 29:01
  What do you want to do? And you know, like, don't ask me
• 29:02
  what I would do because I'm a very different person from you.
• 29:07
  I may have a very different tolerance for tolerance for
• 29:09
  risk. So yeah, don't, don't ask me.
• 29:12
  So yeah, I'm just realizing the people are pretty smart.
• 29:18
  They know what they're doing and just help them guide them in
• 29:23
  some way. Yeah, I feel again, with my
• 29:27
  experience as a high school teacher and as I've tried to
• 29:31
  become a better husband and father through the last couple
• 29:34
  of years, one thing I've really learned is to is that people
• 29:41
  generally have a really good sense of themselves, but they
• 29:45
  kind of have to be prompted or reminded to think about it, you
• 29:48
  know? So a lot of times, you know, my
• 29:50
  student will, if a student ask me something, I'll be like,
• 29:53
  well, why, Why are you asking me this?
• 29:55
  Are you asking me this because you want me to tell you yes or
• 29:58
  no? Do you want to like hear this
• 29:59
  out? You want to ask me this because
• 30:02
  you, you want something like, what do you want out of this
• 30:07
  conversation? And a lot of times they'll end
• 30:11
  up answering themselves, here's what I'm looking for.
• 30:13
  And I'm like, well, it sounds like you already know what you
• 30:14
  want. You know, I mean, I'm happy
• 30:16
  that, you know, if you want me to help getting there, you want
• 30:18
  to talk through, you know how to do it, that's great.
• 30:20
  But you know, like I would, I, I, I, I try my best to help
• 30:24
  people be again, I like what you said.
• 30:30
  You're not me, I'm not you. Let's not impose ourselves on
• 30:34
  other people. Let's see what they have to,
• 30:36
  what to say or what to offer and help help bring that to to
• 30:39
  fruition. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:42
  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, really cool, really
• 30:44
  cool. So, so I wanted, I wanted to
• 30:47
  also talk a little bit about the Rat Pack.
• 30:49
  I saw you wrote a book about them and there there's something
• 30:55
  immortal about that, about that crew.
• 30:59
  There's something however, you know, so I was talking to a
• 31:03
  friend of mine the other day and I was like, however long Vegas
• 31:07
  lasts, you know, is standing is however long Frank Sinatra is
• 31:11
  going to be be alive, you know, because they're they're so you
• 31:16
  know, they're so they're so ubiquitous.
• 31:18
  They're just like they're so connected that like, you know
• 31:21
  it. How'd that happen?
• 31:22
  What was their what was their story like?
• 31:24
  Who were they and what was their association with Vegas that made
• 31:27
  them so connected in such a strong way?
• 31:30
  Oh, I got some stuff about this. So, yeah, the story time here.
• 31:35
  Let's do it. So basically we'll go back Frank
• 31:40
  Sinatra, you know, legendary singer from New Jersey.
• 31:44
  Yeah, Yeah, just as legendary career.
• 31:48
  It is ups and downs, you know, very popular 30s, early 40s,
• 31:51
  very popular then late 40s. Career is a little bit of a
• 31:56
  nosedive. Acting career.
• 32:00
  Acting, yeah, but that hadn't quite taken off.
• 32:02
  But yeah, his musical careers, kind of.
• 32:04
  She had been the Bobby Soxers before the war, after the war,
• 32:07
  the Bobby Soxers have grown up. And, you know, nobody knows what
• 32:11
  his appeal is. And he, he plays Vegas at the
• 32:14
  desert. And it's like, that's OK October
• 32:17
  of 1953, the Sands is a little bit less than a year old, and he
• 32:24
  plays the Sands in the Copa room for the first time.
• 32:28
  And he did something different. And just again, to bring us back
• 32:31
  at the time, you know, the, the status quo then for Vegas shows
• 32:36
  was a lot like vaudeville, which was an entertainment, you know,
• 32:40
  from the 19th to the early 20th century.
• 32:42
  It was eventually supplanted by by motion pictures.
• 32:45
  You know, vaudeville would have a lot of different performance.
• 32:48
  You'd have a comedian, a juggler, dancers, all kinds of
• 32:51
  stuff. So if you went to a Vegas show,
• 32:54
  you know, so let's say we're going to see Mario Lanza
• 32:58
  headline at the El Rancho Vegas. I don't know if he ever did.
• 33:01
  I just kind of threw or like, yeah, I'm blanking on all the
• 33:06
  people who headlined the El Rancho Vegas.
• 33:07
  I used to know all this. But since we're seeing him or
• 33:11
  whoever, OK, we have the comedian come out to start, then
• 33:16
  the dancers, then maybe an animal act, then maybe somebody
• 33:20
  else. Like in every Scorsese.
• 33:23
  We'll get the headliner for about 20 minutes.
• 33:26
  Headliner will come out, do some songs, 20 to 30 minutes Zoom.
• 33:29
  They're done, thank you, done and dusted, as they, as they say
• 33:33
  on the other side of the pond there.
• 33:36
  So Sinatra, there's a difference is you know what?
• 33:42
  No, you're going to get like an hour of me.
• 33:44
  We are going to have one opening act and you're going to get an
• 33:48
  hour of me. It's kind of funny because one
• 33:49
  of the reviews said, and like for so many people today, they
• 33:53
  were like, man, if I could go back in time to see Frank
• 33:56
  Sinatra at the height of his palace in the Copa room in this,
• 34:00
  you know, 500 seats and like you're right down there.
• 34:03
  Boom. Like they won't give anything.
• 34:05
  One of the reviewers said, well, yeah, Sonata like for an hour,
• 34:08
  which is great if you if you like that kind of thing, if you
• 34:11
  like. But we wanted to see like the
• 34:14
  the jugglers and stuff and there's no jugglers.
• 34:17
  So I want my money back for that show which again it was like a 2
• 34:20
  drink show so but really. That's right.
• 34:23
  Changed, but you know that that was really different.
• 34:26
  Yeah. So at the same time he's in this
• 34:29
  little movie called. Oh man, I almost totally got
• 34:32
  this mixed up. He's in From Here to Eternity.
• 34:36
  OK, which ended up he, I believe he won the Oscar for that for
• 34:39
  supporting actor, you know, and this of course, was
• 34:43
  fictionalized a little bit in The Godfather with Johnny
• 34:46
  Fontaine and Jack Waltz. And, you know, it's, it's hard.
• 34:49
  I can't, you know, I don't even have to act.
• 34:53
  You know the book. Was way better about the plot
• 34:55
  than the movie was with Johnny. Yeah, yeah, the horse's head,
• 34:58
  all that fun stuff. Good old Johnny Fontaine.
• 35:02
  Yeah. But yeah, where was I going with
• 35:06
  that? Yeah.
• 35:06
  So basically that establishes him in Vegas.
• 35:10
  So now he's at the Sands. He has an equity stake in the
• 35:13
  stands. He has he has stock, according
• 35:16
  to some people. And again, it's not like they
• 35:17
  kept kept written records. So can we prove it?
• 35:20
  Who knows? Supposedly he was holding the
• 35:23
  points for people like Sam Gian, but who knows, you know.
• 35:27
  Anyway, on paper, at least, he's an owner of the casino, part
• 35:30
  owner. OK Dean Martin, you know, Martin
• 35:35
  and Lewis. Dean Martin and Jenny Lewis, a
• 35:38
  very big act, first came together at the 500 Club in
• 35:41
  Atlantic City, my hometown, hometown Fried there.
• 35:44
  That's when they that's when they started working together
• 35:46
  and they were huge movies and stuff.
• 35:49
  They played the Sands. They split up and basically Dean
• 35:54
  keeps the Sands in the divorce. So Dean stays at the Sands.
• 35:57
  I mean it wasn't literally a divorce but they did split up.
• 36:00
  Were they? They were just handing out
• 36:02
  equity to anyone that performed there.
• 36:05
  What was it? How'd that?
• 36:05
  Happen, right? I mean, it was a more, it was
• 36:08
  definitely for very special people.
• 36:10
  OK, gotcha. And they're like, oh, so we want
• 36:12
  you to come. We want you to spend more time
• 36:13
  here. If you invest the time here,
• 36:15
  we'll make it worth your while by giving you a part time owner.
• 36:18
  Or we need to get money to Sam Giancana.
• 36:20
  And this is a way that we can do without one of the biggest
• 36:24
  history. There's the stuff that was
• 36:26
  written down on paper and there's the stuff that was
• 36:28
  probably going on that we're pretty sure was going on.
• 36:30
  But we don't have the same proof, you know, because
• 36:34
  obviously they didn't keep records of this because it was a
• 36:36
  criminal conspiracy. And, you know, as we know from
• 36:40
  The Wire, you don't take notes on a criminal conspiracy.
• 36:43
  So another great HBO show, The Wire.
• 36:49
  So basically Dean is at the Sands, then Sammy Davis Junior
• 36:52
  comes at the Sands. So by 1960 they're all there.
• 36:56
  January of 1960, couple things happen.
• 37:00
  They start filming a movie called Ocean's 11, which is
• 37:04
  basically, you know, again, they, they remade it many years
• 37:07
  later, but it was pretty much, it's a real document of the
• 37:10
  times, pretty much just them filming Sinatra and his buddies
• 37:13
  hanging out. And, you know, there's a plot
• 37:16
  with the casino heist and all that.
• 37:19
  Great songs, great stuff. And while they're doing this, Al
• 37:24
  Freeman, who was a publicity director of the Sands, has the
• 37:27
  idea. OK, Also backing up a second,
• 37:30
  for a long time, like, let's say Dean Martin was playing and
• 37:33
  Frank happened to be in town. He would come up and sing, you
• 37:36
  know, when Judy Garland performed, I think 59, you know,
• 37:40
  Frank came out to support her because he was a big fan.
• 37:43
  So, you know, this has been happening for a long time.
• 37:47
  Al Freeman gets the idea. Hey, wait a second.
• 37:49
  We've got all three of these guys here.
• 37:50
  We're going to promote this as the biggest thing in the history
• 37:56
  of the universe since The Big Bang.
• 37:57
  Like, this is the biggest thing. And like, yes, they never called
• 38:03
  them the Rat Pack. That was a gossip columnist who
• 38:08
  called them the Rat Pack, who Frank hated, who said terrible
• 38:11
  things about, hated her. Never called them a Rat Pack
• 38:16
  either. Sinatra wanted to call them the
• 38:18
  clan, but that wasn't so great. They called it the summit.
• 38:21
  Or is that Eisenhower, Kennedy, Eisenhower Gustav Summit that
• 38:26
  was supposed to happen. That didn't.
• 38:27
  So it was like the summit, Frank and his friends.
• 38:30
  Yeah, whatever they called it. But they, they would, they would
• 38:32
  perform together. You know, you also had had Joey
• 38:35
  Bishop, Peter Lawford and a bunch of other folks, Shirley
• 38:38
  MacLaine. You could do a whole chart.
• 38:40
  You know, it's kind of like the the NWO and the late 90s WCW
• 38:44
  with all the people who are coming and going in the Rat
• 38:46
  Pack, although I don't think they had a Rat Pack, Wolf Pack,
• 38:50
  but that would have been quite the idea.
• 38:52
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:53
  There's some concept. Ideology or like, you know, some
• 38:56
  kind of, you know, formal like club you know, that people could
• 38:59
  join. Yeah, so there's people kind of
• 39:02
  there and yeah, like they would. So they had the times where they
• 39:04
  were booked together. They also sometimes they would
• 39:07
  just kind of crash each other's shows and and have fun stuff.
• 39:10
  You know, it all fell apart a little bit later.
• 39:13
  A couple things happened with Frank Sinatra, kind of his
• 39:18
  forceful abandoned his gambling license because he was caught
• 39:20
  hosting Sam Giancon and was a alleged Chicago mobster up at
• 39:25
  the Cal Neva in Tahoe. He eventually leaves the sands
• 39:30
  in 67. He leaves the sands, I think.
• 39:34
  Cash. Is that what it just stops
• 39:35
  forming? He well, he got into a little
• 39:39
  altercation with Carl Cohen, the casino manager at the Sands
• 39:43
  there a little altercation where he got.
• 39:45
  He's a notorious for his temper whenever he felt like he was
• 39:48
  having a bad night. Yeah, and he wasn't, you know,
• 39:51
  keep in mind, you know, Frank was not really a physically
• 39:54
  imposing guy. Whereas Carl Cohen, who was the
• 39:58
  casino manager of the Sands, a lot of people said he was the
• 40:00
  best casino manager in the history of, of the Vegas casino
• 40:03
  business, you know, was a physically imposing guy, you
• 40:06
  know, just imposing a lot of way.
• 40:07
  Also really, really smart guy, great at game protection, great
• 40:10
  at working with people, you know, so they had that dust up.
• 40:13
  Frank end up going to Caesar's. Caesar's also ended up stealing
• 40:17
  a lot of the Sands is Thunder and the kind of the the crown
• 40:21
  kind of moved to Caesar's Palace.
• 40:23
  After it opened in 66 and that's, you know where you get
• 40:27
  that? And the Sans hung on for a long
• 40:28
  time, did a lot of really cool stuff, but eventually was
• 40:31
  imploded and now is the Venetian.
• 40:34
  Right. And, and, and and.
• 40:35
  Caesars hung on for a long time, too.
• 40:37
  Caesars was the top of the pyramid for for years, right?
• 40:40
  Or decades. Caesars Until The Mirage opened
• 40:42
  the Caesar, Caesars was the number one high end casino in
• 40:46
  town. So they're still, you know,
• 40:49
  they're one of the most recognized brand names in town.
• 40:53
  Yeah, it's interesting that it doesn't sound like Frank Sinatra
• 40:57
  left on the best terms, but everyone's still left.
• 41:00
  Everyone's still like, I mean, did everyone?
• 41:03
  Oh, wait, was it a thing in terms of, like, for example,
• 41:05
  like, hey, management's fighting, but like, you know,
• 41:08
  the locals love him. Or is it like you think of one
• 41:11
  time to kind of come back around to him or what was that?
• 41:14
  Well, again, there's like layers within layers within layers.
• 41:18
  So at one level, OK, so one big thing that happened in early
• 41:22
  1967, Howard Hughes buys the Sands and a lot of the old time
• 41:28
  guys who had been part of the original ownership syndicate
• 41:31
  stay on. You know, they're basically
• 41:34
  managers who lived at the casino, you know, so they stayed
• 41:37
  on some of them and eventually they they filter out, some of
• 41:42
  them end up at The MGM Grand, some of them end up other
• 41:45
  places, some of them pass away. So you kind of have this change
• 41:48
  in ownership. And it used to be, while it was
• 41:52
  run as a very serious business, they did not keep records in in
• 41:57
  a lot of ways. Also things like casino credit
• 41:59
  were very personal. So like, hey, if we know each
• 42:02
  other and I know you're good for it, you have credit.
• 42:04
  You know, now they want to take people's names and run their
• 42:07
  credit report and stuff like that.
• 42:09
  So the alleged inciting incident was Frank Sinatra.
• 42:14
  And I do cover this in the book, which is called At the Sands.
• 42:17
  You know, Frank Sinatra performs and some of the Apollo
• 42:22
  astronauts are in town and see the performance, and then he
• 42:25
  wants to take them out on the town and like, OK, let's go have
• 42:29
  some fun of the casino. So he goes down the casino,
• 42:31
  says, hey, you know, pit boss, give me 50,000 and chips.
• 42:35
  Pit boss is like, I'm sorry, Frank, I can't do it.
• 42:37
  You know, the guys upstairs say we can't do it.
• 42:40
  So Frank has now been made to look like a bum in front of the
• 42:45
  Apollo astronauts. He's livid.
• 42:46
  He's screaming at people. He's threatening people.
• 42:49
  Apollo astronauts are like, you know, peace out.
• 42:52
  You know, I got a pretty early morning tomorrow.
• 42:55
  Oh, yeah, got it. Got an early flight.
• 42:57
  I think we're just going to call it night.
• 42:59
  So we want none of this. They could have.
• 43:01
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:02
  So I've actually had. I've actually done a conflict
• 43:04
  resolution for some gaming folks.
• 43:06
  Yeah. Based on another Frank incident.
• 43:10
  You know, basically it was there, I hope.
• 43:11
  You have a look at that one. And like where, you know what is
• 43:14
  Yeah, we, we it's a role play. We're like, OK, you're Frank.
• 43:17
  You're the gaming regulator. You're this person.
• 43:20
  It's kind of fun. It's kind of a fun thing, sort
• 43:22
  of like a murder mystery party. But you're nobody gets murdered.
• 43:25
  It's just somebody might lose their minds.
• 43:27
  So Frank goes home in Palm Springs, comes back later and
• 43:32
  gets in a fight with Carl Cohen. So on one-on-one hand, it's.
• 43:35
  And Frank and Howard Hughes had a history.
• 43:39
  They were both rivals for Ava Gardner.
• 43:41
  Also, Hughes called Frank a communist because Frank in those
• 43:46
  days was a probably a little bit more of the liberal side, so he
• 43:49
  called communists. So they, they, Hughes and
• 43:52
  Sinatra did not love each other. OK, so can.
• 43:55
  I-1 real quick. Sorry, I'm so sorry real just
• 43:57
  quickly the content. What did I know that, you know,
• 44:02
  politics I, I'm trying to I, I, I, I generally stay pretty
• 44:05
  apolitical. But politics throughout time
• 44:07
  change as what the values in the spectrum of what they're, what
• 44:10
  they're what, what it was. What would be considered
• 44:13
  left-leaning then was that that was typically a little bit more
• 44:17
  towards communism at that point, right?
• 44:19
  Wasn't, I would not know. So Frank was not a communist.
• 44:22
  His mom was pretty important in the Democratic Party in North
• 44:25
  Jersey. So he is, I feel pretty
• 44:27
  comfortable describing him as a New Deal Democrat.
• 44:30
  Believed in things like, believed very strongly in things
• 44:34
  like inclusive racial policies, stuff like that, you know, and,
• 44:39
  and had no tolerance for that kind of bigotry.
• 44:42
  So, yeah. So today we probably would not
• 44:45
  make him regular. Not a communist.
• 44:47
  So definitely not a communist. And certainly, yeah, like, like
• 44:51
  to make money and like to own gas cars and things like that.
• 44:55
  So, yeah, certainly not a communist, but for Howard
• 44:57
  Hughes. So.
• 45:01
  So at one level, that's the issue, but there's another
• 45:03
  level, too. So if you think about Frank as
• 45:06
  kind of the conduit for maybe money back to certain parts of
• 45:09
  the mob, now that Hughes is owning the place, they can't do
• 45:13
  what they were doing with skimming the money.
• 45:14
  They've got to move it somewhere else.
• 45:16
  What about Caesar's Palace? So some people have said that
• 45:19
  the whole thing was just AI don't want to say an illusion,
• 45:24
  but like, yeah, he wasn't. It wasn't really that kind of
• 45:26
  personal argument was a business thing.
• 45:28
  And like, yeah, some evidence for that is some news of this in
• 45:32
  Vegas broke Monday morning. By mid Monday morning, he had a
• 45:36
  signed contract at Caesar's Palace.
• 45:39
  Yeah, before the equity. Yeah.
• 45:42
  So what really went on? Who knows?
• 45:44
  Who knows that it's fascinating. So that's.
• 45:47
  Yeah. I mean, so that was how Sinatra
• 45:50
  ended up leaving the Sands. It's quite.
• 45:51
  AI guess. Ostensibly, it's not too far out
• 45:56
  to even say, like if you even if you didn't want to go down that
• 45:59
  path, it's not too far out to say, hey, someone, I'm sure
• 46:01
  everyone knew that there there's a blow up and everyone wants
• 46:04
  Frank Sinatra involved. So it's, it's not too far of a
• 46:07
  stretch to say, well, it could just be that, you know, it's a
• 46:10
  small town, everyone knows each other.
• 46:11
  And someone said, hey, man, if you're not going to do them,
• 46:13
  come to me, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:15
  So it was not a it was not a spur of the moment thing, I
• 46:19
  guess. And, you know, you can speculate
• 46:20
  who really benefited and all that, but interesting stuff.
• 46:24
  And Frank. So Frank didn't have a gaming
• 46:26
  license in the 80s. He got his gaming license back.
• 46:30
  Nancy Reagan was one of his character witnesses.
• 46:33
  So it's kind of funny how they that and he ended up being
• 46:37
  acclaimed in the gaming industry once again in by the 80s.
• 46:40
  So yeah, because here's why Frank Sinatra was the best for
• 46:46
  drawing gamblers. So like, Elvis would draw
• 46:49
  people. Elvis had all those sell outs in
• 46:50
  a row. Sinatra would draw the gamblers.
• 46:54
  Do they have any relationship Elvis and Sinatra?
• 46:57
  I mean not that I'm aware of. I would guess they knew each
• 47:00
  other but I don't think they were like buddy buddy but who
• 47:04
  knows different. Have you, have you done a lot of
• 47:07
  diving, a lot of work into Elvis and his and his Vegas, some
• 47:11
  stints and work and his relationship with his manager?
• 47:14
  Kind of superficially, but not not to the extent that I have
• 47:17
  with Sinatra. I see.
• 47:20
  I feel like people are in one camp or the other, you know, a
• 47:23
  lot of times. But maybe it's like we have the
• 47:26
  the peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch and the
• 47:29
  marinara possum, you know that we have that for in the brujols
• 47:34
  or whatever for some maybe, maybe we could do both.
• 47:37
  Yeah. Yeah, cuz that was I think what
• 47:40
  Elvis. Elvis is some stints there, or I
• 47:44
  guess his residency there was in the 60s.
• 47:48
  Well, 769, you know, 69 after the International Open, which is
• 47:52
  now the West Gate, so 69 until his death.
• 47:56
  So yeah, that was a. That's quite the thing.
• 48:00
  And what how, how do you drive a mob out of of Vegas?
• 48:04
  How do you there's? A couple ways, you know, so
• 48:06
  basically a couple things happened.
• 48:08
  You know #1 and again, like I go under this in the books.
• 48:12
  If you look at it, they really had, if we're both running
• 48:15
  casinos and one of us is affiliated with organized crime
• 48:17
  and one of us isn't the one with the organized crime connections
• 48:21
  has some advantages #1 financing.
• 48:25
  It's not the people running banks were Puritans and didn't
• 48:28
  in thought gambling was evil. It's that casinos are really
• 48:31
  risky businesses. And you know, if you look at the
• 48:34
  number of casinos that go bankrupt, I mean it's constant.
• 48:37
  You know, look at how many times casinos go bankrupt.
• 48:42
  You know, even though they're offering negative expectation
• 48:44
  gains, there are still a lot of expenses they can get out of
• 48:46
  control. You know, today it's the debt
• 48:48
  expense because a lot of companies have taken on a lot of
• 48:51
  debt that's hanging warm now that they split the ownership of
• 48:56
  the property in the operation. The operators have rental
• 48:58
  payment, rent payments to make. So yeah, it's it's can be
• 49:01
  heavily leveraged. So it was too risky.
• 49:04
  People connected with organized crime knew the business, though,
• 49:07
  and knew like, yeah, we can make money from this.
• 49:10
  You know, also, they knew how they could skim money out of the
• 49:12
  casino, take it back home. Number one, you can get
• 49:17
  financing #2 is how are you going to market your casino, You
• 49:20
  know, if you want to find the gamblers.
• 49:23
  So let's say we want to find the gamblers in Cincinnati.
• 49:25
  It's not like we're going to buy ads and say, hey, gamblers come
• 49:28
  to our casino. We're going to go to somebody
• 49:30
  who knows the gamblers in Cincinnati.
• 49:31
  And who's that going to be? People were involved in gambling
• 49:35
  in Cincinnati, which is organized and illegal, therefore
• 49:37
  organized crime. So junket marketing is a second
• 49:40
  one. You know, third one is
• 49:42
  interesting. So it used to be, and under a a
• 49:45
  British law called the Statute of Anne that dates back to the
• 49:48
  time of Queen Anne, gambling debts could not legally be
• 49:52
  collected. Legally collected.
• 49:54
  You could not. So if you go, if you went to the
• 49:57
  courts and said, hey, I lost this much money to the OR this
• 50:01
  guy lost his money to me playing poker, you know, just like right
• 50:04
  now, you couldn't go to court and say, well, hey, I gave this
• 50:07
  guy all those pure uncut cocaine and he stiffed me.
• 50:12
  You know, you can't sue for that because it's illegal.
• 50:14
  It's the same thing, you know, And even when, when it became
• 50:17
  legal, they didn't change that. So we can't collect the debts
• 50:22
  legally. How else can we collect the
• 50:24
  debts? Yeah, sure.
• 50:26
  You send Joe Pesci in. Yeah, exactly.
• 50:28
  Like new Caps, baseball bats and stuff, Although usually, I mean,
• 50:31
  that's very overrated. The number one thing, that
• 50:36
  number one force that led people to pay off their gambling debts
• 50:39
  was a mix pride and peer pressure because people wanted
• 50:43
  it known that they were, you know, they were good for it.
• 50:48
  So if you're a serious gambler, like, yeah, my kids are
• 50:52
  starving. We don't have heat in the
• 50:53
  apartment, but I paid off my bookie.
• 50:57
  Wow, That's like the that's the pride.
• 50:59
  Like, yes, I am a real man. I settled my debts, you know,
• 51:02
  again, even though my kids don't have food, so.
• 51:06
  It's. More the peer pressure, I guess
• 51:08
  for some people it would be the the threat of violence.
• 51:11
  Or even the addictive nature of it.
• 51:13
  No meaning that you're so addicted to the to the to the to
• 51:16
  the high. Then you know what that does
• 51:18
  come before your food and rents. You know that does come before
• 51:21
  you know your, your, your payment to your kids, you know,
• 51:23
  tuition or whatever it is. Yeah, that's like the worst
• 51:26
  thing. It's like, oh, you won't be a
• 51:27
  guest here anymore. That.
• 51:29
  Would be, yeah. That'd be the worst part of it,
• 51:31
  yeah. Yeah.
• 51:31
  So, yeah. So a lot of times, you know, it
• 51:33
  wasn't I feel like maybe that's been overstate a little bit
• 51:36
  because yeah, that's that's fine.
• 51:40
  But the threat of it's still there.
• 51:42
  I mean, again, how many people do you need to see with a broken
• 51:44
  kneecaps to realize like, Oh yeah, he's really serious.
• 51:47
  I I better pay him his money. Yeah, I don't know if you're
• 51:50
  there's actually a really interesting phenomenon in the
• 51:53
  Jewish community and the Orthodox Jewish community where
• 51:56
  if the if someone wants to get divorced, a husband has
• 52:00
  according biblically has to religion, You know, I guess
• 52:03
  according to the the laws of the Torah Bible, just the husband
• 52:07
  gives it to the wife, The wife can't just walk off.
• 52:12
  And but what they do, but what the there's a whole organized
• 52:17
  organization within the community that if a husband is
• 52:20
  taking advantage of his wife and not and not doing that and they
• 52:23
  want a divorce, they'll go over and they'll put they'll break
• 52:27
  his kneecaps, they'll get him to do it, You know, and I don't
• 52:30
  think it's, you know, I think that and it's funny because it
• 52:33
  says it has to be willingly handed over.
• 52:35
  You know, it's like, well, how is that willingly?
• 52:37
  It's like, because if it didn't stop, then, you know, then it is
• 52:41
  his choice, you know, at a certain point.
• 52:42
  But I think it's and, and you know what you still have it to
• 52:46
  today too. I don't know why there's
• 52:48
  something about, it's so interesting.
• 52:49
  There's something psychologically about violence
• 52:51
  that doesn't seem to necessarily work on people.
• 52:53
  We know it with torture, with the CIA and other countries.
• 52:56
  You know it with, you know, with what you're, the way you're
• 52:58
  describing, a lot of times the way to get people to bend is to
• 53:01
  actually just get them to kind of see another side or to, you
• 53:05
  know, to just open their eyes up a little bit.
• 53:09
  Yeah, and bringing it back around to conflict resolution,
• 53:11
  the workplace and stuff, You know, fear is an excellent short
• 53:16
  term motivator. And like when I'm doing a
• 53:18
  workshop, I like to tell people like, hey, like if a leopard ran
• 53:21
  into this room, I bet we would all run faster than we've ever
• 53:25
  run in our lives. Like fear, excellent short term
• 53:27
  motive. You don't want to mess with a
• 53:29
  leopard or anything, but leopards are the one that he
• 53:32
  faces. What I've heard so but if like
• 53:36
  it's a leopard every day, eventually you're like what?
• 53:40
  So if the boss says, hey, if you don't get this done, I'm going
• 53:42
  to fire you. Oh my God, like for Oh my God, I
• 53:45
  don't want to lose my job if they're doing it every day
• 53:48
  finally, like man, just fire me already.
• 53:50
  Just get it over with so. It's.
• 53:53
  Yeah, it's about making people want to do things and kind of
• 53:56
  figuring out what are their motivation, what do they want
• 54:00
  and, you know, helping them, you know, like you said, reframing
• 54:03
  things sometimes is the best way.
• 54:06
  Yeah. The show that that, that, that,
• 54:09
  that, that that described this, that whole process really well
• 54:12
  was Homeland. I don't know if you watched it.
• 54:15
  It kind of trails off the last two seasons.
• 54:17
  I think that, you know, like all television shows for the four to
• 54:20
  five season or four to six season, you know, peak if you're
• 54:24
  lucky. I also completely forgot,
• 54:27
  completely tangentially, television shows seasons used to
• 54:31
  be 20/20/25 episodes of season. Yeah, and if it was an hour
• 54:35
  show, that's a ton of content. I don't know how anyone was able
• 54:38
  to keep up a good story for more than a few seasons.
• 54:41
  If it's 20 hours or 25 hours of television per season, that's
• 54:45
  crazy. Yeah.
• 54:46
  You know, and that was just because I was just, I was
• 54:50
  watching because I was watching Homeland and it was it wasn't
• 54:53
  HBO. But most of the long term form
• 54:54
  content that I, that I do consume is typically HBO or
• 54:57
  Netflix. Now Netflix kind of adopted
• 54:59
  that, you know, 6-7, six to 10 season, you know, arc.
• 55:06
  And then I went back and like, how long am I watching this for?
• 55:08
  This is crazy. But I guess, yeah, that timeline
• 55:14
  is really perfect. But yeah, so as far as they do a
• 55:17
  really good job showing how spying and Intel and the way
• 55:23
  that you get people to flip or the way you get information out
• 55:26
  of anyone, the best way is to treat them like a human being.
• 55:28
  And you constantly have these guys coming in and being like,
• 55:31
  let's torture them. And you be like, it's not going
• 55:33
  to work. And then it doesn't.
• 55:34
  And then you just sit there and give them a coffee and A food
• 55:36
  and some food. And you say, we want to protect
• 55:38
  you and your family. The way that it's going to
• 55:41
  happen is if you just talk to, if you just work with us, you
• 55:43
  know, like we know that you want to protect your family or your
• 55:45
  friends or your empire or whatever it is, we'll help you
• 55:48
  do that. Just talk you know, and it works
• 55:51
  way better. Yeah, yeah, people need to be
• 55:54
  self motivated. Yeah, definitely.
• 55:57
  How accurate was the movie Casino or how, how you know just
• 56:00
  in terms of you know, the culture or you know what was
• 56:04
  going on? Very accurate.
• 56:07
  So, you know, as you may have heard, the former mayor of Las
• 56:10
  Vegas, Oscar Goodman, who was previously an attorney,
• 56:13
  represent a lot of folks connected to organized crime and
• 56:16
  some of the folks in the movie, what played himself in the
• 56:19
  movie. So that's kind of one thing.
• 56:20
  Oh, he did. Yeah, he did.
• 56:21
  Yeah. I asked a gaming regulator,
• 56:24
  someone I really respect, name's Shannon by the.
• 56:27
  I asked him about it, and he said, well, you know, the scene
• 56:30
  with the like, well, how accurate was that?
• 56:33
  He's like, well, the scene with the head and the vice, that did
• 56:35
  not happen in the state of Nevada, But apparently the rest
• 56:38
  of the stuff was pretty accurate to the folks who were around
• 56:40
  there who kind of lived through it.
• 56:42
  And, yeah, you know, it's just a great, great depiction of Vegas
• 56:47
  at that time. Just really cool.
• 56:50
  Yeah, yeah. It also kind of showed the
• 56:52
  where, the where like what we're what I was trying to, you know,
• 56:56
  describe earlier with the notion that as the town got a little
• 57:00
  more full, that's when competition, you know, really
• 57:03
  got a little more heated up. Yeah.
• 57:06
  And it's also, you know, and we can talk about the decline of
• 57:09
  the mob, but kind of one of the one of the things I'd like to
• 57:12
  say about organized crime is because there's so few records,
• 57:16
  like records, we tend to impose what we want to impose on it.
• 57:23
  So Nick Pileggi, Martin Scorsese see it and they see a Greek
• 57:28
  drama, OK, Police look at it. They see it as a a quasi
• 57:36
  military or law enforcement organization with the boss, the
• 57:39
  under boss. And it's very, it's like a
• 57:41
  police, it's like a Police Department.
• 57:44
  Yeah. Almost said.
• 57:45
  Yeah, almost said. Team Police Department.
• 57:47
  It's like a it's like, it's like a police agency, which like
• 57:49
  here's the boss, here's here's the chief of OPS, here's the so
• 57:54
  yeah. So they look at it that way.
• 57:55
  OK, when you have academics look at it, they basically look at it
• 57:59
  like it's the sociology department of OK, well, we've
• 58:01
  got the chair of the department and these other people are doing
• 58:04
  stuff and they'll kick something back to the chair, but they're
• 58:06
  kind of independent agents. I'm not saying that people in
• 58:09
  the social department or any department, it kicks up back to
• 58:11
  the chair, but it's really like with the chairs more the first
• 58:14
  among equals as opposed to the boss.
• 58:16
  You know, it's kind of like that's how they look at
• 58:18
  organized crimes. It's kind of interesting when
• 58:20
  when you look at the mob, we can pretty much impose any structure
• 58:25
  we want on it because so much of it is an enigma.
• 58:28
  And as I said, I bet reality is probably a blend of all of it,
• 58:32
  you know, you know, depending who you were talking to and what
• 58:35
  they're, you know, what they're like, you know, if you were
• 58:37
  making observation with the podcast State of the world, you
• 58:39
  could say it's education, it's news, it's, you know, it's
• 58:42
  conspiracy theories, it's whatever, you know, and then you
• 58:45
  say, well, it's actually all of that.
• 58:47
  It just depends who you're listening to, you know, it's
• 58:49
  just that. So, so I, I bet that I bet that
• 58:52
  there's truth to all of it. You know, that's been the fun
• 58:54
  part of doing this deep dive, this these deep dives.
• 58:57
  Hey, can we take a little detour into conspiracy theories for a
• 58:59
  minute? Yes, please.
• 59:01
  OK. I'm currently teaching a seminar
• 59:03
  at UNLV on conspiracy theories. Really.
• 59:05
  So yeah. So I'm having a lot of fun with.
• 59:09
  Them tell me tell me what are some of your favorite ones just
• 59:11
  off the top of? Your head my favorite one.
• 59:14
  OK, like I when I'm first like hey, I want to teach a class on
• 59:18
  this. I thought it would be the fun
• 59:19
  ones with, you know, like Bigfoot and aliens and stuff
• 59:24
  like that. Area 51, a lot of it's not quite
• 59:26
  so fun, you know, it's much more sinister.
• 59:29
  So it's just amazing how the same tropes are recycled and
• 59:35
  have been recycled for hundreds of years now.
• 59:37
  And it's basically trying to, you know, one of them, you know,
• 59:41
  So I'll look at, you know, one of the thinkers, one of the one
• 59:44
  of the frameworks we look at is Barcoon.
• 59:46
  Basically everything is connected, nothing is as it
• 59:51
  seems and nothing happens by accident.
• 59:53
  And if you look at any and basically also I've done this in
• 59:56
  my conflict resolution where we bring these, we bring this
• 59:59
  mindset into our work relationships.
• 1:00:02
  And. I did a blog post about this a
• 1:00:04
  while back, but basically it's like, yeah, if you start
• 1:00:07
  thinking this way, like, oh, well, I know what's really going
• 1:00:09
  on and yeah, they said this, but they're doing this.
• 1:00:12
  And yeah, I know that was no accident that this happened.
• 1:00:15
  Like really start to think critically about where you're
• 1:00:18
  going wrong because conspiracy, you know, basically the runaway
• 1:00:21
  conspiracy theories, it is sort of like pattern recognition
• 1:00:27
  turned up to 11. And like we think about pattern
• 1:00:29
  recognition, it's basically hardwired into US.
• 1:00:32
  You know, think about like something like the face on Mars,
• 1:00:37
  which is a big deal when I was a kid, the face on Mars, it's like
• 1:00:39
  it's not really a face. We're just used to recognizing
• 1:00:41
  faces, you know? Why does this go back?
• 1:00:44
  Well, as I've been told, I'm not an evolutionary biologist.
• 1:00:47
  Any stretching imagination. But hey, I read a book about it.
• 1:00:49
  So what do you know? What I read was, you know, the
• 1:00:52
  little baby primate that recognizes its mom's face and,
• 1:00:56
  like, smiles, gets milk. The one that doesn't is like,
• 1:01:01
  yeah, whatever, lady, you know, I got stuff to do, doesn't get
• 1:01:05
  the food, so it doesn't survive. So basically, we're, like,
• 1:01:07
  hardwired for pattern recognition.
• 1:01:09
  So conspiracy is basically like picking out patterns where they
• 1:01:13
  may not exist. Yeah, sure.
• 1:01:16
  Yeah. And then like you get in.
• 1:01:17
  So next week one of the classes is on gang stalking where people
• 1:01:21
  believe, you know, it's it's very, it's scary because people
• 1:01:25
  believe that people, they're just regular folks like you and
• 1:01:29
  I are organized to stalk them and intimidate them and bully
• 1:01:32
  them and stuff like that. So you kind of get that and
• 1:01:35
  they're picking up on patterns. But it's like, oh, you know, a
• 1:01:38
  red car drove by, then another red car drove by.
• 1:01:42
  They're they're sending me messages.
• 1:01:43
  So yeah, it does. Do you?
• 1:01:45
  Think that would happen? Do you think that would happen
• 1:01:46
  anyway? Because I feel like the areas
• 1:01:49
  that conspiracy theories kind of pop up the most is when there's
• 1:01:53
  a lack of transparency or conversation and then it leaves,
• 1:01:58
  it leaves it up to individuals to fill in the blanks
• 1:02:01
  themselves. So like, for example, I've
• 1:02:02
  noticed and I'm really, I mean, I kind of, I'm not really sure
• 1:02:05
  what to think of her by. I think that she's probably
• 1:02:08
  nuts, but I'm not sure what to think of Candace Owens.
• 1:02:11
  And you know, I mean, I'm she's but what she's really good at,
• 1:02:14
  she's good at finding holes in narratives that really are
• 1:02:18
  legitimate holes. The way that she puts the pieces
• 1:02:20
  back together again, I can't speak to, but like when she does
• 1:02:25
  emphasize a lack of information is being provided.
• 1:02:28
  Like a lot of times, those kind, that kind of critical
• 1:02:31
  observation typically comes from a relatively grounded place.
• 1:02:34
  And then what? And then what you're, you're
• 1:02:35
  describing like us creating pattern out of chaos or meaning
• 1:02:40
  out of chaos is where we could go wrong.
• 1:02:42
  Because that's also when we're almost like what you said with
• 1:02:45
  even with the conflict resolution, I'm injecting myself
• 1:02:47
  into this story. I'm injecting what I think
• 1:02:50
  everyone's motivated by and inspired by into the story
• 1:02:53
  without actually knowing who the players or the characters are
• 1:02:55
  necessary. Yeah, I mean, it's a myth of
• 1:02:57
  thinking we have perfect information about anything you
• 1:02:59
  think about any event. There's a lot of chaos, there's
• 1:03:03
  a lot of confusion on the ground.
• 1:03:04
  You know, I've been through a thing or two where it's like,
• 1:03:07
  yeah, at the time people would say it was one thing, but then
• 1:03:10
  it turned out to be another thing.
• 1:03:11
  And I understand why that happened.
• 1:03:13
  There was a lot of confusion going on.
• 1:03:14
  There was there was things happening, you know.
• 1:03:17
  So a lot of it is just over elaborate explanations and
• 1:03:23
  explanations that avoid Occam's razor.
• 1:03:26
  A lot of that, you know, so super elaborate explanations.
• 1:03:30
  Also like one of the theories is they posit preternaturally.
• 1:03:33
  What is it preternaturally competent and sinister people?
• 1:03:37
  So like, obviously, like something like Watergate, right?
• 1:03:41
  You know, that was, as the White House itself said, a third rate
• 1:03:44
  burglary didn't get away with it.
• 1:03:47
  So like, how do you think they can't get away with that?
• 1:03:48
  But they could get away with faking the moon landing, which
• 1:03:51
  they didn't. Blows my mind.
• 1:03:53
  And like, so literally the 50,000 people were working on
• 1:03:56
  it. All are just doing this for fun
• 1:03:59
  and none of them has confessed to it When like, yeah, you're
• 1:04:02
  probably not gonna get. Although I guess the counter is
• 1:04:04
  like, well, that's what they want you to believe and we are
• 1:04:08
  better. And like again, if there was a
• 1:04:10
  really good kind of like, well. The counter that I've heard to
• 1:04:12
  that was that it only took a couple of people at the top and
• 1:04:14
  everyone else thought they were doing the right thing.
• 1:04:16
  Everyone thought they were. Just I guess, but it seems very.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah, by, by the way, by I, I all these all, all these things
• 1:04:23
  and and one of the valuable aspects of conspiracy theories
• 1:04:26
  is you can't prove it's not it, you know, like it's a.
• 1:04:29
  Thing they're ultimately and if your theory is ultimately
• 1:04:31
  unfalsifiable, you've got to be really critical when you reflect
• 1:04:35
  on that. Because if there's no way, and
• 1:04:37
  I'd like to, this is what I, you know, my students aren't talking
• 1:04:40
  about like, yeah, if there's no way you can disprove this, then
• 1:04:45
  like, how Can you believe it? Because there's not, you know,
• 1:04:48
  so. And again, The thing is like,
• 1:04:49
  hey, there's an invisible dragon behind me.
• 1:04:53
  Can you believe that there isn't?
• 1:04:55
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So my.
• 1:04:57
  Hand went through him. Oh well, he also shapeshifts or
• 1:04:59
  he went to another dimension. Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah, it wouldn't be a dragon. It would be the, I don't know, I
• 1:05:07
  think elephant from Winnie the. Pooh after he takes after he
• 1:05:09
  takes the acid. Yeah, I mean, but we hear, we
• 1:05:12
  hear good things about the Greys, the Reptoids.
• 1:05:15
  We hear, we hear, you know they're supposed to be bad.
• 1:05:17
  Will you want that? What do you think about that,
• 1:05:18
  About aliens and stuff like that?
• 1:05:20
  Reptoids, I mean, personally again, and I'm not a I'm not a a
• 1:05:24
  scientist, natural astrophysicist or anything like
• 1:05:26
  that, but based on my college level education in in science,
• 1:05:32
  you know, universe is vast pretty.
• 1:05:36
  Do you believe that we would this would be the only time life
• 1:05:38
  happened? On the other hand, like are
• 1:05:42
  people flying from other solar systems and like abducting
• 1:05:47
  cattle and and putting probes in people probably, well that part.
• 1:05:51
  Right, exactly. That's the problem.
• 1:05:52
  That's where it that's where it gets dicey.
• 1:05:54
  Is there? Probably no.
• 1:05:56
  Yeah, yeah, this. Thing Have you been following
• 1:05:59
  this thing at the Atlas I3 Meteor in the news?
• 1:06:04
  No, but they're they want to see if it's if it's. 7 billion year
• 1:06:08
  old asteroid that's been floating through our through our
• 1:06:11
  through our Milky Way just around to the sun a couple of
• 1:06:13
  days ago, you know, but and we don't know what it is, but it's
• 1:06:16
  cool. Anything 7 billion years old is
• 1:06:18
  cool, you know, as far as I'm. Concerned yeah so like again,
• 1:06:22
  like who knows but again like, I don't know the they they would
• 1:06:27
  manifest in that way but hey, maybe they do maybe they just
• 1:06:29
  have fun with doing it. You know, maybe it's, maybe it's
• 1:06:32
  like Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy or something.
• 1:06:34
  Maybe. I was talking to the other week,
• 1:06:37
  I was talking to a former homicide detective, really sweet
• 1:06:41
  guy out of Arizona. And I asked him what he thought
• 1:06:45
  about the Charlie Kirk situation.
• 1:06:47
  Because there's been a lot of, you know, conspiracies flying
• 1:06:49
  around that. And then one thing that I before
• 1:06:52
  I even before I even got a chance to answer, I said, you
• 1:06:54
  know, just where I stand on, on the, on the conversation.
• 1:06:57
  I was like, and because my high school students were asking me
• 1:07:00
  about it, you know, the day they're like how, how did the
• 1:07:02
  FBI arrest the wrong guy, blah, blah.
• 1:07:04
  I'm like, let me explain something to you.
• 1:07:05
  I was like, you guys are going to be in College in four years.
• 1:07:08
  There's going to be an event on campus.
• 1:07:10
  You're going to smoke, you're going to drink, you're going to
• 1:07:11
  go with your buddies. Everyone's going to be there.
• 1:07:13
  There's going to be 10,000 people there and everyone's
• 1:07:16
  going to be having a great time. If anything happened, every
• 1:07:20
  single person there forget about whether you're inebriated or
• 1:07:23
  not, or whether you're hanging out with your friends or not, or
• 1:07:25
  you're there just for a good time and you're even paying
• 1:07:27
  attention or you're not on your phone and you're not scrolling.
• 1:07:30
  Take all those variables out. You have no idea what's flying
• 1:07:34
  there At the end of the day, You know, these kind of jobs are so
• 1:07:40
  hard to do. And you know, there's so many
• 1:07:44
  hundreds and thousands of factors that go into every
• 1:07:47
  detail and every act that it's really.
• 1:07:49
  And by the way, and I'm not discounting the potential for a
• 1:07:53
  conspiracy either, you know, but you know, there I think that
• 1:07:57
  like, you know, Akens Razor, you know, like I think that
• 1:08:00
  generally speaking, we're probably the safest to say the
• 1:08:04
  simplest explanation is probably the right one, you know?
• 1:08:06
  Yeah, although my other, I don't know, I don't want to say it's
• 1:08:09
  my last word and some conspiracy theories, but it sounds pretty
• 1:08:12
  pithy. And you know, I, I, I, it's
• 1:08:15
  original. So it's got that bad script.
• 1:08:18
  You know, to me, conspiracy theories are like slot machines.
• 1:08:22
  OK, what's the what's the tragedy of the slot machine?
• 1:08:25
  It's not that most people lose. It's not that you're going to
• 1:08:28
  lose every time. It's that sometimes people win.
• 1:08:31
  So you can't know that you're not going to win.
• 1:08:33
  There's still that hope. Conspiracy theories are the same
• 1:08:36
  way where like, yeah, a lot of them are definitely false, but
• 1:08:39
  every now and then one of them turns out to be true and there's
• 1:08:42
  just no which one is which? So, yeah, if you're like, hey,
• 1:08:45
  you know, the government is lying about something.
• 1:08:48
  Well, like they very well, maybe they have in the past.
• 1:08:51
  They're. Definitely out of the entire
• 1:08:53
  history. They're not shooting 100% on
• 1:08:55
  honesty, you know? Yeah.
• 1:08:57
  So, so yeah, it's kind of interesting in that way.
• 1:08:59
  We're like, yeah, we, we're kind of chasing after the vast
• 1:09:04
  majority of people of the lace slot machines are not going to
• 1:09:06
  win in their session. That small minority will.
• 1:09:09
  So like we're chasing that. I think it's similar with
• 1:09:12
  conspiracy theories. We're like just trying to find
• 1:09:15
  that or also, I mean, there's ways, and this is not original
• 1:09:17
  to me, but, you know, people have said it's a way of making
• 1:09:20
  sense of the world. And it's actually less scary.
• 1:09:23
  And I think it was Alan Moore. You know, I've got a great quote
• 1:09:25
  from him. But like, the terrifying thing
• 1:09:26
  is, nobody's in charge. Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  And like, if we knew there was a a, the the Reptoids were
• 1:09:32
  secretly running everything behind the scenes like, well, at
• 1:09:34
  least someone's doing something. But the fact that this all could
• 1:09:37
  be just random scary. No one wants that, right?
• 1:09:40
  Yeah, it's. Really interesting.
• 1:09:43
  Yeah, Really, really interesting.
• 1:09:45
  It's a great point. It's a great point.
• 1:09:47
  I want to talk to you about a couple more topics.
• 1:09:50
  I want to hit the I want to hit the fall of the mafia for sure.
• 1:09:53
  I also want to think about the different economic, I guess
• 1:09:57
  classes or stages that occur because, you know, throw
• 1:10:00
  gambling, because gambling is consistent no matter whether the
• 1:10:03
  economy is good or bad. And the question really kind of
• 1:10:05
  becomes as to what kind of games or what type of playing that
• 1:10:11
  people are doing in different economic situations.
• 1:10:14
  If times are good, are more people playing slots or less
• 1:10:16
  people? Is there a correlation between
• 1:10:21
  where we are as a society? So you could choose to tackle
• 1:10:25
  whichever topic you want to go down 1st.
• 1:10:28
  Yeah, decline on the MOB. Let's take that.
• 1:10:30
  So basically, remember the three things that I talked about, the
• 1:10:33
  three advantages the MOB casinos would have in Vegas, which were
• 1:10:37
  finance, marketing, debt collection.
• 1:10:39
  By the 80s, they're all gone. So originally in Nevada, anybody
• 1:10:44
  who owned any share at all of a casino had to be licensed, you
• 1:10:49
  know, basically investigated and licensed, which precludes
• 1:10:54
  ownership by publicly traded companies because they're
• 1:10:57
  trading over the counter. So you can't really do that.
• 1:11:00
  So originally, no publicly traded companies in Nevada
• 1:11:04
  owning casinos. That changes in 67 and 69.
• 1:11:08
  The legislature passes the corporate gaming acts.
• 1:11:12
  Now they do allow corporations to own it.
• 1:11:14
  So now we're opening up the faucet for corporate money from
• 1:11:22
  for mainstream finance to come in.
• 1:11:24
  You know, at the same time, Nevada starts doing a much
• 1:11:27
  better job of tracking the casinos financially.
• 1:11:32
  And these companies see just how profitable casinos can be.
• 1:11:35
  So suddenly they're in money. And here's the example I'd like
• 1:11:39
  to use. So the Sands opened in 1952,
• 1:11:43
  cost around four and a half, $1,000,000 to build.
• 1:11:46
  It's a huge number of times, yeah, which was decent.
• 1:11:49
  But like that you could get from Hal Rothman, who was a great
• 1:11:52
  historian of Vegas, called it Shoebox Capital.
• 1:11:55
  Basically like mob guys taking cash out of shoeboxes and
• 1:11:59
  shipping it to Vegas so you can get that.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah. Caesar's Palace opens up in 1966
• 1:12:05
  cost 19,000,000 dollars. 10 million of it was a Teamsters
• 1:12:10
  Central State's pension fund loan from Jimmy Hoffa. 9 The
• 1:12:14
  rest of the 9 million they scraped together going to every
• 1:12:16
  bookie, every big gambler in the East Coast, and they barely
• 1:12:20
  opened. Like they almost didn't have
• 1:12:22
  enough money to open. They probably shouldn't have
• 1:12:24
  been allowed to open because they didn't have enough money,
• 1:12:26
  but they were very successful. OK, so that's straining the the
• 1:12:29
  thing there. 1969, the international opens, that's Kirk
• 1:12:32
  Krikorian that cost $50 million and the the mob guys could not
• 1:12:39
  get their hands on $50 million. Krikorian, you know, does a
• 1:12:43
  stock offering. That's how that happens.
• 1:12:45
  So basically they're so successful they get priced out
• 1:12:49
  because now like they can't afford to build the new ones or
• 1:12:52
  keep up the old ones. So that's finance goes away
• 1:12:55
  marketing, you know, guy named John Akers who does casino tech
• 1:13:01
  has a room key and a speaking spell and figures like, hey,
• 1:13:03
  wait, if we can get these to go with each other, we could like
• 1:13:07
  put information in the card and put it in the slot machine and
• 1:13:10
  track people's play. Wow.
• 1:13:12
  So like player tracking is born. So now people will tell you how
• 1:13:18
  much they gamble. So players clubs, let people
• 1:13:20
  track that loyalty and stuff like that.
• 1:13:22
  They now know how to how to market to people.
• 1:13:25
  So boom, out of that, you know, last one, debt collection,
• 1:13:29
  Nevada changes the law. Gambling debts are now legally
• 1:13:32
  collectible in the state of Nevada.
• 1:13:33
  Oh man. So by the 80s, all that's gone.
• 1:13:35
  Also there's that generational shift.
• 1:13:37
  So remember the young and hungry guys in Prohibition, you know,
• 1:13:42
  they're born around the year 1900.
• 1:13:44
  They've all retired or died off at this point.
• 1:13:47
  Their kids are mostly, they became doctors and lawyers and
• 1:13:51
  stuff like that for the most part.
• 1:13:54
  Organized crime, you know, it's not the 20s anymore where people
• 1:13:58
  are betting on horses and stuff. Organized crime is now focused
• 1:14:01
  much more on loan sharking, prostitution or comics, stuff
• 1:14:08
  like that. So they're not really doing
• 1:14:09
  gambling anymore. So like, hey, you know, this
• 1:14:11
  guy's in the mob doesn't really know gambling that well.
• 1:14:15
  Can't get us money, can't market for us.
• 1:14:18
  You can't do debt collection. So like what's?
• 1:14:20
  So that's kind of how they go away.
• 1:14:22
  You also have a big crackdown by the state and the federal
• 1:14:24
  government. That must have been systematic
• 1:14:27
  because there was the exact three things that you said gave
• 1:14:29
  them advantage over everyone else, you know, I mean.
• 1:14:33
  It is interesting how it's, it's just so many factors come
• 1:14:36
  together because you also have now, OK, so originally nobody
• 1:14:40
  really cared. It's like, yeah, Nevada's,
• 1:14:41
  Nevada's this is weird state. They're a bunch of freaks.
• 1:14:44
  They have legal gambling. You know, as time goes on, the
• 1:14:47
  federal government's getting very interested.
• 1:14:49
  In the early 60's, the Kennelly White House and Bobby Kennelly,
• 1:14:53
  his attorney general was very anti organized crime.
• 1:14:56
  You know, he wanted to really crack down on Vegas.
• 1:14:58
  They're able to prevent that. But Vegas in the message was get
• 1:15:01
  your house in order. So they really are like, yeah,
• 1:15:05
  we better take this seriously and kick these people out.
• 1:15:08
  So they really do step that up. Do you think that could have?
• 1:15:11
  Do you think I I never I mean that I've heard that the mob
• 1:15:15
  could have been involved in in killing, in Kennedy's
• 1:15:18
  assassination. I never heard of all.
• 1:15:19
  I never knew why that could have been enough of a reason.
• 1:15:23
  I. Mean, yeah, I mean, this could
• 1:15:24
  be a whole other episode here, but basically I mean Kennedy
• 1:15:30
  like who couldn't have been involved in the asset?
• 1:15:32
  It's so funny when you read this in everyone right?
• 1:15:35
  Everyone could be Castro, anti Castro, Cubans, communists, most
• 1:15:41
  communists. American Seattle men.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah, pretty much everybody, the mob, kind of everybody, you
• 1:15:48
  know, which is a whole other thing there.
• 1:15:51
  I mean, that's a whole other thing, but.
• 1:15:53
  It really is. So I don't know, that seems a
• 1:15:56
  bit a little bit out of their out of their scope there, but
• 1:15:58
  who knows. OK, You think that you don't
• 1:16:00
  think you don't think that they were powerful.
• 1:16:02
  I I know that. I guess culturally or media that
• 1:16:04
  you know, we make it, we romanticize them to be powerful
• 1:16:06
  enough, but you don't think in reality they were.
• 1:16:08
  I don't know what they would gain if if it was like, hey,
• 1:16:11
  we're mad because we're out of Cuba, didn't get him back into
• 1:16:14
  Cuba. If they're just like mad because
• 1:16:18
  he wasn't he, he broke we. Still haven't figured out our
• 1:16:21
  situation with Cuba unfortunately.
• 1:16:22
  Oh, yeah. But it's like, you know, part of
• 1:16:24
  it's like, well, he was, you know, hey, the mob helped him
• 1:16:26
  get elected and now he's cracking down the mob.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah, didn't really do much for that.
• 1:16:31
  And the mob ends up, it ends up being, you know, Bobby
• 1:16:35
  Kennedy's, and this is another book about called Cutting the
• 1:16:38
  Wire at the Wire Act. You know, Bobby Kennedy's bright
• 1:16:40
  idea for cracking down the mob was, oh, they're using Telegraph
• 1:16:45
  wires to send gambling information.
• 1:16:48
  So we're going to criminalize this.
• 1:16:50
  And so like the bookie's going to roll on the bigger bookie,
• 1:16:53
  who's going to roll on the bigger 1, and that's going to
• 1:16:55
  take us all the way up to the big mob.
• 1:16:57
  What he didn't account for were the people would gladly do five
• 1:17:01
  years in prison to avoid angering the big mob boss.
• 1:17:05
  So basically wire act did not break up any organized crime.
• 1:17:09
  It wasn't until Rico, the Racketeer influence corruption
• 1:17:12
  act that did that. That was in later in the decade
• 1:17:15
  or I think in 70. Again, it's been a while since I
• 1:17:19
  I, I wrote that, but you know, basically that's what does it,
• 1:17:21
  which makes just being in the criminal conspiracy is now a
• 1:17:24
  crime. They just need, again, kind of
• 1:17:27
  going back to the wire here. They just need the wiretap
• 1:17:29
  evidence like, yeah, you guys play on this crime, you're going
• 1:17:32
  down. That's what breaks up a lot of
• 1:17:34
  that classic New York, Italian, Five Families stuff.
• 1:17:38
  What do you think of what do you think of that idea in a vacuum?
• 1:17:42
  I don't understand that it's being applied particularly to
• 1:17:44
  the mafia, but what do you think of that idea applied in a
• 1:17:46
  vacuum? Generally speaking, do you think
• 1:17:49
  as far as like the law and the country goes, do you think that
• 1:17:52
  that's something that is, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't
• 1:17:59
  really go with the whole idea of innocent until proven guilty
• 1:18:01
  kind of thing. Oh, yeah.
• 1:18:03
  I mean, a lot of the stuff, well, the stuff that Bobby
• 1:18:05
  Kennedy did was probably, well, they got caught using illegal
• 1:18:07
  wiretaps, right? Wiretapping was illegal in
• 1:18:10
  Nevada. They didn't have clearance.
• 1:18:11
  They did it illegally and they got caught doing that.
• 1:18:14
  It was a big embarrassment. Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  I mean, and some people would say they overstepped in their
• 1:18:19
  zeal to get organized crime. So that is definitely a danger.
• 1:18:23
  Yeah. And then it just becomes a
• 1:18:25
  precedent that it can be used to apply to anything else you want
• 1:18:28
  in the future. Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah. So yeah, that's why I've.
• 1:18:32
  Been thinking a lot about that because that's, that's got a lot
• 1:18:34
  of very modern day repercussions.
• 1:18:36
  You know, the decisions that we're making today or the
• 1:18:38
  decision we made a couple of years ago or whatever, you know,
• 1:18:41
  the repercussions that they have in other contexts that we didn't
• 1:18:44
  even imagine that it would come up, you know, just happening all
• 1:18:47
  over the place. So that that could be a pretty
• 1:18:49
  big thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:51
  Wow. So, so it turned out that it
• 1:18:55
  really was just a like the government, it was a combination
• 1:18:57
  of it being such a financially, you know, enticing, you know,
• 1:19:04
  spectacle that corporations were out mafia ING the mafia and then
• 1:19:10
  also down from local and federal government.
• 1:19:12
  Some people would argue that, yeah.
• 1:19:14
  But I mean, it's it's definitely a variety of factors.
• 1:19:16
  But if you look at it, kind of a variety of things came together
• 1:19:19
  to create that. A variety of things changed.
• 1:19:21
  So it's shifted, you know, the gambling industry kind of moves
• 1:19:24
  and adapts with the times. And there's nothing saying, you
• 1:19:27
  know, so like 30 years ago, hey, you want to make money in Vegas,
• 1:19:31
  build a big air conditioned box, fill it with slot machines and
• 1:19:34
  people are going to fly or drive like four or five hours and sit
• 1:19:37
  there and play for for three or four hours a day.
• 1:19:40
  That's changing. And that has changed.
• 1:19:42
  You know, people are gambling less or gambling more intensely.
• 1:19:44
  They're gambling less though. So not less money, but less
• 1:19:48
  time. So that's why you have a lot of
• 1:19:50
  other attractions in Vegas. And you know, also people can
• 1:19:53
  gamble almost anywhere. So now hey, you got to come out
• 1:19:56
  for something like sphere or. I was about to say, what do you
• 1:19:59
  think of this? Or F1, which is happening pretty
• 1:20:01
  soon. That's right, what was I?
• 1:20:04
  I went last year or two years ago to Vegas with my wife the
• 1:20:07
  same weekend as one of the races.
• 1:20:08
  But it wasn't F1 was it? What?
• 1:20:10
  What was it F 1-2 years ago? When did they start there?
• 1:20:12
  Well, I don't know. I mean, I know we had F1, but
• 1:20:15
  there's a copy, you know, there's, there's NASCAR.
• 1:20:17
  Was it on the street or was it November?
• 1:20:19
  It was in the street, the track was around.
• 1:20:21
  It's a. Lot like F1.
• 1:20:22
  Yeah, That was that cool. It was really cool.
• 1:20:25
  It was actually this time of year because it was, it was
• 1:20:27
  anniversary, yeah. Yeah, yeah, very cool. 20th,
• 1:20:30
  20th through 22nd. What?
• 1:20:33
  20th November this year November 20th.
• 1:20:35
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:20:36
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:20:37
  So cool, so cool, so cool. So, so I want to talk about real
• 1:20:41
  quick. I want to talk about economics
• 1:20:42
  and I actually want to ask you about writing because I'm also a
• 1:20:45
  writer and but I am not a prolific writer like yourself.
• 1:20:50
  And not only that, I have a, you know, and I've spoken to a
• 1:20:53
  couple of people to try to get, you know, people that are, have
• 1:20:56
  written larger libraries to ask their methods because I have a
• 1:21:01
  very hard time keeping track of like a whole thing.
• 1:21:06
  And then, you know, and I kind of get lost in the detail, the
• 1:21:09
  zoom. I'm either focused completely on
• 1:21:10
  the trees and I have a hard time seeing the whole forest while
• 1:21:14
  I'm writing. So I want to ask you about
• 1:21:16
  writing and the economics of, you know, gambling patterns or
• 1:21:19
  anything like that. Yeah, again, your choice is to
• 1:21:22
  which one you want to go into. Yeah, I'll go writing.
• 1:21:24
  I'm not. I'm not an economist.
• 1:21:26
  So like that, that stuff was a little bit outside.
• 1:21:28
  So we'll, we'll, we'll leave with the writing plan, yeah.
• 1:21:30
  Nice scope, let's talk. So like writing.
• 1:21:32
  And again, I'm not, I'm not that perfect right now just cuz I
• 1:21:35
  have a lot of things going on. Although I do like to keep my
• 1:21:37
  blog up. I try to get that out every two
• 1:21:39
  weeks. I'm working on something now
• 1:21:41
  about how, you know, instead of just giving people advice about
• 1:21:44
  how to be nice and solve conflicts and like, what if we
• 1:21:46
  like went mirror universe? And I'm going to give people
• 1:21:48
  advice on how to sabotage things as a leader and how to be a bad
• 1:21:51
  leader and what to do. And it's kind of so yeah, I'm
• 1:21:54
  working and hopefully I'll get that's cool.
• 1:21:56
  I'm working that today and over the weekend.
• 1:21:57
  It, I hope it is, you know, basically writing, you know, my
• 1:22:00
  thing when I'm doing a book is a little bit at a time.
• 1:22:06
  If I can write 2000 words a day, that's pretty good for me.
• 1:22:11
  You know, 1000 is good. The key is to just get words on
• 1:22:14
  paper. Also, like don't getting it.
• 1:22:17
  Don't get too attached to anything because a lot of it you
• 1:22:19
  might get rid of. So, you know, I've got.
• 1:22:24
  Yeah, I'm not. Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  Right now just have so much stuff going on because I'm doing
• 1:22:29
  this, teaching the class, working another job, part time
• 1:22:33
  back in school. Not a lot of time to sit and
• 1:22:35
  write, you know, I can imagine. Yeah.
• 1:22:38
  But when I was doing it for the 12 books or whatever I've done,
• 1:22:42
  when I was doing it more and I'll do it again someday, you
• 1:22:47
  know, it's just like basically breaking it up into small
• 1:22:50
  pieces. Whatever it is, break it up into
• 1:22:52
  small pieces. And again, I'm a nonfiction guy,
• 1:22:56
  so I can't really speak to fiction with any, any degree of
• 1:22:59
  authority there. But like nonfiction, like, yeah,
• 1:23:01
  hey, have your outline, know what each chapter's about.
• 1:23:04
  Then they just break it down in chapter.
• 1:23:06
  I'm the kind of writer who I'm pretty much, you know, kind of
• 1:23:09
  like if you imagine them designing the building as
• 1:23:13
  they're working on it. So when they're pouring the
• 1:23:15
  concrete in the first floor, they're kind of designing the
• 1:23:17
  5th floor. That's the kind of writer I am
• 1:23:19
  where like, I'll just have my outline and as I'm doing the
• 1:23:23
  research, I'm writing. And how often, like, how often
• 1:23:28
  do your projects evolve as you're writing them?
• 1:23:31
  And like, oh, I thought I was starting about this.
• 1:23:32
  And it turns out I'm going into this.
• 1:23:34
  Or, you know, I thought, you know, I thought this was enough
• 1:23:37
  to be a whole book. But it turns out I want to
• 1:23:39
  include this or I want to include all of it.
• 1:23:41
  And it turns out that I could only focus on this.
• 1:23:43
  Does that happen often? Yeah, I mean, they do.
• 1:23:46
  A lot of times it's getting concepts.
• 1:23:48
  So like I had an idea, I wanted to do a book about the history
• 1:23:51
  of E sports and I thought I wrote a pretty good first
• 1:23:56
  chapter, wrote a pretty good chapter about space 4, which is,
• 1:24:00
  which is a big deal. Then I'm like, yeah, that's I'm
• 1:24:04
  just not feeling this. And I gave it.
• 1:24:06
  I'm like, I'm not doing it. Don't know what I'm going to use
• 1:24:08
  that stuff for sitting on a hard drive somewhere, which is kind
• 1:24:12
  of sad, but it's like, Nah, my heart's not in it.
• 1:24:14
  I will, I will share my usual. It's not quite a sine wave.
• 1:24:20
  I don't know what you would call it, but like my sort of mood
• 1:24:24
  writing mood thing as we're going through it.
• 1:24:27
  So like basically start the project.
• 1:24:29
  Like yay, I'm up here. This is the coolest thing ever.
• 1:24:32
  This is the book that's going to change the world.
• 1:24:34
  I mean, I'm not grandiose. Like, Oh my God, this is so
• 1:24:37
  awesome. It's going to be great.
• 1:24:39
  This is so cool. Kind of get into it.
• 1:24:42
  The mood goes down, you know, And then by the time I'm like
• 1:24:45
  25%, I'm like, not only is this a bad idea, this is the
• 1:24:51
  stupidest idea ever. Terrible writer.
• 1:24:54
  If it was like if there was a good writer in here, a good idea
• 1:24:57
  here, you wouldn't be the writer to pull it off.
• 1:25:00
  So, like, a terrible idea and you are failing it tremendously.
• 1:25:04
  Or maybe it's a good idea, but your ineptitude as a writer is
• 1:25:07
  making this awful and borderline and unreadable.
• 1:25:10
  And this is just the worst thing ever written.
• 1:25:13
  But you're like slogging on, slogging on.
• 1:25:15
  Then like 75% through. It's like, OK, I could finish
• 1:25:19
  this thing. It's terrible, but at least
• 1:25:21
  it'll be done. And then the mood goes off.
• 1:25:24
  It's yeah, that's like kind of my, my experience.
• 1:25:26
  So like, it's not, it's not. How do you get?
• 1:25:28
  On yourself 12 times or more. It can be rough, but it's like,
• 1:25:33
  you know, like, yeah, then you're like, hey, this wasn't
• 1:25:34
  that bad. This actually wasn't that bad.
• 1:25:37
  Like there's something of value here because you just get so
• 1:25:39
  immersed in it. It seems so obvious.
• 1:25:42
  Sure. Yeah, I, I find that I write
• 1:25:45
  best when I, I think that writers have to get themselves
• 1:25:47
  into some kind of negative or not negative, but, you know,
• 1:25:51
  like challenging place. They, you know, like they have
• 1:25:56
  to experience some kind of angst in order to get good quality
• 1:25:59
  work. You know, I think that I think
• 1:26:00
  that we become a lot more analytical psychologically when
• 1:26:04
  we're, you know, having a hard, you know, whatever, having a
• 1:26:08
  negative experience. The best, most beautiful songs
• 1:26:10
  are written about the saddest things, you know, and the worst
• 1:26:13
  songs or ran about the happiest things, you know, Like it tends
• 1:26:16
  to be, it tends to reflect in the beat or the melody, which is
• 1:26:19
  much more upbeat. But like, as far as the prose
• 1:26:21
  and as far as the poetry goes, like, you know, you're not
• 1:26:24
  getting a, you're not getting a real piece of work out of
• 1:26:27
  someone whose life was perfect all the way through and like
• 1:26:29
  never had a problem. You know, I mean, so I bet like,
• 1:26:33
  I bet a natural part of writing is like, you know, focusing in
• 1:26:40
  on that frustration or focusing on the like, on like something
• 1:26:43
  to keep you in that analytical locked in kind of mode.
• 1:26:47
  And a big part of writing is putting order in the world and
• 1:26:50
  taking 1 little chaotic thing and ordering it.
• 1:26:52
  That's why again, kind of circling back in in this roller
• 1:26:56
  coaster. That is my interest here in
• 1:27:00
  conflict resolution writing is a big place, you know, narrative
• 1:27:03
  writing it down. That's why I like to suggest to
• 1:27:06
  people like, hey, number one thing you can do, What can I do
• 1:27:09
  to help myself? Hey, write it down.
• 1:27:12
  First of all, you're going to keep everything fresh.
• 1:27:14
  Second of all, it's kind of like you clear the buffer and you can
• 1:27:16
  let it go. So it's giving you a measure of
• 1:27:19
  control where you're just saying this is the story, this is what
• 1:27:22
  happened. So I was.
• 1:27:24
  Thinking out with conflict control, it also allows you a
• 1:27:27
  lot of times you have incomplete thoughts, but a lot of feelings
• 1:27:30
  flying around your head and it allows you to really put a
• 1:27:34
  thought that you might not have even fully finished, but you're
• 1:27:37
  feeling out and then understand it.
• 1:27:39
  I think that helps a lot too. Yeah.
• 1:27:41
  So writing is great for that. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of
• 1:27:43
  writing. And you know, hey, you do it.
• 1:27:45
  If someone else reads it, great. If nobody else reads it, it's
• 1:27:47
  still great because you did it. So that, that's why I'm a I'm a
• 1:27:50
  big fan of writing for all kinds of things.
• 1:27:54
  Wow, so cool, so cool. I love all the stuff that you're
• 1:27:58
  doing. I think it's really great.
• 1:27:59
  And I only that I love how we didn't get to, we didn't get a
• 1:28:02
  bunch of stuff, but you know, we but I love how are you able to
• 1:28:08
  keep yourself going from one passionate project to the next?
• 1:28:12
  And I think it's very commendable because I think that
• 1:28:14
  a lot of people, even my friends, I'm turning 30 in a
• 1:28:17
  month, a lot of my friends are set, have been set in their ways
• 1:28:20
  for the last five years, you know, as to what their interests
• 1:28:22
  are, what their passion is. And I think that, you know,
• 1:28:25
  being curious and, you know, really just learning to follow a
• 1:28:28
  thought, you know, and even if it doesn't belong in the order
• 1:28:31
  of your life, following it down somewhere might lead you to some
• 1:28:34
  really, really awesome places. So I think there's, I think
• 1:28:36
  you're a wonderful example of of that.
• 1:28:39
  Thanks, you know, following thoughts does do that also say
• 1:28:42
  the thing that I've really found like wonderful in ways I
• 1:28:45
  couldn't have imagined is going back to school has just been
• 1:28:49
  phenomenal, like just being a schooling again, it's been
• 1:28:52
  great. So I would highly recommend that
• 1:28:55
  for anybody. Take classes in anything.
• 1:28:58
  You know, I mean, now I'm doing my advanced EMT coursework.
• 1:29:03
  It's not, it's certainly not easy because I, I did not have a
• 1:29:06
  medical background, you know, and we didn't do bio outs after
• 1:29:09
  high school. So yeah.
• 1:29:11
  And last night we did a lot of anatomy and Physiology.
• 1:29:15
  What's been the hardest part for you of that?
• 1:29:17
  What's the most challenging part for you to learn?
• 1:29:18
  I mean, a lot of the challenging stuff is just taking it from
• 1:29:21
  like, OK, here's the way it is in the book to like we have an
• 1:29:24
  actual sick person here and then here's what you actually do.
• 1:29:27
  So actually like putting on that non rebreather mask, connecting
• 1:29:30
  it, you know, putting it up to 15 liters per Nets and kind of
• 1:29:34
  actually doing the stuff and even done it before as far, you
• 1:29:36
  know, it's it's definitely an interesting job.
• 1:29:38
  We've got sort of the the knowledge base you need.
• 1:29:42
  You also need to be fairly good with people who are probably
• 1:29:45
  having a pretty bad day if they're having a medical
• 1:29:48
  emergency. You also need to know all the
• 1:29:51
  rules of how to, you know, just kind of all the administrative
• 1:29:55
  stuff. There's a lot of pieces that go
• 1:29:57
  together and it's amazing. It's just an amazing job that
• 1:30:01
  just it needs all parts of your brain firing same time.
• 1:30:05
  It's awesome. It's awesome.
• 1:30:06
  Yeah. Dave, thank you so much for the
• 1:30:07
  time. This is really so much fun.
• 1:30:09
  Maybe we'll do a Part 2 sometime soon, especially if you keep on
• 1:30:12
  working on all these things. I mean, there's gonna be a lot
• 1:30:13
  more to talk about, so I would love to do that.
• 1:30:16
  But this is a real pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
• 1:30:19
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:30:20
  Of course, have a great weekend. All right, Take care.
• 1:30:22
  Thanks. Have.
• 1:30:23
  A great day. Bye bye.
• 1:30:24
  See you. It's done, done.
• 1:30:26
  Bye bye. Waiting for it to finish
• 1:30:29
  uploading. Thank you again.
• 1:30:32
  It's stuck at 99% uploading so maybe it'll finish after I
• 1:30:35
  close. Thanks again for the
• 1:30:37
  opportunity. I really appreciate it.