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