Episode 9: Framing the Gambler

Summary

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis – Episode 9: Framing the Gambler

Release Date: January 14, 2025
Host/Author: Michael Lewis
Produced by: Pushkin Industries

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Overview

In Episode 9 of Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, titled "Framing the Gambler," Michael Lewis delves into the burgeoning landscape of legalized sports betting in the United States. He explores the parallels between the sports gambling industry and the financial markets, examines international case studies from Britain and Australia, and unpacks the strategic framing employed by gambling companies to maintain their dominance and evade regulatory scrutiny. Throughout the episode, Lewis highlights the ethical and societal implications of this evolving industry and raises critical questions about the future of trust and fairness in American life.

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1. Insider Trading in Sports Gambling

Michael Lewis begins by drawing a comparison between insider trading in the stock market and the emerging issue of insider information in sports gambling.

Michael Lewis [02:32]: "The analogy, which seems obvious to some people, is The SEC ban on trading stocks when you have inside information. But even that is not an obvious type of crime."

Dan Davies, an economist and financial fraud expert, elaborates on the peculiar nature of insider trading laws:

Dan Davies [03:03]: "There really is no commandment that says thou shalt not trade securities while in possession of material non-public information."

Lewis points out the inconsistency in societal perceptions, noting how financial markets are uniquely vilified for insider trading compared to other industries.

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2. The Regulatory Landscape: Lessons from Britain and Australia

The episode shifts focus to international perspectives, specifically examining the outcomes of legalized sports gambling in Britain and Australia.

Charlie Lewis, an Australian journalist, provides alarming statistics:

Charlie Lewis [08:34]: "Australians lose more per capita than any other country in the world on gambling."

Australia's struggle with regulating sports betting despite overwhelming public support for restrictions is highlighted:

Charlie Lewis [09:07]: "Polls still show that 70% of Australians want a total ban on sports gambling ads."

The episode underscores how the gambling industry in these countries has entrenched its influence by controlling media narratives and resisting legislative reforms.

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3. The Gambling Industry's Influence and Framing Strategies

Lewis explores the strategic framing employed by the gambling industry to shift responsibility from themselves to the individual gambler. This approach mirrors tactics used by other predatory industries, such as tobacco.

Frank Farenkoff, former chairman of the RNC and gambling industry executive, discusses early strategies:

Frank Farenkoff [13:34]: "The gambling industry wouldn't do what the tobacco industry did and lie and tell people that its products never caused harm. Instead, it would shift the focus away from the industry and onto its customers."

Lewis critiques this narrative, emphasizing that it absolves the industry of accountability and perpetuates a blame-the-victim mentality.

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4. The 'Blame the Gambler' Narrative

The episode delves deeper into the origin of the "blame the gambler" frame, tracing it back to American legal strategies.

Charlie Lewis [10:15]: "The gambling industry is only really doing what every big harmful industry does, which is fund research to try and get their message out there."

Lewis argues that by framing gambling addiction as an individual's flaw rather than a systemic issue, the industry effectively deflects responsibility and stifles meaningful regulation.

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5. The Playbook of Doubt: Mimicking the Tobacco Industry

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on how the sports gambling industry adopts strategies akin to those used by the tobacco industry to create doubt and delay regulation.

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor in the history of science, provides insights into these tactics:

Michael Lewis [29:37]: "Naomi soon found herself under systematic attack from a machine she didn't know existed. A machine built to deny climate change and paid for by the fossil fuel industry."

Lewis connects this to the gambling industry's efforts to undermine scientific consensus on the harms of gambling, thereby preventing regulatory actions.

Malcolm Gladwell [32:44]: "You don't need to prove that what you do is safe or good or right or moral. All you have to do is prove that we don't know."

This strategy of sowing uncertainty ensures that the industry remains unregulated despite mounting evidence of its detrimental effects.

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6. Implications for America and Future Outlook

Lewis concludes by reflecting on the potential trajectory of legalized sports gambling in the United States, drawing lessons from international examples.

He warns that without proactive regulation and a shift in narrative, America could face severe societal repercussions akin to those seen in Australia and Britain, including increased gambling addiction and financial ruin among vulnerable populations.

Michael Lewis [37:43]: "Do not flinch. And I don't think they'll flinch. Too many interests are aligned."

Lewis underscores the urgency for American society to recognize and address the framing strategies of the gambling industry to prevent systemic harm.

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Key Takeaways

• Insider Trading Parallel: The sports gambling industry's focus on policing insider trading mirrors financial market regulations but highlights inconsistencies in societal attitudes towards different industries.

• International Lessons: Britain's and Australia's experiences with legalized sports betting reveal significant challenges in enforcing effective regulations and the pervasive influence of gambling companies on media and politics.

• Strategic Framing: The gambling industry's narrative shifts responsibility for addiction from the industry to individuals, a tactic previously employed by the tobacco industry, effectively hindering regulatory efforts.

• Creation of Doubt: By funding research that questions the harms of gambling, the industry creates scientific uncertainty, delaying necessary interventions and maintaining profitability.

• Future Implications: Without intervention, the normalization of sports gambling in the U.S. could lead to widespread addiction and financial distress, emphasizing the need for informed regulatory policies.

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Notable Quotes

• Michael Lewis [02:32]: "The analogy, which seems obvious to some people, is The SEC ban on trading stocks when you have inside information. But even that is not an obvious type of crime."

• Dan Davies [03:03]: "There really is no commandment that says thou shalt not trade securities while in possession of material non-public information."

• Charlie Lewis [08:34]: "Australians lose more per capita than any other country in the world on gambling."

• Frank Farenkoff [13:34]: "The gambling industry wouldn't do what the tobacco industry did and lie and tell people that its products never caused harm. Instead, it would shift the focus away from the industry and onto its customers."

• Naomi Oreskes [29:37]: "Naomi soon found herself under systematic attack from a machine she didn't know existed."

• Malcolm Gladwell [32:44]: "You don't need to prove that what you do is safe or good or right or moral. All you have to do is prove that we don't know."

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Conclusion

In "Framing the Gambler," Michael Lewis provides a compelling examination of the sports gambling industry's rise in America, its strategic maneuvers to evade regulation, and the profound societal impacts that may ensue. By drawing parallels to well-documented strategies of other predatory industries, Lewis emphasizes the critical need for awareness and proactive measures to safeguard public trust and ensure fair practices within this rapidly expanding sector.

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Listeners interested in deeper dives into the intersection of addiction, regulation, and industry influence may look forward to future episodes featuring interviews with experts like anthropologist Natasha Scholl and historian David Courtright.

Transcript

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Michael Lewis]

I hate to do this, but I just have to pick up right where we left off. In our last episode, we were talking about insider trading, how it's become the one crime the sports gambling industry really wants to police. But it's also the one thing that every other guy on an American college campus wants to do. As my producer LJ found out after just a few hours at the University of Kansas.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you gonna ask your roommate for any, like, intel on the player front?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yeah, well.

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, well, he's in the. He's driving there right now. He's on the bus.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

So I'm gonna text him later tonight.

[Michael Lewis]

Be like, what should I put money on? Wandering around the integrity landscape these last six months, we found that some huge number of Americans who are too young to drink now gamble on sports. Yet no one ever gets in trouble for taking their bets. What people do get in trouble for is trading on inside sports information. The analogy, which seems obvious to some people, is The SEC ban on trading stocks when you have inside information. But even that is not an obvious type of crime.

[Dan Davies]

You know, some kind of frauds clearly fall under thou shalt not steal. Some kinds of frauds clearly fall under thou shalt not bear false witness. But there really is no commandment that says thou shalt not trade securities while in possession of material non public information.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Dan Davies, once an economist at the bank of England, an analyst for a bunch of investment banks, he now writes about financial fraud, lying for money. His first book was called Most people.

[Dan Davies]

Would consider that like just the epitome of doing good business. If you don't have more information, why are you making this transaction? And it wasn't a crime in most of the world for most of the history of stock markets. It became a crime in the USA in the 1930s after the Wall street crash.

[Michael Lewis]

It's kind of odd, right, that the financial markets are the only place where you're vilified. If you trade on some piece of information not available to the general public, Amazon can buy your property without telling you that they've already acquired the rest of your city. But if Jeff Bezos buys Amazon stock because he knows Amazon has just secretly bought an entire city really cheaply, he might go to jail.

[Dan Davies]

It's a decision that society has made to create this crime on the basis of a trade off. And that trade off is obviously that if you have insider dealing rules, you make it look like a fair game, you're going to attract more people into that game, and that in turn is going to attract more of the savings of the middle class in to finance the industrial developments of the capitalist world.

[Michael Lewis]

So maybe insider trading laws make sense in the stock market. Though I got to say that their main effect is to trick a lot of people into thinking that the financial markets are more fairly policed than they actually are. But that's my point, not Dan's. Here's why I called Dan up. Because his country is now trying to turn the informal rules against insider trading and sports gambling into actual laws. Just like in the stock market.

[Dan Davies]

It is being done, in my view, on the basis of a very, very shaky legal footing. The Gambling Commission have taken it upon themselves to say that placing a bet with material non public information is in principle cheating and that they will investigate it with their own criminal powers.

[Michael Lewis]

You're basically policing the market. For whose benefit? Like who benefits from raising it to the level of a crime?

[Dan Davies]

I think that is completely the right question to ask because we know the trade off that we made with securities markets, which is that we decided that we would police their internal rules for them using the criminal law because we want to. To attract everyone into the capital markets. And I think it's a very good question to ask what is this great benefit that the gambling industry provides to society that we should do it this huge favor of letting it put people in actual grown up prison in the worst cases for the crime of knowing more about a horse race than the bookmaker does?

[Michael Lewis]

And the answer to the question who benefits? It's the bookmaker.

[Dan Davies]

I assume the bookmakers are the concentrated interest. They're the people who pay quite a lot of the bills. And so a lot of these sports seem to be quite happy to bend over backwards to keep things nice and safe for the bookmakers, to allow them effectively the kind of privileged position that stock market specialists used to have in the 1960s and 1970s.

[Michael Lewis]

The sports bookies hate insider trading for the same reason they hate smart sports gamblers. They're in the business of maximizing stupid sports bets and minimizing smart ones. They don't want to take bets from people who know more than they do. One way to avoid those bets is to criminalize the information. Hi, I'm Michael Lewis and this is against the rules. It's still hard to tell how exactly sports gambling will play out in the United States. It's still so new here. But outside the United States, there are places that are way ahead of us. They give us a glimpse of our future and it's not a pretty sight. The British have allowed online sports gambling since 2005. Within a couple of years, sports betting in Britain had gone from a thing you had to work to do to a thing you had to work to avoid. Ads like this are everywhere.

[Dan Davies]

Football's back cop competitions, relegation battles, the nights under the lights.

[Michael Lewis]

I absolutely love it. You can see the effects of this gambling culture everywhere. Just Google gamblers, Anonymous meetings in London. The gambling industry in Britain has acquired so much political clout that the British government still thinks mostly in terms of policing the gambler rather than policing the industry. But it's the Australians who are way ahead of everyone, even the British. Australia legalized sports gambling with few restrictions back in 2001.

[Charlie Lewis]

Australians lose more per capita than any other country in the world on gambling.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Charlie Lewis, journalist for the Australian news site Crikey. Charlie was amazed to learn that 27 million Australians were losing $24 billion a year gambling per capita. That would be the equivalent of Americans blowing more than $200 billion a year. In Australia, problem gambling has become such a big issue that it was front and center in the last election, which the Labour Party won by promising to enact lots of restrictions on the sports gambling industry.

[Charlie Lewis]

There was a bipartisan process that unanimously concluded that there ought to be a blanket ban on online gambling advertising in Australia. The government had kind of sat on those recommendations for over a year until recently announcing that they were going to do a much more watered down version of what that report was recommending.

[Michael Lewis]

Polls still show that 70% of Australians want a total ban on sports gambling ads. The major political parties say they agree, but there's been no ban. The sport's gambling ads are still everywhere.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hey, mate, this Chuck 50 bucks on race four. Come give me lucky nipple a rope. Hello, mate.

One thing I love about you Aussies, you're all different.

[Michael Lewis]

And on the punt, they're all as.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Mad as cut snakes.

[Frank Farenkoff]

Get him on side, rats.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

You just butchered me, Molsey.

[Michael Lewis]

Mad as cut snakes. You gotta love it. Anyway, Charlie set out to understand why the ad ban was going nowhere. What he found was a situation even worse than in Great Britain. The sports gambling companies hadn't simply bought the political process, they'd bought the bulk of the Australian media too, with ad money.

[Charlie Lewis]

The real unity is from the Australian mainstream media because they rely on that money much more than they ever used to. So they are of one voice opposing reform, which is kind of interesting because that's also who pays for journalism in this country.

[Michael Lewis]

It wasn't that the Australian media completely ignored the problems that sports gambling caused. But Charlie found that a lot of the Australian media had settled on a narrative that was extremely convenient for the gambling industry. Yes, they report on the bankruptcies, the ruined lives, the suicides, but their reporting also implied that the industry bore zero blame for any of it, because some people simply didn't know how to gamble responsibly. Now, we know that young males like to gamble, and we know that they're vulnerable to gambling problems. A society allows gambling companies to bombard young males with ads and free offers to gamble and VIP status. And then when vast numbers of young males get themselves in trouble, we all say, well, those young people really shouldn't have done that to Charlie Lewis down under. This frame felt off. So he dug deeper and found that this whole blame the gambler frame indeed had an origin story, an American one, created by an American lawyer named Frank Farenkoff. Frank Farenkoff grew up in Reno, but made his career as a Washington lawyer and later became chairman of the RNC. Back in the early 90s, as Charlie writes, the Las Vegas casinos and the companies that made slot machines wanted to expand their operations. But at the very same time, there were U.S. congressmen who were upset about the effects of gambling and who were writing legislation to ban all forms of gambling, which would not only have stopped the spread, but would have shut down Las Vegas too. It was Frank who convinced the casino operators to get ahead of the conversation. He told them they needed to come together around a strategy and the first step would be to admit that gambling addiction is real.

[Frank Farenkoff]

And now that was not an easy sell.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Frank himself, now the co chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates. But Back in the 1990s, the Vegas casino owners hired him to be president and CEO of the new American Gaming Association.

[Frank Farenkoff]

The guys who were running the gaming industry, the various companies, many of them didn't believe there was any problem, as with, you know, responsible gaming. And one of the first meetings when I went, I brought with me the picture of all the leaders of the tobacco industry standing before Congress, raising their right hand, saying that tobacco wasn't addictive.

[Naomi Oreskes]

Yes or no, do you believe nicotine is not addictive?

[Michael Lewis]

I believe nicotine is not addictive.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes, I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

[Michael Lewis]

I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

[Frank Farenkoff]

And I said to them, you know, I want you to picture this in your mind. If we don't do something affirmatively, which is in the public interest, the dealing with we know is a problem. But no one had any idea how deep the problem was.

[Michael Lewis]

The gambling industry wouldn't do what the tobacco industry did and lie and tell people that its products never caused harm. Instead, it would shift the focus away from the industry and onto its customers. It would fund lots of research about gambling addiction without ever having to do anything that reduced the money they made from the addicts.

[Charlie Lewis]

The gambling industry is only really doing what every big harmful industry does, which is fund research to try and get their message out there.

[Michael Lewis]

That's the Australian journalist Charlie Lewis.

[Charlie Lewis]

Again, certainly not the tobacco companies. And I don't think even fossil fuel companies were ever as successful as the gambling industry has been in making that process kind of invisible, making it something that people don't really know is happening.

[Michael Lewis]

We are all now just living in Frank Farenkoff's frame, a frame that keeps people's attention on the person and off the situation, on individual weakness and off an environment designed to profit from that weakness. In Australia, the regulatory environment has fallen entirely under the control of the gambling industry. But this isn't a show about Australia. It's a show about America and how this latest predatory industry is likely to affect us. What's happening in Australia seems bad, but if the pattern holds, what will happen in America will one day seem even worse.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hello there. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. Ready? Let's go. We're getting in the special car. This is the special car. Look.

[Speedy Gladwell]

Where?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

See the blue car?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Whoa.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So here we are. We're driving down a lovely winding country road in the Hudson Valley. I am here with my daughter, Speedy, and we are sampling one of the latest and greatest of BMW's creations. Makes 335 horsepower, range of over 300 miles. Riding in the BMW i4E40. You know how your toys have batteries? This car has a battery. How do you like this car so far?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Does it go fast?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, it goes so fast.

[Speedy Gladwell]

Let's go.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you ready?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you sure?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah. Whoa.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Spadey, was that fast again. Oh, yeah. Okay. In a world full of ordinary, there's a brand that dares to be different. Feel the rush of precision engineering as power meets sophistication with every turn. It's not just a drive, it's an experience. So buckle up and embrace the extraordinary. Because when the road calls, only one answer will do. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Shall we see what happens if we push the accelerator all the way to the floor? Are you ready?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you sure?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

One, two, three.

[Michael Lewis]

Whoa.

[Speedy Gladwell]

Elevator. Dad, is it the elevator going up.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Up a hill in this BMW is just like an elevator. That's exactly right. You know what this car is? This is your first BMW. Learn more at BMWUSA.com listener A new year is finally here. And if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Habits to build, travel plans to make, mocktail recipes to perfect. Good thing. Our sponsor, NerdWallet is is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the best financial products. Introducing NerdWallet's best of awards. List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts, and more. The nerds have done the work for you, researching and reviewing over 1100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer credit card with a 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. Or a bank account with a top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that too. Know you're getting the best products for you without doing all the research yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com awards to find the best financial products today.

[Michael Lewis]

They're now a long list of products and substances either banned or strictly controlled in other countries that were allowed to wreak havoc in the United States, whereupon lawyers have rushed in and made a fortune by suing the relevant industry. And then everyone looks back and says, how did that happen? How did those tobacco companies get away with doing that? Or how did opioids run wild for so long?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The drug is released in 1996, and initially there's this incredible reinforcement for them where they're getting these letters from people, these amazing letters who say, you know, I can pick up my grandkid for the first time in years. I can go back to work. You've given me my life back.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain, the story of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, which back in 1996 came to market with a new painkiller called OxyContin, and the drug becomes a huge blockbuster.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

There's a big moment where it edges out Viagra as the number one drug of the day.

[Michael Lewis]

So it's released in 96. When is the first signs? Like, if you were sitting there and you were concerned, when would you have first noted there's some problems here?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Really early? It's like almost within a year. Really, really early. When they released OxyContin, they sent out into the field all across the country the biggest sales force that had ever been put to work marketing a single drug. The interesting thing about doing that is those are your canaries in the coal mine. You have this early warning system, which is these people who are actually out there in the communities. And so when you start getting doctors who say, well, geez, this is interesting. I had a patient come back and say, the pain is coming back. Within eight hours, they've started taking three pills every 24 hours, not two pills. You know, you get pharmacists saying, people are starting to break into my pharmacy and steal the OxyContin. The people who are hearing about that.

[Michael Lewis]

Are Purdue's sales reps. Now, obviously, opioids aren't the same as sports gambling companies. Sports gambling companies make you poor instead of making you dead. Then again, if you're poor, you're more likely to die. What opioids taught us, or should have taught us, was that when lots of money is being made, massive public health problems can fester out in the open for years.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

So it's not that people didn't notice in a public way that there were problems with OxyContin, that it was killing people, that people were addicted to it, and indeed that the company had done a lot of bad things. And there's this fascinating moment where there's a congressional hearing. And Arlen Spector, the late Republican senator from Pennsylvania, in this hearing, has this moment in 2007.

[Frank Farenkoff]

I see fines with some frequency and think that they are expensive licenses for criminal misconduct. I don't know whether that applies in this case, but a jail sentence is a deterrent, and a fine is not, not a corporate fine in the context of the kind of profits which are involved here.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

And he says, are we not on some level, just issuing them an expensive license to keep doing business? And it's this kind of incredibly poignant moment to look back at the evil.

[Michael Lewis]

Now seems so obvious. The Sackler family made billions peddling a drug they knew was addictive. But the fact that it now seems so obvious should make everyone a little uneasy. Like, what is going on right now that one day in the distant future will seem so obviously evil.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

You're actually working in a very familiar kind of American moral vernacular, right? Which is guns don't kill people. People kill people. Right? Like, we have a deeply ingrained libertarian sense that you can create something that will wreak havoc and put it out in the world and get very rich doing it. And as long as there's some person downstream of you making some bad decision, you're kind of off the hook morally and legally.

[Michael Lewis]

We lead the world in many things, and one of those things is in our tendency to see the person, rather than his situation as the ultimate cause of some problem. Even when the situation has been designed to lead the person to his ruin. Maybe especially when an industry has designed the situation, so long as that industry remains faceless, telling the story of how.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The wrong happened and how it should be righted is a lot harder if there's no characters in the story.

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, no, it's an accident. With driverless cars.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Michael Lewis]

Stay faceless. Blame the customer. Buy media and politicians. All of that needs to be part of the sports gambling industry's strategy if they want to stay out of trouble. After that, there's only one more thing they need to do. Create doubt.

[Amazon Voice]

We've all been there. You're sick and you're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. Then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about getting your prescriptions. That's a whole other story. Amazon understands. That's why they created Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, designed to remove these pain points from healthcare. With Amazon One Medical, you get 247 virtual care so you can see a provider within minutes and avoid those long, annoying waits. And with Amazon Pharmacy, your prescriptions are delivered directly to you quickly and affordably. No more trips to the pharmacy and no more surprise costs at the cash register. Thanks to the ease and convenience of Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, healthcare just got less painful. Learn [e-mail] hello.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hello there. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. Ready? Let's go. We're getting in the special car. This is the special. Look. See the blue car?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Whoa.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So here we are. We're driving down a lovely winding country road in the Hudson Valley. I am here with my daughter, Speedy, and we are sampling one of the latest and greatest of BMW's creations. Makes 335 horsepower, range of over 300 miles. Riding in the BMW i4E40. You know how your toys have batteries? This car has a battery. How do you like this car so far?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Does it go fast?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, it goes so fast.

[Speedy Gladwell]

Let's go.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you ready?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you sure?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah. Whoa.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Speedy. Was that fast again? Oh, yeah. Okay. In a world full of ordinary, there's a brand that dares to be different. Feel the rush of precision engineering as power meets sophistication with every turn. It's not just a drive, it's an experience. So buckle up and embrace the extraordinary. Because when the road calls, only one answer will do. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Shall we see what happens if we push the accelerator all the way to the floor. Are you ready?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Are you sure?

[Speedy Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

One, two, three.

[Speedy Gladwell]

Whoa, Elevator. That isn't the elevator.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Going up, up a hill in this BMW is just like an elevator. That's exactly right. You know what this car is? This is your first BMW. Learn more at BMW USA.com nerds listener a new year is finally here, and if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Habits to build, travel plans to make, mocktail recipes to perfect Good thing. Our sponsor, NerdWallet is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the best financial products. Introducing NerdWallet's best of awards. List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts, and more. The nerds have done the work for you, researching and reviewing over 1100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer credit card with a 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. Or a bank account with a top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that, too. Know you're getting the best products for you without doing all the research yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com to find the best financial products today.

[Michael Lewis]

Lots of smart people recently have been noticing the same addictive forces at work in American life. We've interviewed some of them, for example, the anthropologist Natasha Scholl, who wrote a book called Addiction by Design and whose interview can be heard later this season. Another great writer on this topic is the historian David Courtright, who author of the Age of How Bad Habits Became Big Business. There are now shelves of books on how strong market forces and weak regulations leave Americans wildly exposed to predatory industries. But the grandmama of all these studies is Merchants of Doubt by Eric Conway and Naomi Oreskes. It's about the way that predatory industries use bad science to obscure the good science that's trying to reveal harms to the wider society.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So I started just pulling on that thread and discovered this whole universe of scientific work that nobody had really written about.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Naomi Oreskes, Harvard professor in the history of science. Way back in 2001, she was looking into the question of how much difference it made who paid for science. And she was looking specifically at oceanography, a field that launched in a big way after World War II with money from the U.S. navy. These early oceanographers discovered, among other things, that Oceans were warming, that the climate was changing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So I wrote what became my most famous paper, the paper on the scientific consensus on climate change, saying, hey, guys, there really is a consensus on this issue, and there has been for a while now. And I started getting hate mail and threatening phone calls.

[Michael Lewis]

Naomi soon found herself under systematic attack from a machine she didn't know existed. A machine built to deny climate change and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. A very American machine that happens to employ scientists. She decided to study the machine and others like it. I want to know the playbook. So I'm asking her to play a game with me. It's called Devil's Advocate. Naomi hasn't paid much attention to sports gambling, but it doesn't matter because she understands the big picture. Sort of like a talented consultant to Hell Incorporated. I'm going to turn you into an advisor to the forces of darkness. Tell them what they do to combat what's coming.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Great. Well, first of all, I charge a lot of money for this. Just want to be clear up front. This is not a pro bono operation. But what we need to do is situate you as an honest business. You're good guys. Just giving people an opportunity to do something that they enjoy. This is a form of entertainment. It's fun, it's enjoyable. People love professional sports, and people enjoy gambling on professional sports. Now, we recognize that for some people, it can be a problem, but that's relatively minor. What you will do is promote the notion of responsible gambling, that this is an adult activity. Adults can decide for themselves. And for the vast majority of people, it's perfectly safe.

[Michael Lewis]

Now, vast majority might be too strong. I mean, the respected medical journal the Lancet just published a bunch of scary scientific findings. For example, one in six adolescents who gamble on sports develop a problem. That sort of science could screw up your business if you're running a sports gambling app. That's why you need Naomi.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You're going to cast doubt on that science. You're going to say it's unsettled, we don't know, the methodology is suspect. You're going to come up with a whole set of strategies, and I'm going to help you with that. You will find credible researchers at credible universities, including my own Harvard, places like Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago. And you will find scientists who are willing to do research that casts doubt on the mainstream view that this is harmful. Once you have that research in place, then you will be able to say in public that there's no scientific consensus on the harms of this activity. And therefore that there's no reason for the government to regulate it or control it in any way.

[Michael Lewis]

And you think this will be effective?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Not think I know it will be effective because we've done it before. I can show you many books, many articles, many examples. I can show you examples of court cases that we have won because we cast doubt on the science.

[Michael Lewis]

And what other industries should I look to as models from my own? Like, if I want to see who's done this, well, who's, like, state of the art?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, the textbook case is tobacco. We've known that tobacco was harmful since the 1930s. We've known since the 1950s that tobacco caused cancer, emphysema, bronchitis, heart disease. But tobacco is still legal everywhere in the world. Millions of people still smoke. And even in the United States, where significant controls were placed on tobacco from the 1990s onwards, we delayed, we effectively delayed tobacco regulation for the better part of half a century.

[Michael Lewis]

And so if I don't take your advice, if I just let the science pile up that gambling addiction is growing because of legalized sports betting, what's going to happen to me if I try to just stay out of this?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, your business will be destroyed because the scientific evidence will make it clear that this is massively damaging. There will be public outcry. There will be parents, mothers, the spouses of people who have been bankrupted by your industry. There will be teenagers who committed suicide after being bankrupted or having their lives destroyed by gambling addiction. You will be hauled into court. You will face thousands of lawsuits. You'll face both personal injury lawsuits, class action lawsuits, and possibly state and federal prosecution. And your industry will be destroyed. So this is a matter of life and death for your industry.

[Michael Lewis]

Sorry, I don't have any choice. That's the big point here. The inevitability of what the sports gambling industry must do if it wants to survive in its current most profitable form. The first thing it must do is figure out the best scientists to buy. Our devil's advocate isn't worried about that.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

We can identify three different types of scientists who you might be able to find help you type.

[Michael Lewis]

Number one is the shill. The hacks who show up every time some predatory new industry needs help. But they aren't all that useful because of their past association with big tobacco or Purdue Pharma or whoever.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

What's better is if we can find someone who's a bit of a true believer. And we do that in two ways. A person could be a true scientific believer, and that happens when for some reason someone, it doesn't accept the science and it might be a legitimate reason, we can find those people and they may be willing to accept funding from us for their research because this is research they want to do independently. So we can make common cause with those people.

[Michael Lewis]

Yes, we can get the science we pay for, we can buy the science we need, but in the end, we might not need to pay that much because this is America, baby land of the free, which means, among other things, being free from science.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The other people we can make common cause with are ideological fellow travelers, people who believe in the free market system on principle, who don't believe in government regulation. I can assure you there are lots of them, people who are opposed to government regulation on principle and they will support us and they will do this work because they don't want to see your industry regulated. And those are the best, those are the ones we want most of all because they are, they're true believers, but they're not industry shills. And that makes them perfect to present when we go to the New York Times or the Washington Post with our side of the story.

[Michael Lewis]

If muddying the waters is actually going to cause so much damage, actual damage in the society, how do these people who are going to help us sort of defend themselves from, I mean, why do their institutions even put up with them? I would have thought they would be discredited just by joining forces with us.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, universities are very weak. And the remarkable thing about universities is how easy it is to buy them.

[Michael Lewis]

Is it sufficient just to muddy the waters in scientific research? That's all we need to do.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes, that's the beauty of what we do. You, you don't need to prove that what you do is safe or good or right or moral. All you have to do is prove that we don't know. Because if people think the science is unsettled, then they will think it's premature for the government to get involved.

[Michael Lewis]

So the lesson to draw from that is don't waver, don't show any weakness. As long as I don't flinch. I'm more likely to be the tobacco industry than I am the ozone hole industry.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Correct?

[Michael Lewis]

Right. So sports, if I'm my sports gambling company, just has to be just consistent in the messaging that we don't know.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Correct. Do not flinch.

[Michael Lewis]

Do not flinch. And I don't think they'll flinch. Too many interests are aligned. The sports leagues all see gambling as their future. The tax revenue for states isn't big yet, but it's new revenue and new revenue's hard to find. I think this is what's coming. Lots more people getting into trouble. Lots more ruin and anger and pity. Because your society will not defend you against this particular threat. Not for a very long time. You'll need to defend yourself or more likely, the young men in your life. And we're going to tell you how in our next episode. So I'm at family dinner in Paris at the Olympics, and I made a bet, $500 bet that I didn't tell my dad about. And the dopamine is filling my brain right now. I can smell the money. Against the Rules is written and hosted by me, Michael Lewis and produced by Lydia Jean Cott, Kathryn Girardeau and Ariella Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is Jake Gorski. Our music was composed by Matthias Bosse and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphoniet. Our fact checker is Lauren Vespoli. Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin Podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to listen to ad free and learn about other exclusive offerings, don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin plus subscription and at Pushkin FM plus or on our Apple show page.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Okay, I'm a little scared now. This could be taken out of context and people will think I've gone over the dark side.

[Michael Lewis]

Oh, no, that was just the best.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Okay, I'll share another secret. You know, people always say, like, if you could be reincarnated as anything in the world, I would like to come back as a standup comic because I don't think anybody gives people more pleasure.

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