Part 8: The Other Massachusetts Miracle

Summary

Scratch & Win - Part 8: The Other Massachusetts Miracle

Release Date: March 12, 2025

In the eighth installment of Scratch & Win, hosted by Ian Coss and produced by GBH News, the narrative delves into the transformative journey of the Massachusetts Lottery, particularly focusing on the inception and evolution of scratch tickets. Titled "The Other Massachusetts Miracle", this episode examines how innovative strategies and pivotal leadership propelled the lottery from obscurity to becoming the most successful in America, while also exploring the broader implications of legalized gambling in the United States.

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1. Introduction to the Lottery’s Genesis

The episode opens by revisiting the humble beginnings of the Massachusetts Lottery in the 1970s. Initially introduced as a tool to legitimate gambling activities previously conducted by mafia-run bookmakers, the lottery sought to bring gambling into the public and governmental realm. Ian Coss sets the stage by recounting his personal visits to Mayette's convenience store, where his daughter Tracy Mayette manages the legacy of her father's involvement in the early days of scratch tickets.

Ian Coss [02:09]: “Fifty years ago, when Glenn sold that first scratch ticket, it cost a dollar...”

2. The Evolution of Scratch Tickets

The discussion transitions to the evolution of scratch tickets from their inception. Initially priced at $1 with a maximum prize of $10,000, the tickets underwent significant changes over the decades. By the late 1970s, sales were dwindling, prompting a critical need for reinvention to sustain the lottery's appeal.

David Duchovny [02:38]: “To a $2 ticket. This again is Glenn Myatt, the former owner.”

The prices escalated over time, moving from $1 to $20, and eventually reaching $50, reflecting a shift in consumer behavior and perceptions of value.

3. Leadership Transformation: Jim Hosker’s Impact

A pivotal moment in the lottery's history was the appointment of Jim Hosker as the director in 1983. Despite his unconventional background with only a high school diploma, Hosker's leadership marked a significant departure from the previous conservative management. His people-centric approach was instrumental in redefining the lottery's image from a stoic government entity to an engaging entertainment form.

David Duchovny [06:17]: “I've never met anybody that understood people better than Jimmy Hosker.”

Hosker's collaboration with Jim O'Brien, an innovative game designer, led to a renaissance in scratch ticket offerings, ensuring they remained fresh and enticing for players.

4. Innovations in Game Design

Jim O'Brien’s contributions were revolutionary. Faced with declining sales, O'Brien conducted extensive focus groups to realign scratch tickets with player preferences. His primary changes included:

• Prize Structure Adjustment: Transitioning from tickets with numerous small prizes and a few large jackpots to incorporating more mid-range prizes, termed "chatter money," to enhance player satisfaction and perceived value.

David Duchovny [10:00]: “You've got a better chance than ever to win $40 or more.”

• Multiple Reveal Mechanics: Introducing multi-layered scratch areas within a single ticket to increase engagement and excitement, thereby mimicking storytelling by keeping players intrigued until the final reveal.

Ian Coss [11:24]: “A good story is like a good scratch ticket. It keeps you guessing until the very end.”

• Game Overlap Strategy: Unlike the initial model where new games replaced old ones without overlap, O'Brien implemented a system where multiple games coexisted, catering to diverse player fanbases and maintaining long-term interest.

5. The "Massachusetts Miracle"

These strategic innovations culminated in what was later dubbed the "Massachusetts Miracle." From 1983 to 1991, the lottery experienced unprecedented growth, with instant ticket revenues increasing fourteenfold. By 1991, annual revenues approached a billion dollars, cementing Massachusetts as the gold standard in lottery success.

Ian Coss [16:04]: “The mistletoe ticket came out. 1991, Crane retired...”

The success attracted attention nationwide, with lotteries from other states sending representatives to study Massachusetts’s approach, further spreading its innovative practices.

6. The Rise of Competition and Legalized Gambling

As gambling expanded beyond lotteries, the landscape became increasingly competitive. The 1990s saw the emergence of casinos, and the early 2000s introduced online poker, followed by the legalization of sports betting in 2018. This proliferation posed new challenges for state lotteries to maintain their market share amidst a diverse array of gambling options.

Ian Coss [21:37]: “The Massachusetts lottery remains the gold standard in terms of sales per capita. But that era of explosive growth is over.”

7. Perspectives on Gambling: An Interview with Barney Frank

A significant portion of the episode features an insightful conversation with former Congressman Barney Frank, who advocates for the legalization of gambling. Frank's libertarian views emphasize personal freedom and minimal state intervention, arguing that the successes of lotteries have dispelled myths about widespread social degradation resulting from legalized gambling.

David Duchovny [23:43]: “What percentage of state revenues on the average do you think lotteries are?”

Barney Frank [30:41]: “I'm in favor of government. I think we do too little on those things...”

Frank challenges the traditional discomfort associated with gambling, suggesting that lotteries serve as a pragmatic solution for generating public revenue without heavily taxing citizens.

8. Cultural Impact and Stigma Surrounding Gambling

Despite the lottery's success, societal views on gambling remain complex and often conflicted. The episode explores the lingering stigma and perceived moral implications of gambling, contrasting it with other liberal causes like marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage. Historian Steven Robertson’s perspective illustrates how gambling is seen as an “other” within the capitalist framework, coexisting on society's margins.

Jonathan Cohen [35:11]: “It's also a myth because most lottery winners do just fine...”

The narrative also touches upon the mythologizing of lottery winners who allegedly fall into destitution, debunking it by highlighting that such outcomes are rare and often exaggerated.

9. The Enduring Legacy and Future of the Lottery

Concluding the episode, Ian Coss reflects on the enduring presence of lotteries despite the evolving gambling landscape. Personal anecdotes from store visits underscore the lottery's persistent appeal, driven by habit and the tactile satisfaction of scratch tickets. The Massachusetts Lottery's ability to adapt and innovate continues to sustain its relevance, suggesting a resilient future despite emerging competition.

David Duchovny [38:28]: “Look at the store. Every store has them. Yeah, yeah. No one's going to stop playing.”

10. Conclusion and Reflections

"The Other Massachusetts Miracle" encapsulates the intricate balance between innovation, leadership, and cultural acceptance that has defined the Massachusetts Lottery's success. It highlights the lottery's role in normalizing gambling in America, the ethical debates surrounding its impact, and the ongoing tension between state revenue needs and societal well-being. The episode leaves listeners contemplating the broader implications of legalized gambling and the fine line between entertainment and vice.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jim Hosker on Leadership:

  David Duchovny [06:17]: “I've never met anybody that understood people better than Jimmy Hosker.”

• Jim O'Brien on Prize Structure:

  David Duchovny [10:00]: “You’ve got a better chance than ever to win $40 or more.”

• Barney Frank on Gambling Legitimacy:

  Barney Frank [30:41]: “I'm in favor of government. I think we do too little on those things...”

• Reflection on Gambling Stigma:

  Ian Coss [34:07]: “Jonathan Cohen believes this is also why you hear so many stories about lottery winners who wind up miserable and destitute.”

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Credits:

• Host and Scriptwriter: Ian Coss
• Executive Producer: Devin Maverick Robins
• Producers: Isabel Hibbard and Ian Coss
• Story Editor: Lacy Roberts
• Editorial Advisor: Jen McKim
• Fact Checkers: Ryan Alderman and Isabel Hibbard
• Scoring and Music Supervision: Ian Coss
• Graphic Design: Bill Miller
• Project Manager: Meiqian He

Special Mentions:

• Richard McGowan and Tom Damakis for their contributions
• Paul Regan for sharing archival lottery advertisements
• Jack Connors in memoriam

For full transcripts and additional content, visit gbhnews.org/scratchandwin.

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Closing Reflection:

The episode poignantly captures the duality of lotteries as both a state-run revenue generator and a pervasive element of American culture fraught with ethical debates. By tracing the historical trajectory and engaging with diverse perspectives, "The Other Massachusetts Miracle" offers a comprehensive exploration of how scratch tickets became a cornerstone of legalized gambling, shaping economic and social landscapes in Massachusetts and beyond.

Transcript

[David Duchovny]

Hi everyone. I'm David Duchovny. Join me on my podcast Fail Better, where we use failure as a lens to reflect on the past and analyze the current moment. I speak with makers and performers like Rob Lowe, Rosie O'Donnell and Kenya Barris, as well as thinkers like Kara Swisher and Nate Silver, to understand how both personal setbacks and larger forces impact our world. Listen to Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ian Coss]

Support for Scratch and Win comes from M. Steinert and Sons, celebrating the anniversary of Steinway and Sons throughout March with special offers on new Steinway and Steinway designed Boston and Essex pianos. Learn [e-mail] support for Scratch and Win comes from Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Case lottery tickets right here. What are we looking at here? They ship them FedEx now. Used to be UPS. You might remember back in episode one, we met a convenience store owner named Glenn Mayette. He was behind the counter on day one of the scratch ticket era, when customers lined up to try the new instant game. That same store, Mayette's, is now run by his daughter, Tracy Mayette. Can you say what we're looking at here? You're looking at my delivery scratch tickets. This box she just got is small enough to hold under one arm, but Tracy shows me a receipt listing the total value, and it's a pretty big number. In case you're wondering, there's no point in stealing scratch tickets because the state would just invalidate them. But still, staring at this box of tickets on a table, I feel like I'm standing in a bank vault. I can say it to you, but that's what's in this box. Got it. This is where we keep a meeting.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, yeah.

[Ian Coss]

Fifty years ago, when Glenn sold that first scratch ticket, it cost a dollar. The maximum prize was $10,000, and the only way to get that prize was to match all four spots on the ticket. You had one chance to win big, and of course, there was exactly one scratch ticket for sale. No options, no variety. All that has changed.

[David Duchovny]

They started with a $1 ticket, went.

[Ian Coss]

To a $2 ticket. This again is Glenn Myatt, the former owner.

[David Duchovny]

And I remember when they come out with a $20 ticket, I just couldn't believe that somebody would walk in and.

[Ian Coss]

Spend $20 on a lottery Ticket that's.

[David Duchovny]

Going to be gone pretty much instantaneously. And now they have 50. It's evolved to a 50.

[Ian Coss]

Just throwing it down like it's $5.

[David Duchovny]

Right. I just find myself hard understanding that.

[Ian Coss]

How well do the $50 tickets sell? Very well. According to the Massachusetts Lottery website, the state now offers 125 different instant games, ranging in price from $1 to $50. Myetz doesn't stock all of those, but they stock a lot. This is the most popular $50 ticket lifetime. Millions. This is a new $2 ticket, 100 million power shot. The reason I'm returning to the story of instant games is that after the scratch ticket was invented, it was reinvented once again in Massachusetts. And that reinvention, that refining of the game is maybe the most important thing this lottery ever did. It changed the way every lottery in the country operates. Gold Mine, 50x Big Blue Bonus cash. Word.

[David Duchovny]

I just usually just buy a block.

[Ian Coss]

And throw them up on the dashboard.

[David Duchovny]

So when I get to a red light, I can just scratch off a couple. He's joking.

[Ian Coss]

From GBH News, this is scratch and win. Hi, I'm Ian Coss. The triumph of the scratch ticket was not inevitable, but it is the last missing piece in the story of how this state built the most successful lottery in America. I've thrown that phrase around a bunch, but here at the end of the series, it's time to also try and make sense of it. Should we be proud of what our lottery has accomplished? Ashamed? Confused? A little of everything? This is part eight, the other Massachusetts miracle. When we left the story of the scratch ticket back in part one, it was still the shiny new game that promised to finally give the lottery an edge over their illegal competition. And it did that for a time. But then the scratch ticket did what all other products do. It got old. By the late 1970s, sales on instant games were actually declining year over year. Just as the daily number and lotto games were starting to take off, it looked for a moment like the scratch ticket might fade away entirely. There are a few people who can take some credit for turning that around, but I'm going to focus on two, both of whom happen to be named Jim. This is the cash cow that crane built, the fountain of billions fed by the greatest gambling instincts in America. And Jimmy Hosker's been running the game since 1983. I can remember it like it was.

[David Duchovny]

Yesterday when we started it, the treasure said. To this day, I've never met anybody that understood people better than Jimmy Hosker.

[Ian Coss]

Everyone I talked to at the lottery talked about Jim Hosker.

[David Duchovny]

It was just, it was in him. He was the right guy for this job. He made us feel like we were.

[Ian Coss]

Part of a family, actually. Hosker was in many ways a bold choice to run a lottery. He had just a high school diploma, he never went to college. His resume included working as a part time cop and delivering heating oil. But he had somehow worked his way into treasurer Bob Crane's inner circle. And the fact that Crane gave Hosker the top job shows just how much the conservatism of those early lotteries had faded by the 1980s. The games were established, they were trusted, they were politically secure. They didn't need to be run by mathematicians and FBI agents. What they needed now was a people person. I'm curious, did it change, you know, when he came into leadership?

[David Duchovny]

Yes, it definitely, definitely changed.

[Ian Coss]

Sheila Dabrowski started at the lottery just a few years before Hosker became director in 1983. You know, the lottery had an image and there was so much, how do.

[David Duchovny]

I want to say?

[Ian Coss]

Consciousness about it, you know, having integrity and being not solemn. I don't have a word for it.

[David Duchovny]

But, you know, just very corporate y.

[Ian Coss]

It had to be serious.

[David Duchovny]

Serious, yeah.

[Ian Coss]

And, you know, I think Jim Hoska.

[David Duchovny]

Was right person at the right time because he was, you know, it can be all that, but the players out there are looking for excitement.

[Ian Coss]

I think it's telling that for years when the lottery published its annual reports, treasurer Crane and the original director, the mathematician, would each write and sign a separate introduction. But after Hosker's first year in charge, he and Crane signed the report jointly. They shared a vision and sensibility that the lottery was entertainment. It had to be entertaining, and he.

[David Duchovny]

Was really willing to create that image. A one in a million chance of a lifetime.

[Ian Coss]

A lot of that new image came from marketing, from those barstool brainstorms at Hill Holiday, but it also came from the design of the games themselves. And one of Jim Hosker's secret weapons on game design was the other Jim, Jim O'Brien. I was not able to contact O'Brien, but according to an interview he gave years ago to the Washington Post, when O'Brien joined the mass lottery, he was told that scratch tickets were, quote, dead in the water. Sales were so bad that the lottery was thinking about phasing them out entirely. O'Brien wasn't ready to give up, though. So he started conducting focus groups, dozens of focus groups just on scratch tickets to try and understand the true desires of lottery players. Then he made some changes. He started with the prize structure.

[David Duchovny]

The prize structure he would work on like crazy.

[Ian Coss]

Paul Regan was an art director with the lottery's ad agency, Hill Holiday, but he worked closely with O'Brien on both ticket design and the ad campaigns that went with them. With the new instant game lucky roll.

[David Duchovny]

You'Ve got a better chance than ever to win $40 or more.

[Ian Coss]

And early scratch tickets would tend to have a lot of very small prizes, like one or two dollars and then just a few very large prizes. What O'Brien realized was that you needed more in the middle. 50, 100, maybe a few hundred dollars, enough to make you feel like you got a little windfall. O'Brien called it chatter money.

[David Duchovny]

So all of a sudden someone's saying, hey, maybe I'm not going to win the million, but hey, that 500, I got a better shot at you. Grab a load of those tickets, ladies.

[Ian Coss]

And gentlemen, and start scratching. As part of this new prize structure, the lottery also gave out more money. Total early scratch tickets were a terrible bet. On a $1 ticket, only about 30 cents went back in prizes. O'Brien pushed that up to 40, 50, 60 cents on the dollar, higher than any other state was offering at the time.

[David Duchovny]

The best cash payout in instant game history.

[Ian Coss]

This was a huge gamble because what it meant was cutting into the lottery's own profit margin. But the leadership under Jim Hosker was willing to take that chance. Also due for a revamp was the so called play action, how the game itself unfolds on the ticket. People didn't just want a simple reveal, they wanted a series of reveals.

[David Duchovny]

I didn't win the first time, but I might win the second. You could win a first time, a second time, a third time, you could win three times on the same dollar.

[Ian Coss]

I have a friend who teaches writing and she told me that she used to use scratch tickets to illustrate the fundamentals of storytelling. You have to reveal a little bit right away to get people interested, but not so much that the reader feels satisfied. A good story is like a good scratch ticket. It keeps you guessing until. Till the very end. Who knows how much you could win cash in a flash.

[David Duchovny]

The civilized way to scratch your way to the top.

[Ian Coss]

But perhaps O'Brien's most important insight of all was that people wanted options.

[David Duchovny]

Obviously, Jim O'Brien learned at one point, I don't need to stop a game.

[Ian Coss]

This might be hard to picture, but back when scratch tickets started, you'd walk into a convenience store and There would be a scratch ticket, like one option. A few times a year, the current ticket would phase out and the new ticket would launch. But they didn't overlap. What O'Brien realized was that people missed those old games, especially if they'd won on it.

[David Duchovny]

So he then was the brilliant guy who came up with the fact of we can keep these games out there because we have fans. Everybody who won is a fan. So why don't we put them away?

[Ian Coss]

The lottery kept launching new tickets, but now the games would overlap.

[David Duchovny]

Introducing the lottery's new Cash in a flash instant game. The new instant game wild card.

[Ian Coss]

It's the lottery's new blackjack and cash roulette.

[David Duchovny]

Instant games.

[Ian Coss]

That's how you get the cornucopia of glittering paper displayed behind every convenience store counter. It's not just another item on the wall. It is the wall.

[David Duchovny]

That had never been done before.

[Ian Coss]

By the end of the 1980s, the Massachusetts Lottery had upped its release cadence to two new instant games every six to eight weeks. Just a constant churn.

[David Duchovny]

And of course, other states picked up on that too. You know, they said, oh geez, they're leaving the games out there, why don't we do the same thing? So they all, they followed everything that O'Brien did. So anyone who can scratch can win.

[Ian Coss]

I began this series asking why residents of Massachusetts of all states have the distinction of spending on average $1,037 a year on lottery tickets, way more than any other state. And I hope it's clear by now that there are many answers to that questiongeography. Demographics, migration, urbanization, religion, politics, patronage, FBI wiretaps, property taxes. All these factors fed the strength of our lottery and our lottery habit. But they can't entirely explain it. Other states had Catholics. Other states had numbers games that were eventually put out of business. Other states had political machines determined to use the lottery for their own gain. But none of them pulled it off in quite the same way. That's why I began and ended the series talking about innovation. That is the one thing that truly sets this lottery apart. Those other states didn't take the same risks, make the same bets, or at least their bets didn't pay off quite as well. You'll sometimes hear the 1980s described as the so called Massachusetts Miracle. Our economy grew rapidly for most of that decade, propelled by the tech sector. But I found a book about lotteries from 1989 that borrowed that phrase, referring instead to scratch tickets as the Massachusetts Miracle. That's because from 1983 to 1989. Instant ticket revenue in Massachusetts increased 14 fold. Even as the numbers game and lotto game started to plateau or decline, scratch tickets kept growing. By 1991, total revenue topped $750 million. That's close to a billion dollars a year in scratch tickets alone in this one small state.

[David Duchovny]

Clarence angel, second Class. I'm here to show you how lucky you really are. Sure.

[Ian Coss]

How?

[David Duchovny]

Mistletoe from the mass lottery.

[Ian Coss]

In 1991, the mass lottery closed out that banner year with a Christmas ticket, of course, called Mistletoe.

[David Duchovny]

You're rich. Mistle dough, everyone. Mistletoe.

[Ian Coss]

The ad is based on the classic Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. In it. The ticket is is in glowing color, red and green, while everything else is in black and white. And truly, the scratch ticket was a miracle. The one lottery game that could defy the product life cycle and remain fresh for years, decades to come. The bread and butter game of state lotteries everywhere. Would staff from other state lotteries come and visit when you work there?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, from all over the world, actually, all the time. All the time.

[Ian Coss]

Yep. That's David O'Reilly and Sheila Dabrowski, both former lottery staff. The way they describe it, the Mass lottery was not just up on top of the leaderboard. It was a source of fascination, envy. A lottery staffer from Kentucky called Massachusetts the Mecca. And the pilgrims came from all around, from England, Spain, France, China, Australia, Japan.

[David Duchovny]

And I mean, they came from everywhere.

[Ian Coss]

They all wanted to see for themselves the miracle. This lottery that Bob Crane had built for what we do and how we do it.

[David Duchovny]

It is the best lottery in the world. And so today, I can tell you that I'm reminded of the song.

[Ian Coss]

This is Bob Crane speaking to the press. You gotta know when to hold them, you gotta know when to fold them.

[David Duchovny]

You know when to walk away and know when to run. And today it's time for me to walk away.

[Ian Coss]

That same year, the mistletoe ticket came out. 1991, Crane retired. He went out on top, still undefeated after 27 years in office.

[David Duchovny]

For the first time in nearly 30 years, someone other than Robert Crane will be taking the oath of treasurer.

[Ian Coss]

For a lot of politicians, the treasurer's office is a stepping stone. They stay for one or two terms and then seek a higher, flashier job. But for Crane, this was the job.

[David Duchovny]

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, our guest of honor, Bob Crane.

[Ian Coss]

I spoke with one lottery staffer who told me that years after Crane left, he would call up and ask, how's my lottery doing? It was not just an office that Crane held. The treasury and the lottery were his family, his personal fiefdom. He could hire his friends, play by his own rules, and be what he'd always wanted to be an entertainer. Christy George with WGBH once went out on the streets of Boston to see what people thought of their treasurer.

[David Duchovny]

We're going to play word association. I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into your mind when I say Bob Crane. Money. I'm going to have to say the lottery. The lottery. No, he's a treasurer.

[Ian Coss]

I know he's rich. A few people knew he was treasurer. Most seemed to know him as the face of the lottery. He had succeeded in his goal of reinventing himself.

[David Duchovny]

Megabytes.

[Ian Coss]

You don't even know him. He's the one who started Megabytes. Crane had become the purveyor of dreams. If this story were a scratch ticket, the boxes are now all scratched. The question is answered, the storylines are resolved. But we are left with a much more difficult question. Question. How do we feel about it? How do we feel about the way state lotteries have changed us? Besides marking the end of Treasurer Crane's career, the early 1990s also represent a kind of high watermark for lotteries as a whole. Lotto fever was still raging. Scratch tickets were thriving, and the games had spread to basically every corner of the country. But already a new era was beginning. 1993 is the last year in which lotteries were the single biggest segment of the gambling industry. In 1994, they were overtaken by casinos, which were also expanding all over the country. In the early 2000s, online poker exploded on the Internet. And in 2018, we get the beginning of widespread legal sports betting.

[David Duchovny]

But despite the introduction of new games.

[Ian Coss]

And the continued success of keno lottery, sales have gone flat. The Massachusetts lottery remains the gold standard in terms of sales per capita. But that era of explosive growth is over.

[David Duchovny]

That means, in order to keep the.

[Ian Coss]

Money flowing, the lottery has to come.

[David Duchovny]

Up with new ways to come up business.

[Ian Coss]

I went to a game at Fenway park recently. On the outfield wall were big ads for DraftKings and MGM Sportsbook. Under the scoreboard was a screen promoting a mobile gambling app. The stadium itself was running a 5050 raffle, with salespeople marching up and down the stands. And after the game, there was a free shuttle directly from Fenway to the city's waterfront casino. That is what your neighborhood lottery retailer is up against. What's striking is how quickly this new era arrived. Consider this. From 1964, when New Hampshire sold its first sweepstakes ticket, to 1993, 37 states legalized lotteries. That's 37 states in 30 years. As of this moment, 38 states have legalized sports betting. And guess how long that took? Eight years. 38 states in eight years. I've never loved the slippery slope metaphor. Maybe because I grew up in the age of dare, when kids were warned of the terrible dangers of the gateway drug, it always seemed a little overblown. So it is with some reluctance that I say legalized gambling is a slippery slope. You start with a little, inevitably you get more and more, faster and faster. However you feel about it, that is how things played out. And probably Nothing in the 20th century did more to lubricate that slope than lotteries. These strange enterprises that carried the legitimacy of the state and put gambling out in the public sphere like never before. Could you just introduce yourself for the recording?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. This is Barney Frank. I was a supporter of legalized gambling.

[Ian Coss]

One local figure who has been cheering that slide towards legal gambling is our former congressman, Barney Frank. You may know Frank as the architect of the Dodd Frank act, regulating banks, or for being the first openly gay member of Congress. What you may not know is that he has a real libertarian streak. He fought for same sex marriage. He also fought for legalized sex work and marijuana and online gambling. Basically, his attitude has always been, when it comes to people's personal lives, we should let them make their own choices. And I want to spend a minute with Frank here because he helped me make sense of some of my own complicated feelings about lotteries and gambling in general.

[David Duchovny]

The thing is, in America, there's a strong libertarian tradition. It's not popular to say, I'm going to tell you what to do. So when people want to ban an activity that other people want to do, they ginger up negative social consequences. It's not that I don't want you to enjoy marijuana, which it really is. It is that if you smoke marijuana, it will hurt society. I don't want you to marry another person of your sex because that will undermine the marriage of other people. All nonsense.

[Ian Coss]

But if one state gives it a try and the doomsday scenarios don't fully materialize, then suddenly those fears don't carry so much weight.

[David Duchovny]

Then it spreads and it happens very rapidly. That happened with same sex marriage and marijuana, and I think it happened with gambling.

[Ian Coss]

In Frank's view, it was the lotteries that provided that breakthrough that disproved the.

[David Duchovny]

Naysayers lotteries came and there was no great social deterioration.

[Ian Coss]

But as he was laying out this argument, I couldn't help but think one of these things is not like the others. Liberals are all for same sex marriage. They love legalized marijuana. Gambling, though, feels different. It's really been interesting over the past year as I work on this project, just raising the issue of the lottery with whoever I talk to and hearing people's reactions. I find that a lot of liberals I talk to, including my fellow journalists and academics, they tend to be instinctively skeptical of legal gambling. They are concerned that the lottery is addictive, misleading, that a small percentage of the players account for a vast majority of the spending and that those heaviest players tend to be relatively poor. There's a discomfort there, which I feel in myself too. Maybe that's why I do ultimately use that slippery slope metaphor. I mean, doesn't it imply we're sliding towards something bad? This is an issue that still inspires really strong reactions from people. Why do you think that is?

[David Duchovny]

Liberalism? Yep.

[Ian Coss]

Frank calls it illiberal liberalism. Why is that? Why are liberals so uncomfortable with gambling?

[David Duchovny]

I think the association with crime is a part of it. It's a leftover paternalism. Look, if you really want to help the poor, help them get more money. Don't tell them how they should spend whatever money they have.

[Ian Coss]

I think when we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, you described it as a liberal glitch.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. People who are for legalizing marijuana are against legalized gambling. I don't understand how you do that.

[Ian Coss]

Is it just sort of like back to culture, like liberals smoke weed but they don't gamble?

[David Duchovny]

That's part of it. I can't understand it. I don't know.

[Ian Coss]

Let me try on the other side of this argument for a moment. I think the liberal case against legal gambling is that the social consequences are real and not worth it. To put a number on it. According to the National Council on problem gambling, about 1% of all Americans, or 2.5 million adults, meet the diagnostic criteria for a gambling disorder. It causes harm to their lives. That number has increased with legalization, especially sports betting. Just a few months ago, our state approved a $3 million program to help reduce problem gambling among youth. You don't do that if there's not a problem. And it's not just the professors and liberal elites who are concerned. Even among people I interviewed who played and worked for the lottery, I heard misgivings about legal gambling. If you ask me, most of us have just a bit of puritan in us. We have our doubts.

[David Duchovny]

It's never ending debate about gaming. How much is too much?

[Ian Coss]

Everyone drew their line in a slightly different place, but most of them have a line. Maybe it's a price point.

[David Duchovny]

$50, that's a lot for a scratch.

[Ian Coss]

Ticket or a marketing strategy.

[David Duchovny]

I mean, it's all over the TV now.

[Ian Coss]

Or maybe an entire avenue of gambling.

[David Duchovny]

You can literally bet on whether the next guy up is going to get a hit. It's like what?

[Ian Coss]

For some, even the idea of a state run lottery crosses the line already. Do you think that the state should be in the gambling business?

[David Duchovny]

No, they should find another way to make resources.

[Ian Coss]

And so maybe the reason I find Barney Frank so interesting is that he simply has no line. Do you have any reservations about the ubiquity of gambling in our society today?

[David Duchovny]

No. I don't care what people do if they want to do it.

[Ian Coss]

I guess the place where I wonder a little bit, and I'm sort of playing devil's advocate to your argument. I tried one last argument on Frank to see if there were any cracks in his no holds barred position on gambling. So part of what's always felt weird to me about lotteries is that the state has this strong financial incentive to constantly bring in new customers, new gamblers. In the last year, just as the state launched that new program to reduce youth problem gambling, it also approved online lottery sales for the first time ever, specifically to reach younger players. That is the constant pressure. And it's a little different from other activities that also carry social risk, like alcohol and tobacco. Yes, the state allows those things and even profits from those things, but it's not paying for TV ads that promote smoking just to boost tax revenue. Do you feel like that's a healthy relationship for the state to have with the gambling industry?

[David Duchovny]

What percentage of state revenues on the average do you think lotteries are?

[Ian Coss]

Oh, I think it's very small.

[David Duchovny]

Much small. Too small to have an effect. Secondly, I regard that as a good thing. See, I'm in favor of government. I think we. Our problem today is that we have too little government spending, not too much. We do too little on those things. That only can be done if we do them together. And there's enormous resistance to increasing taxation. So something like the lottery that allows us to increase public expenditures I think is a good thing.

[Ian Coss]

So do you feel like the lottery is a realistic solution to the problem of we need government revenue and people are opposed to taxes? Or if you could write the tax code yourself, would you still make the lottery a core part of it.

[David Duchovny]

Yes, again, because you're implicitly citing the premise that gambling's a bad thing or that lotteries are a bad thing.

[Ian Coss]

Secondly, somehow, no matter what question I ask, what policy issue I raise, it keeps coming back to this. A state sponsored lottery is only a problem if you think gambling is bad. If you think betting your money on a slim chance you'll get more money is a vice that should be limited and contained. I think I'm actually not as critical of the lottery as I'm coming across. I'm just curious to kind of push against your arguments and hear it. The reason I keep asking the questions is that I don't want it to be that simple. But on some level, Frank is right that moral reservation is the root of all the uncertainty, the hand wringing, the love hate relationship that America has had with gambling since before this country was founded. Can I ask you one last question?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[Ian Coss]

Gambling has gone through a cycle in this country where, you know, we had lotteries in the colonial era.

[David Duchovny]

Right.

[Ian Coss]

We had lotteries to fund the Revolutionary War. You know, they get banned, they come back, they get banned. Do you think that the cycle will come back around?

[David Duchovny]

No, it's over.

[Ian Coss]

You think that fight is done?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Reality has taken over and there's no reason for it to. There's nothing that will drive it. I think the world is now America is really largely divided into a minority want to gamble and the majority doesn't care.

[Ian Coss]

I recently walked past a poster in my neighborhood for the Problem Gambling helpline. Someone had written across it with bright red ink. We're all addicted to something. Who's anyone to judge? I immediately thought of Frank's line, a minority that want to gamble and a majority that doesn't care. That's a strange but strong political constituency.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, it's a common one.

[Ian Coss]

So maybe gambling is here to stay. What I find so fascinating is that the shadow around it, the stigma, feels like it's here to stay too. It lingers in our culture and hearts in a way that doesn't feel feel like just a relic. It feels integral, like it's part of what gambling is.

[David Duchovny]

You almost have to have gambling so that you can say the market isn't gambling.

[Ian Coss]

Forgive me for going a little academic here, but I got a fascinating theory on this from Steven Robertson, historian of the Harlem numbers game. The way he sees it, capitalism cannot fully embrace gambling because to do so would be to undermine capitalism itself. To admit that the free market is not really about merit. And hard work, after all.

[David Duchovny]

And so, you know, the easiest way to have that is to have an other, you know, and so gambling is capitalism's other. And so we can't kind of get rid of it because it's got enough of the things that we value in capitalism that it sits there kind of on the margins. But we also can't just, you know, legitimate it and bring it all under the same umbrella, because the bottom line is the need to have gambling almost to play against all of the other highly speculative ways of making money that we sort of legitimate.

[Ian Coss]

Jonathan Cohen believes this is also why you hear so many stories about lottery winners who wind up miserable and destitute. Like it's just their comeuppance for defying the rules of capitalism. It's also a myth. Most lottery winners do just fine. There actually were a couple cases from, like, the late 80s, early 90s of, like, actual people this happened to. And now if you read, like, top five lottery winners who lost it all, it's like always the same people, every single article. Because there actually aren't any more recent examples. But we just love that story. Yeah, I think. I think the myth has persisted because of this clinging to this idea of a meritocracy and this belief that the deserving rise to the top. Gambling, capitalism, merit, chance. We can't seem to accept that these are all connected, that gambling is always a part of life, even when we don't want to admit it. And there is one last story I'll share from lottery broadcaster Don Hayes that just captures this dynamic perfectly.

[David Duchovny]

Wheel of Fortune came to town to do a show.

[Ian Coss]

At one point in her long tenure, Hayes was part of a live taping of Wheel of Fortune, which, like the lottery, is all about giving away money to lucky winners. The game show itself was, of course, hosted by Pat Sajak and Vanna White. Hayes was like the local talent presiding over the whole evening. She was starstruck, of course. These were her heroes, but the feeling was not mutual.

[David Duchovny]

Vanna White and Pat Sajak would not take a picture with me because I represented gambling.

[Ian Coss]

So they saw themselves as like, we're a game show. That's gambling.

[David Duchovny]

Correct? Yes. Yeah. And they would not take a picture.

[Ian Coss]

With me, and they felt that was like, that was very important for their public image, for their image to not.

[David Duchovny]

Be associated with gambling. Yes.

[Ian Coss]

That's really interesting.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Yeah. I was the host on the stage, but yet they couldn't associate, so I never met them.

[Ian Coss]

Even after all the waves of lottery fever, the ad campaigns, the primetime Drawings, the fancy sets, the billions of dollars poured into local government. The whole thing still felt a little dirty, tainted somehow. The best Hayes could get was a picture of herself standing in front of the iconic letterboard. That was a game show. She was gambling. To me, that kind of says it all. Gambling has to remain off to the side, forever present, forever transgressive. But then again, maybe that's part of what we love about it. I'm curious, do you think, you know, with all the sports betting and casinos and town now, do you think the lottery will still hang on?

[David Duchovny]

Oh, yeah, definitely. Look at the store.

[Ian Coss]

I make a point of stopping by Joe's Market every month or so as I work on the series just to see what people are playing and try out whatever question is on my mind.

[David Duchovny]

Look at the cards they have. And this. There's a. Every store has them. Yeah, yeah. No one's going to stop playing.

[Ian Coss]

And you're not going to stop playing, I assume.

[David Duchovny]

No, no, I'm going to wait for the big one.

[Ian Coss]

The business at Joe's Market is always.

[David Duchovny]

Brisk grad stickers, Christmas time. We always buy Christmas tickets for my daughter, my family. So they got you.

[Ian Coss]

And what I try to remember is that lotteries have always had competition from corner bookmakers, from mafia run numbers games. They've been outgunned before, and that's why the lottery is fun and the action is fast. That's why the marketing is aggressive and the products addictive. Now, the competition is legal, but the same rules apply as 50 years ago. Either of the lotteries will compete and innovate or they will fade away. But I wouldn't count them out yet. How'd you do today?

[David Duchovny]

I'll let you know. This is from yesterday. How you doing, chief?

[Ian Coss]

On these visits, I see a lot of the same regular customers and the same types of customers. There's the people who just buy a couple tickets and leave. There's the people who buy a whole stack of tickets and scratch them in the car in batches. There's the people who buy one at a time and keep coming back up to the counter again and again and again. Every time saying, just one more jack.

[David Duchovny]

What's that? Just give me one more. That's it.

[Ian Coss]

And more than anything, I hear the same grim humor that's always the same. How long have you been playing?

[David Duchovny]

Since they've been screwing us since 1972.

[Ian Coss]

Oh.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, you didn't. I'm not supposed to say the truth.

[Ian Coss]

So why do you keep playing?

[David Duchovny]

Cause I'm a Masochist. You.

[Ian Coss]

After all the time I've spent loitering around this store, I feel like I should at least buy something. It's been a while, but I've always liked scratch tickets since I was a kid. I think for me, it's the tactile quality of it. There's just something satisfying about the feeling of a coin against that thin, scratchy film. Oh, I gotta try the the 50th anniversary. The state just launched a special commemorative ticket quote Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first instant ticket ever. It's titled simply the Instant Game, written in the same big block font used on that original ticket from 1974, back when it truly was the instant game. Can I get a couple of those? The regulars watch warily as I pull out my wallet like I'm a kid about to take a drag on his first cigarette. Come on, it's just a scratch ticket. Don't blame me.

[David Duchovny]

Don't blame me. If you're going to ask me what how do you play the lottery?

[Ian Coss]

Sit near a barrel.

[David Duchovny]

Don't play.

[Ian Coss]

She'll tell you.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Coss]

I've already.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Back the guy with the mic.

[Ian Coss]

I choose to scratch my tickets in the car and keep my joy or disappointment to myself. The top prize is $50,000. The winning numbers, so you can follow along. The winning numbers I'm hoping to match are 9 and 16. 9. Looking for 9 and 16. And here we go. 11, 13, 8, 19, 1, 7, 10, 17, 14. And admit it, you want to know what that last number is? Am I about to win $50,000? Three. Nothing. Not. All right, that's it.

[David Duchovny]

You made me love you. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. You made me want you. And all the time you knew it. I guess you always knew it. You made me happy. Sometimes you made me sad. But there were times.

[Ian Coss]

The series is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Coss. It's edited by Lacey Roberts. The editorial Supervisor is Jennifer McKim, with support from Ryan Alderman. Mae Lei is the project manager, and the executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. Special thanks this episode to Richard McGowan and Tom Damakis. Thanks also to Paul Regan for sharing those recordings of the lottery ads he worked on. I also drew heavily from that Washington Post article I mentioned about Jim O'Brien. That's called gambling's man by David Siegel here at the end of the series. I also just want to thank all the folks at GBH and PRX who helped to launch this series. It was truly a team effort and thanks to my audio pals Noam Hassenfeld and Ilya Maritz, who listened to early versions of the show and gave feedback on it. For more info and full Transcripts, go to gbhnews.org scratchandwin. You can also find videos of the episodes on the GBH YouTube channel with incredible archival footage. The artwork is by Bill Miller and Mami Hawa Bao. Our closing song is yous Made Me Love youe, performed by Massachusetts State Treasurer Bob Crane. Scratch and Win is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx.

[David Duchovny]

I need some love, that's true, yes I do indeed I do, you know I do so gimme gimme gimme gimme what I cry for? You know you got the brand of kisses that I die for. You know you made me, you know you made me, you know you made me love you and all the time you knew it. Thank you.

[Ian Coss]

Finally, this series is dedicated to Jack Connors, the ad man who passed away shortly after our interview. When we spoke, Jack told me about performing a song at Bob Crane's funeral called Irish Lullaby. I hope someone sang it for him too.

[David Duchovny]

Over in Killarney many years ago my mother sang a song to me in words so sweet and low. Just a simple little ditty in a good old Irish way. What give the world to hear her sing that song to me today. Toralora lora tora lora lora hush now, don't you cry Tora lora lora tora lura li to. It's an Irish lullaby, by the way. All rights reserved.

[Ian Coss]

Okay, yeah.

[David Duchovny]

In other words, you can do with it as you wish.

[Ian Coss]

Hey, I want to make sure that you know this series you're listening to right now is part of an ongoing feed telling stories from the past to help us understand our present. Our first season is all about infrastructure. The second season is about gambling. And we've got more seasons planned. So if you want to stay on top of what the team and I are doing, go ahead and follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. We've got some really exciting stories coming up and I hope you'll stay with us. Thanks.

[David Duchovny]

From prx.