Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So, let’s square the strange.

Pascual Romero: And welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m your co-host, Pascual Romero, and with me as always is…

BR: Ben Radford. And with us for the first time on podcast, not just in spirit, is…

Celestia Ward: Hi, I’m Celestia. I’m the content producer and you’ve heard me doing the Skeptical Fortune Cookie and I happen to be in town this week, so I swung by the studio.

PR: Yep, so we’re pretty excited. We’re gonna be doing a little bit, a few discussions actually, so you’re gonna hear her voice on a couple of episodes and some special Patreon only content.

0:01:10
Yeah, so now we’re really doing the added value thing.

BR: All the more reason to support us if you haven’t already.

PR: Yes. So I guess we should just get right into it.

BR: So what’s on your skeptical radar this week, Pascual?

PR: This week I saw a piece about a giant mysterious sea creature that washed up on a beach in Indonesia. Yeah, so that’s pretty exciting. That’s the kind of headline I just live for. Disclaimer, everything sea creature, sea monster, that’s like top of my list for cryptozoology. Loch Ness Monster was like my first love when it came to cryptozoology, so this stuff always just fascinates me. But the reason I’m skeptical, well go figure, someone says sea monster. It’s a pretty cut-and-dry case. So far I haven’t seen a lot of headlines refuting it, but the first image I saw, so you see this big blob, this big mass, and it is huge. When you see people standing next to it, they are very small compared to it. And it is, go figure, whale-sized.

0:02:48
And, you know, I’ll just pull off the band-aid right now. I am fairly confident it’s a whale. I’m not a whale expert, but when I have seen these things, when they finally come out with the scientific consensus, you know, they break down the anatomy of the thing that washes up. The jawbone almost always is the first thing that gives it away. It’s the lower jaw, big, long bone. And usually that’s the thing that when the skin and tissue is peeled off of it it looks very strange. It’s this big protruding almost blade-like structure and a lot of people you know that tends to be one of the first things that makes people think it’s some kind of monster because it doesn’t look like a whale. And then the next thing is that the through the picture as you look and there’s what’s called the ventral grooves which is kind of the gullet the the throat of the whale underneath it’s what kind of balloons up when they’re scooping krill off of the surface of the water.

0:03:18
And so you see those, and there are these long lines that go along the bottom of the neck, what would be kind of the whale’s neck, so to speak. And you see those in the pictures. It’s very obvious, and anyone who’s seen a humpback whale will know exactly where those are on its body. It’s a very obvious trait.

BR: So the neck waddle, sort of going like Rich Little, for example.

PR: The other thing I saw was that people are claiming that it has fur. And I have an image up right now and you can see where there’s kind of this stuff hanging off of the jaw bone here. And that claim, I’m not sure if I’ve seen that claim before that when you see these monsters wash up. But usually as the tissue pulls away from the bone, it leaves a lot of fibrous material, which looks like wet matted fur. I can assure you that’s not what it is.

0:04:11
I think if I recall correctly, it’s the connective tissue for the muscles, I think. Yeah, and then the fat also does that too. Fat kind of has a tendency to get fibrous when it decays. You know, it does look kind of like fur, but it’s not really…

BR: Well, it’s common for people who aren’t familiar with marine biology to come across it and just think it’s something weird. I often hear people talking about how, well, it must be bizarre because people live there and they would always recognize it. No, no, that’s not the case. Just because somebody lives in a marine area and just because maybe other animals have washed up there before, are they more likely to recognize it than someone who’s never left Manhattan? Yes.

0:05:03
Does that necessarily mean that everybody can immediately identify the different parts of these decaying animals? No.

PR: And even if it’s something you’re very familiar with, it’s the fact that it’s been out at sea decaying and being picked at by sharks. And we sort of like to picture when we see a corpse of something, we picture it as being fairly intact or being very recognizable. But the fact of the matter is, in an advanced state of decay, everything looks like a blob, you know, and everything looks strange. And oh, and to get back to the hair thing, I also thought about it, the baleen is another thing that could easily be mistaken for hair, which is essentially the mouth structure that whales have to filter the krill out of the water.

0:05:50
It looks like a fine-tooth comb. That could be another…

BR: It looks exactly like hair, I mean, from a distance.

PR: Yeah, and there’s a lot of it in the mouth of any kind of krill-feeding whale.

BR: Well, what I think is interesting is that you have you have these little details that are sort of picked out and so yeah, oh I looked at it and it has fur. Yeah, and and you know, like well, hold on dial that back a bit. Are you saying the whole thing is furry? Somebody’s quoted as saying it has fur on it. And this is then repeated like well, they’re saying it’s this furry wash up out No, no, no. No one person said that part of it looked like it had fur, which of course it did. But it’s this sort of game of telephone where this mystery mongering thing and people are talking about it.

0:06:36
And of course, if there’s 30 people surrounding this beached animal and 10 of them think it’s a whale and two of them think it’s some mysterious creature, who’s the news media going to talk to? Go to the guy that’s saying this is the strangest thing he’s ever seen in his 85 years and run with that. Not the marine biologist who’s like sipping a Diet Coke thinking, I know exactly what that is.

PR: Well, and I think kind of one of the things that causes these to run away is that the experts, you know, they see it wash up and they’re like, oh, that’s a whale.

0:07:08
To them, it’s not even a thing. So they just kind of dismiss it. But then, you know, nobody notices when they just shrug it off and so you’ve got these kind of like fantastic stories from locals and and it’s funny because that like the headline and we’re looking at right now says

BR: Let me do it. “Okay. What on earth is it mysterious sea creature washes up on the coast of Indonesia.”

PR: Exactly and it’s yeah It gives you that that sense that you know Nobody knows what it is and nobody…

BR: In a world where everything is weird.

PR: In fact, it looks like there was an earlier draft of the headline because when you click on it, it says what you just said.

0:07:47
But before you click on it, the Google result for it says, Sea Creature washes up in Indonesia and no one knows what it is.

BR: Really no one knows what it is? I mean, click bait, is that the express i mean come on

PR: yeah it’s and I mean this is all you know tabloid tabloid yeah it’s that the independent i mean the others i don’t see a front page cnn headline or anything but it’s just kind of funny because it is and of course the internet being the internet you know i have i’ve had a number of friends you know post it and who who are you know who don’t even think twice about, you know, they’re just like, wow, that’s amazing.

0:08:26
It’s mysterious. It’s like, well, some, they’re saying it’s mysterious. A marine biologist would probably take about 15 seconds to not only tell you that it’s a whale, but tell you what species, you know?

BR: Well, but here’s the thing though, because I’ve seen this happen where, where you’re exactly right. As a marine biologist, we’ll, we’ll like, okay, this is what it is. And then, and then in some cases the mystery mongers will dismiss like, well, look at that. Did you look at every little single thing? Or the DNA analysis, right?

0:08:54
And so there’s this sort of anti-authoritarian, sort of anti-intellectualism where it’s like, well, the so-called expert didn’t do 15 sets of DNA analysis. He’s like, no, he can tell from the morphology. Why? Because he has a PhD in that. He went to school with that, and you looked on the internet. There you go.

PR: Yeah, it all falls into that mentality of conspiracy theorists and all that. And it’s interesting because I have seen a great deal of conspiracy theory around these things. Over time it’s gotten worse, especially just with the way the internet is. I have a friend who very regularly shares cryptozoological articles and pieces and he seems to pretty firmly believe that people brushing it off and scientists just making the quick determination that it’s a raccoon that washed up on the beach and not a chupacabra or whatever.

0:09:48
He seems to grab onto the idea that these people are trying to keep it covered up. So they have this list of what does it look like, here’s the thing we’re going to say it is.

BR: And just make sure that no one thinks it might be something weird.

PR: And give science some credit. I mean we want to find a sea monster. That is like a holy grail in science, like just something we’ve never seen before wash up on the beach. Like we want mystery. I mean that’s what science is all about. It’s not about making claims of about what everything is. It’s about figuring out what everything is and the journey to get to that point. There’s no point in doing it if you don’t get to investigate the the mysteries and to just presume that science has some conspiracy to not allow us to know these things. It’s like, no, we want to know what these are and we hope for that kind of mystery.

BR: Well, I mean, there’s another angle to this and I saw this in my Chupacabra research, is you have people who are again making this big assumption about, you know, that there’s some, you know, cover-ups and scientists and my answer is always, the carcass is right there.

0:10:51
And I’ve seen this over and over again in cattle mutilations, chupacabra victims, this and that, is you have people who are like, well, the scientists don’t. I’m like, you know, if you want, you can get the carcass. You can do that yourself. When these stories make the news, there’s often a carcass. There’s a dead body, something washed up.

0:11:10

And in some cases, it’s a public beach. So if you’re convinced that the marine biologists are way off and this is some completely unknown creature, go there, take a pocket knife, take some samples, pay for it to be analyzed, and you could be the first person to prove that this is some totally unknown creature. But they don’t want to do that. They’re dismissive of skeptics and scientists on one hand, but then when you say, okay, well, if they’re wrong, then what do you got? Then you do your research, right? You put in the time and the effort and the cost to do analysis.

0:11:47
Well, I don’t know about that. Well, hold on. You’re telling me this is some unknown creature and it’s not worth a couple hundred dollars and a couple hours to you to be the first person in the world to demonstrate it?

PR: You can name it after you.

BR: But they’re like, well, that’s too much effort. Like, whatever.

PR: I guess it’s just a big misunderstanding about what science is set out to do.

0:12:12
Science isn’t necessarily about conclusions. It’s not about wrapping everything up perfectly. It’s about finding all the data that it possibly can and coming up to tentative conclusions, really. I mean, any conclusion really should only ever be tentative. That’s the way science works. That’s why things are called hypothesis. But anyway, I think that this story was kind of interesting just because of how much it’s blown up. By the time science gets around to saying what it is, the news has already gotten past it and there will be no headlines saying, mysterious sea creature, it just happened to be a humpback whale, you know, because no one cares next week.

0:12:52
BR: Right, and in fact, we should do, I want to do a show at some point about the importance of follow-up. I think that’s one thing that’s really missing, both in the skeptical community, but also in the public at large and in journalism, is you see people making wild claims all the time. And, you know, just on any number of things, and just, you know scientifically whatever else and very rarely is there any follow-up.

PR: I agree.

BR: And I think that’s a real failure among skeptics and scientists and others and that’s that would be a good show

CW: Well, to sort of introduce myself here, I live in Las Vegas, but I do travel around for my job sometimes, so that puts me in various places, sometimes here.

0:13:43
Living in Vegas, I figured I’ve been witness to a lot of gambling superstitions. The locals themselves, some of them gamble a little bit. I know some people who play bingo regularly, but if you’re a local, you tend to not gamble, but you certainly make a living off of other people gambling. And gambling has… they take into account superstitions. So you hear a lot of stuff through the grapevine, and as a local, you hear a lot of stuff from people who work at the casinos. I know some dealers, I know some girls who do dice, and I’ve heard a lot of stuff. And so I figured I’d compile some superstition stuff to talk about, specifically as it relates to gambling.

0:14:33
PR: Very cool. I’m certainly aware of it. My uncle was a… He actually was a very successful accountant, but he also really enjoyed gambling. And his nephew on the… His uncle by marriage, on his side of the family. He actually owned the California casino.

CW: They have a really great prime rib special.

PR: I just need to go there sometimes. Be like, we’re kind of, sort of related, but not really. But yeah, so anyway, he was always out there once a year visiting, and he stayed at Caesar’s Palace every time, and he was that kind of guy. And his name was Louie, my Uncle Louie. Uncle Louie.

0:15:11
CW: Yeah, has he got mob connections? Because Uncle Louie, that sure sounds like… In fact, I’m going to cover some mob-related superstitions today.

PR: I’m certain he didn’t. He’s a northern New Mexican Spaniard, but he definitely… He looked the part, though. He dressed really well and gambled.

CW: Where did you get these brand-new stereo systems?

0:15:36
My Uncle Louie found them. He was off the truck. Yeah.

PR: You know, the one that always slipped us like a 20 when we came to visit. All right. Yeah. So, but anyway, so, but he, he kind of had some of those little superstitions. He taught me how to play blackjack and talked about that stuff. So I feel like I’m familiar, but I, there’s a whole world of it that I’m excited to kind of delve into today.

0:15:55
CW: All right. Well, let me just start blasting some of these out. Cause I do have quite a bit to get through, believe it or not. Uh, and yeah, now that I’ve sort of, uh, sort of made fun of the Italian heritage by throwing out a bad accent with your Uncle Louie there, I’m going to go to a whole other culture, specifically Chinese superstitions and superstitions of the Asian variety. There’s a huge contingent of people who come from China to gamble in Las Vegas. Vegas is constantly competing with major Chinese centers like Macau and a lot of the people, a lot of the conglomerations that own casinos in Vegas also own casinos in Macau and Asia.

0:16:34
And something I have always heard, but going through doing some research for this, it’s backed up in a lot of the gaming journals, is the Asians, they like to gamble. And sociologically, there were some studies, I didn’t do a super deep dive, I can’t pull out like, you know, authors and, you know, numbers of sample sizes here, but some studies have found that Chinese people have a higher external locus of control, more so than Western counterparts. And what that means is you kind of believe things that happen to you happen because of outside forces. Like, and it can be real things like the government or society, which again, government and society, those pressures are higher for Chinese people living under Chinese rule than they would be for the average Bundy.

0:17:26
Somebody living in the Southwest or something would not have the same forces acting upon them. And Americans especially tend to have a lesser external locus of control. They think, oh, well, if I made, like, you know, Donald Trump probably firmly believes that he is as wealthy as he is today because of his genius. Not external forces, not things like, yeah, anyway, but I work for what I have. I’m, you know, I am this way because of me. Where, yeah, anyway, but psychologically, they say that that kind of leads people who are from Asia to sort of look to outside things like destiny or luck, and specifically things in the culture like the folklore and the Taoism and Confucianism, and the fact that it’s a ritualistic society where people do a lot of things ritualistically to please the gods.

0:18:17
Even if they aren’t necessarily religious per se, you still find people going to temples and oh, we’re gonna do this thing and we light a candle and we do a tea ceremony, and more so than Western cultures. So that leads to a lot of the gamblers who come from China having a lot of gambling-related superstitions. Like, I can influence how the cards will be dealt or how the dice will roll if I do this thing, this ritual, this superstition.

0:18:44
And I’m just gonna go through some of the list here. There were a lot of them in, I’m just going to divide it up. There’s like Asian superstitions, and then there’s the more Western superstitions. Let’s start with Asia. There were a ton that involve “sounds like”, it’s almost like numerology slash feng shui. If the word for death sounds like the word four. So anything involving a number four, stay away from it. Don’t get a room with the number four. And whereas the number eight is good luck because it sounds like the word for prosperity.

0:19:21
So Chinese visitors supposedly try to book rooms that contain an eight. And I had read that the Rio and the Encore supposedly don’t have any floors… you know how like a lot of places don’t have floor 13? Which a lot of them in Vegas don’t have floor 13. Some of them in Vegas apparently don’t have floors 40 through 49. I actually called to double check though and the Encore does have floors 40 through 49. So I found a mistake in one article I read. But the Rio does not. The Rio goes from floor 39 up to floor 51 or rather floor 50.

0:19:56
And I tried asking the guy on the phone, I was like, why is that? He’s like, well, it’s just the way it is. It’s, you know, because you have the rooms and then we have the club upstairs. I was like, oh, it’s just empty space. That doesn’t sound right. But yeah, so obviously major conglomerations take all this into account because they want the money. In fact, I was, so I, some of the things I read to prepare for this were out of gaming journals and from a 2009 article in Global Gaming Business Magazine, let me quote the text here, “by examining Chinese gambling from multiple perspectives such as history, culture and psychology, one can then begin to understand why Chinese gamblers behave the way they do and how we can manage their gaming consumption.”

0:20:45

Yeah, it’s all about managing your consumption. So it’s very, they’re set on monetizing any sort of belief system they can. Another superstition is, oh and another thing that sounds like is like apparently you’re not supposed to bring a book to gamble. You’re not supposed to have a book anywhere around you. Books are bad luck because the word for book also sounds like lose. So there’s all these like sounds like.

BR: What if you just mispronounce it though? I mean it seems like, being a skeptic here, it seems like the obvious way to get around that is just mispronounce the word.

0:21:19
CW: Yeah, or I have brought my bundle of reading material to the table.

BR: Here’s my book. My book is fine.

PR: Maybe they don’t have a synonym, like here’s a publication.

CW: Yeah, I find it somewhat makes sense that the author at the table is defending the right to bring a book everywhere. Yes, you should.

0:21:41
Oh, speaking of defending things, another situation they had is sex is bad luck before gambling. And I saw all sorts of different strains to this because a lot of that goes way back with all sorts of other like, you know, man sport things like, oh, don’t have sex before you’re going to go to war because you’ll spend all your virility before you get to the battlefield right so sex before gambling is bad luck…

BR: But what’s interesting about that one is that is that I mean inherent in that assumption is the the idea that you have control over I mean yeah, if it’s sports, then you know I’ll I may be more tired if I’m you know I’ve if I had sex a night before so I can’t my mind on the game. In the case of gambling, I mean there’s some skill, but a lot of it’s just pure luck.

0:22:29
CW: Yeah, although that was listed as a specifically Asian superstition, you’re right, that focuses on an internal locus of control, not so much external. And there is, you know, it’s not going to take you a ton of physical effort to hold your blackjack cards, but in terms of battle and other stuff, I mean, Pascual, you’ve been on the road forever. Did you know guys that didn’t want to get lucky with any groupies right before they went on stage?

PR: Yeah, that’s been a thing. I mean, I don’t know how widespread it is, but I’ve known people who definitely don’t make it a point not to…

0:23:04
CW: To abstain.

PR: Yeah, and so that’s kind of interesting. I mean, I’ve never heard really any of the rationale for it. It’s just, I mean, they may think that they’re too tired when they play but I mean we don’t sleep for weeks on end. There’s tired is so relative at that point.

BR: I wonder if I mean I’m just spitballing here, but I’m curious about the psychology of it You know I wonder if the idea is that you know that you spent something you didn’t get returned for like you you you put forth you emitted or whatever I mean you frame however you want, but that you lost part of you and you’re not gonna be up to your aura or your spiritual, that you’ve…

0:23:49
CW: You’ve used up your mojo. You’ve got no more mojo left. Yeah, that’s, who knows.

BR: Or maybe just get a good night’s sleep. But it’s just curious to be, and of course, I’m sure that if we asked people about that, I mean, they may admit that they endorse this belief, but if you pin them down, it’s like, what exactly do you think? They’re like, well, I just, you know. They probably won’t be able to justify it rationally. They’ll just be like, well, it’s just better safe than sorry.

0:24:18
CW: There’s plenty of people that can be very rational when they discuss superstitions, but it’s almost like they do it just to quell their unconscious, like, I’m still going to do this. It makes me feel good on a certain level.

PR: I think that’s the majority of superstition is people being a little nervous about not really, I mean, because even the most rational people when you give them a really strange premise like if you do this, then this will happen, while most don’t, rationally you’re just like it doesn’t matter. But there’s probably a part of you that’s like, hey, well, you might as well not do it. I mean, you’re not going to hurt.

0:24:55
CW: Yeah. That gets into a whole discussion of, well, there are situations where superstitions can be very harmful. There’s no harm in sticking a four-leaf clover in your pocket, well, except for the clover plant, I suppose. But yeah, there’s a lot of things where it can cause some real damage. I’m going to get to one of them pretty soon here. But the last one I have on my little list of Asian superstitions is the color red is supposed to represent joy and good fortune.

0:25:21
And I don’t know if you have, have you guys, well, I work in a, I work in a, an industry where I work at parties and events and I draw funny pictures of people and sometimes you get handed tips. And I have been handed tips by Asian hosts and clients where they hand me a tip in a little red fancy envelope and it’s always red and when you see that red envelope you’re like, yeah. Yeah, you know that’s for you. That’s a little, you know, and it represents good fortune. And I know when I see it I think, oh, good fortune for me.

0:25:55
And apparently gamblers from the Asian countries wear red underwear to improve their luck as they gamble. And I’m like, all right, that sounds interesting. I have no idea how you would actually observe or test for that. I’m not going to go pantsing people in a casino to see if the Asian gamblers are actually wearing red underwear. But hey, it seems plausible.

0:26:20
And let me see here. And the big one that I’m getting to here that certainly indicates how people can sometimes bring superstition to a level where it causes damage and man this was a rabbit hole, I went down this. Everybody in Vegas knows about this. I don’t know if you guys do. Have you heard of the MGM going through its refurbishment in the 1990s and what happened with the Lion? No. Okay, in the early 90s, 1993-

BR: Just make sure. So the MGM is Metro-Goldwyn, the famous roaring lion?

CW: Famous roaring lion, yes.

BR: Okay, so that’s where the lion comes in.

CW: But MGM has a themed casino resort in Las Vegas.

0:27:03
Actually, they did in the 80s too. It burned down spectacularly. There was a huge loss of life. It was a major thing in the early 80s, mid 80s. I was just a kid.

PR: Yeah, I do recall that.

CW: Yeah. And so we didn’t have an MGM for a long time after that. And then it resurfaced and they built a brand new MGM on the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard.

0:27:23
And it was huge. They had an art deco frontage. They put a theme park in the back. It was themed like Wizard of Oz with green, like emerald city. It’s beautiful. I’m sure you can Google it. You’ll see it. And the first incarnation of this in 1993, it had a giant frontage of a lion. And the lion was huge, and to get into the casino, now a lot of the things I read said you had to walk through the mouth of the lion.

0:27:49
That’s not exactly right. It was more like you walked through the, like under the chest of the lion.

PR: Okay, I do remember that.

CW: Yeah, you could walk under the chin of the lion.

PR: Okay, I do recall that.

CW: And pretty quickly after that, I mean, you know, normally casinos that undergo multi-million dollar refurbishments, they don’t do that right after they’ve opened. But just a couple of years later, in like 96, they put scaffolding up everywhere and that lion was gone. They ripped it out and they put in a completely different frontage.

0:28:19
And everybody in Vegas, like I said, said, oh, the Chinese don’t think… They think it’s very bad luck to walk through the mouth of a lion. And that frontage was just too close to walking through the mouth of a lion. So they had to replace it with a regular front door. And they actually put in a beautiful new bronze statue of a lion. It’s like the largest bronze statue in the Western Hemisphere. Oddly enough, designed and created by a former con man who did time for some swindling in Utah and then turned his life around afterwards and became this prolific sculptor. He just died several years ago. So on the Wikipedia page, they don’t make any mention of the fact that this is due to superstition.

0:28:59
As a Vegas local, I remember everybody was like, yeah, that’s due to the superstition that the Chinese have. And in fact, according to sources, I can’t. According to internet sources about superstitions, there’s another superstition they cite which is it’s better luck to enter a casino from the side door, not the front door. And the authors I read, which is real sketchy, it’s real sketchy reading because every list of superstitions comes from so many different things. And it’s all real fuzzy anyway. But they say that the one that I read said this superstition of entering through the side door was actually only started happening about 20 years ago and it came directly from the MGM Lion. Because all the Asians didn’t want to enter through the front door, they would scurry around to the side door instead and so it became like, oh it’s better luck to enter through the side door.

0:29:52
Maybe there’s some traction to that, that it came from that, I don’t know. Anyway, so in chasing this down, because I wanted to get some legit sources saying, yes, our marketing department determined that we were losing a ton of Asian whales who would spend millions of dollars at our casino, and so we changed the frontage right away. I couldn’t get anybody to say that. I called a history professor at UNLV. He vaguely remembered it, but I called MGM, and I was on hold. And then she came back and said, we’re not supposed to talk about that. And then she transferred me and I got somebody else who very briskly said, I understand you have questions about the refurbishment. And well, I’m sorry, I didn’t work here at that time. But let me transfer you. She transferred me to the Bellagio. And it almost sounded like a cover up.

0:30:52
I’m like, well, they don’t want it out there. That it was because, if it was because of the superstition. And…

BR: Just raising it is sort of negative. Even if it’s been fixed, it’s sort of…

CW: Yeah, even if it’s been fixed, they don’t say. Cast a pall on it.

BR: Well, you know what struck me was, you know, when we’re talking about superstitions, usually superstitions are things that are fairly common, right?

0:31:14
For example, if a black cat is crossing your path, don’t go under ladders, don’t break mirrors. I’m wondering, so someone’s like, you know, don’t go through the mouth of a lion. It’s just…

CW: I can’t remember the last time that I almost went through the mouth of a lion. Well, literally. I’ve walked through the MGM a number of times. But, yeah.

0:31:39
PR:  I was going to say, the majority of people who have seen The Mouth of a Lion didn’t really live to tell about it.

BR: Yeah. Or they… You could assume, you could infer that it wasn’t a good experience. Well, interesting.

CW: Speaking of From the Mouth of a Lion, I do have a friend. I know a lot of weird people in Vegas, or at least people who do weird things. Yeah.

0:32:00
And one of my friends is an actor, and he was the cowardly lion at the MGM when it opened in 1993. Oh, wow. I was like, okay, an ex-employee. I will ask him. Yeah, he said, well, from what I remember, he’s like, now this is in the 90s when they had a downturn in the family business because it was like, bring all your kids to Vegas. We have roller coasters. Then they started changing that in flux and they were like, oh, what happens here stays here and they wanted to push more for the bachelorette parties and stuff like that and not have the families.

0:32:31
And he said, well, people he worked with were like, yeah, the Asians didn’t like it. But the corporate word was, we’ve decided to not be as family friendly. So it was easy, because they also got rid of the theme park at the same time. So the refurbishment was easy. It was all just kind of subsumed. So he’s like, yeah, the official word was never, it was about superstition. But everybody said it was.

0:32:56
So that’s why I’ve got the, and as I’m reading this, all the sources I’m finding were secondary. It was always like, well, did you know that this happened, blah, blah, blah. But I did not find any articles from 1995 that said, this is why, and we have an MGM representative saying, we made a big mistake and so-and-so has been fired. Didn’t find any of that. That’s really interesting. So I sort of wonder, is this a Mandela effect? Do me and all my friends just remember that this was a superstition and that’s why they did it?

0:33:23
But you know, after looking at everything and living there, my personal opinion is, yeah, I think it was a superstition that made them change that.

BR: Well, what strikes me is, like you’re saying, some hotels in Vegas don’t have a 13th floor, some don’t have between 40 and whatever. What’s curious is, why wouldn’t they all do that? I mean, if there’s a clear benefit, I mean, why are they in business?

0:33:47
To make money. They’re not there to entertain you, they’re there to make.

CW: To manage people’s gambling consumption.

BR: Exactly, and so you would think that, that if there was a clear benefit, I mean, if the bottom line is that hotels that don’t have a 13th floor bring in an extra $12 million a year, everyone’s like, and there we go.

CW: You’re talking about a situation though where it would be almost impossible to parse things down and measure an individual effect like that, because it could be that Casino A has no 13th floor, and so more people stay there, or more people feel lucky and want to gamble there.

0:34:25
It could just be that Casino A also has topless women dancing by the Baccarat tables after a certain time at night. There’s so many different promotions and themes and trends and the demographic in Vegas is changing week to week with whatever business is having a convention that week.

BR: Presumably they wouldn’t be able to measure that?

CW: I would imagine it would be super messy.

BR: No, I agree.

0:34:49
It just occurs to me that if they were, to my mind, it’s sort of like fortune telling, right? I mean, there’s hundreds of different ways of telling fortunes. You can read tea leaves, you can do coffee grounds, you can do Tarot. And if any of them worked at all or worked like demonstrably better, people would do that, right? People wouldn’t read tea leaves, they would read coffee grounds.

0:35:17
Or they wouldn’t read palms, they would read… So if any of these methods were demonstrably, falsifiably better than other ones, then everyone would go do that. And so I’m just thinking in the case of these superstitions, if it were self-evident that that these were, you know, that one, that having or not having a 13th floor, having or not having a four-leaf clover outside the front of your casino was gonna do it, then everyone was sort of good.

0:35:48
So I think it’s the ambiguity, which is what’s interesting about it, right? It’s not clear. And superstitions trade on ambiguity. Did I hit the jackpot because I just happened to be there, because my ex-wife is in town, because I’m wearing green underwear. What is it?

PR: Yeah, it is interesting.

0:36:08
And you’ve got to figure, especially the casino business, that’s a cash business. And it is almost impossible to know in the span of a year who has been… specifics about where the money’s coming from because I mean that’s just people dumping coins and bills into stuff.

CW: Yeah, that’s It’s a great business to laundry money.

PR: Yeah, and that’s the other thing I mean…

CW: I guess you could have a good week or a bad week and it could be it could be the full moon

PR: Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s crazy. I mean and as a touring musician, you know, I understand a lot of the the the comp the complexity of cash business because selling merch on tour is, you know, majority cash and stuff like that. And, I mean, it gets really hard to account for who’s, where this money came from and who it came from.

0:36:58
And, and when you’re not selling a product, you know, like at least when we had, you know, we had a count of shirts and CDs and we knew how many were going out. And at Casino, it’s like, there’s just money flowing in the door. Well, there’s a lot of money flowing in and a little bit flowing out.

CW: Yeah, Vegas says, I mean, UNLV churns out graduates that are aimed specifically for the hospitality industry. It’s like the number one hospitality program in the world, and we have so many people in the industry that, yeah, I agree, it would be really messy to parse out, okay, which the ones with the 13th floor, are they earning a little more or not?

0:37:34
But as far as regulating how much cash money comes in, they’re very good at figuring out their streams of revenue and keeping track of everything. I mean, if the bingo hall is losing money, it’s going to go. If the pie gow poker is not turning in as much… And they have certain things. They aim at different demographics depending on… It’s amazing how CES comes to town and they’ve got all these like, hey, we’re having a technology burlesque show at such and such place. They definitely aim to please their people and they aim to make them comfortable enough to drop as much money as humanly possible and it is a science. Interestingly enough, thinking of it as a science, sometimes you get people kind of thinking, oh, I am being manipulated and that leads into some other superstitions that aren’t Asian-based superstitions.

0:38:29
And I’ll talk about those in a little bit. I’ve got some planned for you.

PR: Hey, strangers. We love sharing our podcast with you, but it takes substantial time and money to produce and release each episode. If you think our podcast is worth a buck or two, please head over to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange and consider becoming a patron. Not only will you be helping us, but you’ll also receive some cool perks. Again, that’s patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. Enjoy the show.

0:39:00
CW: Hey squares and hey strangers. Celestia here with your skeptical fortune cookie for the week. Let’s crack this one open. Hmm. You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. This piece of advice is from Richard Feynman, a skeptic hero, Nobel-winning physicist, and science communicator. Feynman helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II, and much later, he was instrumental in finding and demonstrating the cause behind the Challenger disaster, accomplishments that bookend a very full career of teaching and discovery.

0:39:38
In 1979, Omni magazine called him the smartest man in the world. And this particular quote of his is from a commencement address he delivered at Caltech in 1974. It was part of his larger topic of distinguishing science from pseudoscience, specifically cargo cult science. I have always loved this particular quote because it gets to the heart of what is often the biggest roadblock for anyone wishing to be a skeptic, and that’s your own ego. It’s remarkably easy to fool yourself, and once you’ve done that, it can be hard to un-fool yourself. Scientists are just like other human beings.

0:40:13
Everybody’s got an ego, and everybody can be fooled. And once you forget that, your skeptic toolkit is locked shut like an uncrackable safe. Richard Feynman died in 1988, but his lectures are still widely available. His life in science has inspired many biographies, including a graphic novel that became a New York Times bestseller. And yes, some of his wisdom can even be condensed to fit into a fortune cookie.

0:40:38
But let’s get back to Ben and Pasquale, who are right now probably trying to make sure they don’t fool themselves.

PR: So we just got done talking about some of the Asian superstitions and some of the ways that it affects the way casinos do business and refurbish their whole entire buildings. So let’s see what we got domestically. What’s going on here in the States?

CW: Well, everything, I kind of, these sort of kind of self categorized as I looked through all the different ones I could find, and ones that I knew about kind of just anecdotally and pried more into.

0:41:30
And it seemed there was definitely like the Asian lump of superstitions, which were, as we just discussed, mainly based on like kind of numerology, kind of what things sound like, oh, it sounds like a word that I don’t like, so I’m going to avoid it, and color, and stuff like that. The other pile was stuff that related to either being killed or manipulated. And one of the oldest gambling superstitions involves Wild Bill Hickok and dead man’s hand.

0:42:04
It’s bad luck if you get aces and eights in a hand of poker. Because supposedly, now there was, his biographer, one of his biographers did claim that yes, this was the hand that he was killed holding, and they got it from somebody who was there and da da da da da, and somebody wrote it down. It seemed a little sketchy, but it was at least mentioned in a big biography that he was shot with black aces and eights, so it was clubs and spades.

PR: I’ve heard that one, yeah.

CW: Aces and eights, and I think the kicker was a queen or something.

0:42:35
He got shot dead while he was holding that hand. What I found out is dead man’s hand has also meant some other hands. It used to be a… Let me see here. It used to also mean jacks and eights, and earlier lists have it as jacks and 10s. So there’s kind of been a dead man’s hand for a while, but currently people attribute it to Wild Bill Hickok and Aces and Eights. So if you’re playing poker and you’re holding Aces and Eights, just make sure you’re wearing your Kevlar and you’ll be fine.

BR: But is the idea, because I don’t know, is the idea that that that you should that you should avoid getting that hand or if you have that hand you’re just screwed or what? It seemed to it didn’t it the interest a lot of the poker superstitions are based on theory on strategy, like if you have this people think it’s badly a lot of them were debunking like people think this is bad luck but it’s actually good luck because the odds are pretty good if you split and that is interesting This one was not related to strategy or anything, it just seemed to give people a feeling of unease.

0:43:38
Like, if you get this hand, maybe that’s your last hand tonight. Take it easy. Go back, kiss your wife and kids.

BR: Interesting. All right.

CW: And another gambling superstition related to being killed was oddly enough $50 bills. And there’s an old legend, not as old as Wild Bill Hickok, but people say, people say, oh people say so many things, people say Bugsy Siegel was killed and found in the desert with a $50 bill in his pocket because that’s what the mob does.

0:44:13
The mob kills you and sticks a $50 in your front pocket and leaves you in the desert and that’s actually not how Bugsy died at all. He was shot through the window multiple times as he was visiting a lady friend and yeah, I don’t know what he had in his pocket, but nobody would have put anything in there because they shot him through the window. And you can look up and see very graphic pictures of his shot up body on the internet if you want to. But yeah, so there was this legend that it’s like a mob calling card, they’ll put a 50 in your pocket.

0:44:42
And this was a messy superstition, the fact that, oh, some gamblers don’t want to take $50 bills. Like they won’t throw a 50 down on the roulette table. They won’t take 50s from the casino. They won’t give 50s. And there were some sources that said that during the 80s, there were a lot of counterfeit $50 bills. I wasn’t able to find anything telling me from the US Treasury or anything admitting that yes, there were counterfeit $50 bills, but according to some other things I read, the casinos were loathe to take $50 bills, so they stopped accepting them, which struck me as kind of counterintuitive because they’re like, oh, the house doesn’t want $50 bills.

0:45:28
Well, anything that’s bad luck for the house would be good luck for the player. So if I… because people were like, oh, the house believes they’re bad luck. Well, if the house believes they’re bad luck, I want the house to have as much bad luck as possible. But yeah, apparently gamblers also thought that they were bad luck. And to this day, people don’t really throw out 50s in casinos.

PR: You don’t see them a lot. I mean, at least I don’t really remember the last time I had a 50 or even…

CW: Well, 50s aren’t really that common anyway.

PR: It’s a strange denomination.

0:46:01
CW: Yeah, again, it’s hard to measure out.

PR: Yeah, yeah, because it’s like most people only carry 20s at kind of the max, unless they’re just the kind of people that carry hundreds. But it’s like I use hundreds if I need to like buy a large thing.

PR: Holy crap.

CW: Ben just pulled out a $50 bill out of his pocket. I like them. I don’t consider them lucky. Yeah, this is evidence.

0:46:22
I should keep this. Yeah. Here you go.

PR: Yeah, that’s pretty funny. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had one or used one. Because even breaking a hundred, I’ll just get 20s.

CW: Wait a second. ATMs are giving them out. I think I have one too right now.

0:46:38
I do. I’ve got one too.

BR: Wow. Well, there you go.

CW: Oh my God, we are so full of bad luck.

BR: A room full of skeptics debunking all this.

CW: Watch, on the way out of the studio, Ben and I are going to trip down the stairs and die because we have $50 bills on our person.

PR: I’m just going to refuse $50 on principle now. Well those are two of the superstitions I found that involve getting killed.

0:47:01
BR: To be clear, not to interrupt, but if any Patreon supporters want to give us $50, that’s fine. It’s not an actual bill, so it will not curse you, it won’t curse us. In fact, it will benefit everyone. So feel free to throw that in.

CW: Or if you have a $50 bill that you feel is bad luck to you, you should get rid of it by throwing it toward the podcast.

PR: Yes, just put it in an envelope and email us and we’ll give you the address where to send it.

0:47:31
CW: And the other superstitions. And I’ve seen this first-hand. Living in Vegas a lot of the locals far prey to this more than the other superstitions. There is this assumption that, again, gambling is a science. They put the bathrooms in certain areas and they do this that way and they’ve got the lighting a certain way. Psychologically, they do a lot of research to figure out how to get people to gamble as much as possible. There are certain things that are kind of superstitions. They’re labeled as superstitions, but they’re also just kind of psychological projections of like, oh, that’s how they get you.

0:48:08
That’s how they get you. People will refuse to play on a slot machine after an operator has opened it up to check its guts or fix something or service something or take down a number on a clipboard and then close it back up again. It’s like, oh, well, they’ve just rigged that one. I’m not going to play on that one.

PR: Reset the counter or something.

CW: Yes. Or some people will be like, oh, they’ve just reset it. Well, it’s going to hit now. It’s going to hit.

0:48:32
And, you know, as far as I could tell, I mean, you’re violating a lot of laws if you do rig your machines. There’s certain, you know, there’s certain, they’re random programs. It’s obviously set to pay back more in favor of the house than the patrons. But yeah, people believe certain nefarious things are at play with the casino. Like another one that’s labeled as a superstition, but it’s kind of a paranoid, like, oh, that’s how they get you. They want to play the machines that are closer to the entrance or the exits.

PR: I’ve heard that one.

0:49:10
Now thinking in terms of feng shui, it’s like, oh, the money is going to flow out there because there’s an open door and there’s energy. But thinking from the psychological point of view of the house, it’s like, oh, people who walk by the casino, if they hear bells and whistles and see somebody collecting all these coins, or well, now it’s little tickets, so just say how much you want. But if they see a machine going crazy paying out, they’re going to be more likely to go into the casino. So why not take advantage of that marketing ploy and I’ll be one of the ones sitting on those machines earning that sweet cash you know. And people have also thought that newer casinos are the ones to play at you know And I’ve fallen prey to that to this I remember thinking oh, yeah It’d be a good time to go for restaurant like oh, let’s go to that restaurant. It’s just opened They’re gonna be giving out bigger portions right and trying to make people really like that restaurant.

0:50:02
Or let’s go to this casino because they jack up the amount that you win, they turn the dial up and give more back during that first month that they’re open because they want to get their clientele thinking, this is the place I’m going to gamble at forever. And yeah, there’s no truth to that.

BR: The restaurant just opened, their food hasn’t had a chance to spoil. We’re the first ones in the door.

CW: There’s probably barely any roaches in that kitchen. Yeah, exactly. It’s brand new.

0:50:32
BR: What strikes me is that some of those are sort of like the consumer alerts that you see that are consumer activists. So you have people like, the tricky ways that stores try to sell things to you.

CW: Things they don’t want you to know.

BR: You see all those. And oftentimes there’s a kernel true to them, right? So for example, the products that are at eye level are invariably the most expensive ones. So if you have a wall of pain relievers or cereals, the ones at your feet are the cheapest ones.

0:51:03
The ones at eye level are the store brands, the most expensive ones. Is it a trick? It’s not a trick. But people are always looking for an edge. People are like, like you said.

CW: Well, it’s a natural inclination to exaggerate. You hear that there’s this marketing ploy, and so in your head you exaggerate it to be further than it actually is. Like, oh, well, they’re not actually doing that.

0:51:25
There’s been no instances of that. It would be against the law to do that, but I bet they’re doing that.

BR: Right, there’s something there. Right, or the idea that anything on the end cap is like in a sale bin. Like, well no, end caps at the end of aisles, I mean, there’s a reason why that’s there and it’s not because it’s cheaper, it’s because there’s more traffic going through there.

PR: That’s actually, in the music industry, end caps are a big thing in music sales, and not so much these days, but even 10 years ago, you know, an end cap.

0:51:58
BR: Back when people bought music in stores.

PR: Right, when people bought CDs, yeah. When you got an end cap, quote unquote, it was the label paid extra to have your album facing the doors of the store.

CW: Yeah, it’s highly visible, yeah.

PR: And have your logo on the top of the end cap. I mean, end caps are kind of the holy grail of advertising in terms of product, advertising product on the ground. And yeah, in music, I mean, the most expensive placement is end cap placement And

CW: so it should be bad luck to buy something on an end cap because you’re probably getting screwed. Yeah Whatever you do don’t take your $50 bill and go buy something off of an end cap.

PR: Yeah Asking for trouble. Yeah, you’re asking for you’re not gonna get your money’s worth

BR: Unless you buy one of my books one of Pascal CDs or you know

PR: For the record I’ve never I I don’t think I’ve ever been on an end cap and nothing I’ve done Well, I don’t know my my my biggest band a band called In This Moment just got a gold record This year so they yeah. Well, congratulations, man. They didn’t get it when I was in the but but so they Just to get back. Yeah, they they may have had an end cap since I was in the back

BR: The Holy Grail has been reached

CW: nobody like texted you a picture, look where we are.

0:53:17
CW: Yeah, so anyway, those are, well, and the superstitions I’ve laid out for you guys, of course, I didn’t even go into the tchotchke element of like having a lucky charm, a lucky rabbit’s foot But but if you ever if you ever go play bingo in Las Vegas Look for that lady. There’s always that lady. She sets out her bingo cards in a certain way She always gets like the rainbow and the blue and the something she sets it out, she puts her lucky coins on each corner, she puts her lucky troll doll, she gets her purple dauber, because any other color besides purple for her is unlucky, and you will see some real displays of ritualistic creating your own little luck shrine at the bingo table in Las Vegas, most any session.

PR: That’s pretty interesting.

CW: Yeah, my mom likes the bingo.

0:54:26
I’ve played the bingo.

PR: Bingo is kind of fun. I haven’t played it since I was a kid probably, but it’s one of those games where you’re completely… It’s one of the most random chance games you could possibly come up with, but it’s also just kind of the excitement of the numbers popping up. I’m cased. I’m cased. I got one more. I’m cased.

0:54:50.

BR: Well, of course, here in New Mexico, and I’m sure you remember that as well from high school and elementary school, we had, Loteria! It was the Spanish language in the Spanish class. It’d be like, instead of numbers, it’d be like, you know, Pero.

0:55:09
Right, right, right. So that’s how you learn your Spanish words.

CW: Oh, and one last superstition, which is a superstition I have personally benefited from, but in a casino it is good luck to tip. A lot of people, again, the whole outflow, inflow of money, a lot of people tip their dealers and tip their waitresses. Not so much because I’m a good person and I want to reward your labor, just like if I don’t tip, I don’t win.

0:55:32
They think the tipping equates with the winning. I’ve known friends who thought this way too.

PR: That also counts for podcasts. Yeah. Patreon.com forward slash Scoring the Strange. But yeah, no, that’s, that’s pretty interesting. That might, going back to my Uncle Louie, he was always a very, a very sometimes disproportionately good tipper. We know it no matter where he went. And it was great for like, you know, in Santa, growing up in Santa Fe, it’s a small town, so you know, everyone knows everyone. And so he’d be like tipping my friends that worked at the restaurants and stuff and they always liked it. But even, you know…

0:56:05
CW: I’m getting more and more of a feeling your uncle was in the mob.

PR: He may very well have been, I don’t know. He was a good guy, but he had a lot of that Vegas to him, you know. He got out there every year and my aunt would go play the slots and he played blackjack religiously and he did very well, but those were back in the days of single deck blackjack, so you could actually play statistical odds a little better.

BR: And he’s an accountant, right?

PR: Yeah.

BR: See, I find that curious. It’s sort of like a statistician playing the lottery. It’s like, really?

0:56:42
Really? Okay.

CW: That struck me too. Yeah. Recently, I had to apply for a player’s card to get a discount on something and my mom was there and she looked at me and I was like, well I’ve got one at home but I haven’t used it since I got it like five years ago. And she said, you don’t gamble at all? I was like, no I don’t gamble at all. I live in Las Vegas and I know math.

0:57:03
So I don’t gamble. And if you do like to gamble too much, you can’t live in Vegas for very long. You’re going to end up in a car down by the river.

PR: Bad time.

CW: Yeah.

BR: And on that happy note.

CW: Yes. Well, gambling in and of itself can be a skeptical lesson. It will show you over time that observations of a scientific, statistical, mathematical nature will prevail over superstition over time.

0:57:36
And all the proof you need is look at the casinos. They did not rip down that lion and replace it with the largest bronze statue in the Western Hemisphere.

PR: By losing money.

CW: Yes, by losing money. They’re taking in money.

PR: Right. Yeah, it’s pretty astounding to see the kind of money going in and out of that town and it’s very interesting to look into the things that affect that, like the superstition and stuff. And to see that these big money-making corporations and individuals who own these businesses capitalize on people’s superstition.

0:58:17
CW: And I’ve just decided, the next time you guys come to Vegas, if you ever both make it to Vegas at the same time, I’m taking you guys to play bingo.

PR: Okay.

CW: With my mom.

PR: I’m game. That sounds way more fun than sitting at a blackjack table and losing like $10,000 in five minutes.

BR: Yeah, let’s do that.