What would you do if you had millions and millions of dollars? Terrance Watanabe managed to gamble away the most money in history - he came from the family that invented the catalogue 'Oriental Trading'. If you were a kid in the 90s, you know what we're talking about! Learn about the dangers of gambling - including all the stuff you can do on your phone these days!
What would you do if you had millions and millions of dollars? Terrance Watanabe managed to gamble away the most money in history - he came from the family that invented the catalogue 'Oriental Trading'. If you were a kid in the 90s, you know what we're talking about!
Learn about the dangers of gambling - including all the stuff you can do on your phone these days!
Taylor Stouffer says Thanksgiving is one of the better holidays
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Boom. Taylor, we are back. Welcome. Welcome to your own show.
>> Taylor: Thank you. I'm good. I was actually. I don't know. Did I tell you already that today is Christmas tree day in my house?
>> Farz: Really?
>> Taylor: Yeah. I'm ready. I am done with it not being Christmas. So I've putting up the tree after this, but I've been, like, putting up ornaments and stuff all day long. Like, I've been making decoration, like, paper decorations, and I've been. I, like, tie ornaments to ribbons and I pin them to the ceiling, and I've been just doing all of that. And I got the stockings out. Yeah, I'm ready.
>> Farz: There's one. Are you. Are you. You're still celebrating Thanksgiving or.
>> Taylor: Yeah, of course.
>> Farz: Okay. Are y' all doing anything?
>> Taylor: We are hosting here for Juan's parents, and then we invited some friends, too.
>> Farz: It's fun.
>> Taylor: I don't mind. It's easy. Don't tell my mom. But, like, it's not that hard.
>> Farz: It isn't. It's.
>> Taylor: The mom thinks it's the hardest thing in the whole entire world, and I'm like, it really isn't. Like, I don't know. Something hard.
>> Farz: No. Yeah. Cooking a turkey is not that challenging.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And, like, all the sides take, like, four seconds, and they're easy. And, like.
>> Farz: Yeah. It's one of the better holidays because you can literally just mostly enjoy family time. And.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Not to worry about presents.
>> Taylor: And you don't have to do anything stupid. Like, if you find that you're baking bread to make stuffing, just, like, stop and say, no.
>> Farz: Stouffer. Stuffing is amazing.
>> Taylor: So good. Stovetop. Yeah, Stovetop. So for stuff.
>> Farz: Stovetop. Yeah, whatever.
>> Taylor: You take the box of stuffing. If you want to get fancy, which I sometimes do, I'll saute an onion and. And celery and carrots and then add it to it, but just put water in it. It's delicious. Yeah. A can of cranberries. I made my own cranberry sauce one time. It was fine. Can of cranberry. I was good.
>> Farz: Yeah. We've figured out how to industrialize this thing enough to where we don't have to kill ourselves.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: I do like a nice homemade Mac and cheese where you can, like, squash the cheese on top and then put some little crusties on it.
>> Taylor: I did. I did. We had. I Made like, Kraft Creamy Mac and Cheese the other day extras. And I just. So I put it in a pan and I added feta and mushrooms. And my husband's dad was like, this is like a New York Times best of recipe. This is so good.
>> Farz: That does sound pretty good, actually. I didn't think about feta mixing that well, but it does sound pretty good.
>> Taylor: Like, it made it sound like it again for Thanksgiving. I mean, it's a box and feta, and it's delicious.
>> Farz: Maybe add some jalapenos and see how that turns out.
>> Taylor: Ooh. But still not that hard.
>> Farz: Not that hard. Yeah, it's fun. You get creative with this stuff. Yeah, it's fun.
What are you doing for Thanksgiving? I'm going back to Dallas
>> Taylor: What are you doing for Thanksgiving?
>> Farz: So I'm gonna go back to Dallas. I'm basically gonna be in Dallas for, like, 10 days. When I go back for Thanksgiving, I have a conference at the beginning of December, and I got my parents tickets to Andre Bocelli. Andre Pachelli is gonna be playing in Dallas. Yeah. I thought it'd be fun. He's at that age where I'm like, we should probably do this.
>> Taylor: I saw Tony Bennett one time and it was insane. I was like, this man is so good. It's crazy.
>> Farz: I'm sure. Was he older? Like, I mean, I'm sure it was, like, been old forever, but.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I was like, glad I saw him before he died. Cool. That sounds fun. I'm going to see O Mary in New York.
>> Farz: I don't know who that is.
>> Taylor: It's. It's a play, and it's gonna be great. I'm very excited. New York. Later. Cool. Wait, I didn't introduce.
>> Farz: Yeah, no, introduce us.
Taylor: I get advertised online gambling constantly on social media
>> Taylor: Hello. Welcome to Dunes to Fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures. And I'm Taylor, joined by Fars. And today we'll hear from Fars. And it's November.
>> Farz: It is November. I'm gonna talk a little bit about something that is in the news, and it has to gambling and sports betting and all that. So I'm gonna start with a little bit of a soliloquy, because I'm pretty sure that you and I are, like, on very different algorithms on social media. I listen to a lot of, like, manosphere content, and as a result, I get advertised online gambling constantly.
>> Taylor: Do you really? I literally never have constantly. Like, mine is. My whole algorithm is AI videos of characters from Romantic Roman to see books.
>> Farz: Slightly different algorithms, like, just off by, like, a very slight margin. I don't know. I'd love to hear from, like, other listeners like, do y' all also get advertised sports betting all the time? Because it is. It is a constant pressure. Also now, when you watch sports, like ESPN or if you watch, like, actual, like, broadcast.
>> Taylor: I have seen commercials for it.
>> Farz: Well, no, those commercials for it, but they'll also tell you what the line is on certain gambling things in the middle of the game, in the middle of, like, whatever sporting event you're watching. Like, it's gotten to that level of prevalence, and I think it's bad.
>> Taylor: That feels like it should be illegal.
>> Farz: Yeah, we. I. I think it will be probably in, like, 20 years, we're gonna look back and realize what a horrible decision this was. But, like, I do think it's bad. Like, I listen to, like, a lot of, like, financial shows, too, just to. It's just entertaining. And so many people call in being like, yeah, I'm married with, like, four kids, and I make $70,000 a year, and I just lost $5,000 on the jets game. Like, you know, it's like, stuff like that. It's like, oh, man. Like, people are going down the really bad wormholes with this thing. So I end up, like, I'm going to do a story about that, but I pulled a bunch of stats here that kind of illustrate this point. Also, we all know that it's going on because Japan, Chauncey Billups was just arrested for, like, fake poker games.
>> Taylor: I don't know who that is.
>> Farz: You haven't heard about this story? Okay, so a bunch of, like, former NBA players and Chauncey Bills is a current NBA coach, had been arrested because what they were doing in collaboration with, like, the Mafia was they were hosting these, like, underground card games where they'd have these NBA players kind of, like celebrities who were there and just get people in bulk them for all their worth, and then they would just split the profits. So they got arrested. They did a bunch of rest for. On. On the NBA side there. But I just heard, as of, like, a couple days ago, that the UFC also noticed, like, some insane line movement with a specific fight. And the kid in the fight just immediately tapped out in the first, like, round.
>> Taylor: And then try. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it was supposed to be the first round or whatever.
>> Farz: Yeah. And so. And then they called the FBI, and so now the FBI is investigating a bunch of UFC fights. Like, are people showing up and approaching you for, like, cash payouts if you, like, toss or throw, whatever it's called? I don't gamble.
>> Taylor: Is it throw? I think it's throw. But It's. I'm sure it's been happening forever. I feel like you think it isn't happening anymore, but I'm sure it's happened since the beginning of sports.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it is. It happened with that one NBA referee where it was caught that he was betting on games that he was refereeing a while ago. But that's kind of like where we're headed.
38 states as of 2018 have some form of legal gambling in them
I got some stats here that I wanted to read out because I'm. I'm not just being like an old man in a rocking chair right now. So in. By. In 2020 or. Sorry, in 2018, there was some Supreme Court case that went up about, like, gambling and who was allowed to do it, what states are allowed to do it. It basically made it so that a lot of states had referendums on their ballots to allow gambling or not. 38 states as of 2018, plus Washington, D.C. have some form of legal gambling in them. And as of 2024, 94% of betting on sports is all done online. Some interesting stats here was that one in five Americans now place a bet on sports every year, with the average wager in a year being around 30 $300. All of that directly corresponds to increased credit card debt on a per capita basis and reduced savings. So for every dollar investor, look this up. For every dollar that a person gambles, they reduce their savings by $2. So really ending in this situation where people are ramping up credit card debt, not having savings, it's a bad.
>> Taylor: Bad credit cards is bad.
>> Farz: Yeah. Can you imagine how dire your situation must be where interest rate seems like a good. It's crazy.
>> Taylor: I know people, because I'm from Las Vegas, I know people who were addicted to slots and had to get help.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, like, they just, like, couldn't. Couldn't stop doing it. And I know people who, like, won a bunch and then didn't win much after that. You know, it's just like a whole thing.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So my friend Jason and his wife, they have the same numbers in Kino, which is like, Kino's like the lottery every five minutes in, and you can play it at a bar, and they play the same, like, five numbers every time, and they always win, and it's wild to watch it happen.
>> Farz: What is keynote. What do you do?
>> Taylor: Because you just. You just pick numbers, and then they'll. If your numbers are picked, you win.
>> Farz: Dude, at the gas station down the street from my house, they have keno machines.
>> Taylor: It's like, do they really?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's weird.
>> Taylor: It's just. It's just like out of 100, pick five numbers and if you get them, you get them. But they have keno in like every restaurant in Las Vegas. So my friends play and they always win, and it's wild.
>> Farz: I don't. Your experience in Vegas must be different. When I go to this gas station, I go inside the store. Like, the people that are gambling don't. They're not driving Bentley's there.
>> Taylor: Like, you know, no one's. It's not good. Yeah, there's. That's interesting that you have them there because in Vegas, like, yeah, there's. There are slot machines at the grocery store, but if you're playing slot machines at the grocery store, that's bad.
>> Farz: That's bad.
>> Taylor: Yucky or yum. But like, you should call a friend.
>> Farz: Yeah.
Online gambling is becoming a problem with teenagers, according to an NIH study
Well, one thing was that I looked up was that online gambling is now becoming a problem with teenagers.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: And. And this is an NIH study, and they gave a pretty wide range here saying that I have no way. I have no way to read this. But the fact that they're actually acknowledging that there's a problem here says something. But they pegged the range. Somewhere between 1 and 57% of adolescents showing signs of problematic online gambling dependency. And I don't know what that looks like in the future for them. Like, it sounds like you're just setting yourself up for a really, really hard life. But all that to say. I have certain opinions when it comes to this topic, and I. Again, I know I sound like an old man, but I want to tell a story about a guy named Terrence Watanbe. Do you know that name?
>> Taylor: Nope. Wait, no. Is he. Is he the. The guy. The. The guy's translator. Ohtani's translator?
>> Farz: No. Oh, oh, you're talking the Dodgers guy. No, no, that. That was another one.
>> Taylor: That was because that guy was gambling away all that money.
>> Farz: Yeah, he was he depositing the cash or putting his own account or so. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Another example.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. This is a. This is a different one. So I want to tell this guy's story because it's absolutely fascinating. It is the story of the single biggest loser in gambling history. And I want to start out by talking about his dad, because his dad is the reason why Terrence had the financial resources to ultimately make the mistakes in life that he did that would make him famous in a not so great way.
Harry Watanbe started Oriental Trading Company in Nebraska in 1932
We'll start with his dad, a guy named Harry Watanbe, who was born in Hiroshima, interestingly enough, and immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s. He would settle in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1932. He opened a small trading outpost that was called Oriental Trading Company.
>> Taylor: No way.
>> Farz: Do you know them?
>> Taylor: The Oriental Trading Company? Yes.
>> Farz: I've never heard of that brand.
>> Taylor: It's like, you can get. I don't know if it's. I mean, it's like a catalog. I'm sure it's a website now, but it was a catalog you got in the 90s, and it had, like, party s*** in it. So you'd be like, oh, I want to have a party that's like Lion King, like Florence always does. And you can buy 700,000 Lion King's plate for, like, plates for like, $4.
>> Farz: That's crazy. I didn't junk.
>> Taylor: It's like doing this. Doing to stuff stockings. Do I need junk for gift bags? Do I just need, like, bulk junk? Oriental Trainee.
>> Farz: It's like temp team you kind of.
>> Taylor: But it's like bulk junk. It's not like, you know, at least that's what it was like in the 90s.
>> Farz: Interesting. Yeah. I never heard of this brand. That's really cool that you know it. Actually, I'm gonna.
>> Taylor: I'm gonna probably buy some crap. 50 off. Oh, my God. Look at all this crap. You can buy.
>> Farz: Well, you can.
>> Taylor: And $10 off and free shipping, and you can get all this Christmas candy. You can get like, 10,000.
>> Farz: This is not an ad for Oriental Soul Trading Company.
>> Taylor: I'm sure there's nothing like. It's not, like, ethically made.
>> Farz: This is not an ad.
>> Taylor: For $99, I can get 144. Santa Claus and Rainbow Snowman vinyl bendables for $9. You can get 12 kits to make wreaths. I can just keep reading stuff. You can have a Grinch party. Grinch party supply is starting at 299.
>> Farz: They had a Halloween supply section. And I was. My first thought was, is this where Spirit goes to get all their Halloween stuff?
>> Taylor: It actually very much could be.
>> Farz: It could be. Yeah. It does look like it. Well, you. You can thank hair. Well, you can thank Harry and Terence for this. I'll tell you why Terrence is relevant to your part of the. What you just said, But Harry started this thing out in Omaha as, like, just like, selling novelty crap.
>> Taylor: That's good then.
>> Farz: That's the right one as a starting point. So he would. Harry would expand the business from this, like, little general store outpost to being a wholesale vendor of carnivals, of all things. By the 1950s, he would go on to marry this other Japanese immigrant woman named Fern. And they had three children. Terence was the firstborn, who's the subject of today's story. Then Pamela and Gordon and the whole family worked for Oriental Trading. Like the mom was the secretary. The kids worked in the, in the factory. Not the factory, but the, the warehouse. So they all were kind of embedded within the business. In 1977, Harry stepped down from the day to day operations and left Ring the business to Terence as a firstborn son. That was kind of what you did. And he took over at only 20 years old. But he'd been in the business his whole life. He like literally just only knew the business. So I guess at 20 he was able to do it and he started implementing his own business strategies and he grew the h*** out of this business. Like he did phenomenally well with it. He, he expanded the market beyond just carnivals to nonprofits, to schools, to churches. Individuals, as Taylor just indicated, also had interest in buying at that point.
>> Taylor: There are like 7,000 options if you just want to have a party that's themed National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Party supplies.
>> Farz: They're still doing great. They're still doing great. Yeah, but, but Terrence was the one that basically expanded their geography because he developed the catalog model that you just.
>> Taylor: Called out a thousand percent. That's what you'll remember is the catalog.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. So. So he did that so people could do mail order cobs and things like that, or CODs. COB. CODs.
Terrence sold Oriental Trading Company to a private equity firm in 2000
And I couldn't actually find a lot of publicly available information on Oriental Trading Company in terms of like the business processes or growth or anything. But what I could find is that some, some state filings showed that for some projects that they had undertaken that required filing with the state, they had hired about 150 people in the late 80s to early 90s. And then for another project in the 90s, they hired another 600 or so people. It was estimated their annual revenues by the late 90s in the $100 million range. So he like grew this thing. Like it became a real like substantial business. Like that's.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: I don't even know what that is. By today's stand, it's probably like $500 million in revenue on an annual basis. In 2000, Terrence sells the Oriental Trading Company to a private equity firm. And again, the terms were not disclosed. So I did some estimating, I did some digging. I know that in 2006 a private equity firm, that private equity firm sold the business to Carlisle Group for 1 billion. So given averages of multipliers of private equity will decide to liquidate for. It's assumed that they paid about 3 to $400 million for the business. So you know what, I misread that. It's assumed they paid 500 million for the business and Terrence personally netted 3 to 400 million dollars. That's the assumption.
>> Taylor: Oh, wow.
>> Farz: Yeah, he made out good. And he was, he was already rich at that point. He ran the business for 20 years before he liquidated it. So he was, he was, he already probably had a couple hundred million on his account. So he was, he was in that uber wealthy status. So it's now the early 2000. Terrence has liquidated his business and he is just flush with cash. His original goal was just to get into philanthropy. He, again, the data on this is kind of scant. We know that he donated millions of dollars to AIDS service nonprofits. We know that he donated roughly half a million dollars to the dnc. We know that he was very involved with LGBTQ nonprofits. And he was just a, he was a giver. Like he was very generous. And a lot of people that knew him throughout his life would tell you that he was an incredibly generous person, which some of the stories I'm going to tell you here later on will show. After a few years of being, just being a philanthropist, he started visiting Council Bluffs, Iowa, which was homes to a Harrah's casino. And I looked it up. It's a six minute drive from Omaha, Nebraska to this part of Iowa.
>> Taylor: Oh, do they have super different laws?
>> Farz: Yes, yes. This is when you had to go out of state. So he realized that he loves gambling. He'd eventually start making trips to Vegas, betting big money until some of the major casinos like Caesars and Rio started offering him perks to keep him, keep him on premises. So they would give him, they would comp him three bedroom villas, private planes, VIP show tickets. He got $500,000 in store credit at these casinos to use their gift shop. What are you buying at a casino gift shop for half a million dollars?
>> Taylor: That is wild. That is a lot of crap. And like maybe some booze, I don't know.
>> Farz: That's a lot of crap for sure. He would, he just sort of binge gambling at this point. So he was playing slot machines. He was betting $50,000 a hand. Single hands on blackjack as wild.
>> Taylor: I can't, I can't do any of it. I don't know. Are you. If you gamble. But being from Las Vegas, I can do Absolutely nothing. Because I get nervous and I hate it, and I hate losing money. I don't have any money.
>> Farz: Yeah, no, I did. One time I went to Vegas when we were living in LA and I played blackjack. I found the cheapest one at the win I could play, and it was like $50 a hand. And I sat there for maybe 17 seconds and just gave my $50 and left. So this is where the generosity thing happens. And it also shows, like, how totally out of control this guy was. There's one server who reported that he flipped her a $50,000 chip as a tip for serving drinks. It's, like, insane money being thrown around here. There's estimates that he was spending somewhere to the tune of $5 million a day on gambling.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: In 2007, it was estimated.
>> Taylor: And that's, like, net losses.
>> Farz: So it's not all losses. Because I'm gonna. I'm gonna describe why it's not here in a second. In 2007, it was estimated that just his gambling activities alone contributed nearly 6% of Harrah's overall gambling revenue for the year. Can you imagine how much money must be going through? Like, it's. It's. It's.
>> Taylor: I definitely wouldn't. I guess I'd give that guy credit to the gift shop.
>> Farz: So what? One thing to the credit of Steve Wynn, which is a term I'll rarely ever use my lifetime for. He. He did see what was going on with this guy, and he banned him from the Wynn properties because he was like, you are not. This is not happy gambling. You are.
>> Taylor: Something bad's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: So in 2007, it was estimated that he had gambled $825 million and had the single year, biggest loss ever recorded in human history of $204 million.
>> Taylor: All of that hair. Hair is, like, all over.
>> Farz: So it was.
He bet 824 million on gambling and now lives off Social Security
At that point, it was mostly Harrah's, Rio and Caesars because he was banned from Wynn and some of the other properties on the.
>> Taylor: But he's going to Las Vegas now.
>> Farz: He's going to Vegas now? Yeah. There's a Harrah's in Vegas as well. Actually. I think Harris owns Rio, so I think they're all kind of a part of one property. Some things. Some things that were, like, clear to the people that witnessed this was that he was just, like. He was on drugs, he was on pills, he was drinking constantly. He was. He was. He'd, like, gone from this, like, buttoned up CEO to just, like. I mean, not to denigrate the guy more than he already has him, but just like a degenerate at this point. And yeah, like I said, it got to the point where some casinos, namely the Wind, just outright banded. Because early, this guy is entirely being driven by addiction and not at all by, like having a good time and enjoying himself here. The Nevada Gaming Commission would eventually find Caesars $225,000 for allowing him to gamble the way that he was, given how obviously predatory it was. And because there were claims that they. They were plying him with booze and stuff.
>> Taylor: That's what they do.
>> Farz: That's what they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like seeing him lose, they're like, yep, we're gonna keep. Keep floating this guy. Keep giving him markers and all that. He would eventually get sued several times by these casinos for unpaid markers that they gave him. There was one case where he ended up shelling out $114 million for just credit that was given to him to gambling. And then he held back a $14 million worth of payments, and they sued him for the 14 million. Then this went to court, it was settled. But that was where it came to light that there was a lot of weird, shady stuff going on with, like, how they were getting this money out of this guy.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So by the end of 2007, he'd blown through everything. His 500 million plus dollar fortune was totally gone. Like I said, again, he betted 824 million. He lost 500 million, which means that he probably won 300 million. These numbers are so crazy to me, just saying them, it's like, I know, what an insane sum of money to just blow through. And he ultimately, in 2007, would confess to his siblings, like, what he'd been doing. It was pretty obvious at that point because he was liquidating everything. His homes were being liquidated, his private planes and cars and all that were being liquidated to kind of fund this addiction. And they've kind of surrounded him and forced him into rehab, which he ended up going to. It's said that from the day he went into rehab to today, he has not been inside a casino or gambled. So that part of it is, is good, I guess.
>> Taylor: Good for him.
>> Farz: Yeah. He would ultimately relocate to San Francisco to start a new life. And unfortunately, he got hit with prostate cancer and he's still alive today. and he had to start a GoFundMe to raise a hundred thousand dollars he needed for surgery.
>> Taylor: I hate that. Hate it for, like a thousand reasons. Yeah.
>> Farz: And now he literally just lives off Social Security. Apparently that's his only source of income.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: So. And in 2022, the rights to his story were purchased by a film studio. So there's a pretty good chance there's going to be, like, a story, documentary, narrative, movie. I don't know what it's going to be exactly, but there is a good chance the stories will be made about his life because it's pretty incredible. I actually, in the process of researching this, came across several other people that also had this issue. There was one guy where he walked into a casino with 50 bucks and over the course of, like, a couple of months, turned into, like, $40 million and lost it all before the end of the year. It's like, it sounds like when you get hooked by this thing, it's pretty bad.
>> Taylor: You're like, oh, you just, like, stopped, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Like, what do I know?
>> Farz: Yeah. I learned my lesson that one time I played blackjack. I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this. I have done it. I have gambled. Besides that, I do. I'll do, like, slots, but I like walking, like, 20 bucks and just sit and do, like, slots, like, whatever. I'm going to lose 20 bucks and see exactly one light splash in front of me.
>> Taylor: But you're going to lose 20 bucks.
>> Farz: Yeah, exactly.
>> Taylor: Immediately. Yeah.
>> Farz: So that's the story of Terrence Watambi and hopefully a cautionary shell also one that I doubt will ever happen again, because if you're that successful, I doubt you don't understand the risks of gambling. I mean, the guy was worth nearly half or was worth half a billion dollars when this all started. And that was, like, in 2000. Like, he was. He was probably one of the richest men in the world at that point.
>> Taylor: Wild.
>> Farz: Oh, and then Berkshire Hathaway eventually bought Oriental Trading Company and bought a bunch of others and consolidated under the same brand and turned into a powerhouse that I did not know about until I researched this guy's name, even though Taylor is very well acquainted.
>> Taylor: Yeah, just, you know, it's exactly what you explained it. It's just a bunch of junk. But you can make a lot of money if you're selling junk.
>> Farz: Yeah, he did good for himself until he didn't. But, yeah, he's 68 years old now. It's crazy, because I realized I was like, okay, so he basically, for 15 years, had no money, and he could finally claim Social Security, like, three years ago.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: All that stupid junk that he bought with, like, that $500,000. You know what I mean? What a Waste.
>> Farz: Yeah.
$72 billion was lost by Americans to gambling or sports betting in 2024
So just don't gamble. Like, I don't know. I don't know.
>> Taylor: I don't know. It doesn't. It doesn't appeal to me because I don't. It makes me nervous.
>> Farz: The sports betting stuff really weirds me out because it's like, it's like, we're going to hear so much more, I bet, about this happening. Because if you think about it, like, if you're like, as well in the context, like the ufc, because that's the one that came out recently, but like, those guys get paid 12 to show, 12 to win, usually at the undercard. And if someone shows up at your door and like, yeah, you want to make like $300,000 tomorrow, just like throw it in the first round, like. Yeah, I don't know that you're talking to. You're Talking like a 20 year old kid with brain damage. Like, like.
>> Taylor: No, I totally. No. And like, you're not gonna. Those are jobs you can't do for very long, you know, so some people are probably like, how do I even figure out my future?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So anywho, that was my story. Kind of a shorty, but hopefully interesting and hopefully a movie will come out. My main thought here, Taylor, was they're probably gonna release a movie on him in the next, like, year or two, and then we can release this podcast and say, look, we were ahead of the story.
>> Taylor: Perfect. Let's definitely do that.
>> Farz: We'll get a huge bump.
>> Taylor: Awesome. Well, thank you. I mean, yeah, it's spiles.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: I don't know.
>> Farz: Don't gamble. And if your kids. Just don't let your kids get into this. Yeah, there's a lot more stats too. I didn't even read off, like, it was, it was like, what was this one? Yeah, it was. It was the percentage of lower income houses being the ones that do this the most frequently. So the ones who need the money the most, the most likely to end up in this horrible cycle.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Because you're like, oh, just look a little more. A little more.
>> Farz: Yeah. It came out to $72 billion was lost by Americans to gambling or sports betting in 2024.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: So that's. That's literally. That's literally just like that much money in people's savings accounts or to their credit card. Balance just went away.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: In a year, actually.
>> Taylor: I remember, I was going to say, my brother worked at the sports book at a sportsbook in Las Vegas for many, many years. And he was like, yeah, the people are terrible people who are Gambling are always really stressed out and, like, you know, trying to figure it out because you just sit there in, like, a. Like a lounge chair, and when you watch 300 TVs and you just kind of gamble on everything. But we did it a couple of times. We did it one year on the super bowl, and it was like, will the super bowl go into overtime? And Juan bet yes on, like, the thing, and then it did. And it was also the first time in history it ever happened, but he only won, like, $4. And I was like, how could you not have one more money than that? Because it's never happened before. And it happened. And then another time it was a Kentucky Derby, and it was the Kentucky Derby, I think. I think it was that race at Preachers or the other one, but where the initial result was wrong and they had, like, redo it, like, re. Look at the. Like, look at the tape. And then they give it to a different horse. But my mom and Juan had bet on. Had bet on the horse that won first. And we were, like, by the pool, and they were screaming and hugging like they had won the f****** million dollar lottery. They each would have won, like, $300. And they were so excited. We were so excited for them. And then, like, again, for the first time in history, they, like, redid the results, and they didn't win anything.
>> Farz: That sucks.
>> Taylor: But they had the high for a second and they were so excited.
>> Farz: Yeah, I would imagine it is. It has to be pretty exciting. I mean, if you do it for fun. Okay. It just sounds like. Like it's so dangerous doing it for fun that you can end up, like, sunk all the way into it. Yeah. When I was. When I was in Miami, I went to. This is crazy. Do you remember the movie Black Mass with Johnny Depp? No. It was the one where he plays Whitey Bulger.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah, sure. Okay.
>> Farz: So this is, like, I don't know, 15, 16 years ago, but I was in law school in Miami, and I. My roommate wanted to go see a highlight game. Do you even know what highlight is? It's. It's those guys who. They're dressed like jockeys, but they have these, like, rackets.
Miami highlight gambling became huge in the 70s in Miami
But the rackets, like, curved to the top, like these really tall, curved rackets. You slam the ball against the wall. It looks like racquetball, sort of. And I was like, I'll go with you. I don't. I've never seen this before. So I go to this. We go to this highlight place. It's like an enclosed building in the Middle of nowhere, Miami. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck just stand up.
>> Taylor: Being in this neighborhood, I have never seen this before. It's so weird when you say highlight. It's J, A, I.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: A L, A, I.
>> Farz: Yes. It's very weirdly spelled.
>> Taylor: I've literally never seen this. Well, it's.
>> Farz: Yeah, we go there and it's at night. It like starts at like 10pm and goes to like 5am or something. Like, what kind of sporting thing is this? Like, I thought I was going to a competition. You go in there, it's dark, it's dingy. Has been updated in like 70 years. You're watching these people play and you're watching the people there and you feel like what I would imagine like a 1970s p*** theater was like. It's just.
>> Taylor: Sure. It's like then where you feel like you're.
>> Farz: It's gross, it's dingy. And there's all these torn up tickets on the ground. And like these people were here betting. This is a gambling site. Like they're gambling on this thing. Anyways, I had no idea what I was watching. I watched Black Mass and in Black Mass, highlight gambling became like a huge thing in like the 70s in Miami. And it was being fixed by the Irish mafia in Boston. And that's why all this, like, weird underground, like, stuff ended up happening. Why it became this like, kind of seedy operation. And that was like a huge plot point in Black Mass. And I realized while I was watching it, I realized that it was really depressing. I never want to go back. So that was the whole story.
>> Taylor: I just. I can't. I just. They have like lacrosse. Kind of like little nets that catch the ball. And then the thing. You're right. They dress like jockeys. So weird.
>> Farz: It's really weird.
>> Taylor: Not weird, I mean, whatever. So different. Interesting. Not something I've ever seen before.
>> Farz: Yeah. I think it has to be something in like from a South American country, given the fact that it's from Spain. It is. Okay. Okay. Well, not white, but still. Yeah. Yeah. Same story with going to like, horse races. Like, I. I've been to the horse track and outside of. What is it, Pasadena or something? I don't know.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I've been there too.
>> Farz: And even that you're like walking around like this. These people are kind of sad. I don't wanna. I don't want to be here.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I mean, like. Yeah, it's like. Yeah.
>> Farz: Yeah. So anyways, if you have a fun sports betting story, tell us.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it does hopefully tell me more. You won something, and then we'll change our minds and start gambling.
>> Farz: Should we start gambling?
>> Taylor: Oh, wait, no, no, no. Now that you mentioned it, let's start.
>> Farz: Let's start gambling on highlight.
>> Taylor: We're in, like, jail in a year. Like, oh, no.
>> Farz: Fixed in Highline Miami at a cd. Anywho, that's my story.
Taylor: I read a book called Sybil. So I bought that book, and I'm reading that right now
Do we have anything to read out?
>> Taylor: I do. I have one thing from me.
>> Farz: Oh. Special guest writer.
>> Taylor: Special guest me ready in. So I read that book Sybil. When I talked about Sybil, and in the book Civil, one of the personalities was reading a book called the Tortoise and the Hair. So I bought that book, and I'm reading that right now because it's kind of fun to, like, read a book that someone's reading in a book because it, like, really happened.
>> Farz: It's very meta.
>> Taylor: So it's like, you know, whatever it's about doesn't matter. So there's a part in it where these two people, Paul and. And Imogen, are looking at these books for times that they mentioned, like, tuberculosis. It was based in the 1950s, and they're looking at these books that go back to the 1860s that. That Imogen happens to have in her house. And she, like, she finds something, and Paul's excited, and he's like, wait, can you find out the date of, like, this. This. This from, like, the early 1700s on? And he looks at her, and she looks at him, and she goes, there is nowhere in this house I could find that information. And I just, like, laughed out loud, because wouldn't that feel nice if you just, like, didn't have all the information in the whole world at your fingertips? You could just be like, I don't know. I'm never gonna. I'm not gonna be able to find out.
>> Farz: To be able to be oblivious. What a luxury that used to be.
>> Taylor: And it's not even, like, something important, like, whatever. You're just like, you know what? I don't need to know every g****** fun fact the moment I need to know it. I could just be like, I don't know. There's nowhere I could find that. I thought that was fun.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what. That. What the. The future we're looking at looks like for, like, teaching people. Because it's like, how do you even teach people when they have everything in the world available to them immediately, all the time? It's very strange.
>> Taylor: I don't know. I don't know.
>> Farz: A bygone era, Taylor. It was a bygone era.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Cool. That's it. Well, thank you. Thank you for your story.
>> Farz: Thank you.
>> Taylor: Thank you everyone for listening.
>> Farz: Tell your friends. Write to us at Doom tofell pod gmail dot com. Find us on the social at Doom to Fell Pod. And again, tell your friends.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Thank you.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: Thanks.