How the World Became a Casino (With Natasha Schüll)

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]If you are constantly betting on this, how many times is a politician going to say a certain word or how long will they shake someone's hand? You're not really listening fully to what they are saying.

[00:00:12]You're listening for those little words and it's like, oh, ding ding ding.

[00:00:18][music] >> Hello and welcome to the 44 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 44 Media is journalist founded and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 44media.co as well as bonus content every [music] single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments and [music] they get early access to our interview series, too. Gain access to that content at 44 media.co.

[00:00:52]This week, we're joined by Natasha Schul. Natasha is a professor and anthropologist at New York University.

[00:01:01]She is also the author of a book called Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. This book was published in 2012.

[00:01:12]I stumbled into it while I was writing about social games and Facebook games while these were all the rage. And I stumbled into that book in a way that many journalists and researchers who want to study addiction and compulsive behavior that is not associated with drugs but with technology. We all end up reading this book by Natasha because it is brilliant. Natasha basically spent years in Las Vegas talking to the people who play slot machines, the people who design slot machines, the people who design casinos and really laid out the way that technology, specifically our phones work today and beautifully, expertly described what she calls the zone, which is this area of uh behavior and brain activity where you're in like this flow state of playing a game that describes a lot of the addiction that I think we all feel today to some degree. Natasha's work is always relevant but the reason I reached out to her is we've been covering prediction markets more often on 44 media poly market and kshi and this is something that she is interested in as well because it obviously feeds into her research so was very happy to have her on. Please check out her book if you haven't already. Again it's called addiction by design machine gambling in Las Vegas. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[00:02:58][music] Natasha, thank you so much for being here.

[00:03:05]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:03:07]>> I think it would be very useful for our listeners to hear a little bit about your research into slot machines that you wrote about in your fantastic book, Addiction by Design. There is so much to that book. You go into it in great detail. I highly recommend everyone uh read it or listen to it. There's also an audio book. But to just kind of give an example of how digital user interfaces and design can really change uh behavior and gambling behavior. specifically. I was wondering if you can like talk about this pivotal moment in Las Vegas and and slot machine design specifically where they changed from physical reels that are spinning in machines to more digital interfaces, what that did for gamblers and what that did for casinos.

[00:04:02]>> Right? So when you had the the physical reels or the analog reels we could think about them as uh there was 22 positions per reel and so you'd have three of them spinning and you were really constrained in terms of the mathematical uh outputs or we can think about those as algorithms by these 22 per three real positions. there was there was really only so much that you could do with that. Uh in the 80s and then even more so in the '9s when we when we saw digital technologies and capabilities and computerization coming on board and being wedded to the slot machine, you saw this explosion of new possibilities for designers, particularly the designers of the math. So each of those reels um even if you continued to see it spinning in front of you, even as it continued to be physical that you were interacting with was actually virtual with hundreds of stops on them that you could mathematically program to. Most of those virtual stops would be mapped to blank spots on the reel. So they were heavily weighted toward the blank spots.

[00:05:17]um you would see physically in front of you exactly what you saw in front of you on the physical machines. And you know, if you if you imagine someone sitting for 24 hours in front of a machine, whether or not you're mathematically competent, you do get some sense of what the odds are by interacting with the symbols that are in front of you. Uh but what digitization did was completely divorce what you see in front of you with what the odds actually are. The easiest way to describe what virtual reels did for uh physical slot machines is to use the analogy of waiting the dice. So just as you would like drill drill silver into the corner of a die to weight it more toward one position, you were mapping most of the blank non-paying non-winning spots um to to the blank spots on the reel. That was like waiting the reels, >> right? And that allows both the casinos or the designers of the machines to better design the outcome for their profit but also for the enjoyment of the players. Right.

[00:06:28]>> Yes. because you could um you know if we think about the old one armed bandit that the the limitations that those 22 per times three stops gave you also meant limitations in the kind of experiences that you could have and the kind of time you could spend there. Um this is why one-armed bandits most often did not have seats in front of them. uh they were very volatile in the sense that you would either double or triple your winnings or you would lose it all and this would happen pretty quickly. So if you drew it on a graph it would be very very spiky in terms of your winnings over time and it you would quickly zero out your time. when you had these computerized models that could be manipulated to dispense rewards uh at at at a at a kind of continuous um pace but small little tiny rewards over time. You were able to sort of manipulate that graph and uh give people much more quote unquote time on device. And this really was a shift from a profit model that had to do with let's get all their money right away. let's fleece the consumer uh and then they can be on their way to let's actually let the consumer sit there much much much longer. Let's give them more time for their money and let's take their money much more slowly because what we see in terms of revenues is that machines that do that ultimately earn much more money from them. So instead of that spiky graph zeroing out in time, you saw a much more slow gradual uh gradual line down to zero. Um and some of these machines that would dispense, you know, tiny tiny little bits over time uh were were were so sort of relaxing in the way that they felt to play. Um, one of the one of the designers of them drew it on a napkin for me and he pointed to that slow curve down to zero and he said, "We want you to recline on our math model the way you recline on a comfortable couch."

[00:08:42]Um, I guess I do have to say uh to to explain how this happens um you you do need to go beyond the three reel. So the three real virtual real machine that was sort of the first step toward computerization and virtuality um what gave even more possibilities and this sort of comfortable couch that you can recline on that kind of algorithm that depended on what's called multi-line slots. These are the slots that you will still see today in casinos or in online casinos. And basically it's a video screen. There are no physical reels.

[00:09:19]It's a video screen uh with many many symbols all over them and typically you can bet on 50 hundred lines and you you can bet pennies, right? So you you you put in your $5 and you you're betting pennies on each line. Um because there are so many lines, you're going to win back pretty often on at least one or two or three of those lines. And guess what?

[00:09:46]it's going to say, "Ding, ding, ding, ding. You won on this line." But that's a net loss. So th this idea of um what are called false wins. So slowly taking your money, you're slowly losing, but as you're slowly losing, you're experiencing that as winning every time.

[00:10:07]So you do this research uh in the 90s early 2000s and that is long before the ubiquity of social media and mobile games and uh loot boxes and and all this stuff. But I'm sure anyone who is listening to you immediately recognizes all these incentive models from their daytoday lives. these little hits of dopamine, an algorithm that is trying to solicit a certain type of behavior and time on device, a term that uh technologists use, social media companies use, makers of mobile devices use. And you wrote an introduction uh a new introduction to your book in 2024 where you kind of talk about how relevant the book became over time and all these journalists reaching out to you, policy makers, some of the people from these companies that that are actually implementing these type of designs.

[00:11:06]And it seems like we've come around full circle in a way like the philosophy was adapted into all these other industries but now but now they're there now we're just like back to gambling. Uh and you say uh you wrote near the end of the introduction actually I want to quote this uh you mentioned Khi at the very end. Khi being the the the prediction market where like poly market people can bet on the outcome of real world events.

[00:11:31]You say the convergence of future markets in lay betting is not caused by digital technology. The two were all were intertwined from the start. Digital technology has however made the activity widely accessible to anyone with a mobile device, easy to perform and designed to hold attention.

[00:11:51]I want to start with that first part.

[00:11:54]Can you talk about how future markets and lay betting were always intertwined?

[00:11:58]Because I thought of it historically there was like a research aspect to it and and people actually use like experts to bet on real world events in order to get good predictions. What do you mean by that? I'm not a historian, but what I mean by that is that back in the early days of stock markets, um, which weren't weren't necessarily even called that back in the early days, you saw those activities, activities that today we identify as investing and trading as considered betting and even even some of the same laws I'm talking about like back back in England and this kind of thing. I think to anyone uh today it's sort of absurd that that prediction markets would say that they aren't betting in in some way. I always like to say the absurdism of the claim um that calcian poly market etc etc are not gambling rests on another absurd claim which is that there is a big difference between things like day trading and things like gambling. You can go to history to see that link.

[00:13:06]>> And for the second part of that statement, when you talk about how accessible this has become, when you see like a Kevin Hart commercial for a casino app, a slot machine app, or you see commercials on TV for betting apps and prediction markets, what's your reaction to that? How do you think machine gamblers that you've talked to or people that you talked to in in in Vegas at the time that you were researching your book and talking to a lot of gamblers like how are they responding and receiving those ads do you think?

[00:13:38]>> I imagine that they're sort of appalled and uh I mean it makes what it makes very cynical but there really is a sort of an not only an explosion of gambling but an explosion of normalized forms of gambling. Um, even more shocking to me than seeing um the ads by celebrities and others on on on TV are the the the increasing adoption by media of these metrics and sort of referring to prediction markets um as they kind of tell the news. And we've already seen the news take the sports news especially really taken over by uh mobile sports betting. And I think we're in danger of having um news in general taken over by prediction markets which is really speaks to this normalization of betting on things.

[00:14:32]>> This is something I wanted to ask you about. I'm not sure how to phrase it. So like forgive me as I stumble through this thought, but slot machines is a form of bedding that is totally abstract. like there's no subject to to the thing that the the bet is is being placed on. You can say the same for most card games, roulette tables. I think even something like the stock market or crypto. They correspond to things in the real world, but the system that you're betting on is so diffused that it's hard to like connect a single bet to a single outcome. and sports betting and things like Khi and Poly Market especially it it's kind of like a onetoone like I was looking at Khi uh before this interview and like some of the bets that I saw is what will Justin Bieber perform at Coachella on April 11, 2026?

[00:15:36]Will Meta release Llama 5 this year? How will Tyson Fury, who is like an MMA fighter, say? What will he say during his final press conference? Have you thought about that at all? Like what is the impact of betting doing two reality, two real world events, if everything is a bet, if we're betting on everything?

[00:15:56]>> Yes. Um I I have been thinking a lot about this lately. um but in a number of different ways. There are a few different kinds of of of bets that I can see uh on prediction markets. There are these um event contracts that are very linked to specific outcomes like an election or a game. And for those I think what it does is just taking those two examples um let's let's take an election as an example. it really changes the way that you orient towards not only the the election but how how you are a citizen in a way. Um if if you are um constantly betting on this and checking in to to see what the price is doing, you're sort of orienting to what used to be um a a much more um civic-minded, sociallyoriented decision in this granular, you know, gambling type way. I think that that can change maybe even how we feel about politics.

[00:17:00]Um, especially when you get to things like attention markets and you know how how many times is a politician going to say a certain word or how long will they shake someone's hand? Uh, you're not really listening fully to u what they are saying. You're listening for those little words and it's like oh ding ding ding. So I think it changes the way that we listen and hear. I think it could also change literally the way we listen to music. Um, instead of just listening for what do you like and what do you respond to, what songs, you're kind of vigilant if you if you're engaged in prediction markets, you you're very vigilant to which song is most likely um to be like the the pick or to rise to the top according to the population. So, you're listening differently. You're not listening as a music connoisseur. um you're listening as someone who's on uh prediction markets and has a stake in them. And then in terms of a game, it's it's very similar to to to the the politics in the sense that it changes the way you are a fan. You used to place your bets and then participate in the game supporting one side or the other, but now you have money on the game in all of these fragmented, choppy little ways. So you may be watching for tiny things. You may be watching for what a specific player does. You may even bet against your own team because the betting becomes more important than the being a fan. So I really I really think having money on things and gambling especially in these sort of granular ways changes so much about who we are and how we are in the world.

[00:18:46]>> Yeah. I I think it is clear from your interviews with machine gamblers that it causes a change in behavior that extends beyond just like the moment of gambling.

[00:18:59]It just like your perspective of the world maybe shifts a little bit if you're obsessed with gambling in that way. Something I really liked about the book and something that I think we tried to do in our own reporting is the book is very respectful of gamblers and you say that you you learned so much about how all of this works from them and it's very clear that they are very aware of what they're doing. They're not being fooled. They know the odds. They know how the machines work. uh you talked to a woman who like got a very deep education in how they work and are constructed and I found that to be uh fascinating and to be a huge like benefit to to to to your findings. And then on the other hand, despite all this awareness, gambling addiction has a higher suicide rate than other addictions. And it appears that machine gambling addiction works faster and is more of a problem from an addiction perspective than other forms of gambling. And I I was wondering how are like those seems contradictory like the self-awareness and the lack of control like how do you reconcile that?

[00:20:20]How are both of those things possible at the same time? I think that, you know, we we sometimes talk about self-d delusion with addiction in general, but I but I also think we understand and addicts understand addicts of all kinds, they sort of know themselves and know what's going on. And even if they have that knowledge, even if they've been through the programs, it doesn't mean that they're not going to be pulled back into it. So, I don't I don't know that machine gamblers are uh so unique in terms of a spectrum of of addictions in in that and in terms of how to how to reconcile that. I mean, um I don't think it's hard for any of us to understand how knowing that it's time to go to bed and stop scrolling, you know, doesn't doesn't make us stop scrolling and go to bed. And I don't mean to trivialize addiction through that analogy. I just mean that I do believe that these behaviors uh that addiction is not something completely other to who we all are. I think we're all on a spectrum somewhere, right? And I do think that every one of us, it's hard not in in the contemporary world of digital media, it is hard not to have a glimpse of what gamblers call the machine zone and to understand its hook and its hold. So, I think to answer that question, um, we we just need to, you know, to ask ourselves what what is that? What when we know we should be doing one thing, but we're we're doing another. Um, I I don't have the answer. If I had the answer to that question, I'd have it made.

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[00:28:01]I get that feeling about the betting markets. It feels like it's a new technology. It's a new type of business.

[00:28:10]They are making as much money as they can but eventually like another shoe will drop. there's going to be some horrible story in the news about how this has impacted people and we'll see uh regulators come down on these companies. But I feel like I would have had that reaction if I was you kind of reporting on machine gambling in Vegas and that hasn't happened, right? Like the those are going strong. They're sophisticated. Do you think that we're going to see regulators intervene here or is it going to be more like Vegas where we're going to let it run wild and just face the consequences?

[00:28:58]>> So, when you're referring to to to it and the betting markets, you you do mean prediction markets, right?

[00:29:03]>> Yes. Yes. Call >> they wouldn't right. They wouldn't call themselves >> betting markets. And the other reason I asked is because we what we do see and maybe this hints to what could come with prediction markets. We do see an uptick in um legal case suits that are being brought against um mobile sports betting giants like DraftKing and FanDuel. sort of following in the footsteps of the these product liability lawsuits that are um that are are being mounted against big tech like the meta YouTube outcome that we just saw. So I think just in the past couple of months there's been two big lawsuits brought brought against DraftKings and FanDuel taking this approach and I think that it isn't it isn't too many steps from that to bringing a same the same sort of suit against prediction markets. You'd you'd have to modify it slightly. Um, but I think you could sort of show how how certain features, how certain technological affordances are in the the legal presentation defective in that they're they're causing um all sorts of harm and that they should be um regulated. In terms of where we're at right now with prediction markets, I mean, we just had the New Jersey ruling, right, where uh prediction markets uh can continue on um as as they wish there and not be counted as betting. And I I don't know how long that's that's going to hold. To my mind, it should be and would be so easy in court to make the case that this is gambling and should be regulated as such. Not that gambling has the greatest regulations, but at least at least it's something. Um, but right now, um, that that's not even happening. So, I'm I'm not exactly sure when when it will.

[00:31:02]>> Are you surprised by how prevalent it seems that gambling has become in culture since you published the book? Do you agree with that statement at all that the America feels more like a casino in general?

[00:31:18]Yeah. I mean, so you mentioned you mentioned that my book was was put out in a new edition with with a preface and in that preface I sort of uh I narrated the way that my book was kind of taken up as a sort of and the slot machine became this kind of Rosetta Stone or skeleton key for for un for unlocking how the hold of so much emerging on the landscape of digital media from Candy Crush to the smartphone and texting.

[00:31:47]um what were some other big ones to dating apps and you know Tinder as a horizontal kind of slot machine and then Robin Hood and fractional shares like sort of like multi-line slot machines and now we've landed uh in this moment when it isn't just diffusing out everywhere into all of our devices and um online experiences but those experiences are increasingly becoming gambling like actual gambling. So, we have this explosion of the the mobile sports betting and the the prediction markets. I did not see that coming. I saw it coming probably a little sooner than others just cuz I was in touch with what's happening over in the UK where the mobile sports app are a few years ahead of us. And so, I sort of saw that that was what was coming down down the pike. And the reason I keep talking about mobile sports betting is that I think you have to talk about that when you're talking about prediction markets um especially now because it's 90% of what's happening on prediction markets is sports betting. I think 90% of the activity on on Kshi and I'm not sure what it is on poly market but I think it's almost all of its um US like official US business is is sports betting. But you've you've really got to see those two th those two are very very similar. And I think that the regulation the eventual regulation discussion around them would hopefully converge.

[00:33:21]back to the the regulation question.

[00:33:24]There is regulation in in gambling and there's I actually don't know this, but I'm assuming there's like specific rules about slot machines. But you talk about in the book how the makers of slot machines uh use like awareness of gambling addiction as a as a shield almost like they are transparent about the odds and that makes it seem above board. But that kind of underplays the reality of like why people play, how they play, uh all the ways that they're pulled in. And just because people know the odds, it seems like transparent and fair to the gambler even though it can it can cause harm and all all of that. I guess when you say that like hopefully there's going to be some discussion of regulation, do you think that actually like curbs the behavior or it just I don't know normalizes it?

[00:34:23]>> So I I understand your question. And um I the kind of regulation that I was talking about or that I would be hopeful for would be a kind of regulation that we we don't see yet with slot machines.

[00:34:35]And it it would be the kind of regulation that just taking the slot machine example um they say oh we you know slot machines are so regulated they run on random number generators and near misses only occur five times more than they would by chance alone which is kind of um and there's a couple of other sort of trivial things. We're so transparent and fair and and you're right that by focusing on that, they completely um obscure what the real problem is, which is the algorithms that are geared toward keeping you in the seat for continuous play until your funds run out and a lot of other uh kind of holding design features like that. We can take the example o of in social media and the recent trial of things like infinite scroll right the slot machine is a kind of infinite scroll right so should we regulate the infinite scroll yes we should that's what we should be looking at those kinds of things and I would hope for the same with mobile sports betting and um prediction markets both of whom are totally trying to do that move of oh look we're you know we're putting up warnings and we're we're putting up labels. I have a Cali account just so that I could go on and see um how these things work. And so I got a little ping a couple of weeks ago telling me cali like wellness tools or I forget I forget exactly what they're called, but it's a suite of ways in which you can kind of regulate your own self and your time and your your spending. And it's it's a way of sort of if we put that stuff out there, then we are less liable um for all this other stuff we're doing to keep you there.

[00:36:26]>> I imagine uh your upcoming book will touch on it, but do you have anything to any thoughts about like how you inoculate yourself to these incentives like being in that environment and researching it all? Do you feel the pull and how do you push back against it or does it just slide up right off of you?

[00:36:49]I've never really felt the pull of gambling and maybe that's what what allowed me to kind of get so close to it and I it was also what propelled my curiosity because it seemed I really couldn't understand it and what the appeal was and I really wanted to understand and I think that's what gave me momentum with my many many interviews with gamblers over over the years. Um, I've begun to interview some mobile sports betterers. Have not yet really talked to anyone um, in the prediction market sphere. So, I don't consider that I yet have researched that. I'm sort of extrapolating from what I know about slot machines and sports betting apps to prediction markets and what I see when I go on and um, kind of play with it myself. I feel like I I'm not that at risk there. I am at risk for other kind of tedious little flow clickytappy activities, which is why it was gratifying when my book was uh taken up mostly by journalists um as a as a cipher for understanding um all of our you know our our infinite scrolling just to uh put it that way. um as as a culture because that I that I relate to and I always I think in the back of my mind had my my own penchant for becoming um sort of disappearing into little repetitive continuous activities whether it's weeding you know whe even non-digital activities or whether it's like editing clicking around and editing photos in Photoshop for many many many many many hours you know I thought those were just sort of my personal uh connections. So that's why it was gratifying that others saw a link there.

[00:38:43]>> Yeah. And I guess there isn't anything like inherently um inherently harmful about being in the machine zone, right? like you can be it in some innocuous way or some joyful way or I I I I obviously um I came I came at your book from the perspective of video games and when I I read the the description and like theory of the machines and I was like ah this is like expressing a very base feeling that I have maybe can like do anything too much but there's nothing inherently wrong with like being in that space I think >> no I don't I don't I don't think so at all like whether it's knitting or gardening. Um I think you know Mihi chicket mihi the psychologist has this has popularized this term flow and um the title of his book flow the subtitle is you know the optimal human condition or something and uh if you look at how he defines flow every cate every criteria uh could apply to the to the slot machine or to day trading or or these kinds of things. And so I had to ask myself when I was writing the book, you know, what what is it then that makes the difference between um you know, let's call it good good flow and then flow that is destructive and um depleting. And at the end of the day, I don't think there's that much difference in the biofysiological um state itself. I think to understand the difference we have to um we have to look outside of it to who is is designing the experience who is profiting from from the experience that really makes the difference. I think >> this is very tangential to gambling but I've seen your documentary in college Buffet uh and I was such a big fan. It was such a mind-blowing documentary. Uh it's a short documentary. It's about uh buffet culture in Vegas, who's partaking in it, uh what happens to the food uh after the fact and all of that. I just kind of if you don't mind, like a couple of questions about that. I assume that that is something you became interested in while you were researching your book and just like observing it kind of on the periphery of of casinos. Is that is that how that came about?

[00:41:05]>> That is how that came about. I mean, I was living in Las Vegas for quite a while and um friends would visit and we'd go to the buffets and um especially European friends would just be sort of flabbergasted and watching their discomfort and they they just didn't know how to do it. They're like, "Really? I leave my plates here with food and I go get more?" You know, they just didn't understand it. and I came to see the buffet as this sort of little appendage to the casino uh that that sort of plays out so much of what's going on in the casino. And of course, I couldn't make a film about slot machine gambling easily. Um you can't bring cameras into casinos, etc. But you you totally can bring a camera into the buffet. So, I decided I'm just going to focus there. And it it it relates even though it's food that we're talking about. Um there's definitely a design element at play there. Um I spoke to the chefs and others behind the scenes and they they they very meticulously lay out the food in a certain order and pattern to kind of produce certain behavior in um in the diners. So you know it's it's sort of like a culinary um example of creating creating an algorithm for a slot machine in a way.

[00:42:28]How are they complimentary in the sense that like is there something about gambling all day and maybe probably losing money that eating too much at a buffet would be would be a complimentary experience to that? So I will answer that question but first I'll say what the difference a big part of the difference is big part of the difference is that just as with like alcohol there's only so much food you can eat. You can eat to excess and you like one person in my movie you can go and vomit and come back and eat more.

[00:43:05]But there there's a there's a physical limit to how much food you can eat.

[00:43:10]there is no limit to uh the gambling that you can do as long as you've got credit or currency of some kind to to stay in motion. So that's the real difference. But in terms of the similarity, that might allow me to return to one of your earlier questions that I realize I didn't answer, which was about the um this the sort of culture of gambling that that that the US um maybe the world in general, but certainly the the US um has become and why what that has to do with and why that might be. I think we I think the answer could sort of explain um the appeal both of buffets and um gambling and probably prediction markets etc. And I think it is a certain um the gamblers that I spoke with when I when I kind of asked them to talk about their lives and introduce themselves and then make connection between their lives and their histories and the machine zone and the draw that it held for them. They often brought up um volatilities and sort of what what the zeitgeist would call procarity. Um today just these precarious circumstances whether it was domestic abuse or losing a job or being from a very poor family or having a child that was very sick and and on and on. and they were they were able to bring those sort of volatile uncontrollable circumstances of their lives directly into conversation with the relief they got um going into that repetitive zone um that you find in a slot machine. I think the world today, you know, it's been a it's been a few years. It's been like 12, 13 years since I wrote that book, but certainly where we're where we're at as a society politically, in terms of the climate, in terms of so so many things out there, volatility abounds. Um and I believe um Mansour, he's is he's the CEO of Poly Market, I believe, described um the the sort of volatility um in his in his childhood politically as having a lot to do with his conception of of prediction markets. And so it's almost like a gamification of volatility.

[00:45:39]It's a way to both rehearse volatility, but you're rehearsing it in a more controlled and limited way. So, it's almost like it's a way to kind of like shortcircuit a a sense of uncontrollable uh procarity by acting out that volatility itself. If that makes sense.

[00:45:59]>> That's very well said. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And I think there's also something like if the entire world or this country is becoming more like Las Vegas in in the way you just described where we feel procarity, we feel volatility and we are somehow I don't know roleplaying that or coping with that by by betting and predicting uh on everything. I think there is probably I don't know how to exactly identify it or express it but there's also like a buffet aspect to the culture where we go from like the procarity and the bedding coping and then soothing in some way with with food or I don't know video games or entertainment or just like switching from one extreme to to the other. And I I think that's definitely where we are.

[00:46:46]>> Binge culture. I mean we binge >> Yes.

[00:46:49]>> We binge watch shows. I think there is a sort of throw caution to the wind and go to this to this extreme in the face of, you know, all this [ __ ] [laughter] >> No, totally. And and the Yeah, Netflix is a buffet, right? Like a lot of the a lot of the a lot of the stuff we get served is kind of buffet style, right?

[00:47:09]Uh pick what you want and and gorge yourself.

[00:47:11]>> Yeah. And I think that Netflix autoplay was one of was one of the was one of the early sort of like or I think it was called postplay. originally where it just you know so it's like no resolution you just go into the next one and the next one and the next one and then it it is it is very soothing it sort of like holds the whole world in obeyance and it keeps everything at bay >> yeah okay Natasha thank you so much for your time I'm looking forward to your next book and again I highly recommend everyone uh read uh addiction by design if you want to understand uh a lot of how you feel uh in the face of of these technologies that that we uh uh interface with every day.

[00:47:53]>> Thank you so much for having me.

[00:47:54]>> Thank you.

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