The Infinite Monkey's Guide To… Gambling

The Infinite Monkey Cage

BBC

Comedy, Science

4.7 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robin Ince and Brian Cox ask why some people always seem to win as they investigate the science of gambling. They hear how playing monopoly is no way to make friends, but don’t worry, because psychologist Richard Wiseman claims that it’s never really good fun anyway. In fact, games are mainly a form of social bonding and studies show deception could even be essential to human behaviour, which may just explain why so many people cheat. So should we even bother playing them? Well, it just so happens that solving maths problems can help us in other areas of life, so the team tackle a conundrum involving a goat, a cabbage and very hungry wolf, before becoming side-tracked by a debate over why the three were ever on a trip together in the first place, let alone trying to cross a river.

New episodes will be released on Wednesdays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the full series on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyF

Producer: Marijke Peters Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

Episodes featured: Series 15: How to Beat the House and Win Series 3: Randomness Series 11: Deception

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Helena Bonkarter and this is history's secret heroes.
0:07.0	In this series we'll hear stories of daring secret missions and rarely heard tales from World War II, like Emily, the enigmatic high-ranking
0:17.2	codebreaker, and Tremont, the escape artist, interned in a German camp.
0:24.0	Tales of danger, dynamism and downright determination.
0:27.8	The new series of history's secret heroes.
0:30.5	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.0	BBC Sounds.
0:34.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
0:38.0	Hello I'm Brian Cox.
0:40.0	I'm Robin Ince and this is the Infinite Monkey's Guide guide to and today it is an infinite
0:44.4	monkeys guide to gambling more specifically the the science of gambling which is
0:49.5	is there a site I suppose that's what we're going to find out really but that idea that you could
0:53.0	site it because then eventually surely all gamblers would buy that book and then the
0:57.5	house would always lose and that would be the end of gambling. The gambling
1:00.7	industry is of course much like the alcohol industry. They say drink responsibly and gamble carefully.
1:04.8	I'm not entirely sure that is what they really mean.
1:07.5	Yeah, gambling looks like a game of chance, but is there really a way to maximize the chance or will the house always win?
1:14.5	You'd be good at poker.
1:15.7	Why?
1:16.7	Because you'd have that smiling face, the smiling face of an assassin.
1:21.1	And they would never know were you smiling because you had a great hand or not.
1:25.0	Well, if anybody's going to know whether I'd make a good poker player, it's Richard Wiseman.
	...

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