This is an iHeart Podcast. The best AI assistant isn't one that knows the whole world. It's one that knows your world. Um A custom assistant built on Watson X with IBM's Granite models can leverage your trusted data, be easily trained on your workflows, and integrate with your apps. It can be tuned to do just what you need.
Because the more AI knows about your world, more it can help you do. Learn more at ibm.com slash productivity. IBM. Let's create. I've never felt like this before.
It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous.
Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. Yeah. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, and more at your DSW store or dsw.com.
Toa Ina. We all know that water is life. An average American household consumes over 300 gallons daily. 40% of Navajo families residing on a reservation the size of West Virginia struggle to survive on less than 10 gallons of water per day. Yearly St.
Bonaventure Indian Mission and School delivers over 1.5 million gallons of clean water to these families. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. This message comes from Green Light. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy?
Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest with your guardrails in place. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real-time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk-free at greenlight.com/slash iHeart. This is Matt Rogers from Lost Coach Reese with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Have you ever felt that uneasy anxiety when the 4 p.m. hour strikes, the creeping meal-related distress that happens when you don't quite feel prepared? You know, dinner dread? Let's get rid of that unpleasant feeling forever with one word: stouffers. No matter what happens, you'll have a dinner plan that everyone loves with stouffers.
Some chicken enchiladas or a cheesy chicken and broccoli pasta bake is always welcome, whether it is plan A or plan D. Licious. Not gonna lie, I eat the lasagna once a week. A week. And that's a fact.
When the clock strikes dinner, think Stouffers. Shop now for family favorites. And we continue here with our American stories. And now Matt Parker, a comedian and mathematician from Australia. Tells the story of the time Michael Larson surprisingly beat the game show Press Your Luck.
Here's Matt. The best TV game shows sit at the intersection of skill and luck. And in the 1980s, there was one such game show called Press Your Luck. The skill component came from asking the contestants trivia questions, but then the luck came in via the big board. This is how prizes were dished out after a contestant had demonstrated their skill answering a trivia question.
It was a massive screen with 18 boxes detailing different cash amounts or physical prizes and a cartoon character known as a whammy. The highlight on the board would rapidly flip between the different boxes in an apparently random order. The players would then win the content of whichever box was selected when they hit their buzzer, but if they landed on a whammy, the player would lose all the prizes they had accumulated so far.
Okay, I'm on the trip. Let's go, please. Vacation time, okay? No! Stop.
Boom. The system would never linger on one box long enough for the player to see what it was, react, and then hit their buzzer. And because the movement was unpredictable, it was theoretically impossible for the player to anticipate which box was going to be selected.
So they were picking at random. And most players would win a few prizes before retiring for that round. Other players of course would press their luck and get worried. I mean That was the idea in theory. Michael Larson was an ice cream truck driver from Ohio, and they decided to see just how random the big board really was.
So they taped some shows when it first started airing in 1983 and they poured over the footage, trying to crack if there were any underlying patterns. And sure enough, They noticed that the board only had. Five. Predetermined cycles. They just went through them so fast that they looked Random.
So Michael set about memorizing those five cycles, working out exactly when the optimum point to buzz in for each one would be, and then they flew out to Los Angeles and unbelievably managed to get themselves on the show as a contestant. The game starts normally enough. Michael was competing against Ed, a Baptist minister, and Janie, a dental assistant. Michael answers enough trivia questions correctly to earn some spins on the big board, and on his first go, he hits a whammy. By the start of the second round, Michael is in last place, but his trivia knowledge has just earned him seven more spins on the big board.
This time, he does not hit a whammy. Oh no, he lands on $1,250. Hey, no whammies! No whammies. Come on, big bucks.
I need lots of money, come on. Yo Stop! Stop at $1,250. One spin left. $1,250 Michael Pressure.
And then on the next spin. $1,250 again. Doo-doo. Stop! Stop!
At $1,250 again! And then $4,000, $5,000, $1,000, a holiday, $4,000, and so on. As most of the prizes also come with a free spin, his reign on the big board seems to be everlasting. At first, the host, Peter Tamakin goes through his normal patter, waiting for Michael to hit a whammy. But Michael doesn't.
In a freak of probability, Michael keeps selecting prize after prize. It is amazing to watch the range of emotions the host goes through. Initially, he's excited, something unlikely is happening, but soon he's trying to work out what on earth is going on while still maintaining his jovial game show host persona. Until that first game. I don't cancel whatever.
Here we go. Stop! Stop it, five, under that skin. Apparently, behind the scenes, Chaos was breaking out as show executives and channel directors were trying to work out, was Michael cheating? How was this happening?
To their eyes, Michael seemed to be celebrating too soon. He was pleased when he buzzed in in less time than he conceivably could have been reading the prize that he had won.
Somehow, he already knew when to press the buzzer and which square he wanted to stop on.
Now of course all of this could have been avoided if the game show big board was actually random. Then Michael wouldn't have been able to pour over the footage on VHS and memorise the five different cycles. But the designers of the Press Your Luck system had hard-coded set cycles instead of making it truly random, because being random is very difficult. Yeah. There's not even really a case of it being difficult for computers to do something randomly.
is pretty much impossible. No computer can be random unaided. Computers are built to follow instructions precisely. Processors are built to predictably do the correct thing every time. Making a computer do something unexpected is a very difficult feat.
You can't have a line of programming code that says do something truly random without also having a specialized component attached to the computer to provide the randomness. Oh. The extreme version of this is to build a 2-meter-high motorized conveyor belt that dips into a bucket of about 200 dice and lifts a random selection of them up past a camera. The computer can then use that camera to look at the dice, detect what numbers have been rolled, and use that as a source of randomness. And such a machine, capable of over 1.3 random dice rolls a day, would weigh over 100 pounds, fill a room with the cacophony of moving motors and rolling dice, and be exactly what Scott Nessen built for his Games by Email website.
Scott You See runs a website where people can play games. By AMO. which means he requires about twenty thousand dice rolls per day. People who play board games do take their dice rolls very seriously.
So he went to all the effort in two thousand and nine to build a machine capable of physically rolling enough Dice. He was sure to engineer the Diso-Matic so it was future-proof with plenty of spare capacity, hence the maximum output of over 1.3 million rolls per day. Scott currently has about a million unused dice rolls saved on his server and the Dyso-Matic fires up for an hour or two each day to top off the randomness reservoir, filling his house in Texas with the thundering sound of hundreds of dice rolling at once.
However, The makers of Press Your Luck did not use that, and it meant that Michael Larson was able to memorize the patterns and they ended up winning an unprecedented one hundred and ten thousand two hundred and thirty seven dollars. On the game show, about eight times more than the average winner. He had such an extended winning streak that the normally fast turnover game show had to split his appearance across two separate episodes. And even though they did look into if he was somehow cheating or breaking the rules, eventually Michael Larson did get all of his prize money. He managed to show that it was actually less effort to memorize the apparently random sequences than it was to memorize the trivia which the show was meant to be testing.
Michael was able to take a game show which was supposed to be skill and luck and turn it entirely into a very specific, different type of skill. And a great job by Robbie digging up that story, and that's just a delight. And a special thanks also to Matt Parker, a comedian and mathematician from Australia. Matt's book, Humble Pie, P.I., pick it up at Amazon.com and the usual suspects. Michael Larson's story of how he beat the game show Press Your Luck.
Here on Our American Stories. With Amex Gold, you can make dining out before the big event a big event. Hey, you made it. It's been so long. And earn four times membership rewards points on purchases at restaurants up to $50,000 per year.
And if you're running late, no problem. Oh, we gotta go. You get access to card member entrances at select venues so you can make it in time to catch the big win. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Card number entrance access not limited to Amex Gold Card.
Terms apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com/slash with Amex. We finally switched to T-Mobile because with them, we can be connected here and there. Dad, the cousins in Mexico have a surprise for you. And enjoy the gift of staying connected.
Switch and start saving today. Get four Samsung Galaxy S25 phones with Galaxy AI on us and four lines for just $25 per line. Plus, non-stop talk texts and data between US and Mexico. Visit his door at T-Mobile.com or call 1-800-T-Mobile, 1-800-T-Mobile. See details at cmobile.com Behind every successful business is a vision.
Bringing it to life takes more than effort. It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in. With convenient digital tools, helpful resources, and personalized guidance, we can help your business forge ahead confidently. Learn more at chase.com backslash business.
Chase for business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JP Morgan Chase Bank NA, member FDIC, Copyright 2025, JP Morgan Chase Company.
You heard it before many times. Water is life. But do you know that almost half of the homes on the Navajo Reservation do not have clean, running water? With your support, St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School is ready to give water to Navajo families.
So we invite you to help provide this precious gift of life to those in need. Contrary to many average Americans, Navajo families survive on just 10 gallons of water per day. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to ST Bonaventure. Here at the Almond Joy factory, where tropical vibes abound, we use soft, fresh-tasting coconut.
The crunchiest almonds and delicious chocolate candy. Ah, but do you know what our most important ingredient is?
Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don't. Almonds. Joy's got nuts and something even way better than that. Yes, almond joy is made with almonds and yo. This is an iHeart podcast.
