Hello Kevin! As Fannie Davis's daughter, and the author of the book about her, I am blown away by your knowledge, your perspective and your respect for her and so many like her. Basically, wow! Thank you. And thanks for shouting out both Felicia George and Louise Meriwether, who paved the way for me to tell my mom's story.

@TheRandomizerYT

2 жыл бұрын

Wait no way you really are who you claim to be. Are you?

@abebitu1

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheRandomizerYT Yep!

@TheRandomizerYT

2 жыл бұрын

@@abebitu1 Hm, I have no intentions to be toxic or unbelieving, but considering how unreliable just words have become, is there any (sorry to ask) proof for the same, implying you truly are the daughter?

@abebitu1

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheRandomizerYT Odd question, especially since I don't know who YOU are.

@cipher3966

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheRandomizerYT Is it really hard to believe that her daughter would be interested in a video like this?

I can't think of anything more American than criminalizing something that makes money then using it themselves.

@MemeMarine

2 жыл бұрын

Actually, in many countries, the government is the only group allowed to hold lotteries.

@ShadNex

2 жыл бұрын

Hotdog

@kanvolu

2 жыл бұрын

School shooting moment

@EvilDMMk3

2 жыл бұрын

@@MemeMarine in the uk only charities can hold them and the licensing is real strict.

@idon.t2156

2 жыл бұрын

Capitalism: become government, let everyone work for you. Stop taxing the rich. Done. Some people still think the game is NOT rigged. That capitalism is good for everyone. Child labor, slavery, pollution: it's all good because of capitalism!!

US: We've banned lottery People: Why? US: Because it's gambling US realizes that the house always win. US: We're bringing back lottery! People: So we can play numbers again? US: Nah, we're gonna take everything from what made numbers good and just have gambling left.

@24KinfO

2 жыл бұрын

And because a black lady made it up.

@jazzabighits4473

2 жыл бұрын

@@24KinfO Yeah sure that's why

@linsetv

2 жыл бұрын

@@jazzabighits4473 since it's the US i wouldn't say it was NOT why it was banned lol

@digitalfootballer9032

2 жыл бұрын

Just like how they banned marijuana until they realized that if they control it and tax it they can benefit from it. Same goes for alcohol in areas where it was previously banned.

@jazzabighits4473

2 жыл бұрын

@@digitalfootballer9032 Exactly, it's about the government getting a piece of the pie, nothing to do with race or gender.

It never really occurred to me that the lottery would've been invented by someone, even less that the government would've stole it.

@TheJbro765

2 жыл бұрын

If someone didnt invent it how did it come to be

@DeJay7

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheJbro765 sounds obvious but we don't think about things we take for granted to exist

@TheJbro765

2 жыл бұрын

@@DeJay7 i know lol im just playing, it sounded funny to me. I think the roots of it all is super interesting, i had no idea about this.

@EebstertheGreat

2 жыл бұрын

No one really invented numbers. A lot of very similar "policy" games existed around the same time in the 1860s, eventually moving to the three-digit box and straight format in the early 20th century in order to pick winners fairly using digits published in newspapers. Lotteries predate numbers games by centuries.

@atzuras

2 жыл бұрын

Lottery, by any other name, predates the founding of the U.S. But in this fashion it was a new thing because how people played it, not how it worked.

In Spain, in Christmas, there is a national lottery and a lot of people play it. The fun thing is that you can buy the same number as other people (each number can be bought up to ten times) so you usually have a number you share with your family, one with your friends, one with your job, etc… so when you win something, a bunch of people you know also win

@dingaia

2 жыл бұрын

to be fair spain is about as large as most states

@armstrong.r

2 жыл бұрын

I love that

@stephengibbons4680

2 жыл бұрын

@@dingaia lol, Spain is more populous that all of them, and larger than all but 2

@galaxytori877

2 жыл бұрын

Fellow Spanish neighbour, yes, it is so cool if you win. Even if it is just 20 €

@BinCaAlors

2 жыл бұрын

@@dingaia what's your point? And FYI, all of us living outside of the USA would really like that you guys get over yourself. Please. Edit: typo

Kudos to Kevin for being the only Vsauce who uploads frequently.

@thephoenixking1086

2 жыл бұрын

Or at all hah... hahhhh........SIGH RIP Vsauce 1, DING and so on (I don't class shorts as CONTENT so to me, they do not count).

@anactualfingbottleofranch747

2 жыл бұрын

Kevin and vsauce 2 is the best of the three by far

@kashifraja8451

2 жыл бұрын

@@thephoenixking1086 dont you mean dong

@italianstalian331

2 жыл бұрын

@@thephoenixking1086 yeah this new trend of KZreadrs putting out only shorts is so dumb

@Kislay11

2 жыл бұрын

@@anactualfingbottleofranch747 tbf, I got into Vsauce because of the og Vsauce 1 and the old content over there, originally I didn't even like Vsauce 2 much, but Vsauce 2 has grown on me since then, and I don't even check Vsauce 1 anymore

So, when the government engages in "racketeering", then it's OK. No hypocrisy there at all...

@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer

2 жыл бұрын

Racketeering is basically the definition of a government.

@btrbt8613

2 жыл бұрын

Wait 'till you hear about taxes.

@tobymcculloch4375

2 жыл бұрын

Wait till you understand fractional reserve banking!

@btrbt8613

2 жыл бұрын

@@tobymcculloch4375 Taxation is obviously worse than fractional reserve.

@devil_master1562

2 жыл бұрын

Its not hypocrisy if the government is the one benefiting from it. Funny how that works, isn't it?

The communal aspect of The Numbers reminds me a lot of how local schools/churches/businesses do fundraisers. Donate $5 and be entered to win a prize! Since it was a community game, it didn't matter too much if you lost because someone local that you knew ended up with it. Although, I guess there wasn't a guaranteed winner for every pull. Loving these history videos!

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

2 жыл бұрын

I get what you mean. Raffles would sound a lot less fun if people called them gambling. And that's essentially what The Numbers was.

"But the highly regulated mass production of fun strips the complex social function from a game that's the perfect blend of math and people." I feel like this quote is quite relevant in today's world. So many games today have had the fun engineered out of them in exchange for you to pay to progress, to skip the grind, or just keep up.

@tysonion01

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah. It's a little like paying to watch someone else have sex on your couch with your spouse & calling it what... progress?

@Robert_McGarry_Poems

2 жыл бұрын

@@tysonion01 😣 Oof... Some internal issues huh? You realize this is the internet, right...

@Robert_McGarry_Poems

2 жыл бұрын

Food has had the living engineered out, working has had the humanity engineered out, academia has had the education engineered out, manufacturing has had obfuscation engineered in, capitalism has evil engineered in... It's almost as if, Titles such as: A brave new world, the neo-Seoul storyline in Cloud Atlas, or Soylent green, heck even Wall-E... Are trying to warn us of our own desire for comforts. As if, this isn't new, these ideas of excess and complacentcy.

@tysonion01

2 жыл бұрын

@@Robert_McGarry_Poems Nah. The world is changing. Open minded people are coming out of hiding thanks to the internet.

@NaudVanDalen

2 жыл бұрын

Ironically, I'd still rather spend $100 on EA game microtransactions than on a Numbers game.

This is one of your best, explaining the social context of numbers and how it went to state controlled lotteries encompasses a lot of what happened in America in the twentieth century.

@elNathNY

2 жыл бұрын

Agree. I love all Vsauce2 episodes, but this one is the best of the best.

Yo, shout out for using your platform to signal boost the real human voices and experts that most people would never hear of on their own.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

2 жыл бұрын

Now, let's calculate the probability that people would have heard of them on their own...

Meanwhile, I've noticed BINGO as more of a social activity for certain groups- a place to drink coffee, groan at just missing, and cheering on winners. But you need a license from the government.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

2 жыл бұрын

It never clicked until just now why it is that bingo is associated with retirement homes.

@yararinamiil

2 жыл бұрын

excuse me, you need a license to play bingo in the us??

@dillonvandergriff4124

2 жыл бұрын

@@yararinamiil You need a license to bet on bingo. Playing with no by in and no winnings is perfectly legal.

I've never heard anyone bring up the social aspect of old numbers games.

So this is what “grandma plays the numbers” means. Great video!!

Thank you for talking about this :) as a kid I heard my grandparents talk about running the numbers back in the day but when I was born it wasn't really much of a thing anymore. I'm happy I could learn about an aspect of my community from Era I didn't live through in a mathematical way.

Let's make a Vsauce2 Community Numbers so we all can have a chance to see Kevin's cage of balls breaking apart more often.

I always knew that “running numbers” was gambling rings BUT I never realized how literal that expression was.

"My cage of balls broke" A legendary statement

This video was really great! Here in France the state-ran lottery system "La Française des Jeux" has become a serious problem, because it's basically a reversed income tax: the poorer people are, the more they spend on average. It has also become much worse with the growing popularity of private sport bet applications which target their commercials specifically at young suburban people who often struggle financially.

@PlanckRelic

2 жыл бұрын

The regressive tax aspect of state lotteries is true pretty much everywhere

Thanks for the history lesson here. For probably 40 years I've wondered why the government could do the lottery but nobody else could.

OMG this brought me back to my 8th grade English class when the teacher had a ball machine like the one at 1:49 and a classmate once said that he'd give me $200 if I drew 72, and there were 100+ balls in there. And I just rolled the machine and drew a ball without looking and I drew _exactly_ 72. You don't have to believe me, but I hope you'd at least believe that this happened _somewhere_ . He didn't give me the $200 dollars though >:(

Government greed ruins fun. Does this really surprise anyone?

@iv9753

2 жыл бұрын

Or individual greed

@BUFU1610

2 жыл бұрын

@@iv9753 or corporations' greed.

you forgot to mention that you only pick the number in the 1's position before the spin, so I had to rewatch the whole cage spin several times before I realized it on my own. this means that you could literally put single digit numbers in the cage and they could all each have 10 1's 2's 3's 4's 5's 6's 7's 8's 9's and 0's each and it would be the same.

Awesome video Kevin. The local aspect of it reminded me of mexican Tandas, a way of saving in community. And how much I distrust government

Hahahahaha... Miss Fannie :D All kidding aside though, I found it beautiful that you put the emphasis of the unfairness and the person behind the story. Its not just about probability and games, but the real people behind it. One of my favourite videos :)

we have an end of year lottery thing that has become quite the tradition here in The Netherlands, so in some ways it still is a social kinda thing. Though you don't win nearly as much as the game you talked about.

The way lotteries operate today (and the way legislation is crafted around them) is nothing but a tax on the poor. Lottery revenue is used to pay for school systems and such only because the funds that would have gone to them are instead given as tax breaks to corporations.

I'm all for bringing back community numbers games. Small scale. There are private lotto companies and casinos in the US. We outlawed them where I'm from b/c you had to be rich to make one, and at that point, it's just a way to transfer money from the poor to the rich.

Government: That's illegal, you're in jail for doing that. Government: It's legal now that we're doing it. Also people: Government, can you do more things for us please?

@Deadlines-X

2 жыл бұрын

Its the same with selling Drugs, aint illegal for them but it is for you.

@maxmustermann2197

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, same like killing people... It's illegal when normal people do it, but when the government does it, it's a okay...

@SkLLzDaTkLLs

2 жыл бұрын

@@maxmustermann2197 Lol. True. They do have a monopoly on death I suppose.

@Veilure

2 жыл бұрын

Fun fact: all government earnings from the lottery go to education and other civil services. Look it up -_-

This seems humble bringing up a small part of history that made a massive change/impact, we always think about the wars and such when looking back in time

Fascinating stuff - really enjoying the recent videos. I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude has a subplot about a community lottery, which was the first time I learned that these ever existed.

I like this Police Math type of videos. I think this should be a KZread Originals series!

@KarolOfGutovo

2 жыл бұрын

KZread originals is no more. Idk if it was for better or worse they ended it

@scrawnypaleboy

2 жыл бұрын

A real life Mathnet!

@rickscandon

2 жыл бұрын

@QuantumMeme it's a recent development that KZread did away with Originals. Shame because Mindfield and CYSTM were great.

Hey Kevin! My mom is Dr. Felicia George and her book is finally getting published this month about numbers gambling in Detroit. Thank you so much for your video. I'm going to make sure I share with my mom. Also I can link you her book if you're interested!

love all your videos, but this is my favorite one in a while!! thanks for sharing this story and these writers with us :-)

Kevin, I really like the new true crime format. Your usual (sometimes) Isilly, frenetic style contrasts well with the subject, making it seem dramatic. Great change!

It's always a neighborhood mom running the local bingo.

In the Netherlands there are mainly two. One where your specific postal code or streets wins and one on the 31st of December. I think the first one is mainly motivated by fear. Imagine your street winning, and you being the only one that didn't get like a million and a car. The other on the evening of the 31st of December definitely related to this video. Is a culture thing where families gift these to family members and friends.. And a lot of people at least win like 50,- to be fair.

@Thoomas2001

2 жыл бұрын

My teacher lives in Reuver, where the jackpot was given out on New Year's 2021-2022. Because Reuver only has one postal number, everyone who bought a ticket got at least something, while people on a specific street got about 2 million per ticket. My teacher did not buy a ticket since he doesn't like the lottery, but an elderly friend of his now has 2 million which he cannot do anything with.

Kevin, hopefully being a baseball fan, has made me love this channel even more.

@monohymn

2 жыл бұрын

Kevin is a complex creature.

If you want to know more, there was a great episode about this on the Criminal Podcast, episode is titled 'The Numbers'.

Even though Kevin is always talking directly to us it still felt like he broke the 4th wall when his balls broke out of the cage

And as always, a top notch video that makes us think. Thanks for such a brilliant channel.

I work at the race track. I still play my mommas birthday. One ticket straight and one ticket boxed. I hit almost twice a week. After my son tracked my Return On Investment, he said I’m spending too much money on losing tickets. He then gave me a basic battle plan to follow. He noticed Ive never once won two races in a row, and rarely twice in the same day, so the plan is basically.. after a win with my mothers BDay numbers, I cant bet any more that day. Just take the winnings and walk away, the entire day, done. 1) skip a day, on average saves me from buying 6 losing tickets 2) After every 3 loses, increase the base bet by 50cents. So at first im betting $3, then $6, then $9 etc (A 50cent minimum bet boxing 3 numbers = 6 combinations for $3) Result. Im skipping more losing bets, also multiplying the winning bets. So instead of winning once a week, its like winning multiple times a week.. however many times the base bet of 50cents. Ex $9 ticket = 3x the prize Track takes about 10%. Original ROI was about -2%. New ROI ranges between +1% to +6% Will I get rich from this, no. But its a higher percentage than a bank will offer.

2:28 What the teacher sounds like after he yells at a student:

And remember when someone refers to a "Numbers Runner", that's not the accountant or head of the game, that's the name of the people who take the bets, collects debts and pay out winnings.

Great video as always, keep up the good work!

@AUSans101

2 жыл бұрын

Hi

@SlimStarCraft

2 жыл бұрын

hes not going to read your comment lmao

Playing 6 days a week and winning boxed 2 times a year? And that made people happy and excited to play? Whatever it is that makes people like gambling, I don't have it or understand it at all. Also, as a public school teacher, THANK YOU lottery!

@Daro-Wolfe

2 жыл бұрын

Another commenter pointed out that part of the excitement in a communal game is even if you only won 2 times a year, with 50 people there are 100 wins a year, so people you know are winning every week

Like the commonwealth classic says, "Grandmas playing the numbers"

@LeeMadik

2 жыл бұрын

Now we know

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

2 жыл бұрын

@@LeeMadik We found out

Every time Kevin uploads, my respect for lawmakers and the people who decide how and why to enforce it drops lower and lower and lower.

I like that you put your ad-read in the middle of the video instead of at the end, like most youtubers. makes the message more impactful.

Love your stuff. Very thoughtful.

@SlimStarCraft

2 жыл бұрын

hes not going to read your comment lmao

Great video, brings up some interesting points regarding centralization.

I had to rewatch the 'I have a cage full of balls' part about four times before I stopped laughing XD

Here in Brazil there is a lottery that was once legal but now it's illegal called "Jogo do Bicho", which is basically Numbers but with extra steps. Funny thing is that from what I've seen in my neighborhood it is way more popular than any government lottery, and even cops play it

Great vid, Kevin. I also love your vSauce music theme at the end ... can it be (legaly) downloaded somewhere?

I really like the way you highlight this

Like how you gave a shout out to their books, real respectable

Governments around the world stll behave like this. They still believe they know whats best for us.

@pvanukoff

2 жыл бұрын

It's really that they know what's best for them, then try to spin it to make it sound like a positive thing for the public.

I already knew about Numbers, but I never understood why it was made illegal. That sucks.

Like this one. I actually watched a Film Noir called Force of Evil about the numbers game earlier this week, but that's a rather sanitised one, it really doesn't touch on the important community aspect you mentioned here (and needless to say for a 1948 studio film, pretty darn whitewashed). A little detail that separates the old numbers game from current lotteries is that point that modern lotteries are specifically drawn, that is the sole purpose of those numbers. With the old ones, with the racetrack results etc., it adds that little drama that these events can have a big impact on people's lives, but in a way that those that run those events have no idea how. It has that extra element of it being fully decided by some whim of fate, rather than picked by a machine.

I always wondered what old gangster movies meant by "running numbers" I always assumed that just meant booking bets in general.

Spain's Christmas lottery is special in that it retains some social aspects. Each number is divided in tenths. Each tenth costs 20€, which is expensive enough so that people will rarely buy all tenths of a single number, but affordable enough so that many people would share a number with many groups of family, friends and coworkers. And it is quite different from a lottery where you write down any number you like, in that each number can be bought only up to ten times, and each winning tenth will always give exactly a tenth of the prize.

The number game ruined lots of lives. It was not always 1$ that was gambled, entire week wages, school fees, college funds, food budgets that were lost.

@mirkofernd

2 жыл бұрын

well you were supposed to use "disposable income" in this.

@kkgt6591

2 жыл бұрын

@@mirkofernd no that's the issue, the community didn't have any disposable income, those were some tough times and they got exploited to some extent.

There was a really good podcast episode of "Criminal" about this. Very thorough.

So this is what that one fallout song meant when it said "We found out Grandma plays the numbers"

I like the music at the end, where did you get the song?

that line in that one song makes so much more sense now! We found out grandma plays the numbers.

Pretty cool they a balloon can teach so much about math :)

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

2 жыл бұрын

It's so advanced you'd almost think it's the real Kevin. But we'd never fall for that ruse.

“my cage of balls broke” why was that quoted, and how long before it gets taken into an out of conext compilation

Alright I can't find it anywhere so here I am: What is the music in your outro? I've looked everywhere but up to no prevail..

It's one thing to drink a glass of whiskey at a bar with friends. It's another thing to drink a glass a whiskey at home alone.

@mudmug1

2 жыл бұрын

Or even, given the drop in odds of winning : It's another to drink a bottle of whiskey at home alone

@maxmustermann2197

2 жыл бұрын

Both cases unhealthy and putting poison in your body, so...

I will quote a bumper sticker that Ron Paul liked to keep at his desk when he was in Congressional office: "Don't steal, the government hates competition". In this case, don't be ingenious or they will make it illegal and steal it from you. If something like this was community run and "the house" did well, consider that someone like Fannie could take some of their locally-obtained profits and help feed the homeless or projects for the disabled/elderly in the area, stuff like that, you know... what the state isn't going to do with 99% of the money. If the state is going to be able to legally run such a game, then there should be no reason companies or individuals shouldn't be able to do the same, insomuch as it's done properly and with complete equal fairness for all players.

"I have a cage full of balls" "My cage of balls broke" Lmao 🤣🤣🤣

beautiful video sauce man

Let’s go real early on this one

Sounds like "Numbers" was the original "Pick 3." Lol

Thanks for the videos, Kevin. Great work as always! R.I.P to your cage of balls

This was a really cool episode

“Miss Fanny” lol

Here in Wisconsin most bars have a weekly sign in where you pay every week and only need to sign your name in order to win. Also football game pools where you are given random numbers and win based on the score every quarter. There’s also a game that involves a deck of cards. The money rolls over every week until someone picks the right card. Bars are a big deal around here.

Wow, what an impressive video. Super interesting, thank you very much

LOL if you didn't get that the gov ain't your friend, you'll never get it

@iamnohere

2 жыл бұрын

I: Agreed, but capitalism ain´t your friend, either

THAT THUMBNAIL

who else immediately thought of Snape upon hearing 394 ? I did for one.

The final music in the last few mins always gives goosebumps , actually the second last one

@Consa_Lu

2 жыл бұрын

Jake Chudnow - Olive

@vijaykrishnan7797

2 жыл бұрын

@@Consa_Lu yea i know jake chudnow and the serial numbers he has in his comments , just didn't know the name of this music in particular , thankyou

a cage full of balls got me dyin💀💀💀

I understand that one fallout 4 song on the radio now lol. This is really interesting to hear about too but overall this just grabbed my attention thinking of that song, and lo and behold, it was the game that the song was more than likely based off of.

The entire time all I thought of was how now I understand the song from fallout 4 about grandma playing the number

I love your videos! theyre exciting, dramatic, educational, and funny! great work 💪🤌

@SlimStarCraft

2 жыл бұрын

hes not going to read your comment lmao

Mrs Richards: "I paid for a room with a view !" Basil: (pointing to the lovely view) "That is Torquay, Madam." Mrs Richards: "It's not good enough!" Basil: "May I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically past?..." Mrs Richards: "Don't be silly! I expect to be able to see the sea!" Basil: "You can see the sea, it's over there between the land and the sky." Mrs Richards: "I'm not satisfied. But I shall stay. But I expect a reduction." Basil: "Why?! Because Krakatoa's not erupting at the moment ?

Great topic ☑ great video ☑ great message ☑

Love to Tony Gwynn rant!

Joey "Coco" Diez, aka Uncle Joey, has great stories about growing up in the Numbers game back in the day

Beautiful, thank you kevin

"My cage of balls broke" Ohh well...

What kinds of jobs could gambling create, other than those of the person organizing the game? This activity doesn't create value, only redistributes it. It's economically useless.

I’m greatful that you shared this story. It’s a shame, we need to away for stories like this to be available, in the open, uncensorable, for the forever existence of our species.. There are lessons to learn from this story

This is why you never trust your governments no matter what side of the fence you are on haha

Love this video, you earned my respect Kevin!

@SlimStarCraft

2 жыл бұрын

hes not going to read your comment lmao

@drcgaming4195

2 жыл бұрын

@@SlimStarCraft ‌

Love ur vids

@SlimStarCraft

2 жыл бұрын

hes not going to read your comment lmao

It sounds like that was a great thing back then, the sense of belonging because the community numbers, the way he described him t at the end was really nice