Podbit · Freakonomics Radio
There's a crucial difference between roulette — where you have no control — and backgammon or sports betting, where hard work and analysis can generate a real edge. Mark Olsson argues that skill-based gambling hardens your character, punishes recklessness instantly, and rewards preparation.
Where this was said
At 34:15 · chapter starts 29:35
Mark Olsson co-founded Backgammon Galaxy in 2018 with Sandro Lilov and Mochi, initially imagining it as a money-gaming site built on their sports-betting background. That business model ran into regulatory walls, but their YouTube channel took off, becoming the biggest backgammon channel on the platform. They pivoted to social gaming, raised funding, and officially launched in 2022 — the platform now has 220,000 users, 25 employees, and ownership of the World Championship in Monte Carlo. Beyond the business narrative, Olsson makes a compelling intellectual case for backgammon as an economics simulator: unlike economic models that begin 'all else being equal,' backgammon never holds anything constant. Change one variable — split a back checker, say — and every other variable in the position shifts. This entanglement of trade-offs, Olsson argues, makes the game a genuine training ground for opportunity cost awareness, sunk-cost discipline, and probabilistic decision-making under complete-information-but-uncertain-future conditions.
In 2018, Mark Olsson, Sandro Lilov, and Mochi set out to build a unified backgammon site. They pivoted away from money gaming, grew a massive YouTube channel, launched in 2022, and now own the World Championship. Backgammon Galaxy has 220,000 users and a 25-person team.
Backgammon Galaxy, the online platform co-founded by Mark Olsson, Sandro Lilov, and Mochi, has approximately 220,000 registered users.
Backgammon Galaxy, launched in full in 2022, now employs a team of 25 people split between developers and operations including customer support, YouTube, and live tournaments.
Galloway confesses to occasionally writing after a drink or two — and finding the work grips better because it removes filters and lets emotion through. AI is the opposite: it optimizes for pattern-matching and produces a regression to the mean. People don't read average.
Galloway's son, walking to Kensington, refused to use AI to find a coffee shop. His reason: 'I don't want to be reliant on AI for simple things.' Galloway draws an analogy to testosterone replacement therapy — leaning on AI for creative work suppresses your brain's own creative output, just as exogenous testosterone suppresses natural production.
Your brain only rewires when there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be. Errors trigger elevated norepinephrine and epinephrine, which chemically tag the synapses that need to change. Sleep then seals the new wiring. The uncomfortable agitation you feel while learning something hard is not a problem to fix — it's the mechanism itself.
The best way to consolidate and accelerate learning isn't re-reading or visualization — it's deliberately trying to recall what you know, hitting the wall of what you don't, and going to look it up. That gap triggers the same norepinephrine response as making errors in physical practice. It's why drivers used to have to retake tests, and why physicians still do.
A baseball-playing junior who learned about compound interest now wants to quit the sport to start working and investing. George says let him decide and own it. Jade says team sports build something a job can't replace — try doing both during off-season first before making the call permanent.
May is 33, carries $69K in combined household debt, and wants to spend 11–13 years training to become a forensic pathologist at $14K/year in tuition. The prerequisite is non-negotiable: zero debt before a single class. Then, with the spouse earning $4,500/month and able to run the household debt-free, cash-flowing medical school is genuinely possible.
Kavak launched the Jedi Academy, an internal program where every employee — from CEO to mechanics — completes a 6-week training and ships a production-ready AI agent. The message to staff was blunt: train and adapt, or this may not be the right place for you.
The worst AI outcome for young people isn't cheating on homework. It's that passive, mindless consumption strips away the motivation and agency their brains need to develop. The second worst outcome is banning AI from classrooms entirely. The winning path is giving students AI-powered agency.
Prompting AI effectively is a skill that should be taught in K-12. The best prompter in history? Socrates. His method of relentlessly asking precise questions to uncover truth is exactly what powerful AI interaction looks like — and schools should explicitly teach it.
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