Aug 28, 2026 · 53 min · 11 segments
Roger Bate joins Veronique de Rugy to discuss his new book, The House Always Wins, sharing his personal brush with sports betting addiction and what it reveals about the industry's explosive growth…
Roger BateGuest
Veronique de RugyHostBut I wanted to have you on to talk about your new book that was released on, I think, August 4th, The House Always Wins.
But before we do, because this is a really interesting book about sport betting.
And it is... quite interesting like the the the last few books you've written you've written on on counterfactual uh contrafeited drugs and things like this it is kind of interesting to me to kind of see the shift in your career and your attention i mean it's it's it seemed like actually it is a i mean it is there's a natural progression you were working on malaria and how I think when we were connected in the U.S., you had started this nonprofit called Africa Fighting Malaria, where you were advocating for actually things that would be really useful at fighting malaria and actually thinking think about trade-offs in how we fight malaria and, and balancing the environment, but also people's lives, which is kind of crazy to say.
And, and now you seems to, uh, to have kind of like your, it's evolved into kind of looking at, you know, fake drugs and, and how, you know, the, the kind of the dynamic of, of, and the, and the nefarious side of, of, of betting, which is a lot of you looking, what's interesting to me, and this is why I think you're kind of one of the most interesting libertarian, classical liberal, whatever, of the moment, it's like actually you're evolving in a space that makes us libertarian very uncomfortable.
I mean, we'll get on to talk about the gambling thing in a minute, which was the most personal thing.
I've always been, as I said, from when I was a grad student, I've always wanted to work on gambling.
Economic policy was going to be whatever we think of now of the Washington consensus, but generally the idea that free markets, capitalism would win, limited democracy.
Yes, there are going to be flaws and there are different types of democracies, but we won these battles.
So I wanted to work in the areas where I felt that the dirigistes were still on top.
And so I've always wanted to work on topics where there were perceived wisdoms, which were often not true.
And here, I think classical liberal economists should note that one of my great heroes growing up and working was, I met him only once, but was Ronald Coase, the Nobel laureate in economics, who wrote basically won the Nobel Prize for two papers, Theory of the Firm and Theory of Social Complexity.
But for me, the key paper was, I can't remember the title, but it was to do with lighthouses in Britain.
But I wanted to have you on to talk about your new book that was released on, I think, August 4th, The House Always Wins.
But before we do, because this is a really interesting book about sport betting.
And it is... quite interesting like the the the last few books you've written you've written on on counterfactual uh contrafeited drugs and things like this it is kind of interesting to me to kind of see the shift in your career and your attention i mean it's it's it seemed like actually it is a i mean it is there's a natural progression you were working on malaria and how I think when we were connected in the U.S., you had started this nonprofit called Africa Fighting Malaria, where you were advocating for actually things that would be really useful at fighting malaria and actually thinking think about trade-offs in how we fight malaria and, and balancing the environment, but also people's lives, which is kind of crazy to say.
And, and now you seems to, uh, to have kind of like your, it's evolved into kind of looking at, you know, fake drugs and, and how, you know, the, the kind of the dynamic of, of, and the, and the nefarious side of, of, of betting, which is a lot of you looking, what's interesting to me, and this is why I think you're kind of one of the most interesting libertarian, classical liberal, whatever, of the moment, it's like actually you're evolving in a space that makes us libertarian very uncomfortable.
I mean, we'll get on to talk about the gambling thing in a minute, which was the most personal thing.
I've always been, as I said, from when I was a grad student, I've always wanted to work on gambling.
Economic policy was going to be whatever we think of now of the Washington consensus, but generally the idea that free markets, capitalism would win, limited democracy.
Yes, there are going to be flaws and there are different types of democracies, but we won these battles.
So I wanted to work in the areas where I felt that the dirigistes were still on top.
And so I've always wanted to work on topics where there were perceived wisdoms, which were often not true.
And here, I think classical liberal economists should note that one of my great heroes growing up and working was, I met him only once, but was Ronald Coase, the Nobel laureate in economics, who wrote basically won the Nobel Prize for two papers, Theory of the Firm and Theory of Social Complexity.
But for me, the key paper was, I can't remember the title, but it was to do with lighthouses in Britain.
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