So a long time ago, and I was still a teenager, I did something incredibly stupid as many of us do when we're teenagers.

And of course, instead of costing me a fortune, a cost of friend of mine a fortune, I was traveling in Europe with a pal,

and we were in London, and we were walking through a kind of connecting alley, and we came upon a three-card Monti game.

Now, most of you know what that is, but that's where the guy, spread, takes three cards, and he shuffles him around,

and you have to find the queen, and you bet money on whether he can hide the queen from you, or whether you can pick it out of the deck,

and out of those three cards.

And there was a huge crowd gathered around them, maybe 20, 25 people, and they're all shouting, and there's a lot of excitement,

and people are winning, and people are losing, and I'm watching this thing, and I've never seen this up close before.

You know, I'm only a kid, I'm maybe 18, 19 years old, I've never really seen a three-card Monti game before,

and I start to think like, gee, you know, some of these people are picking out, and some of them aren't, but I'm picking it out every time.

I'm getting it every time, some of them are winning, some of them are losing, but I'm getting it every time,

and I started to reach into my pocket and took out some money, and I said to my friend, you know, I think I've got this.

I think I have got this, I think I've got this figured out.

And he starts looking at it, and he starts to think, because I said so, he starts to think that he could figure it out too,

and I lifted up my hand to lay down the money, and suddenly it occurred to me that everybody in the alley was part of the con. This entire huge crowd.

I mean, it was 2025 people. They were all part of the con, and I reached out to my friend and said, stop, and it was too late,

and he dropped 40 pounds, which at that point was almost $80 on this game, and he lost the money, because of me, because of what I said,

it took me all that time to realize, I mean, it was such an atmosphere, such a complete scene, that it took me all this time to realize that it was everybody,

that everybody in the scene, except for us, was part of the con, and we walked away, of course, stunned and shocked a lot of money for us to lose at that point in time, obviously,

and we went back, and of course the alley was empty, and they were all gone.

And it occurred to me this weekend, as I was watching TV and kind of thinking about some of these sex scandals and the Russian thing, that that's exactly the situation that we are all in right now,

with the communication that is coming out of our TV sets as news, is coming over the radio, and even is in the commentary like this, and even to some degree that I'm participating in,

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