This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Guess what, Will?

What's that, Mango?

So in 2012, this little farming village in Spain called Sodetto was struggling.

And there had been this downturn in the economy.

There was also this massive drought.

And the town's Homeowner Association was running short on cash.

But for some reason, they decided to spend what was left of their dues on the Christmas lottery.

I guess this is kind of a Spanish tradition and the whole country gets into it, but they bought tickets for the whole town.

Wow.

You know, I've actually heard about the Christmas lottery.

I think we wrote about it a while back and, of course it being such a big deal in Spain.

I actually saw this one study where people were so optimistic around the time in the Christmas lottery.

Like, even though they know they're most likely not going to win,

but that optimism actually changes their opinions of politicians.

And so whoever's running for re-election at the time, even if they're overwhelmingly disliked, they end up getting this big bounce because of this.

Oh, that's crazy.

But going back to this town, they were actually really lucky they played.

The village won $950 million, and it got split up among the town's 70 families.

Yeah, so there were these unemployed construction workers or down on

their luck farmers, and they all walked away like millionaires or at the very least 100,000aires,

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