This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q.
Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. Why did I search the internet for answers to my cold sore problem?
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Healthcare just got less painful. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.
It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast.
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Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures. What's up y'all? Summer's got a different tempo. Everything's a little looser, brighter. One plan turns into another.
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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. The ruling in the Supreme Court case Murphy v. New Jersey in 2018 is one of those rare legal decisions handed down by our nation's highest court that has had immeasurable and far-reaching impact on our day-to-day lives. Chances are, after all, that you've seen a sports gambling ad or perhaps partaken in it yourself. Here to share the story of the tumultuous rise of sports gambling in America is Danny Funt, author of Everybody Loses.
Take it away, Danny. I really wanted to get to the bottom of this fundamental question. Why was it that the professional sports leagues abandoned a century of opposition to legal gambling and not just. Whether it should be legal, but they couldn't have spoken about it in more extreme, almost biblical terms, calling it an evil that would be the deadliest possible thing that would happen to sports. That's something the commissioner of baseball said barely a decade ago.
So to go from that level of staunch opposition to now being the strongest evangelist for the spread of gambling across the country was. Mm. dizzying and I I just wanted to get to the bottom of it. The surface level thing that happened was the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal ban on bookmaking outside Nevada that had been the law since 1992. And the leagues used that as cover to say, well, the justices have made their ruling.
We have to cope with this new reality. In fact, well before that case, they had been meeting with representatives of the gambling industry. Quite secretively, so much so that in the NFL's case, they insisted on doing these meetings at cafes in New York's Park Avenue rather than at the league offices, just because still they were so averse to even being spotted with representatives of the gambling business. But in these meetings, they presented studies that had been commissioned that demonstrated that gamblers are rabid consumers of sports. They watch more than twice as many games as traditional fans.
They watch till the ends of blowouts. And the leagues at the time were so concerned about. The long-term value of their TV rights, which is the biggest moneymaker for sports, the right to show pro and college games. And they saw people canceling cable subscriptions, the audience aging, young people not wanting to sit through a three or four hour ballgame. And so the idea that gambling could be used to turbocharge that audience was extremely appealing.
In the NFL's case, The projection that they were presented with in those meetings indicated that between the direct revenue they would make off partnerships with newly legal sports betting operations and the indirect revenue they would make from this expanded T V audience. two billion dollars every year. If gambling were legalized across the country. At that point, they were converted, and as soon as the Supreme Court struck down that federal ban. They were off and running and did away with a century of saying this would be a disaster for the future of sports.
But you have to understand why was it that. The leagues, lawmakers, even sports media were so opposed to gambling, and what evidence did they have? It surprised me that literally from the earliest days of the English colonies, there was all sorts of gambling happening. People would be in awe of the fact that our colonial ancestors were betting at all hours of the day on cockfights and bear fights and horse races, you name it, they were gambling on it. And yet, a lot of these colonies were founded by religious refugees, so they had a strong religious wariness of gambling.
Christianity, Judaism, even Islam are explicitly anti-gambling. From the fact that Roman soldiers bet on who would get Jesus' clothes after he died on the cross, to the Torah saying it's equivalent to theft, to the Quran saying it's the devil's handiwork. Monotheistic faiths couldn't be more clear that this is something that should not be promoted. And yet, the country really waffled on that, thinking, you know, on the one hand, this is a vice that shouldn't be promoted. In a progressive society, and on the other hand, it's something that people couldn't resist doing, and that lawmakers, when pinched for cash, were quick to expand and legalize.
So, from the earliest days of professional sports in America, you know, beyond horse racing to like the 1850s and 60s, there was just a craze of people finding ways to bet on it.
So much so that the New York Times around then said, So long as baseball is a contrivance for gambling, we can't accept calling it the national pastime. That's the New York Times in the 1870s. And then, of course, the Black Sox scandal in 1919, when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were paid to throw the World Series, was an existential threat for not just baseball, but organized sports, period. The Commissioner of Baseball was established explicitly with the assignment of ridding the game of gambling. It was that big of a crisis after the Black Sox scandal, and for a long time they did everything they possibly could to discourage it.
It was a big part of the mob's bottom line, so that motivated the federal government to crack down. That leads us up till 1992. Congress passes this federal law containing sports gambling on a legal basis in Nevada, where it had long been legal. And the leagues were the ones. That lobbied Congress to pass that bill.
They saw a number of states clamoring to legalize versions of sports betting as a way of remedying budget deficits. And the leagues were just so staunchly opposed, saying, We know from decades of experience gambling corrupts sports. Corrodes the relationships that fans have with the games. It's a temptation athletes have a hard time resisting. It's a serious health problem for some people.
By then, doctors had recognized gambling as an addiction. It's actually the only recognized addiction that isn't substance-based.
So there's just such a robust history that led us to this turning point in 2018 when everything changed. We're now at 5:30. The nation's highest court is hearing a case that could make sports betting legal in the garden state. Yeah. So in the 2010s, the state of New Jersey got engaged in a lawsuit with the professional sports leagues and the NCAA.
New Jersey was seeing a lot of Atlantic City casinos go out of business, racetracks were suffering.
So many of us are out of work. You know, like where do 8,000 people go and think we're going to get hired? You know, they're never going to hire full-time again. And they said, how is it fair that Nevada is allowed to use sports betting to attract people from across the country and New Jersey doesn't have that opportunity? We want to do it because 65% of the people of the state of New Jersey voted that they want to do it.
And we already have a long experience of over 40 years of casino gaming in our state where we've shown that we can very appropriately regulate gambling in the state. Right, Boy Scouts, we're prepared. We're prepared in New Jersey. We're ready to go. And that's why the horsemen have joined us in this case.
It was considered a total long shot, and they went 0 for 6 in federal court until out of nowhere, the Supreme Court grants a hearing. And at that point, people started to wonder: okay, why would they hear this case unless they intended to overturn that law?
So, come 2018, I think it was a 6-3 decision. The justices said this law is unconstitutional. States are now free to legalize sports betting if they see fit. But as tends to happen with Supreme Court cases, that one is oversimplified and misremembered. People think the court said, A Congress lacks the authority to regulate sports betting.
B, it would be good for the country if sports betting were legal. Or C, sports betting is now legal across the country as a result of us striking down this federal law. None of that was true. In fact, the justices went out of their way to say Congress does have the authority to regulate sports betting and contain it however they see fit. They had just gone about doing so in 1992 through a odd unconventional law.
And yet by 2018 There wasn't much willpower in Congress to pass an updated version of that federal ban. And by then, so much money had been spent to prepare for this legalization boom. That was really the starting gun for everything to take off. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of the rise of sports gambling in America. Here on Our American Stories.
Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. I um.
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Yeah. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.
It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast.
Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures. Mm-hmm. Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or back yards you haven't even stepped foot in, all from the comfort of pretty much anywhere.
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So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit Redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com. And we return to our American stories and the story of the rise and reign of sports gambling in America. with author Danny Fund, his book Everybody loses.
When we last left off, Danny was telling us something you might not have known, that despite years of resistance to the idea, professional leagues were one of the primary drivers of the legalization of sports gambling. Let's return to the story. To Washington now, where the Supreme Court will allow states to legalize sports betting. The court struck down a federal law that banned gambling on sports games in most of the country. Justices ruled seven to two on the case.
And CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford is following the latest from Washington. She's with us now on the phone. Before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, representatives of professional sports and leaders of the top two daily fantasy sports companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, had hired the same lobbying firm, Auric. And they were coordinating their strategy.
So, how could we. Lay the table so that if the Supreme Court strikes down this law, we can get sports betting legalized across the country as quickly as possible. You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge. They named these strategy sessions Project Aftermath. You might remember at the time, there was a big movie in theaters called Spread Out of Company.
About the rap group NWA. They release music under Aftermath Entertainment, so they thought it was clever to call it Project Aftermath. Yeah. Anyway, they had this coordinated operation where the leagues and Fando and DraftKings, which very quickly converted into gambling operators, lobbied states to get this done as quickly as possible and in a way that would be very favorable to those two companies. But what they realized was.
FanDuel and DraftKings had gotten into some hot water in a lot of different states. Daily Fantasy was accused across the country of circumventing anti-gambling laws, even if it was technically labeled as a version of fantasy sports. And so it wouldn't be very effective to have FanDuel and DraftKings lobbying states now to pass their preferred versions of. Legislation.
So, what they did was have the NBA and Major League Baseball spearhead that lobbying effort. A new article from In These Times claims some of the candidates are being bankrolled. They were pushing for bills that were written by Fandu and DraftKings and in the state of Illinois. Lawmakers were invited to tour the ballpark where the Chicago White Sox play, got to go to Chicago Bulls games and attend a private shoot around where A couple members of the Michael Jordan dynasty dropped by to, you know, slap them on the back and make sure they were having a good time. Those lawmakers then got to sit in a luxury suite and watch a game.
So as one of the top lobbyists at Oric put it, they were like kids in a candy store. And at that point, they were willing to grant the wishes of whatever Major League Baseball and the NBA wanted. Sports gambling officially legal in Mississippi. Football fans in West Virginia have a new way to field the Super Bowl rush. New York is already the largest online sports betting state in the country.
Global sports betting will be legalized in Arkansas on March 4th. Suddenly, all sorts of states were legalizing this and getting it off the ground as quickly as possible. That was all thanks to how hands-on the leagues were in this coordinated effort.
So, the leagues have always been profit-motivated. It's not like they suddenly woke up and said, wow, we can make a lot of money off gambling. I think they were always aware of that. What changed was They were really concerned about the long-term viability of their most precious asset, TV rights, the right to show. Pro and college sports makes them more money than anything.
And so they were worried about. What happens long term when people cut the cord on cable subscriptions, and gambling was a way of reversing that trend. And the commissioners caught to this, sorta maybe by accident, but they basically said, We're not gonna have a new industry make billions of dollars off of our sports without us getting our cut. At first, they wanted to demand that states mandate what they called an integrity fee, which was essentially: we're going to have to spend a lot of money making sure that gambling isn't corrupting our games. You ought to pay us for that.
But Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, was doing a press conference and he said, Yeah, we're calling it an integrity fee, but basically, you could think of it as a royalty. We spent a lot of money to put on these games, we deserve our peace. Once the integrity fee got so much backlash, they said, okay, let's rebrand this so that states. Require that these gambling operators pay us for what they called our official league data. Which was essentially the game stats that you need to decide if bets are won or lost.
So they got what they wanted just by a different name. But they were able to sell the public and a lot of politicians on the idea that gambling would enhance the integrity of games because you'd be able to monitor all this betting activity. And that way, if someone's betting who shouldn't be, or there's a suspicious flurry of bets that might indicate the fix is in, you could flag that and investigate it thanks to all this being legal. Quite an argument, and we've seen a lot of evidence to the contrary. Three of the players that are suspended are suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games last season.
Tonight, NBA Hall of Famer and Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billips and Miami Heat star Terry Rozier have been placed on immediate leave by the NBA. The leagues, as one of their chief arguments why they had suddenly become in favor of legalization, insinuated that athletes make too much money nowadays to be tempted to gamble, and that by allowing this to be conducted legally, they could track betting data and identify if someone's betting who shouldn't be. And through all my reporting, that argument for legalization doesn't hold water. If people were sophisticated, they would continue betting through the black market if they wanted to fix a game or bet illegally. And we would have as difficult of a time tracking that as ever.
And if they were reckless enough to bet through a legal operator, now that there are so many ways to bet on individual play, you know, including. Things as ridiculous as whether the next pitch in a baseball game will be a ball or a strike. You could fix a game very subtly. And what's worth pointing out is. These ways of betting on obscure players' individual performance and betting in a way that could win millions of dollars never used to exist.
Delusion and misunderstanding is so fundamental to the gambling business. But especially with sports, because you're competing against a house. Bookmakers bake an advantage into the odds, what's called the vigorous or the vig. It's an inherent advantage they're playing it, which is why if you look at a game and you were to bet on both teams to win, you're not gonna come out even, you're gonna come out down. Traditionally, the house edge was about 5%.
A lot of the modern ways to bet online have a much steeper VI.
So, when you talk about props, like how many points a player will score, rushing yards a team will accumulate, all those prop bets have a steeper edge for the house. On top of that, Parlays, which combine a number of bets together for the chance at winning a lot more money, you're giving the house an even bigger advantage. It's why parlays are thought of as a sucker bet to a lot of professional gamblers and bookmakers. And yet, for a lot of young people, that's all they're betting on these days: are these long shot parlays. I spoke with longtime bookmakers, and they said, We would have never dreamed of being on the hook for millions of dollars if some obscure bench player on the Raptors didn't score enough points in a game.
We knew that that was something that could easily be fixed, and yet because that style of betting is such a money maker for online sports books, they're willing to expose themselves and the leagues to an unprecedented risk of corruption.
So I mentioned that traditionally the house makes about five bucks for every hundred wagered. For parlays now, they're making as much as $30 for every 100 wagered, and yet customers don't understand that. When we come back, more of Danny Funk, the author of Everybody Loses, here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. I um I can't stop scratching my downtown. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown some things you'd rather type.
And say out loud. There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI. Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7. Healthcare just got less painful. Mm-hmm.
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500.
Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing.
Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
Complete disclosures are available at public.com/slash disclosures. Mm. Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in, all from the comfort of pretty much anywhere.
Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own, but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears.
Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2,200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just Windowshop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait, this could actually be home.
So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit Redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com. And we return to Our American Stories and the final portion of our story on the rise of sports gambling in America. with Danny Funn, author of Everybody Loses.
When we last left off, Danny was telling us about some of the rather, for lack of a better word, insane ways the sports gambling industry makes its money.
Now Danny turns to the sports media's role in this industry. Here again is Danny Funt. You hear a lot about legal sports gambling on this show. The Bustin Boys, obviously sports gambling is a huge part of what you do. It was not how sports media wanted fans to think about sports.
And all that changed in a blink. At the time, a lot of sports outlets were fighting for survival. You know, Sports Illustrated was laying off dozens of longtime writers. ESPN even was suffering layoffs.
Some newspapers were abandoning their daily sports sections. And so it's a very difficult time for sports journalists to stand on principle and turn down a massive influx of revenue. The result bothers a lot of sports writers and sports journalists of all types because they're being paid to promote gambling and promote some of the most foolish styles of betting. Ways that are definitely not gonna win their listeners or their readers money. And they're being paid to maybe look the other way or bite their tongue if they're inclined to report something that would be unflattering for either their sports book sponsors or the leagues for doing business with those companies.
And I heard this again and again, including from a former ESPN reporter named Henry Abbott, who said, In a way, it's like sports media is being bribed because to publish something that might lose you one of your top sponsors is a really difficult dilemma. I also heard from someone who was pursuing an investigation that would cast doubt. On the credibility of officiating in the NBA. And he realized that if you call into question the credibility of officiating, it calls into question the legitimacy of gambling. And so, as he put it, it was almost like career suicide potentially.
He said, I worry I'm tying a noose around my neck. By going down this path. And that's the threat that looms in the back of the head of a lot of sports journalists. Sports media being complicit in that way has had such an important effect on normalizing gambling, taking it from something that people did discreetly to something that's become the default way of engaging with sports. When I saw these commercials saying, hey, win some money while you're watching these games, it felt like, wow.
That looks amazing. I was already watching it. I might as well, you know, make a little bit of money doing it. Rob Minnick was in high school, scooping ice cream for minimum wage when he started gambling through a bookie. This concept that I could make $100 on a Phillies game versus working two days at the store, it was like, why would I ever work again?
I put myself into debt six times over the course of six years to the point that I had to work a second job to pay it off. I graduated from Georgetown University in DC in 2014 and I was an obsessive sports fan, went to as many games as I could, watched way too many games on TV. I don't remember anyone, myself included, placing a bet or having any awareness of a bookie on campus. And then, as I was writing this book, I met someone named Rob Minnick, who also went to Georgetown, but he went there about five years after I did. And in that short amount of time, sports betting legalization had taken off across the country.
He's from New Jersey, which was one of the first states to legalize. DC was a few years later, but Maryland and Virginia were also legalizing around then, too.
So he was surrounded by opportunities to gamble. And He thought of it, like so many people, as a way to make money. You know, he's a big sports fan. He thought, I can leverage that and turn this into a side hustle while I'm in college. And a lot of his peers had the same mindset: that this wasn't gambling, this was an investment strategy.
Not too bad. I'm not complaining. And at this point it's better than you made in finance? Yes. Way better.
Way better. And you think this is sustainable? Oh yeah, it's it's definitely. I mean Over time, He developed a really brutal gambling addiction, first on sports and then going to casinos and playing online casino games on his phone. He told me that he got to study abroad in Australia.
And first thing I did when I landed after I dropped my bags wasn't to like Go and talk to the other students that were gonna be staying in the same room as me or in the same area as me, it was that I dropped my bags and I went straight to the Star Casino. Because when I began looking things up to do in Sydney, I saw beaches, I saw, you know, go to the zoo and hold a koala. Then I saw That there's a casino. He basically spent the whole time gambling. It completely spoiled this incredible study abroad opportunity in Australia.
Back at Georgetown, it was all he was doing outside of class. The gambling was different because it was continuous. Like, When I got caught with the beer cat, right? I didn't... Walk down the street anymore with a beer can as an 18-year-old.
When I got called with the joint, I stopped going in the dorm room with wheat. But when I did, when I got caught with the gambling, I kept going. I just didn't tell anyone about it. And that was the difference between it, I think. Any time we were.
Taking the bus to a basketball game, all of us were getting our bets in, or I talked to people in class who I spotted, like me, betting on their computers during a lecture. But for me, it got way worse than that, where I was losing a terrifying amount of money and I barely left my dorm room because I was. Totally consumed by betting. To the point that for his graduation, he and some buddies went to Europe and he was having a marvelous time. And then he told me that he got back from a night out and Gotten the shower and was playing roulette on his phone, and spent the whole cost of that trip.
On roulette in a matter of minutes in the shower. And I spoke with his parents because one thing that really shocks me about gambling addiction is it's an invisible addiction. You don't You often have no idea that someone close to you is dealing with this. And it can be just dominating their lives, this cloud that's always hanging over them and causing them so much shame and stress. But to spouses, or parents, or best friends, they can be totally oblivious.
And so they said, you know, he'd be at the dinner table and keep running off to the bathroom, or say he was on a call with his girlfriend and excuse himself. And really, they found out he was constantly gambling. And so it broke their hearts. His dad said at first he was pissed off at his son for being so reckless, but ultimately realized this is a disease and a mental health affliction, and that Rob just suffered from something that a lot of people are suffering from now. And it's a brutal addiction to overcome.
I've spoken with so many people in recovery who say, I was addicted to gambling and other substance abuse, and gambling was by far the most difficult thing to escape. Because, unlike some other things, where, yeah, if you're an alcoholic, you might drink to numb a hangover, or if you're a smoker, you know, you might light up a cigarette to calm an urge. Only with gambling do you think that your affliction is the antidote to your problems? You think if I could just win one big bet, I'll get out of this hole and everything will be okay. And that's why you keep betting and betting, even when you know you have a problem.
So. Rob, thank God, is in recovery and doing a lot of really impressive advocacy work about the dangers of gambling, especially for young men, because he's not alone as far as college students who are getting caught up in gambling to a dangerous extent. One study found that one in five college students now access their tuition funds to pay for their gambling. I've heard of people much younger than that getting caught up in gambling now. as young as elementary school where I live in North Carolina.
Half of the phone calls to the problem gambling hotline. Are coming from parents. who are terrified seeing their kids suddenly consumed with gambling.
Some of that is due to all this advertising.
Some of it's due to the fact that when you're underage, your brain isn't fully developed, and so the part of the brain that regulates. Risk assessment is not fully matured. It's probably one of the most alarming facets of what we're seeing: this surge of gambling and problem gambling among young people. Where that's going, I spoke with an expert in youth problem gambling, a man named Dr. Jeffrey Daravensky out of McGill University in Canada.
And I asked him about that, and he said, God only knows where we're going to be in several years from now as a result of all these kids who are being groomed to be lifelong gamblers. This is from the 1992 hearings before the House and Senate. Faye Vincent was commissioner of Major League Baseball. They had just dealt with the Pete Rose scandal, where the all-time leader in hits was busted for betting on games as a player and manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and so baseball was reeling from that. And I write.
Finally, the MLB Commissioner Francis Fay Vincent testified. Quote, Americans' identification with their heroes and teams is unique. It would be tragic if the importance of batting averages and baseball cards were overshadowed by betting odds and lottery tickets. Close quote. Asked if his league had plans to promote any kind of wagering, Vincent replied, quote, it would make a mockery of the office I hold.
There is absolutely no way Major League Baseball would ever participate in the kind of activity that is at the heart of your question. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Reagan Habib and Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Danny Funt, his book, Everybody Loses. The story of the rise of sports gambling on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans.
It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues.
Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Hot take. You can disagree with someone and not hate them. I know, really groundbreaking stuff.
But lately, that line seems blurry because hate is rising across communities in all kinds of ways, and Jewish communities are getting a lot of it right now. You don't have to agree with people, you just have to not be awful. The blue square is a simple way to say, I'm with you, and I don't tolerate hate of any kind. Go to bluesquarealliance.org, get a pin, share it, and stand up. This is Sophia Donner from OK Storytime.
This summer, find your next obsession on Prime Video. And listen, we're not saying you need another obsession, but there could be a lot worse ones. Steamy Romance, Addictive Love Stories, and the Book to Screen favorites you've already read twice, so why not watch them a third time? Off-campus, L, the Love Hypothesis, and more. Slowburn Second Chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen, and it makes you wish you were actually in that movie.
We've got binge-worthy series, Can't Miss Movies, perfect for when you're ignoring your own problems or procrastinating, as one does. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Here's the truth: you could literally be adored by everyone and then come home and still get completely ignored by your own cat. It's classic cat behavior.
But new Shiba Premium Puree is a liquable treat that changes all that. They're protein-rich, made with bone broth, and have the smooth, creamy texture cats go crazy for. Especially when it's hand-fed. Yeah, it's more than a treat. It's a fast pass to favorite human status.
So, feed your cat Sheba and go from totally ignored to truly adored in just 12 days, guaranteed, or your money back. Learn more at Sheba.com.
