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Audie Cornish

00:00:03

Hey everyone, it's Audie. This is The Assignment. And today we're talking about one man's journey from suburban dad to quote, degenerate gambler. My guest today is a staff writer for The Atlantic. His name is McKay Coppins. He spent $10,000 of his employer's money and an entire NFL season diving into the world of online sports betting.

McKay Coppins

00:00:24

98% of problem gamblers online are men.

Audie Cornish

00:00:28

Can the manosphere tackle this?Like, seriously.

McKay Coppins

00:00:30

I will tell you, we have tried to pitch this story to the big manosphere podcasts. I've yet to be booked on any. If anyone's listening, I would be happy to come on and talk to you, Joe Rogan or anybody else. Nobody wants me.

Audie Cornish

00:00:43

And I wanted to talk to him because lately, honestly, betting of all kinds has gone mainstream.

Harry Enten

00:00:51

'We're talking about more than a two-in-five shot that those who are putting their money where their mouth is think that the US will acquire part of Greenland by the end of Trump's term.

Audie Cornish

00:01:01

'And it's taken over pro-sports completely. We're talking billions in tax revenue and boosted ratings. If only there weren't those pesky scandals.

Jake Tapper

00:01:11

'This sprawling FBI probe into mafia-linked gambling and sports rigging schemes are sending shockwaves across the NBA and the United States.

Boris Sanchez

00:01:19

The interpreter for the LA Dodgers star stole nearly 17 million dollars from him to secretly pay off some of his own sports gambling debts.

Audie Cornish

00:01:28

So McKay and I talked about what happens to all of us when the bookie's in your pocket. Stay with us.

Audie Cornish

00:01:40

Tell me who you are and what you have done.

McKay Coppins

00:01:46

McKay Coppins, I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic, author, and new gambler. I have always believed about myself and told people that I don't have an addictive personality because I don't have a lot of vices. I'm a Mormon, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I've never tried drugs, anything like that. And I had a certain amount of hubris going into this experiment where I just believed that it would be a funny little side plot in my broader investigation of the sports betting industry. And I genuinely did not expect that it would kind of take over my life the way that it did.

Audie Cornish

00:02:22

'And one other thing about your background, because... How did this relate to how you saw vice and gambling in general? Like I know for me now when a commercial comes on for FanDuel or DraftKings or whatever, I have this moment with my two little kids where I want to explain to them this thing that is being portrayed to you as a game, like a candy crush, no stakes game. Like, I- There's so much explaining to do. So for your family coming up, like where, where was the world device?

McKay Coppins

00:02:59

Yeah, I mean, generally, you know, as a Christian, I have certain beliefs about the dangers of vice. And I will say with gambling in particular, this was a vice that I had never really given that much thought to because I was never really tempted by it. Even if you took away my religious constraints, I probably wouldn't have been a gambler because I thought it was kind of a waste of time. I didn't see the appeal. I don't live near Vegas or Atlantic City, and so gambling itself, until the last like seven or eight years, would have required too much work on my part to figure it out, you know? And so...

Audie Cornish

00:03:37

You're one of those people like confused how to buy a lottery ticket. Like when Powerball happens, you're like, is there a machine? Like, is it a dollar?

McKay Coppins

00:03:44

'I actually now that you say that I don't even know if I know how to buy a lottery ticket. So there you go Yeah, I think that gives you a sense of kind of where I started but I will also say that as a sports fan, almost through kind of cultural osmosis, I had started to learn more about sports betting because, as you point out, it's so omnipresent in sports media. Like you cannot watch a game on any channel at any time of the day in any sport, any league, without being bombarded by these like neon soaked ads for online sports books and so -

Audie Cornish

00:04:17

With shockingly famous people.

McKay Coppins

00:04:18

'But it's athletes too, and that's the thing that actually is kind of shocking to me. Like 10 years ago, the idea that somebody like Tom Brady, or Kevin Garnett, or Wayne Gretzky would be not only associating themselves with gambling, but becoming pitchmen for online casinos would have been insane. Like the consensus in organized sports and professional sports for decades and decades was that the leagues needed to keep online sports betting - or sports betting in general - far away from them, right? That it posed a fundamental risk.

Audie Cornish

00:04:52

'And to be clear, that was because of scandal. Like some of the laws that are being rolled back now were born out of a period of scandal, and there are many in our history we'll talk about, but specifically, I think it was '92 that the sort of ban on professional sports betting, as we all maybe grew up with it, came into play. This was not that long ago. But the reason why I'm bringing it up is because you can reach a point where societally people are like, this sucks, like this doesn't work, like it becomes a problem. And one of the questions I sort of have going forward is, are we at that point? But before we get there, you are, you a normal person we've established, a normal non-gambler, jump into the deep end, getting into the apps, doing it all with your company's money.

McKay Coppins

00:05:45

'Mm-hmm.

Audie Cornish

00:05:46

And right away, as you're learning to do this, you get some advice from a one Mr. Nate Silver, didn't expect to see him pop up in this story, but makes sense given in the context. And he gives you some tips like avoid prop bets, avoid live betting, like betting during a game, and my favorite: avoid emotional bets. Cause honestly, I think all bets are emotional. I know people think it's science, but I'm like... And so for you, can you describe the feeling of what it's like to place a bet?

McKay Coppins

00:06:22

'You know, it's funny when I, when I talked to Nate Silver, he kind of laid out the basic realities of the sports betting economy, which were like, you know, the sports books effectively charge you four-and-a-half percent for every bet that you make. So you need to win, after taxes, something like 54, 55% of your bets just to break even. There are all these other things that the sportsbooks do to kind of rig the whole system against the average recreational gambler. But what that should have done was convince me, 'oh, there's no way to win.' What it actually convinced me of was that I was gonna be the exception, right? Like if I was just smart enough, if I spent just enough time pouring over the lines, and the roster updates, and the weather reports, and all the other factors that can influence the outcome of a game, I could figure out a winning system and consistently win at gambling. That's an insane thought, I should just say.

Audie Cornish

00:07:18

Wait. Did you have that thought at the time or in hindsight, you know, after you went through withdrawal you realized that's the thought?

McKay Coppins

00:07:25

And well, I did not realize it was insane at the time, but I absolutely have the temptation to believe that I would be the exception. Like something Nate told me in that first call was, you know, I asked him, if I'm starting with 10,000, how much would I have to win for this to be a successful season? And he was almost like perplexed by the question. And he was like, 'no, you don't understand. If you win one penny, you'll be better than 98% of sports bettors. Like nobody wins at this. You, at best, break even.'

Audie Cornish

00:07:52

Somebody wins at it or else there wouldn't be a bunch of gamblers? Like, you had to have a moment where you bet and you were like, 'Oh, this feels good.'

00:08:00

Oh, for sure. And my first night of gambling, I think it was the first game of the NFL season, I think I put five bets down, some prop bets, some just spread bets, whatever. And at the end of the night, I was up $20. And that first win was the moment where I was like, wait a second, I could be good at this. What if I'm actually secretly a sports betting savant? Right? Like, who knows? But you're right, everybody has one win that keeps them coming back. You don't win over the course of your gambling life. In the long run, the reason this industry is so profitable is because they don't really let gamblers win on a consistent basis.

Audie Cornish

00:08:46

There was this great line where you were like, "I took pride in my mastery of the lingo and the basic betting math. Like, it feels good to be the person who knows something."

McKay Coppins

00:08:57

You're in the know, you understand the whole kind of gambling economy better than the layperson. And also, you kind of create in your mind this epic battle between yourself and the house, right? Like you're going to figure out how to beat the house. You're going to beat the sports books.

Audie Cornish

00:09:16

This gets me to an angle that I can only say now because we're in the MAGA era. Talk about the man of it all. Meaning there's an element of this that feels very male, not that there aren't female gamblers.

McKay Coppins

00:09:29

'There are definitely plenty of women who gamble. Sports betting in particular is an overwhelmingly male phenomenon. It's, I think about 70% of sports - online sports betters are men. 98% of online sports betters who would qualify as problem gamblers are men.

Audie Cornish

00:09:48

Wait, how many?

McKay Coppins

00:09:49

98% of problem gamblers online are men.

Audie Cornish

00:09:53

Going well. Can the manosphere tackle this?

McKay Coppins

00:09:57

'I mean actually like a really good question. I will tell you, we have tried to pitch this story to the big manosphere podcasts. Like The Atlantic wanted me on sports media, which mostly said no because they all take money from the big sports books, and the manosphere podcasts, which like I think this, this, my experience would be really interesting to a lot of them. I've yet to be booked on any. If anyone's listening, I would be happy to come on and talk to you Joe Rogan, or anybody else - nobody wants me. And you know, on some level I get it, like they don't want to be the moral scolds telling their audiences that, you know, this vice is bad for you and I don't really wanna be that either. I should say, sports betting is fun! Like I get it. I totally understood the appeal the very first night, but to answer your question, it's an overwhelmingly male problem, and it's gonna have disastrous social consequences for men as they get older and develop gambling addiction.

Audie Cornish

00:10:56

'Which is very different when I was looking into the history of this because this kind of thing is cyclical,and I was thinking about some of the turn-of-the-century American movements around both like good government and also moral issues. This is where I took issue with your article actually. You sort of do this rundown of the history of finger wagging, like all the people who have said gambling is bad, but it was out of context. These were periods where like people weren't just gambling, they were gambling like whatever little money they had whatsoever for a household where a woman could make none. It was usually in the context even of scandal. If you look at some of the turn of the century, I would say like late 1800s.

McKay Coppins

00:11:40

The Progressive Era, yeah, for sure.

Audie Cornish

00:11:41

Yeah, where you have these states that had state lotteries. Same argument. You're going to build roads and bridges with the money you get. And Louisiana, in fact, they sent out the tickets across state lines in the mail.

McKay Coppins

00:11:56

Yep.

Audie Cornish

00:11:57

And it turned out to be a huge scandal, you know, with the postal service and all this stuff. And people came away with the same thing after that period, 'Hey, we should regulate this.' And that's when you saw everybody saying like, we're going to put this in our Constitution. We're not going to do it. And I feel like so many times this conversation falls into a, you're either a scold, an uncool scold, you know what I mean? Or a person who gets it. Instead of like, no, we've seen this movie before, and it ends horribly.

McKay Coppins

00:12:24

'That is more the point that I was trying to make. There are cycles throughout human history of like, you know, Wild West, kind of unregulated gambling booms and then backlash. And we go through this over and over again. And it's not, you know - that's American history, the Progressive eEra certainly. You go back to like the Puritans, George Washington. Like there was, you a very strong anti-gambling sentiment, but also you go back to like St. Augustine and Aristotle. Like you could go back to the dawn of human history, like you said, prostitution and gambling, or like two of the oldest industries, right? People have always gambled, and over and over we come back to this consensus that gambling as a vice should be maybe tolerated, especially in a liberal society, like a lot of vices, you have to make some room for it, but it should be regulated, stigmatized to a certain extent, and there should be friction to get there, right. I think.

Audie Cornish

00:13:21

I think the friction, yeah, that's where the current argument is that this is different.

McKay Coppins

00:13:27

Well, because before you had to go to river boats, or red light districts, or Nevada to gamble, right?

Audie Cornish

00:13:33

No, there's always been lotteries and church lotteries, and like...

McKay Coppins

00:13:36

Well, but on sports in particular, to gamble on sports, you had to go somewhere or, I mean, there were racetracks, right? Or you could gamble illegally, which a lot of people did, we should say, right? Like there are offshore books, and like Antigua, that you could call some guy and set up an account. Since the Internet's existed, people would be on there.

00:13:58

And horse racing. I think I went to a steeplechase literally like five years ago.

McKay Coppins

00:14:02

'Yeah, and you could go to Native American reservations, like there were places, but it was not as easy as it's just on my phone, it's an app, it takes 15 minutes to set up an account, put in my debit card information, and then it's with me all the time, right? There is a huge difference between walking around with a casino in your pocket at all hours and having to make some basic effort to gamble. And that's why we see stats like, 50% of men between the ages of 18 and 49 have an active online sportsbook. That's why we see things like, a third of 11-year-old boys have gambled in the past year.

Audie Cornish

00:14:41

I saw that. I saw that in USA Today, and I was like, 'What?'

McKay Coppins

00:14:46

The gambling has permeated the culture in a way that it just was not the case before the Supreme Court decision in 2018.

Audie Cornish

00:14:54

Okay, so McKay Coppins stay with us. We're going to come right back and talk more about what happens next.

Audie Cornish

00:15:05

'Okay, so I had to actually go and look up all the different scandals of the last six months, as pro-sports in particular has embraced this beast that is now eating it alive, frankly. The NBA in 2025 and now is still mired in a scandal over poker, but then also some players may be tweaking their style of play so that they could be inside information for prop bets. Then you've got a pitcher's gambling thing, right? In major league baseball, throwing specific pitches out of the strike zone and then even potentially texting from the clubhouse during games. That's one of the allegations. And then, meanwhile, in a college scene, college men's sports, where you see a point shaving thing. And I think the documents were just unsealed on that in January. So they are literally in this moment, reckoning with this thing that they're now not just a part of, they are yoked to. They are partners with the thing, they are building it into the apps, they're building it into the sport. And is it doing its job of like, bringing more people to watch the sport, giving people more of a stake in the game? Like, is everyone getting what they want out of this, at least right now?

McKay Coppins

00:16:25

'Yeah, I mean, the deal that the leagues made, the calculation they made when they decided to kind of toss their decades-long opposition to sports betting and start developing partnerships with the online sportsbooks was, TV ratings are beginning to decline for our games. Younger fans are drifting away. They're not disengaging from sports altogether, but they're fine watching Kevin Durant highlights on TikTok and not watching entire games, you know, from beginning to end. Well, what's a way to re-engage those people? How do we get them to actually want to tune into the games, watch the whole time... Have them gamble on it, right? If they have some money on it, it's much more interesting. So there are kind of two things that the leagues get out of it. On the one hand, they get direct money, right? They're doing data deals and licensing deals with the online sports books. So they're getting a lot of advertising money from the sportsbook. So that's one thing that the leagues get out of this, but the other thing is, there's a whole population of young men who might not have otherwise watched games beginning to end, but now will because they have 50 bucks riding on it in DraftGames.

Audie Cornish

00:17:34

Yeah. Or will they? I mean, one of the things I was thinking of, a part of your story matched something that one of our producers said, who is a young man, who was talking about this very kind of, honestly, it sounds to me a little bit depressing experience of a game where your screen, your phone, your bets. Is like the stakes are... It's almost too much stakes now. It's gone from these guys won't watch and they'll watch highlights, to now they're obsessed because if somebody steps out of bounds in the third quarter that might screw up all of their bets. And it actually sounded like a... This is not a sexy word, but like atomized experience.

McKay Coppins

00:18:23

Yeah, yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:18:23

It didn't feel communal, it didn't feel like sports and I kinda again, paging the manosphere. This feels like one of those things you wanna be like, 'hey, are we actually having fun here?'

McKay Coppins

00:18:34

'So, that was an experience that I had a few different times when I was gambling. Like I thought, especially the first time I went to a sportsbook lounge to watch a game, that it would be like a classic sports bar experience. Because one of the great things about gambling on sports is you kind of purchase an artificial-rooting interest in a game that you otherwise wouldn't care about. And so I was like, 'Oh, I'll go to this sportsbook lounge. I'll find other people who have bet on the Chargers, and we'll all become, you know, fellow Chargers fans for the night together, and we will root along in the game.' That wasn't really what happened. When I went, what happened was that everybody was paying attention to these like microscopic prop bets within the game, right? And so like, you know, one person had Justin Herbert over for throwing yards, and other people were rooting for the over for Chargers rushing. And some people wanted the Chargers to win the game, but lose the first half or, vice versa.

Audie Cornish

00:19:31

You're also watching multiple games at once.

McKay Coppins

00:19:33

You have a bunch of different TV screens, and that's not just a sportsbook lounge experience, that's everyone. I had four different games on Sundays, four or five different NFL games at once that I was paying attention to. And what it does, like you said, is it removes the kind of monocultural experience that sports kind of provides, the communal experience of, we're all watching this game together, rooting for or against a certain team. Everybody now is just paying attention to their kind of micro bets on their phones, and it is an interesting... You said atomize, like there's kind of an interesting political parallel here. Like I cover politics as my day job when I'm not gambling. And part of what's happened with politics is because of the rise of conspiracy theory, culture, and all of that. Everybody cares way more about politics than they used to, but it's brutally dividing the country and atomizing them. It's not bringing people together in any meaningful way.

Audie Cornish

00:20:30

Although two things. One, you actually mentioned conspiratorial thinking as an outcrop of this. Like when you're watching a game, something goes wrong, someone fumbles, there's a ref call. And it's not just, 'oh, I hate that athlete for messing up my bet.' You also are now like, 'oh okay, who's in on the scam?' Like your brain, I mean, I was fascinated reading in real time your description of what your brain is doing.

McKay Coppins

00:20:57

Right, does the ref have money on the game somehow? Does some player have money on this, and they're manipulating their performance to win money? Which, not wrong!

Audie Cornish

00:21:10

Scandals!

McKay Coppins

00:21:10

'And that's the thing right like these scandals. What we don't really know is, are these revelations the tip of the iceberg, or are they one-off flukes, right? Is it that athletes manipulating their performance, is that a very common thing that we just don't know about or is it statistically anomalous?

Audie Cornish

00:21:30

'Or is it a good thing, right? Which is the argument you hear from the sort of pro-gambling world, which is saying, look-

McKay Coppins

00:21:40

'Mm-hmm.

Audie Cornish

00:21:40

'Because this is now still, because this industry is working hand in hand with the leagues and the state, you actually can catch bad behavior, you can catch gamblers before they slide too far. That we only know these things because they're doing a way better job regulating it than some off-books bookie type who would have just broken your legs.

McKay Coppins

00:22:05

Yes. The guy in Antigua or the mobster who is booking your bets probably is not going to flag to the NBA that there's some suspicious betting activity around a certain game. I actually think that's a pretty fair argument by the sportsbooks, and it is inevitably the case that when you legalize an industry and then regulate it, you're going to get better outcomes in terms of surfacing corruption and things like that.

Audie Cornish

00:22:29

Yeah, you are going to catch stuff.

McKay Coppins

00:22:30

Yeah, I think that that's true. The point that I'm making though is that even if these scenarios where athletes are manipulating performance or referees or coaches are relatively uncommon, you only need a few revelations to plant the seed of doubt in viewers' minds, and sports fans' minds, about what they're watching on the court or the field. Because I'll just tell you, my experience watching these games, especially after those indictments were announced last fall by the FBI and Justice Department of the NBA specifically, although there was kind of a steady drumbeat of scandals after that that you pointed out. But for me, I found myself constantly wondering if this was another case when I would lose a bet. Is this another case where somebody involved in the game has money on this, and they're manipulating the outcome? And it almost doesn't matter if it's really common or rare because I also know this part of my brain knows that the leagues are embracing sports betting, that sports betting is so intertwined now with professional sports that it's almost impossible to not think about it, right?

Audie Cornish

00:23:42

So now, now the league has become the house.

McKay Coppins

00:23:44

Kind of, right.

Audie Cornish

00:23:45

It's another thing against, it's another Goliath against your gambling David.

McKay Coppins

00:23:50

That's exactly, exactly right.

Audie Cornish

00:23:53

Um, what's it like to be unhinged? Meaning what's it like to have that moment where you feel active anger?

McKay Coppins

00:24:04

'Pretty unnerving, honestly, like there was... I write about this one story where Arizona Cardinals running back dropped the football right before he stepped into the end zone. He thought he was like a cool flex, like he was tossing it on the ground, but he dropped it right before it stepped in, so it was a rule to fumble. And the team ended up losing, I lost a few hundred dollars on that game. And there was this moment that was really kind of alarming to me because I was seeing myself do it, where I was filled with a completely irrational hatred for this player that I knew nothing about, that I have, you know I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy. I had no reason -

Audie Cornish

00:24:41

'But what happened? Like, did your brain- did you start swearing in your head? Did you-

McKay Coppins

00:24:44

'In my case, I started watching and re-watching the clip of the fumble, and then also his comments afterward in the locker room to reporters. And almost against my will, I was making moral judgments about this player. Because in my mind, in the gambler's mind, he had lost me money. I had lost money because of this one guy who did something stupid. And like, you know, it only lasted for, you know, a bit. It's not like I still, you know, hate Emari Demercado. Great guy, good player.

Audie Cornish

00:25:17

'Yeah, I mean, you just said his first and last name, totally normal behavior, but yeah, for sure. But on it, but- You like him, though.

McKay Coppins

00:25:23

He's my favorite Arizona Cardinal running back who also fumbled.

00:25:29

I'm checking your Finsta. It's like, I'm checking your fake Instagram where you insult athletes. The reason why I ask is because I'm one of those people, I'm so out of it that when I hear people being... harassing athletes, sending them heinous messages, like threatening their lives.

McKay Coppins

00:25:48

'Mm-hmm.

Audie Cornish

00:25:49

I just think, like, what has risen up inside the person who got to that point?

McKay Coppins

00:25:56

Well, and in my typical life, I feel that way too, not just about people in sports, like people in... Everyone who acts crazy and unhinged on social media, I'm always like, guys, what are you doing? Touch grass, right? But like, then I felt in that moment that kind of fleeting, intense feeling toward an athlete, and it is not... It's very out of character for me.

Audie Cornish

00:26:23

Is it like road rage? Like if someone cuts you off?

McKay Coppins

00:26:24

Kinda. Where you like briefly lose your mind for no you know, for no reason, and if you look back on that moment, if there was like a recording of your life, you know, even like a few hours later, you'd be like yikes like calm down, right? That's how I felt and, and... But like I also interviewed this French tennis player named Caroline Garcia who talked to me about it from an athlete's perspective.

Audie Cornish

00:26:45

Which I learned from your article is like the most bet on sport.

McKay Coppins

00:26:49

Yeah. One of the most gambled on sports is tennis.

Audie Cornish

00:26:51

Not cricket, not like, I was like, how is this possible?

McKay Coppins

00:26:54

'Tennis. It's something about the fact that it's mostly an individual game, right? And so there are fewer variables. That's what the gamblers think. It really just is this one player going to beat this other player, right? But also, what that means is that the player really bears the brunt of the gambler's wrath when they lose. And she told me she first started getting abusive messages from angry gamblers when she was a teenager. And it's become kind of almost like white noise to her for her whole career. She would just. When she'd lose a match, she would pull up her social media and just see a stream of unhinged messages from people. And she said, sometimes she would click on the profile and see that like somebody had sent her the most heinous, vulgar, angry message, and then she clicks on the profile, and it's like him with his one-year-old kid posing and smiling, you know? And she would be like, what is wrong with you?

Audie Cornish

00:27:45

Like, how can this be the same person?

McKay Coppins

00:27:47

And that's the thing, gambling does something to your brain chemistry that really does make you kind of act uncharacteristically, do things that you wouldn't normally do.

Audie Cornish

00:27:59

Its the same for a lot of addictions. And I was surprised to see you writing that this feels different because people kind of can't see it coming from the outside, right? It's a little easier to hide. It's still secret. Yeah, like the amount of times in your story you're hiding in the kitchen pantry, McKay Coppins, is both relatable and also a little bit jarring.

McKay Coppins

00:28:20

Yeah, yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:28:21

Because, you know, your kids like mine know you're in there.

McKay Coppins

00:28:24

Mhm.

Audie Cornish

00:28:24

When you disappear because you're gonna get a yogurt. You never came back.

McKay Coppins

00:28:28

Yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:28:28

'But that is the-the part I want to end on is sort of like how... How this moment might be different from other moments where you've had deregulation and then backlash or not because when I think of past movements, they became collective movements because societally in big communities people felt the collapse. Now, with this more atomized experience, since we're using that term, there's also atomized solutions. Like I go on Google and go into the Reddit threads, and it's like, this is what to do when your partner has become a degenerate gambler. Like you need to change passwords. You need to have separate bank accounts. You need to sign this document to prevent states from letting you gamble, and look like, it's all individual solutions. And meanwhile, the societal description is, this thing is awesome. This thing is fun. This thing is a public good. Even talking about the prediction markets, which we haven't even gotten into here. Polymarket, Kelshi, which I think CNN, our company, has a relationship with. People are betting on Iranian strikes.

McKay Coppins

00:29:32

Yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:29:33

Right. Like this idea that this is the public square. This is where the conversation happens. It has spread to all corners, past sports.

McKay Coppins

00:29:44

'I tend to agree with you that we are not yet at a place of kind of society-wide frustration, outrage, panic that would cause a collective movement to truly rein in the runaway gambling industry.

Audie Cornish

00:29:58

Do you think it's because we have more credit, you know what I mean?

McKay Coppins

00:30:01

'Honestly, that's probably part of it, and it might take kind of... Some kind of upturning of the economy, where all of a sudden people are really feeling the financial pain of their loved ones gambling habits, you know? But I actually think we're getting closer. I mean, I have been surprised by the reaction to this piece since it was published. It seems genuinely bipartisan and cross-ideological, the kind of growing concern about the gambling industry. And I think the prediction markets are a big part of it. I think that it's possible that when we look back on this era, 30 years from now, the way that we're looking back on the '90s or the Progressive Era, that the fact that these platforms emerged where you could bet on whether there will be a famine in Gaza, whether a nuclear weapon will be detonated, how many Americans or people will be deported from America in a given year. Like, that's almost so grotesque and so dystopian that it might be the thing that kind of finally tips the balance toward the country realizing we have a gambling problem and we need to look more closely at how to regulate this.

Audie Cornish

00:31:10

So in the end, spoiler alert, your wife doesn't love it. I think you lost something like $10,000, or was that just on one game?

McKay Coppins

00:31:19

No, $10,000 was the final. I started with $10k and ended with around $120.

Audie Cornish

00:31:28

And your kids watch you go through this. How did it change how they talk about these commercials and the idea of gambling?

McKay Coppins

00:31:40

'They became almost kind of inevitably much more fluent in the vocabulary of gambling. My seven-year-old daughter can tell you what a point spread is. My 10-year old son, every time we watched a game during this whole experience, would ask, okay, who are we betting on, right?

Audie Cornish

00:31:55

Which is literally like out of a scene from Peaky Blinders. Like I'm trying to, I don't wanna again finger wag, right? And be like, that's bad. But it's like, are we feeling good about that?

McKay Coppins

00:32:06

I would say no, but I would also say, like... So in my case, I have not gambled since the Super Bowl. That was the last bet I placed.

Audie Cornish

00:32:14

And also went through withdrawal, though.

McKay Coppins

00:32:16

'Oh, for sure, and I'm in a kind of detox period now. Still, sometimes when I turn on a Celtics game with my son, I'll have a moment where I'm like, oh, I wish I could put some money on the Tatum over right now, you know? But I've been able to resist. I've actually signed a thing called a self-exclusion form, where you basically cut yourself off from gambling. So, I don't have access to the apps anymore, at least in Virginia. But my kids have also gone through a detox, right? Like I - I think in some ways, maybe this is delusional on my part, I think it was a good thing for them to witness to see how kind of insane it got, how distracted I became, how consumed I got by it, because they are much more aware now of these ads when they pop up. My son, especially, and he'll kind of, you know, he'll sometimes be like 'boo' when he sees, like a fan duel ad or whatever, which hopefully that sentiment lasts.

Audie Cornish

00:33:11

My kids have no sense. And hearing us talk about it, it's so abstract, you know? And did I make it worse by making it sound illicit?

McKay Coppins

00:33:20

That is one of my fears in writing this piece, that you can read the whole piece and you get a sense of my journey, and all the perils of gambling. I still worry that people are reading it and are like, that sounds kind of fun, maybe I'll try it. My editor on this piece, actually, after going through the whole editing process with me, which takes a long time at The Atlantic. It's a long piece. On like the very last day, as we were closing it, he downloaded DraftKings, and he is now gambling on tennis.

Audie Cornish

00:33:50

Are men okay? Like for real? This was not the takeaway.

McKay Coppins

00:33:57

'I told him, I was like, 'Scott, I think you took the wrong lesson.' He's like, 'No, no. No, I know. I know, I know, but-'

Audie Cornish

00:34:03

I can imagine if he's like, I can do better than this Mormon.

McKay Coppins

00:34:05

Totally.

Audie Cornish

00:34:06

Like, come on.

McKay Coppins

00:34:07

That is, I think that that is probably the takeaway a lot of people had, unfortunately.

Audie Cornish

00:34:11

Okay, great. Going well. Well, McKay, thank you so much for talking with me. This was amazing. Tell people where they can find your work, professional and otherwise.

McKay Coppins

00:34:23

Yep, The Atlantic, always worth checking out on any given day. Subscribe to theatlantic.com. You can also find my newsletter, mckaycoppins.substack.com

The Assignment with Audie Cornish