Factually! with Adam Conover - Everything in America is Gambling Now

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!)It feels like everything is a gamble these days, doesn’t it? That’s because, in many ways, it literally is. Sports betting, Wall Street speculation, crypto gambling, even loot boxes in video games—risk-taking has become a central part of American culture. When did we unknowingly turn the entire country into one giant casino?Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media and get all sides of every story. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through my link.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Well the Super Bowl is almost here, and since the Eagles have brotherly shoved themselves into a rerun match with Taylor Swift's boyfriend, the only exciting thing we have to watch is the ads. And you can bet that a lot of the ads this year are going to be for gambling. You know, I can remember a time when gambling ads were considered too sleazy to be on mainstream television. Hell, the one time I took an ad for DraftKings on my podcast a year or two ago, my own audience gave me hell about it.

But now, everyone's getting on board. They've got 80s comedians, 90s comedians, Even two thousands comedians. $200 instantly. Yeah, you know if Kevin Hart tells me to bet, I'm not gonna come up short. It's a Kevin Hart joke. Gambling has quickly become a part of mainstream American culture. Americans gambled over $67 billion in 2024, and these days, it's not just sports.

You can bet on who's gonna win the presidential election, play the slots on your phone, blow your wad on a crypto meme coin, and even upload feet pics to OnlyFans and gamble with whether or not GimGam will invite you to Thanksgiving next year. And you do it all right here from your phone. You know, in the old days, if you wanted to blow your life savings, you had to go to the racetrack or the casino or at least to the break room for the office betting pool. But now, gambling is so pervasive that it's literally transforming fundamental parts of

American life, from sports to finance to politics. And I think it's been fueled by a fundamental restructuring in the American economy, one that's incentivizing millions of Americans to risk financial ruin rather than invest in the future. And somebody is making bank from all these bets and it's sure as shit ain't us. But you know what, before we double down on that, you know what's always a sure bet? My stand-up tour. The Nihilism Pivot Tour continues in Omaha on February 12th, then I'm headed to Talia Hall in Chicago on the 21st, the Wilbur, I can't wait to be in the Wilbur, in Boston on the 23rd, and then after that Burlington, Vermont, London, Amsterdam, Providence, Rhode Island, Vancouver, Eugene, Oregon, and Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Head to AdamConover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I would love to see you on the road. We're having a blast out there. And by the way, if you'd like to support this channel directly and the two videos a month we are bringing you every month this year, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Really appreciate your support. Thank you so much. So I'm old enough to remember a time when gambling and sports were like oil and water. So unmixable that until just a few years ago, Vegas didn't even have a single major sports

team. But you know what happened? Right around the time that all of these teams moved to the gambling capital of the world, sports betting was legalized nationwide. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law prohibiting sports betting. And since then, sports gambling has swept the nation. More than three quarters of states have gone all in. And the sports leagues themselves, once fierce protectors of the honorable integrity of the game, suddenly changed their play. Turns out they weren't content to simply have, you know, the most

lucrative broadcasting rights in the world, selling thousands of tickets every year, and building stadiums at taxpayer expense. No, they decided they needed more f***ing money. So they started making dirty deals with betting apps like FanDuel and DraftKings. And suddenly, we're looking around ourselves and realizing that all of sports now revolves around gambling. I mean, the broadcasters show betting lines during the games, and in the pre-game shows, they use analytics to predict game outcomes, telling you who to bet for. Even ESPN has their own betting app. They're not the worldwide leader in sports anymore, they're just another f***ing casino.

You know, we used to watch sports so we could enjoy the achievements of the athletes, chow down on a Dodger dog and have something to stare at, while hanging out with male friends so we could avoid making eye contact. But now, as far as the leagues and networks are concerned, sports aren't about camaraderie or the rush of victory or even the game itself. They're just about funneling you back into your phone to place a bet and get another dopamine hit so they can make another buck. LeBron James and Shohei Otani might as well just be a couple of greyhounds at the dog track for all they care. Now look, let's be clear.

Gambling, like all vices, is a part of human life. It can be really fun, and it's been around so long, we've literally found dice in Egyptian tombs. So that means legalization was not entirely a bad thing. When gambling was illegal, people just did it illegally and informally. You didn't need an app to bet 20 bucks your team would win. You just needed a friend from out of state and the blind hubris of hometown pride. We all know from history that blanket prohibition doesn't work.

But you know what? That doesn't mean that every vice should be available everywhere at all times. I mean, we've all agreed that alcohol should be legal, but I think we also agree that we shouldn't hand out shots of fireball at every stoplight. And in the past few years, that's what we've been doing with gambling. The portal to gambler's domain literally sleeps next to you, follows you everywhere, lives in your pocket 24-7. And the problem with that is, that doesn't just make gambling more accessible, it also makes it more addictive. According to addiction researcher Natasha Shull,

four factors make a behavior especially addictive. First, when it's antisocial and solitary so you can get lost in the flow, you know, like when you're on your fucking phone. Second, when it offers continuous fast feedback that reinforces the behavior, which is what gambling apps are designed to do. Third, when it's unpredictable

so you never know when the reward will come. And fourth, when the activity never really ends or resolves. And that is the real problem with gambling apps. At least with alcoholism, you have to drive back to the liquor store once in a while to get your fix. But with online gambling, once you plug your phone in, the dopamine hit literally never runs out.

And when you combine gambling with addiction, it is incredibly destructive. I mean, first of all, I can't believe it's taken me this long to point this out, but you know, 96% of gamblers lose money. You guys didn't really think you were winning at gambling, right? You think those capitalists are just giving money away? Yeah, and my health insurer really cares if I get better and don't die. Get the f*** out of here. Now look, gambling is also fun, and most fun things lose money. I don't turn a profit

when I go see Wicked for the third time in a weekend, unless you count the inherent spiritual validation. But when you combine loss with addiction, it can ruin lives. States with legalized gambling see significantly reduced rates of household savings. They see increased bankruptcies and decreases in overall credit scores. Studies have even shown that domestic violence incidents

related to sports losses increased by as much as 10% when gambling is legalized. Yeah, it turns out putting an addictive app on the addictive brick in our pockets might actually be a bad thing. And unlike alcohol, tobacco, and other addictive drugs, there's almost no federal regulation of sports betting. That makes sports gambling a perfect storm for cynical CEOs who want to capitalize on addicts. It's right on your phone, it's highly addictive, and nobody is even trying to stop them. And you know what?

Your local sports betting CEO billionaire isn't the only one exploiting Americans' gambling addiction to get rich quick. Because on your phone, you can bet on anything nowadays. Like, do you remember what was all over Super Bowl ads in the years before sports betting? Crypto. Now, evangelists say that crypto can help the everyman save and make money. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, promises a fairer financial system for the billions who can't open bank accounts and Dogecoin

promises to be a currency for the people. But if crypto is a currency then why do only 4% of crypto users actually use it to buy things. Huh, what does that make it instead? Oh, I know, it's another fucking casino. And like a casino, the house always wins. Because for every rich idiot who says they've made a billion off their latest shit coin, millions of others are getting fleeced. In a scam so common that its very name has become famous,

the rug pull, A new cryptocurrency is launched and advertised. Unsuspecting gamblers buy into it, hoping to see the asset grow, only for a small group of investors, often the ones who started the coin in the first place, to quickly sell their stakes leaving it nearly worthless. I mean, at least at the casino a nice lady in fishnets brings me a free drink and tells me my suit looks sharp. With crypto, I don't even get to talk to the hawk to a girl before she steals my money. This scam is so endemic to the crypto industry, even our new president is in on the grift.

Trump recently started his own meme coin that went from 10 bucks a coin to 70 in just a few days, becoming one of the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap before, you guessed it, plunging in value, losing some everyday investors their life savings. But of course they should have known it was a gamble because the Trump coin's website explicitly says that Trump coin is not intended to be an investment opportunity of any type. I mean at least with Trump's last scam you got a physical Bible where you could read about the sin of greed. And by the way, if you're doubting that story because you're wondering if it's too partisan,

I just want to point out that the source is this video's sponsor, Ground News. And I use Ground News because it pulls stories from across tons of media outlets and rates all of them according to their bias and factuality. Like if you scroll down, you can see one headline that says, Trump launches ethically murky crypto coin days before entering office. And before I click on that headline, I can see that this article comes from a left leaning independent source with a high factuality rating.

But you know what, if you'd rather have a centrist source, well, you can sort your sources by left leaning, right leaning, or center. And if I click center, I find this high factuality source from the Globe and Mail. Trump launches new cryptocurrency before taking office on pro crypto agenda. Comparing all these different sources with different biases really helps me make these videos because it makes it super easy to tell fact from fiction and make sure that I'm getting the real story. So if you want to see all of your news in context and get out of your partisan bubble,

check out our sponsor, Ground News. You can get 40% off this amazing user-funded service if you use my special code. Just go to groundnews.com slash factually. But hey, if you get bored of getting fleeced by a gambling CEO or crypto-potus, don't worry. Your phone is full of other great ways to ruin your life. Like polymarket, a betting market bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel, which has effectively replaced political polling. Polymarket allows people to place bets on any random ass event, from the number of times they think Taylor Swift will be shown at the Super Bowl, to whether or not Mark Zuckerberg gets divorced.

Only a 13% chance this clown will get divorced. His pre-nup must be as thick as that sunscreen. And Zuckerberg isn't the only loser on this site because again 86% of wallets on Polymarket lose money. But you know what? We are even training kids to gamble on their phones now. More and more video games have gambling and loot box mechanics which encourage kids to engage in gambling like behavior by selling digital boxes that may or may not contain a prize. Most recently, have gambling and loot box mechanics which encourage kids to engage in gambling-like behavior by selling digital boxes that may or may not contain a prize. Most recently, Pokemon launched a new app that encourages kids to spend real money on card packs

that may contain rare digital cards. And that is fucking gambling. Pokemon was already the highest grossing media franchise in the world with $147 billion in estimated revenue. But Pikachu wasn't content to just sell video games and movies and plushies to your kids, no. They also want to capitalize on their hopes and dreams for a shiny new Charizard card to get them to part with their precious Tooth Fairy money. I mean, at least you used to have to go to a hobby shop and pay some dude named Dave a hundred bucks to hand you a dusty shoebox full of cardboard, but now the crack is right on your phone.

But you know what else kids dream of even more than getting a shiny ghastly in their digital wallet? Becoming influencers. And that is the biggest casino of all. See, social media companies have a voracious need for new content to run ads next to, but instead of paying for that content like the TV industry used to, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok have convinced all of us to make that content for them unpaid.

Oh sure, they sell us the idea that being an influencer is a quick and easy way to get rich, which might be why more than half of Gen Z believes that people can easily make a career in influencing. But it's not fucking true. Only 12% of full-time creators make more than $50,000 a year. Full-time creators! I mean, influencing is literally a job where you work 40 hours or more a week but only

have a 12% chance of barely making enough to afford rent in Cleveland. And otherwise, you make nothing except free content that makes Zuck rich so he can buy more goddamn sunscreen. There are literal millions of real people out there spending their real time and money making content for Facebook and YouTube in the hopes that they'll get lucky enough that they become the next very mindful, very demure.

But that doesn't make influencing a job, it makes it one more goddamn casino. So why the f*** are we falling for all of this? Why have we allowed entire segments of American life, from sports to finance to entertainment, turn into just another form of gambling? Well, I think it's because we've lost faith in anything other than a roll of the dice to provide a secure middle class life.

Since 1971, the American middle class has shrunk by 10%. And while the price of tech, like phones, has gone down, almost everything else we actually need to live has gotten way more expensive. Since 2000, the cost of medical care, college tuition, and child care have surged by more than 100%. The cost of simply having a roof over your head and food in your belly has gone up over 50%. You know, we used to believe in America, that if you invested your time and money into earning an honest living, you'd get a ticket to a better life guaranteed. That's what the American dream was. But most of us realize now that that dream is dead.

So is it any wonder that millions of Americans are now thinking, you know what, let me buy a lottery ticket instead. Even if you lose, hey, it's the only way you'll ever afford that down payment, right? But you know what? Gambling won't win you a house. Because the house always wins. And in America, the house is rich people. The billionaires who built this system to begin with. Every time we place a bet, we make them richer.

The very people who stole the American dream from us in the first place. The ones who suppressed our wages, who ruined the housing market, and created the gambling apps that suck away what little we have left. And now these bro-legarks are running the country and we're paying them to do it. And it feels like all we can do to feel better about that is throw a couple bucks down on the Super Bowl and hope to strike it rich. But it's not true. In a casino, if you play by the house rules, you always lose. The truth of the American economy today is that the wealthy have built a casino around us.

They've covered the windows, they've taken away the clocks, and they've tricked all of us into thinking that this is the only way life can be. That the only way we can get ahead is playing by their rules and putting more and more of our cash, our time, our blood, our sweat into their machines, but that's a lie. The vast majority of us will not win

by throwing ourselves into crypto or monetizing our Instagram reels or betting that Mr. Swift tackles some dude hard enough to sustain permanent brain damage. The only way for all of us to win is to band together, grab a crowbar, smash the rich man's slot machine, take back the time and money that is rightfully ours, and walk out the f***ing door with it. That was a HeadGum Podcast.

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