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David Roth joins us for a look at sports gambling’s rapid rise and infiltration of every institution of professional sports. We look at how it developed, who’s affected, the insidious exploitation of gambling addiction, and how the permissibility of gambling has extended to players in the leagues themselves. We also discuss RFK Jr.’s brain worm, and the crypto bracelet entrepreneur who gave the worst commencement speech of all time at Ohio State.

Subscribe for David’s work at the Defector here: https://defector.com/

Corbin Smith’s Defector piece on sports gambling mentioned in the ep: https://defector.com/sports-is-betting-it-all-on-gambling

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Comments

Justin

A Roth episode makes my life so much better.

Tucker

feeed me daddies

Nolan

It’s good!

Eric

This is like an early birthday gift for me

T

Slop me up

Tom

David Roth slop is the best slop

Bryan Jennings

David Roth based slop? You absolutely love to see it

JD Nonce

A work shift with not a fucking thing to do other than indulge in over an hour of parasocial interaction. Let’s go

Nolan

This is cool and all but I’m like 75% betting on the Celtics and Bruins. Hit my line!

Jordan

Oh shit. Afternoon slop!

BigBoto

I mean, honestly, the only way this ends is with a Black Sox World Series-level scandal every two years lmao sports ball is so done

Alec

RFK eats so many shrimp he got iodine poisoning

Sorkle

Dross Kings

Jon Shields

i love losing money on my favorite teams i hope it never stops

Demented Avenger

Roth's experience with steroids and baseball is 180° from mine. The people who get the most upset about the issue in forums are almost always right-wingers and older, with screams about how pure Joe DiMaggio or Henry Aaron were.

raph4603

Hell yeah love David

Adam

Ohio Mentioned

Josh Woods

Titanium Throat was my nickname in college.

Kirk Lazarus

David Roth is their best recurring guest let's fucking go

Jake V

EARLY SLOP LETS GOOOOOOO

the Minneapolis Kid

Gruel? That sounds and awful lot like slop! Clear a space for this piggy at the trough.

Davin

More David, please.

ploob

That's the Joe Kennedy curse for ya

Guy Guyerson

The TrueAnon march madness episode on online gambling from a while back set the bar pretty high but I trust the dry boys can hit that mark. Happy to be at the trough.

Andrew Cross

bullets 🤝 worms alcohol 🤝 lobotomy picks destroying Kennedy brains

Dick Wolf

So Civil War (2024) is about Texas and California resisting sports gambling?

Juan Gonzalez

If California made it legal, I’d have a bachelors degree already

More Human than Human

The reason it hits young males at much higher rates is because that’s how all addiction works. Every single problem with addiction has that exact same distribution. Especially very risky behavior like IV opiates or serious alcoholism.

Matt Baber

Brain worms. Things of that nature.

plainwrap

UK Gambling ads are nuts. The craziest advertising I saw was on the digital boards of a Premier League game that read 'DELE ALLI TO SCORE NEXT 8/1' right next to the actual player as he's going to get the ball from out of bounds. Like that's got to affect his performance.

Robert K

What was the outro song?

Shiv

Taylor Swift?

John Cook

Will, while you're in Madison I BEG you to have someone tell you the long version of the story about the 2 white rastas who tried to sell weed legally here by starting a sham rastafari church and claiming it as a sacrament.

Joey Fazzoli

“I have cognitive problems. CLEARLY.” will never leave my vocabulary

Joey Fazzoli

So much better than alex nichols imo

Brad Hall

Make. Roth. Permanent.

Jessica Rios

Omg so excited that you said this. I have something good to listen to on my flight to Philly tomorrow 😊

Cas

weed legalization: lets take twenty years to have the same annoying conversation if this is a good or bad idea. sports gambling legalization: now that we took 30seconds to think about it let’s mainstream this and make it ubiquitous in our sports culture.

Ant koz

Hell yeah dude Iv opiates were so cool in the oc80 days and when real heroin existed. Neoliberalism ruins everything

Jake Zydek

Embrace your symbiosis

Antipaganda

I won 50 bucks by betting on when this slop came out

BossHoss

Jury is still out on the future of bitcoin but stew is a lock

Eric Jacobsen

I wanna propose one more theory behind why the millennial generation apparently so susceptible to gambling — it’s literally a generational thing. The Bible thumpers of the American history *up to Jerry Falwell* mostly focused on: adultery, alcoholism, gambling, vice. Falwell moved that attention over to gays and communists and “the left”, but boomers still grew up with the idea that gambling was sin, and gen-x’ers to a slightly lesser extent. You can see it in movies of the 50s through the 70s, gambling was synonymous with being a moral degenerate. James Bond was a maverick because he could gamble and somehow not have vomit all over his shirt. The stigma is simply gone. Millennials grew up with the idea that ultimate sinfulness was either being a commie or a fag, and either embraced or rejected that. Gambling was never on their radar.

Michael

the ray winstone bet365 ad is britain's greatest contribution to western culture

Conner

Love when my slop is on time

Last Years Man

Chris's subliminal drops always fill a need. Just when I was thinking "what about David Foster Wallace," he drops in the This is Water.

Last Years Man

My college commencement speech was by Michael Fucking Dell, who didn't even graduate, and told us that if we aspire to it, we can all start companies or work for him one day.

Billiam

🖤big black🖤

Jonathan Nathan

We love our regularly scheduled content drops, don’t we folks

Jonathan Nathan

Also: everything our parents said was sinful turned out to be awesome.

John Douglas

Love this episode! Funny audiobook is "Dueling with Kings" where Fanduel and DraftKings catered to sports bros but tech nerds won every round. So all of the winner events have models and hypebeast stuff but only nerds show up and act awkward as fuck. Too funny!

Matt James Rich

Loved the Big Black outro, rest in peace Steve Albini.

Dick Must Bust

That “what a pro wants” commercial makes me want to put rocks in my pockets and walk into the ocean. Fucking insufferable.

Gwen Blu

I think the best part of the Ohio State commencement is that someone like died after falling from the stands and the show just went on… the grind never ends

SoConfused

you can easily ban online/casino gambling, you don't NEED to go to a casino to gamble. You can gamble with friends/family if you really want to. Drugs/sex etc are different because you can't make your own cocaine, but you can easily set up a sports pool or fantasy league

Fiddypea

Do you think they chose "Bad Penny" to thematically wed the tragic and untimely passing of Steve Albini with that bullshit about the Bitcoin magic in th commencement speech?? If so *chef's kiss*

Eric Murphy

I'm glad I only got addicted to heroin and not gambling or eating... Fuck that

True Horror Productions

Somehow they continue to get better yes, alternately going "perfect" or laughing out loud at those

Last Years Man

you cant even watch anymore without subscribing to ten different services either.

Jacob

I actually have a signed pete rose baseball with a certificate of authenticity lmao my uncle met him in Las Vegas and got it for me

Matthew Krueger

Holy shit dude! Thank you for this - it plays like a Sexy Beast post credit scene.

The Flon

Roth for third chair!

Ned Schafer

I have to correct the record on this Roth, the reuben was invented at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha. Best town in the world baby! Omaha #1!

hole

how the fuck did you know I was reading Hegel?!?!?

Sam

There’s an old Radiolab episode about a woman, who had never gambled before and whose Parkinson’s medication had been successfully treating her condition for 10 years, going to Vegas with friends on a whim. She suddenly became an insatiable gambling addict and eventually gambled away her family’s home. The Parkinson’s drug targets the motion center of the brain, which is right next to and is very tied to the reward center of the brain. She had to stop taking it and live with Parkinson’s in order to stop gambling. Think about it a lot, one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.

will michel

sports betting has also ruined the MYSTIQUE of sports among fans. the washington post ran a throwaway story on a rookie call-up for the washington nationals handling the pressure of being in the majors this year and everyone on reddit was talking about his xBA and his bWAR and his wRc and OPS+ and how he “has no upside”. it was so depressing. kids aren’t dreaming about hitting that game winning home run anymore. they’re dreaming about hitting that 3-way parlay or making the big moneyball trade for TOP PROSPECTS who will generate a similar level of output as megastars to save the organization pennies on the dollar. i’ve said this so many times: nerds OUT!

Brian

I think it’s great

Karl Childers

i'm always confused when people get addicted to shit that isn't drugs. do they not know about drugs?

kmd

Who up mourning they worm?

BombTracks Podcast

"You can't make your own cocaine" Sounds like someone doesn't want it bad enough

Hilary is Pant-suited Syphilis

Real heads will remember that one guy who nearly bankrupted his parents and then killed his entire family out of his addiction to gooning to a cam model

Jennifer Reft

Yeah this is definitely a potential side effect of levadopa, ugh that sucks

Jennifer Reft

lol Jimmy the Greek shout out! I remember him as a muppet as well.

Fingerless

in one wikihole i went down, i observed that every south east asian human trafficking hub was a town on the chinese or thai border that was home to a casino with a special legal status, best emblematized by the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos. I feel like gambling, legal or not, always seems to embed itself in criminality, particularly as it's useful for money laundering.

Fingerless

we're all a particular brand of hoe-scaring

Fingerless

from an outside perspective, this seems like a prime example of the kind of lie that a regional american city would tell about itself

Christopher Small

In regards to RFK Jr., I’m a little disappointed that no one has brought up the worm in the brain episode of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. Massive failure of cultural literacy

Jaime Christley

I remember Norm Macdonald making that same observation about the thrill of losing being = to the thrill of winning.

Budget Hireling

“Do you want to talk about his weird family and brother?” Obviously David please keep talking. Great ep

HuffingGasInTheShed

Great, now I’ve got the Greaseman Tuna fish song in my head

Ned Schafer

Listen, between this, Warren Buffett, a world class zoo and the college world series it is all we have. Let us have a damn sandwich.

Will

My lone experience with gambling entails being poor and twenty, walking into a casino, putting $20 into a slot machine, pulling the lever a few times and watching my balance go to zero, and saying to myself “well, that was dumb.”

Kvvvy

Poor brain worm done starved to death

thc

roth Roth ROTH! funnier here than his own

PRC

Can Roth get full time third chair?

Ksizzle

Yeah you can definitely rack up debt on porn stuff not sure how well that point holds up

Shane

This is water. Chris, you're a pro.

Mike Mariano

You could have multiple games per season turn into the opening of The Last Boy Scout for players desperate to cover the spread and there would still be resistance to ending gambling.

Ksizzle

Whenever I hear people who don't like gambling talk about gambling its so funny with almost childlike innocence. "It's fun to do with 5 dollars once in a while" is the equivalent of "it can be nice to have wine with dinner sometimes". You know what else is fun? 6-10 drinks. What's not cool is drinking yourself to death or ruining your work & family life over it.

Shane

Dudes in Mansfield screaming every time Will calls OSU the University of Ohio

Jim Veil

I did a similar thing, but came out ahead by like $5. I never gambled again. I tell people this is my "system." It helps that I can't think of anything more boring than playing slots, and don't know the rules to most card games.

Dude of H-town

David Roth and the Trillbillies in the same week?!?!! You absolutely love to see it.

James Proulx

I once had a neighbor who lived across the hall from my apartment and liked to bring the bar back with her after 2 AM. She had a little karaoke machine and loved singing "What's Going On" repeatedly on into the early morning hours. She and her friends were also quite fond of cocaine. She was fun. Irritating, but fun. Kimmy, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well.

PetRockSematary

I appreciated the Big Black track at the end. RIP Steve Albini

PETER C

He’s untethered from Magary’s “and shits”

JoJo Sliwa

Rest in beats, Steve. I first heard Big Black from their cover of Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore”, then I listened to Atomizer and I was hooked

叔叔六十四 (Uncle64)

Tuna fish 🐟? Come on we all know he tried to use Daoist Alchemy to prevent covid. ☯️

will michel

i wouldn’t go that far. i listen to probably 100+ games on the radio every year. it’s just the stats junkies who want to quantify away every little variable or quirk as it pertains to OUTCOMES. what a boring way to go through life. baseball especially has always been about the intangibles, the unknowns…if you’re looking for a way to completely eradicate that through the STATS then we have absolutely nothing in common.

sailor corellia

Everyone who lives in Ohio should read The Rooster.

叔叔六十四 (Uncle64)

The real secret to sports betting is to know the True Names of the team players. 🕯😈🏀🕯

Sage

Present

Greasy_Jones

lol that crowd groan at the bitcoin guy lmao

sarah

Menaker’s take on What’s Up? is the most problematic thing ever said on this podcast. Offensive, foul

sarah

Abilify does the same. Tragic

Nathan Myers

Big Black for the win! RIP SA

sophie

how many guests have been on chapo and normal gossip!! roth rules 💕

Travis Logel

Really wanted this to end with 4 Non Blondes

Zach Pierce

It’s in every sport. Watching games is unbearable.

Zach Pierce

You also have the Peyton Manning audible call.

Boaz Corey

Hell yeah with the Big Black outro. RIP

Lola

The Rooster is amazing!! If you are from Ohio I cannot recommend following him enough!

sophie

so true!

Daniel Marchant

Ted Koppel gave the commencement at my graduation and told us to get off our damn phones and watch the real news instead of Jon Stewart. I can't remember if this was before, during, or after he appeared on The Daily Show as a giant head behind Stewart's desk that would say "Koppel hungry"...

dingbat44

Really sad to see this gambler phobic rhetoric coming from chapo. Do better.

MCL

I’m voting for the worm

Sam

The Pete Rose memorabilia economy has been keeping Cincinnati-area silent auctions running for years

J.v.D

big big ups to Chris for the This Is Water shout

Reece Coren

the smooth jimmy apollo reference was top tier

Reece Coren

also my eighth grade history teacher went on a 20 minute unprompted rant defending jimmy the greek and ended it by telling us Black people actually prefer to be called “negroes”

Lesbian Event Horizon

Will talking about his childhood bus stop made me remember mine. Right on the corner in front of the neighborhood bar. One of those that's open at 6am for the midnight shift..

Conor Duffy

Gambling is a lot of fun and should be legal but it was at its peak in 2019 when it was legal but no one talked or advertised about it

Josh Link

You should have D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster on the pod sometime. He does great work reporting on the various ghouls ruining Ohio, and he’s legitimately hilarious.

KES7774

Sports betting is whack. I’d rather play 10¢ denomination, $5 spins on Huff n’ More Puff at the JACK in Cleveland XD

Dustin Nelson

What is that Big Black song at the end?

Matthew McManus

The sports books are trash. Once you figure out how to beat them they won’t take your action anymore. Such bullshit

Forrest

Re Will in Madison: I would be honored to give you a bicycle tour of Madison tomorrow. I've got a membership to the bike share network you're welcome to use. Hit me up if you're interested.

Jimmy McMillan

I thought the same thing and I don't like gambling. I don't think it should be criminalized, but I don't think It should be legal for big corporations to turn phones into slot machines and take advantage of people's addiction. I don't think states should use it as a regressive tax to bilk poor, desperate people out of money

Scott Hirsch

Minor point but you can ban yourself from the apps and if you do you’re also banned from brick and mortar associated casinos

Jed Levin

I worked with a 50-year old guy who ate a tuna salad sandwich every day for lunch, and his skin had a grey/silver tone! He did not look healthy, but he didn’t drink or anything. RE: betting apps, they should at least outlaw advertising them on “TV.” If there’s a Satan, these apps is what he works on. I’m glad I don’t watch sports! Also, I used to get breakfast at Reuben’s in my early work life. I’m older than David Roth.

Bert

Shout out to Chris for Bad Penny at the end of the show. RIP Steve Albini.

Mids Advocate

It’s wild that American leftist thought almost always includes a large portion of libertarian policy views. Do you think Communist China, the USSR, Cuba (or any other socialist state for that matter) would support the legalization of vices?? Maybe the chapo dudes don’t see the effects of it, but drug and other Vice liberalization is not good for society writ large and almost always turns into one more way to exploit the working classes. Libertarian values should not be a part of American leftist ideology. I’m not saying the war on drugs was good but the idea that “just legalize it” is the answer is also stupid.

KES7774

^ This guy never won a jackpot in his life

Broadway Joe

My wife has a coworker whose husband is a gambling addict and hearing about that was so depressing. She had to get a separate bank account so he wouldn’t continue to spend all of her income betting on sports.

Cory

I enjoyed the bit about Ohio State. Fun fact, Les Wexner‘s name is still on most of the buildings including the hospital. You all need to check out more of the Rooster’s stuff. The Rooster aka DJ walks into the Ohio Statehouse with a GoPro quite regularly and it’s comedic gold. He calls out state reps and ask them the most uncomfortable questions and it’s pure art.

Gus Fessant

if you genuinely think the PRC has the answers about everything you're incredibly daft I have seen this shit used to justify homophobia and transphobia way too often

Noel Haren

When Chris added the “This is Water” echo I was nodding so hard. Only good commencement address

Robin Arnold

We can keep Pete Rose out of the Hall for the pedophillia if that's ok. Not that the hall is a pristine institution by any means

Alice Pooper

Yeah as a fellow Omahan I was outraged at Roth’s lies. Thank you for setting the record straight

Alice Pooper

Don’t forget Malcom X, Johnny Carson and the TV dinner

Ned Schafer

We honestly punch above our weight as far as mid size cities go.

John

Thank you for the Albini outro ❤️

katherine

very much want to hear this

Andrew S

Speaking as a midwesterner who has two parents that graduated from the Ohio Statue University and as someone who graduated from the University of Michigan (and so did my brother)... The biggest troll in the show was how Will kept calling that school in Columbus, the "University of Ohio". That was really the balm I needed to hear.

Scott Gregory

Often overlooked aspect of the Chris Pan is that president Carter, whose only credentials seem to be gladhanding his way through the navy, coincidentally serves on the board of a bitcoin mining company. Great to hear shoutout to DJ at the rooster!

Sarah S

Exactly.

emoly

albini ❤️

Reece Coren

holy shit i completely forgot about the ohio state bitcoin commencement speech