Why We're All In on Gambling

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Episode: Why We're All In on Gambling

Date: September 11, 2025
Hosts: Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, Alexandra Schwartz

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Brief Overview

In this lively and incisive episode, the Critics at Large trio—Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz—explore the widespread and growing integration of gambling into modern American life. They dissect the mainstreaming of sports betting, the emergence of platforms like Polymarket, and examine why, in a time of social instability and uncertainty, so many people are drawn to risk it all. Drawing from literature, film, and their own experiences, they tackle the allure, dangers, and cultural implications of gambling's dizzying boom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Personal Histories and the Ubiquity of Gambling

[01:00–02:54]

• Hosts’ relationships with gambling:
  • Naomi avoids it for fear she’d “never stop.”

    "If I start, I won't stop. Or that's at least the fear that I have deep within me." – Nomi Fry [01:17]

  • Vinson recalls his religious upbringing where gambling was taboo, yet describes the recent thrill of betting on horses.

    "No smoking, no drinking, no gambling. I don't know why gambling got in there, but it was like a big thing." – Vinson Cunningham [01:41] "It was worth it to watch those majestic beasts run... The money just made everything matter more. And I was like, oh, no, I get it." – Vinson Cunningham [02:28]

  • Alex lost $20 in a shell game and was “done in five seconds.”

    "I once lost $20 in a shell game. And that was it for me." – Alex Schwartz [02:54]

Gambling Goes Mainstream—Sports Betting & Polymarket

[03:27–06:08]

• Naomi describes surprise at discovering Polymarket, a site allowing bets on everything from global events to who’ll succeed Anna Wintour at Vogue.
  • The normalization of gambling beyond casinos: “Suddenly everything is up for grabs... it's just regular people.” – Nomi Fry [03:38]
• Alex summarizes changes in regulation: 39 states now offer legal betting, 32 online, after the 2018 Supreme Court decision overturned federal restrictions. [09:23]
• Vinson notes the onslaught of gambling ads during sports events:

  “Even in the spaces where it belongs, it's a bigger part of the narrative than it has ever been before.” – Vinson Cunningham [05:25]

How Gambling Has Changed the Sports Fan Experience

[07:42–11:09]

• Vinson discusses the drastic shift in watching football:
  • Constant betting odds banners, segment picks on talk shows, and promo codes. The game often serves as a pretext for betting narratives.

    "The game is a pretext for the sort of monetary fortunes of small time bettors everywhere... The game becomes this odd secondary show." – Vinson Cunningham [08:28]

• Rise of “props” and “parlays”—bets layered on everything from the national anthem length at the Super Bowl to an individual’s rebounds. [11:20]
• Personal stories about the way betting emotionally affects players:
  • Athletes, like Kevin Durant, joke about their performances ruining fans' parlays.

    "Watches when people get mad at him during games because of the parlays and says, here's one tweet: 'when them parlays don't hit.' … I'm grateful I have this much power now." – Vinson Cunningham [10:24]

  • Nomi: Pro athletes get harassing DMs from fans whose bets they’ve ruined.

    "The ire that they feel because their bets didn't hit based on this guy's performance... it's scary." – Nomi Fry [12:37]

• A sense that the experience is more privatised and less communal than before—sports are now consumed “with individual interests in mind." – Vinson Cunningham [14:28]

The Enduring Drama of Gambling in Art and Literature

[19:29–31:19]

• The hosts reference key gambling texts that frame high stakes as metaphors for life:
  • George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda: Opens at a roulette table, gambling as a metaphor for life choices.

    "...she is determining the plot of her life and the choice that she makes is kind of a gamble, right?... one of the things that attracts us about gambling is it's... symbolic of metaphorical qualities..." – Nomi Fry [20:23]

  • Colson Whitehead’s The Noble Hustle: About entering the World Series of Poker; gambling as self-examination.

    "I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside." – Colson Whitehead (read by Vinson Cunningham) [23:44]

  • Tolstoy’s War and Peace: The agony and fascination of Nikolai losing at cards, illustrated with vivid bodily focus and loss.

    "Those hands which he loved and hated held him in their power." – Alex Schwartz quoting Tolstoy [27:55]

  • The Sopranos / Uncut Gems: Portraits of crushing addiction and compulsion; harrowing yet gripping.

    "Watching someone lose and do so at high cost at a sort of spectacular level of sort of adrenal energy... addicting about that." – Vinson Cunningham [29:36] "You get invested and you get involved and you live that high of hope and expectation that the next bet is the one that's going to change it all. Because of course it could." – Alex Schwartz [31:19]

  • The Big Short: The thrill of winning big at the expense of others.

    “We just made the deal of our lifetimes. We should celebrate.”—Line from The Big Short, quoted [32:48] “And then you remember that their benefit is the detriment of millions…” – Alex Schwartz [32:46]

Polymarket & The Myth of Expertise

[35:10–41:31]

• Exploration of Polymarket as a platform for betting on real-world events.
  • "It's all yes/no bets... for someone who wants to place a bet, you can just scroll around and place a bet on Israel withdraws from Gaza in 2025. Let's take a crack at it and see if you make any money, folks." – Alex Schwartz [37:40]
• The site’s “accuracy” and how people believe betting with real money makes predictions more honest than polls.
  • "This can give you a kind of more accurate bellwether. I think that's an illusion, but it's a really compelling illusion." – Alex Schwartz [38:48]
• The danger of self-anointed expertise, and democratizing risk without safety nets.

  "...it's a Wild west situation... some people have gained much. Many more people have lost a lot, you know, and like anything else in this country, like, there's really no safety net." – Nomi Fry [40:44] "I just feel something very, very predatory in this encouragement of everyone to consider themselves an expert." – Alex Schwartz [41:31]

Gambling, Control, and Canceling Uncertainty

[42:29–49:25]

• Vinson connects the cult of “mindset” and self-expertise back to financialization, “If only you would bet on yourself…” [42:29]
• Nomi likens dating-app behavior to gambling: individuals become gamblers in the unpredictable game of love. [44:43]
• Vinson observes how algorithmic, app-based gambling dehumanizes both bettor and subject, paralleling the digitization and atomization of modern life.

  "...the impulse to gambling, at least of this kind, the app based algorithmic gambling... is a way not to deal with the other and treat them as a separate being from oneself." – Vinson Cunningham [44:47]

• The link between the thrill-seeking culture and a withdrawal of social or religious guardrails:

  "We live in a culture... that loves gratification and the delivery of gratification... there's more benefit, there's more profit, and not to us, by removing those guardrails." – Alex Schwartz [46:38]

• Why people may gamble when the world feels uncontrollable—asserting agency when systems fail.

  "If I can't stop a war, if events around me seem totally chaotic and unresponsive to the usual levers of control, what can I do except ride the rollercoaster of speculation...?" – Vinson Cunningham [48:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the psychological core of gambling:

  "Gambling is such a big theme in literature... because it comes back to this fundamental question that everyone has about themselves, which is, do I got it or don't I?" – Alex Schwartz [25:31]

• On gambling’s transformation:

  "The degenerate aspect has actually faded and now the gambler is cleaned up. He or she is just like you or me, sitting watching the sports game, thinking, you know more about it than everybody else." – Alex Schwartz [35:23]

• Summing up the temptation:

  "You want young person of whatever orientation, you want to feel a real rush, go up to a real person and tell them, hey, I like the cut of your jib. Could I get your number? That is the biggest high." – Vinson Cunningham [48:00]

• On self-destruction and lost restraint:

  "Don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, basically, don't destroy yourself is what I hear from that." – Alex Schwartz [46:38]

• On false empowerment:

  "The only thing separating you from the expert, better the expert investor... The only difference is, as they say, a mindset." – Vinson Cunningham [42:29]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:00] Cohosts’ personal experiences with gambling
• [03:38] The surprise of Polymarket and gambling on “everything”
• [07:42] How online betting transformed football viewing
• [09:23] Gambling legalization and regulation context
• [11:09] How betting impacts athletes and fans
• [20:23] Gambling as literary and metaphorical device—Daniel Deronda
• [23:44] Colson Whitehead and “betting on oneself” vs. others
• [27:55] The agony and spectacle of losing in War and Peace, The Sopranos, Uncut Gems
• [32:46] The Big Short—profiting from catastrophe
• [35:10] Polymarket as the new face of betting and pseudo-expertise
• [42:29] The cult of self-empowerment, “mindset,” and predatory systems
• [44:47] Dating, dehumanization, and “spreadsheet love”
• [48:01] Gambling as a (false) bid for control amidst societal chaos
• [49:25] Final reflections: real-life risk, thrill, and caution

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Conclusion

The episode’s tone is witty, probing, and just a touch world-weary. The hosts alternately marvel at and recoil from gambling’s seductive logic and its insidious entrance into all realms of public and private life. They weave together cultural references, personal anecdotes, and sharp critique, ultimately suggesting that while gambling offers the mirage of control and excitement amidst uncertainty, it exacts a psychic and, often, material cost—one that our current moment seems especially susceptible to.

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If you or someone you know is struggling with a gambling problem, help is available at the National Problem Gambling Helpline: 1-800-GAMBLER.

Transcript

[Alex Schwartz]

Divorce isn't that big a deal. You don't have kids or money. The funniest film of the year is finally here. Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona star in Splitsville, an unromantic comedy.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I don't want to get a divorce. No one does. She does.

[Alex Schwartz]

Critics are praising the sexy, absurd and hilarious take on modern marriage and relationships as an outrageous instant classic. We need to find a way to restore the balance. And you had sex with my wife, so maybe. I don't know. No way.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What is wrong with you?

[Nomi Fry]

Splitsville.

[Alex Schwartz]

Rated R Now playing.

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[Alex Schwartz]

All right, let's lay him on the table, as they say. I want to know from my fellow critics who has a relationship with gambling. Have you been known to play a penny slot? I'm wondering, is there a poker night in your life?

[Nomi Fry]

My relationship with gambling is non existent and I'll tell you why that is. Because I feel like I don't know if this is real or not, but in my mind I'm like, if I start, I won't stop. Or that's at least the fear that I have deep within me.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know yourself and we admire self knowledge. Vincent, how about you?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Similar. I was raised where the ten Commandments, the Beatitudes were all distilled into three laws. No smoking, no drinking, no gambling. I don't know why gambling got in there, but it was like a big thing. I don't know if it was respectability, politics, whatever. So I was raised even to look down at the people lining up to play numbers and the bodegas near me, which they did all the time. I grew up watching people online to just play the mega millions or whatever. It was a big narrative around me in which I could not participate. Although I should say I bet on horses in Saratoga Springs, New York for the first time this summer at and boy, is that fun.

[Alex Schwartz]

And what happened?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I did not break even. It was a loss and unfortunately I didn't care. It was worth it to watch those majestic beasts run from start to Finish around the track and for, I don't know, have some stakes in it. I learned their names, their habits, their prior performances. The money just made everything matter more. And I was like, oh, no, I get it.

[Alex Schwartz]

All I have to say about it is I once lost $20 in a shell game. And that was it for me. Took that five seconds.

[Nomi Fry]

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we. Hello, my friends.

[Nomi Fry]

Hello.

[Alex Schwartz]

So, guys, can you describe a moment that you've had recently where it occurred to you that everything feels like it's connected to gambling right now?

[Nomi Fry]

For me, it kind of like came home recently when I started realizing there was a thing called Poly Market, a betting site where you can basically put odds on anything. For instance, who's gonna, like, inherit Anna Wintour's role at Vogue, Something that mere months ago I would have never thought would be a topic for degenerate gamblers to bet on. And yet on this site, which by the way, has just been cleared to launch in the US Even though people were already using it in the US via vpn, suddenly everything is up for grabs, you know, and I was like, oh, I guess it's not just kind of like grim faced bookies and you know, you know, just like the thing you imagine like the all night, like casinos, the smoke filled rooms, et cetera, et cetera, but it's just regular people.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And I was reading about it in this really interesting article that ran in New York magazine. And what this article was saying was that Shane Coplin did the classic tech founder thing of making exactly what he wanted to make, not worry about regulations and just kind of move fast and break things and assume that the times would catch up. And with the Trump presidency, they have like. Things weren't looking so good for him in 2022 when he was fined for operating like a gambling site without any kind of regulation. But then the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has now given him the okay, like as of a few days ago. Vincent, did you have a similar moment with Polymarket or something else gambling related?

[Vincent Cunningham]

For me, even though sports has always been a haven of gambling, just the sheer number of ads for gambling concerns that now every single sports podcaster has to like, roll off of their tongue, it just seems to me that even in the spaces where it belongs, it's a bigger part of the narrative than it has ever been before. And I've been astounded by, by my understanding and acquaintance with the terms of it, overs, unders, parlays, et cetera. Stuff that I never knew, I just know by osmosis from these various forms of media. It's a huge thing. It's a boom.

[Nomi Fry]

It's mainstreamized, I guess I would say, in a way that I don't think it has been before.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, that's how it seems to be too. I mean, gambling is everywhere. It's just braided into daily reality in a way that it has not seemed to be before. So that's what we're talking about today, gambling. We want to find out what it's doing to us now that it's been freed from the physical walls of casinos and set loose on our phones. And we're going to be talking about some of our favorite gambling texts from the past and why we keep getting drawn into the drama of high stakes betting even while we know, or we think we do that the lows always come to match the highs. And so what I really want us to get into today is why, at a time of increasing instability in the world, when so little feels stable or predictable, are we driven to risk it all? So that's today on critics at Large, why we're all in on gambling. So it's early September. There's that nice little bite in the air. It's back to school season. But more to the point of what we're here to talk about, it's the beginning of football season. And Vincent, when we were discussing this episode and what we might want to talk about, you were mentioning to us that you feel that there's a big difference between watching a football game now and watching one just a few years ago before New York legalized online sports betting. Tell us a little bit about it. I mean, I dare say that your co critics are not the biggest football watchers. Bring us in.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, bring us in.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, it's funny, it's not just football. It just so happens that football is the most visible case of this. I watched, like I assume many millions did the season opening games this week in the NFL, including my jets finding a way to break my heart by being better than I thought they would be and still losing by two points to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Whatever. But what is interesting almost aesthetically is a couple of things. One, underneath the screen on certain broadcasts runs a chiron of the different betting odds for the games usually sponsored by these betting concerns, which they seem to have unlimited advertising dollars and have co opted whole broadcasts. So it's that visual reminder that on some level the game is a pretext for the sort of monetary fortunes of small time bettors everywhere. But then in the content of the media that surrounds the sport, increasingly there are segments on my favorite talk shows. I love sports talk. But now there are these segments where it's like so and so's picks. And they don't say it explicitly all the time, but what they're saying is, I'm giving you gambling tips for the upcoming weekend DraftKings FanDuel. A new entrant into this arena is prize Picks. Here's my picks for that. And go ahead and use the promo code Vincent, and you'll get 5% off your first bet. So it's all to draw you in, give you some expert advice and the game becomes this odd secondary show.

[Alex Schwartz]

I do think it's worth saying that in 2018, the Supreme Court, remember them, they struck down something called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection act of 1992, which had restricted legal betting primarily to Nevada for more than 20 years. So suddenly this just allowed this flood of a gambling free for all to enter into the scene. And I think 39 states now offer legal gambling of some kind and 32 of them are online. And I also think the online thing is very particular because much as with aspects of real life that go online with some benefits and a lot of drawbacks, betting is now one too. Like you can't like here again, I think that idea of the degenerate really comes in Nomi. Like you can't shuffle up to the window and shuffle up and place your crumpled dollars underneath and have to catch your own reflection in the glass. You're just, you know, using your thumbs.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And even athletes are kind of aware of this and having fun with it or getting trouble with it. You know, all this stuff that's like, is this person involved in gambling? Are they trying to make money for themselves or other people? Kevin Durant, who is like one of the greatest basketball players ever, also a very funny guy on Twitter, watches when people get mad at him during games because of the parlays and says, here's one tweet when them parlays don't hit as a joke. This is for years of slander from NBA fans. I'm grateful I have this much power now. Smiley face. So they're aware of it and aware of how their performance in games, either as a team or individually affects these bets radically. I think changing the experience of watching a game.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can you break down for us a little bit that Kevin Durant tweet, what is a parlay? What is he talking about? Yes, how do you think his tweet is expressing him seeing a power shift in his relationship with the fans?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, okay, couple of things. Number one, what I have come to know, I guess this has always been true, but now many more people are aware of this, is that you can bet on any aspect of the game, even within a basketball game. You can be like, who's going to score the very first point? Who's going to score the last point? Will this person score over or under this number of points, rebounds, assists, or all kinds of things in addition to just the outcome of the game?

[Nomi Fry]

So it's potentially endless.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, the super bowl famously has a lot of these, like, prop bets. You can bet on how long the National Anthem is gonna go in the super bowl, like, stuff like that. You can do all these kinds of things and a parlay is the absolutely suicidal act of threading these things together. So my parlay only hits if three of these things happen. If Kevin Durant scores 27 points and the game's total score is above certain number and whatever. So you pick and mix and match these little bets and create one sort of pearl of bets that you can only realize if they all hit. But of course, if they all hit, you make a lot more. There's like a sort of exponential growth when you link them, but if you lose them all, obviously you're assed out.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. I was talking to a friend who is friends with a pro tennis player and he said that since betting has entered the arena in kind of like this much more enhanced role in recent years, the DMs this guy gets are just. It's like the fans, if you can call them fans, you know, the ire that they feel because their bets didn't hit based on this guy's performance on the court are. It's, it's scary. And so there are very strong feelings involved here in a way that, you know, it's. This isn't a game anymore. You know what I mean? I mean, I didn't even realize that this was such a prominent development in kind of the relationship between athlete and viewer.

[Alex Schwartz]

I guess I do want to just briefly say that you don't have to take the word of three self proclaimed, you know, squares for it. You could read this piece that our colleague Jay Kang wrote for the New Yorker called Online Gambling is Changing Sports for the Worse. He published it over a year ago in March of 2024. And Jay himself has written about his experiences with gambling. And the piece opens with him going to Vegas to bet on March Madness. So, look, here's someone who knows of what he speaks. There's a great quote in this piece from Tyrese Halliburton, the basketball player who's just like, for half the world, I'm just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever. I'm a prop. Like, what a brutal way to feel about your profession, your vocation, your art, however you want to define what it is to be a star basketball player.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All of those things.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, I know. He's getting paid richly. Still, it seems like a bummer.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And part of it is like, what it represents is a further privatization of the fan experience. Cause it's like, okay, for a long time, let's say fantasy sports, which are kind of gambling, I'm gonna bet my league, whatever about my fantasy team. But it's like something that is still social, and you're still. You're yelling at your friend about how you lost because your person stayed out of the game or whatever. Now, if you've got your own little parlay, you're watching the games in this hyper, selective way, only for this one little thing that you put together which heightens the stakes in the wrong way. Sports about aesthetics and about beauty. And this makes it less and less plausible to say. So if you got somebody who's got three TVs in his little man cave and is watching this game and this game and this game just to make sure all of his little curios act in the way that they're supposed to. Not watching the game in the right way. Not to be a crusty old man, but, like, watching it with these, like, individual interests in mind.

[Alex Schwartz]

In a minute. The high highs and low lows of gamblers in art. This is critics at large from the new.

[Katie Drummond]

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Tell me more.

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Listen to the big interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Alex Schwartz]

So we've been talking about how everything in our current reality feels like gambling. Gambling is now openly encouraged in the streets and on the phones. But as we critics are wont to do, I want to take us back to some gambling texts to see if we can use them to illuminate our current moment and see where we've come from. Who wants to, you know, just throw it out like a chip on the table? Is that even a thing? It's just a little, little red disc.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The aesthetics are pretty great. Let's say that. Let's say that everything that surrounds gambling is kind of cool.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, well, right. Like, I guess in a casino royale way. Although I did just realize something very fundamental about myself, which is that were I to give it all up, I would absolutely be a blackjack dealer instead of a player. That's how much the illusion of control means to me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Very good, Very good.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'd be on the other side of that table with a little tie on, keeping it profesh.

[Nomi Fry]

Little vest, little vest. I. You know, when you say gambling texts, my mind goes to one of my favorite Victorian novels, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda from 1876, because it opens with the scene of gambling, which kind of sets the stakes. Ha ha. For the rest of the novel. A lot happens in this novel, but there is the character of Gwendolyn Harleth, who is a beautiful young woman of marriageable. And it begins at a casino in Europe where Daniel Deronda, who is the protagonist of the novel, sees her at the roulette table. He doesn't know her, but he sees a beautiful woman about to place a bet and she's winning. He can see that she's on a streak. And it starts with the words, I have it right here. Was she beautiful or not beautiful? And what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? The way the book proceeds then, is she, as in many other Victorian novels, about young women who are looking to make a choice in marriage, she is determining the plot of her life and the choice that she makes is kind of a gamble, right? Will she bet on the right horse, AKA man, for her life to turn out a certain way? Right. And I. A bit of a spoiler alert. She bets wrong, which is kind of a large part of the novel. But the beginning of the novel, in this, like, House of Luck, right, in this casino, kind of becomes a metaphor for the rest of the book. And I think one of the things to draw kind of a broader point from this is one of the things that attracts us about gambling is it's, of course, symbolic of metaphorical qualities, right? It's like, will we choose correctly and will are the heat of the moment. Just the general unpredictability of life and how things turn out. What will the outcome be? What will our story be? And so I think one of the things that we find so attractive about stories of gambling is the. Is the drama and the unpredictability. Of course, this is quite obvious, but I think true nonetheless.

[Alex Schwartz]

Ooh, I love that. Vincent, do you have anything to add to my table?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, I got.

[Alex Schwartz]

Step right up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I got stuff to add. One of my favorite books about gambling is by a writer who's written lots of books that I like, Colson Whitehead. He wrote a book about his attempt to enter the World Series of Poker. It's called the Noble Hustle. And similarly, this idea of the metaphorical architecture of gambling. He's using it in many ways, but talking about the game of poker to illustrate certain aspects of his personality. The first section of the book is called the Republic of Anhedonia, Anhedonia being inability to feel certain forms of pleasure, et cetera. It's partially also kind of a divorce book. He's talking about getting divorced a lot in the book, but the first line of the book I just love. I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay?

[Vincent Cunningham]

My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze has helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago when I was ignorant of pot, odds and M theory and four betting. And it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. Great opening. And really kind of a signpost for the strategy of the rest of the book. This attempt is, in part, at least, a cover over the travel of various mental and emotional states and an attempt to express them. I should say that, you know, we've been talking about betting on things that are outside of us, right? Betting on sports, betting on whatever. And I think these kinds of texts bring into being, at least for me, a kind of, I don't know, taxonomy, which is like primary betting, betting on oneself, and secondary betting, betting on other people. Whereas even think about the film Rounders, the Matt Damon vehicle written by the team of David Levine and Brian Koppelman, about an underground poker scene. Also, the guy wants to be in the World Series of Poker, whatever. But there's a difference between getting really good at something and betting on yourself and getting really mad because Kevin Durant didn't score however many points. And I find as I was looking through these things, I was like, oh, wait, I respect one more than the other. If you get really good at poker and then you decide you're gonna lose your house about it, questionable, but shout out to you for believing in your actual self as opposed to being, like, I'm gonna guess right, about somebody else.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, I like this thing, Vincent, that you're talking about, where you're talking about gambling as a way for the individual to test themselves and to find out what they're made of. And I think that gambling is such a big theme in literature, in film, even in visual art, Caravaggio, painting, gambling, you know, because it comes back to this fundamental question that everyone has about themselves, which is, do I got it or don't I? And I love gambling scenes in which the person don't got it. There's just. Maybe it's schadenfreude, but I think it's also just seeing what gambling does, where you're suspending your disbelief. If you're at the table and it isn't going right for you, you're suspending your disbelief. Because to leave the table is to know that the future has arrived and it's not a good one, that everything is going to collapse. So you dig yourself in deeper and deeper. And one scene I'm of course thinking of is when Nikolay Rostov sits down at the gambling table in War and Peace with a man who loves Nikolai's fiance, who proceeds to fleece him a 43,000 rubles. Which, by the way, guys, it was a lot of rubles then, it's a lot of rubles now. It's just an amount of rubles that Nikolai Rostov simply does not have on him. But he sits there, he knows this guy, he knows Dolokov hates his guts, basically, because Dolokov loves Sonia, Sonya loves Nikolai. Nikolai doesn't really know what he wants in life. He's a young man, let's not blame him. But he's a mess he's there to have fun, and Dalekov narrows in on him and they're playing cards. And he proceeds to absolutely screw him in a way that is so precipitous and crazy that if you. Even the scenes are short, like, if you read this, it goes by really fast. And what I love what Tolstoy does with this. He keeps having Rostov focus on Dalikov's hands as they deal the cards. And of course, those are the hands that are dealing his. He says one tormenting impression did not leave him that those broad boned, reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves. Those hands which he loved and hated held him in their power.

[Nomi Fry]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

So you're seeing the hands and the kind of the beastliness of them with the hairs and the reddish skin, and they just keep dealing and keep dealing. And what happens to Rostov is he starts to fantasize about how great his life is. His regular life, which seemed kind of boring and normal. All he wants to do is go home and hang out with his family and have a lovely time and live in the before times, before he ruined his own name, before he humiliated his father. All of the things that he's doing by getting further and further into debt. It's great. It's crushing, it's beautiful. It reminds me in a different way of the episode in the Sopranos. And there's this episode, the Happy Wanderer, where this, like, absolute putz who runs a. Who runs a sports goods store, who Tony knows from high school, weasels his way into the high stakes poker game that Tony's crew runs, and he shouldn't be there.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Tony.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just having some bad luck. Just got worse.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm gonna come back.

[Nomi Fry]

My luck's gonna change.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Come on. I want something tomorrow. You want to stand there?

[Nomi Fry]

He's in over his head.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. In that case, it's kind of a classic portrait of gambling addiction and seen in this sympathetic but pitiless way from the outside where you see someone who absolutely cannot stop themselves get in deeper and deeper and deeper, even though it is going to cost him everything he has. And in that case, I don't think you feel good watching it happen, but you can't look away.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No. This group of people, I don't think we're gonna make it out of this segment without talking about uncut gems. I will break the seal.

[Nomi Fry]

Ah, yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Watching someone lose and do so at high cost at a sort of spectacular level of sort of adrenal energy. There is something, I mean, addicting about that. Watching someone just go down and down and down and can't look away, but Jesus Christ, they're going again. That sort of tilting at windmills that losing in gambling represents and is so amazingly illustrated in the Safdie brothers film Uncut Gems, starring the amazing Adam Sandler. There's something. It plays out almost like a horror movie. So I want to the Celtics to cover. I want the Celtics halftime. I want Garnet points and rebounds. What do you know? I don't know. I just know. Well, I'll tell you what I know. That's the dumbest bet I ever heard of. I disagree. I disagree.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Gary.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, it plays out like a horror movie. I haven't seen it, you know, since it came out and I'm due for a rewatch. But I do remember the absolute adrenaline coursing through the theater. Because what that movie does, and in some ways what a great movie or book or anything about gambling should do, is even if you're going in and you're like, this guy's a fool, shouldn't be doing that. Go home, go have dinner, step away. You get invested and you get involved and you live that high of hope and expectation that the next bet is the one that's going to change it all. Because of course it could.

[Nomi Fry]

Of course. Like, what could be better? There is something undeniably exciting about an upswing, you know, even if you know that behind it there might be a different story, you get caught up. I think that's. That's absolutely normal.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, there's something I keep thinking about. Cause we were talking about so many of these things where gambling is shown to be not the glory that its participants would hope it would be. But I have a counterexample that's just really, for some reason, floating to the top of my mind right now from the movie the Big Short, which I think really holds up, I gotta say. And it's about the young guys, that team of relatively new investors. They start to notice, I think they read a paper about the idea that the housing market might collapse, and they decide to make a bet. They decide to bet that that will happen. And there's a moment in the movie when that does pay off for them. The housing market collapses, and they just have raked in this unbelievable windfall. And because you're watching this movie and these are two likable, upstart guys, you really feel happy and excited for them. And then you remember that their benefit is the detriment of millions and Millions.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Do you have any idea what you just did?

[Alex Schwartz]

Come on.

[Nomi Fry]

We just made the deal of our lifetimes. We should celebrate.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

We just bet against the American economy.

[Mint Mobile Sponsor]

Fuck yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

We did.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Fuck yeah.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Which means.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Which means if we're right. If we're right, people lose homes, people lose jobs, people lose retirement savings, people lose pensions.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

We were just excited.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Just don't fucking dance.

[Alex Schwartz]

They didn't cause it. They did not cause it, but they did profit from it. Much as perhaps your average show, such as I might go on to polymarket and look at a war or look at a dreadful event and think, what might there be in this for me? We've seen the highs and more soberingly, the lows. So why are we still drawn to the rush of the game? This is Critics at Large from the New Yorker. Stay at our table.

[Deborah Treisman]

Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

He was going to go for it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No matter what happened after.

[Nomi Fry]

Or Joy Williams, her father was silent. Slowly, he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, a place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch.

[Deborah Treisman]

Listen to news stories or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the writer's voice wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alex Schwartz]

We've been talking about gambling and we haven't even. We haven't even sung anything by Kenny Rogers, which is, frankly, a show of restraint on our parts that do the honors.

[Nomi Fry]

Islands in the Stream.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I'm thinking more.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, I know.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm kidding. Damn, you're good. We've been talking about gambling. We've been talking about just our culture being awash with it. We've been talking about figures in literature and film who have themselves tried their luck and more often than not, found that luck to be wanting. You know, one thing that occurs to me is how dramatic the gulfs are between the highs of what your mind's eye sees. When you think about To Catch a Thief, Mid Century Monte Carlo, or you think about Casino Royale and the sumptuous Eva Green wandering through the casino with Daniel Craig's James Bond, just looking so glamorous. And then often the reality of what these places are, which is no daylight and a complete loss of time itself. And then now, in our current era, we have the gambler as the pseudo expert. It's like the degenerate aspect has actually faded and now the gambler is cleaned up. He or she is just like you or me, sitting watching the sports game, thinking, you know more about it than everybody else. I have been absolutely fascinated by this poly market situation. This is this website founded by a guy, Shane Coplin, who I believe is, as of now, maybe 26, but he founded it when he was 21. And it lets you place bets on numerous, numerous, numerous categories of life and experience. But all the bets are yes, no. So here are some examples right from the homepage Fed decision in September. 50 plus bps decrease, you can place a yes or no bet. 25 bps decrease, you can place a yes or no bet. A more straightforward one. New York City mayoral election. Zoran Mamdani, yes or no. Andrew Cuomo, yes or no. Right now it has 80% yes on Mamdani, 18% on Cuomo. Next Prime Minister of Norway, Nobel Peace Prize winner, 2025. Trump out as president in 2025. Right now they're giving it a 7% chance.

[Nomi Fry]

I like those odds.

[Alex Schwartz]

I like those odds. So there are all kinds of. For someone who wants to place a bet, you can just scroll around and place a bet on Israel withdraws from Gaza in 2025. Let's take a crack at it and see if you make any money, folks. So right there is the unsavory element, of course, of what it is to bet on. It's not all fun and games. Maybe when you're trying to get rich off of a genocide.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Seriously.

[Alex Schwartz]

But what I find really fascinating about this site in part is that it's been credited as being really accurate in its predictions. So, for instance, polymarket betters were saying that Trump would win the 2024 election, which he of course did. And his own team pointed to this. While news sites had yet to call the election, they predicted that Biden would drop out after the first presidential debate. So there is a line of thinking that goes, people, when they have their own money put down on a certain outcome, are gonna try to be as accurate as they can be in predicting it. That this can give you a kind of more accurate bellwether. I think that's an illusion, but it's a really compelling illusion.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, yeah, and this has some of the. At least my knowledge of the terminology here does stem from sports betting. But there Is this idea the Sharps, that there are people who are expert bettors, some of whom have algorithms. Right. Are professional betters and have taken many different statistical things into account in making their bets. And the regular better takes their cues from the sharps so that some of these percentages, you say, okay, somebody that has inside information on the polling is making these bets. So this assumption of accuracy in the betting world has something to do with this interesting relationship between amateurism and professionalism in betting. But it's also, interestingly, a dovetailing then, too, of like, oh, gambling then creates new numbers, new kind of analytics, which then makes it kind of dovetail with another thing that is ascendant in our time, which is polling, that these two are on parallel tracks.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And in the case of the presidential election and other cases, people are saying that the betting version is more accurate than the polling version, simply because people, if it comes down to putting their own money on an outcome, that's where the truth may lie.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And it really flatters the gambler with the idea that they can use their own information, their own expertise to predict an outcome and to make money on that outcome. Classic. Like, I think it's the perfect example of gambling for our do your own research times, basically, where anyone is encouraged to be an expert, to question expertise, and to come in with their own ideas and potentially profit from them. But, of course, is that happening?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, it's a Wild west situation. Right. And like, in a Wild west situation, some people will rise to the top, you know, by either inborn talent or ruthlessness or luck even. But a lot of people will lose. I mean, look at, like, something like crypto. Right. Which the Trump administration is heavily encouraging, as you say, Alex. It's something that, on the face of it, it democratizes the market. Right. And of course, some people have gained much. Many more people have lost a lot, you know, and like anything else in this country, like, there's really no safety net. Right. And it's a little bit scary from my perspective.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, often our financial market and our financial system is likened to a casino. I think not inappropriately, but you forget that the people who are often competing or playing know something about what they're doing. They're reading the research paper. You know, there's a reason that expertise often ends up winning the day. So I just feel something very, very predatory in this encouragement of everyone to consider themselves an expert. I'm not saying people can't enlighten themselves or can't do the research. You can. You should but in the self declaration of unearned expertise. I think it's bringing us to a bad place, guys. I think it's bringing us to a bad place in a lot of ways. And it's going to make a lot of people poorer before it makes them richer. Yeah, sorry I sound so scolding, but.

[Nomi Fry]

No, there's no protection. Right. It's like you made your choices. Sorry, you're like an unlucky SAP, essentially. Right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. On some level, it almost seems like the culmination. It's like the punchline to the joke that began with Mitt Romney saying corporations are people.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That there's a strange logic today by which. And you see it online, you see it everywhere, influencers, whatever, telling you that you can actually act like the people that you think are like the big boys, that if only you would bet on yourself, if only you would use the number of hours in the day that the corporate CEO uses you too. If you only were willing to put something on the line, the only thing separating you from the expert, better the expert investor, whatever money getter you are being trained to look at. The only difference is, as they say, a mindset. If corporations are people also, people can act like corporations. There is a sort of. My friend, the writer John Ganz has called this vulgar positivism, that if you could only sort of take your human emotions and turn them into complex algorithms, you could get the outcome that you want.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. But of course we know that's not how it works because people are still people, for better and worse. For better and worse. Yeah. Like I was thinking about this is not from personal experience, but the whole idea of, like dating apps, right. When people find themselves in the role of a kind of gambler, right. Like, the options are all there. Like, who are you gonna meet, you know, who are you gonna swipe on? And how will the narrative of your life be affected by it? Likely it won't in a lasting way, but there is the possibility that it will. Right. And then whichever choice you make, and whatever person chooses you, you know, it's kind of an exciting, unpredictable narrative that you're coasting on. From what I understand, from people, from friends who've told me, you know, there is something addicting about it, you get caught up in your own narrative and how it might turn out potentially.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And there too, there is such a great example, and there is again this temptation toward, number one, turning matters of the heart into matters of the spreadsheet in terms of like sort of mathematizing, mathematicizing I don't know, all of your interactions and the dehumanization that follows from that goes in really nasty directions. Not only dehumanizing one's own approach to another person, but dehumanizing the other person in turn. In the same way that you dehumanize the tennis player at the US Open by having turned them into digits in your parlay calculation. Exactly that. The sort of the impulse to gambling, at least of this kind, the app based algorithmic gambling that is sort of maybe characteristic of our day, is a way not to deal with the other and treat them as a separate being from oneself. It's like it really is a way around fear. It's like I don't have to encounter if I can manipulate by other means.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And maybe it's also like, you know, the thing about gambling that's so fun is the thrill of it and the thrill of the next possibility. That's why you don't cash out your winnings and go, you know, that's why you put them all back and you go, double or nothing, right? I mean, I do think so. We do live in a very. We live in a culture. This will mean news to everyone that loves gratification and the delivery of gratification and you know, Vincent, I'm just going. I'm just thinking back to what you said at the start of the episode about religious prohibitions. You know, don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, basically, don't destroy yourself is what I hear from that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Or the idea of the self destruction there in the religious context is just lack of temperance, lack of the ability to say, no, it's enough. I can be as I am. I don't have to alter my experience further. I don't have to seek the next great thrill. And that's something that's really hard to walk away from. Like, you know, know me. I understand what you mean. If you started, you couldn't stop. It's hard to walk away from it. And the powers that be in our world have decided that there's more benefit, there's more profit, and not to us. By removing those guardrails and by removing the moral guardrails and the practical guardrails around those things.

[Nomi Fry]

Let chaos reign.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. Who's gonna benefit? Who's gonna profit? Keep on scrolling, keep on betting, keep on going.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's also just an invitation not only like, whatever, in art, in life, whatever, to kind of reacknowledge where actual control in your life lies, you know? Cause on Some level, you talk about betting on dreadful things like genocide. And one way to understand that, maybe this is like the Freudian way to understand that, is you acknowledge your total lack of control in so many domains, and therefore you grab at the closest node of control that you can't.

[Nomi Fry]

That's a really good point.

[Vincent Cunningham]

If I can't stop a war, if events around me seem totally chaotic and unresponsive to the usual levers of control, what can I do except ride the rollercoaster of speculation that surrounds those events, grab what I can from the aura of happenings. Because whatever democracy, et cetera, et cetera, my usual ways of registering or at least just feeling control, are now no longer available to me. And also, just like reading a novel or just watching a game and just sitting there and watching it, is its own battle of control. It's like, will I cede control of my consciousness to somebody else? Can I sit and let this novelist, can I sit and let this athlete, by whatever means, maybe lead me to transcendence? It's like a scary thing to give oneself over in that way. And maybe this is another way of sort of saying, you don't have to do that. You can distract yourself in other ways. You want young person of whatever orientation you want to feel a real rush, go up to a real person and tell them, hey, I like the cut of your jib. Could I get your number? That is the biggest high. And you. And you might pay for it later, but there's no, you don't have to sign up for an app. Ride the real wave. It's called life.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow.

[Nomi Fry]

I love that so much.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vincent, keep your money in your pocket.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Until you have to go on a date. But it's a different thing, correct?

[Alex Schwartz]

This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle o'. Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost, Chris Letts and Ben Adair, with mixing by Mike Kutchman. And we should say if you or someone you know is struggling with a gambling problem, help is available. The national Problem Gambling helpline can be reached at 1-800-GAMBLER. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Host]

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of Artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To podcasts.

[Nomi Fry]

From prx.