McKay Coppins spent one year and $10,000 of The Atlantic’s money to find out the truth about sports betting.

Russell welcomes McKay Coppins to talk about his latest for The Atlantic, a deeply personal and unsettling experiment with online sports betting, which opened a window into the addictive architecture of modern gambling, and the quiet ways it can take hold of a life.

Together, they explore not just the mechanics of gambling, but its deeper implications: how it alters our attention, distorts our relationships, fuels anger and illusion, and increasingly reshapes everything from sports to politics to everyday life. Coppins–a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints–even remarks at the ways the experiment affected his prayer life.

If you’ve wondered how sports betting has become so popular, or why younger men are being held tightly by its grasp, you might find this episode enlightening.

This is a conversation about more than just betting, it’s about desire, discipline, and the kinds of guardrails we don’t realize we need until they’re gone.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler (The Atlantic)

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