Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Amanda here again while Jay continues to recover.

His voice has mostly come back, but he's still off somewhere coughing.

Now, Albert Einstein said, life is just like a game.

First you have to learn the rules of the game and then play it better than anyone

else. Or just get some insider knowledge about which team was paid off to lose and bet on the

game rather than playing it, am I right? While it's well known that sports gambling has great

potential to corrupt the game, we're pretty sure that being able to bet on literally anything in

life all the time, right from your phone, with billionaires funding

persuasion campaigns to convince you to do it, will probably work out fine. For those looking

for a quick overview, the source is providing our top takes in about 45 minutes today include

the gray area, the powers that be, on point, good work, and Jen. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show,

there'll be more in four sections. Section A, gambling on everything. Followed by section B,

the ubiquity of sports betting. Section C, sports betting is bad for sports. And section D,

gamifying life. But first, a quick note that Best of the Left is turning

20 years old in January. I know, it's crazy. And it's kind of a big deal. So we thought it'd be

fun to start celebrating now. Check out bestoftheleft.com slash 20 for details on locking in a

discounted membership for life and how to send us

your thoughts and memories of the show, politics, and podcasting from the last 20 years. That's

best of the left.com slash two zero. And now on to the show. I just want to pause to just appreciate how fast things have shifted culturally.

I mean, I'm a huge sports fan.

I'm a consumer of sports media.

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