This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

In 2022, Americans spent more than 100 billion dollars on lottery tickets.

Well, millions of Americans are dreaming

about winning tomorrow's mega millions jackpot,

now the largest in world history.

Mystery surrounds the winner of the $2.04 billion dollar lotto ticket, the largest jackpot.

To imagine powerball excitement growing more than what we've seen over the last week.

But after another rollover, we're now seeing a record jackpot

leading to another dash for tickets.

From Scratchers to the Powerball,

the lottery is the most popular form of gambling

in the United States.

The likelihood that you will win a lottery like the Powerball is about

one in 292 million. Statistically, you're more likely to get attacked by a shark, give birth

to Quintuplets, or even get crushed by a meteorite.

You know, the lottery is often called attacks on people who are bad at math,

because this perception that lottery players don't understand the odds against them

and have these wishful

hopeful beliefs that a lottery will solve all of their financial problems.

That's Jonathan D Cohen.

He's a historian and author of the book For a Dollar and a Dream state lotteries in modern America.

Jonathan says it isn't just the people playing the lottery who

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