Get Rich Quick: The American Lottery

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NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Want to get rich quick? You're not alone. Right now, Americans spend over $100 billion, yes billion, every year on lottery tickets. Today on the show, in collaboration with Scratch and Win from WGBH, how the mafia, Sputnik, medical equipment, and the electoral college led to American's obsession with playing the numbers.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from American Jewish World Service,
0:04.7	committed to the fight for human rights, supporting advocates and grassroots organizations worldwide,
0:10.7	working towards democracy, equity, and justice at a.jWS.org.
0:19.9	Today, there are numerous ways to gamble.
0:24.7	And if cards aren't your thing, there's slots or roulette for you.
0:31.0	Or if you're hours away from a casino, no problem.
0:34.4	You can just hop on your phone.
0:36.5	Tap into BetMGM casino, and you're entering a huge library full of exclusive games.
0:42.1	But maybe you're not really into gambling games.
0:45.1	Well, then you have sports betting.
0:47.3	New customers bet $5 to get 150 in bonus bets if you win.
0:50.4	Fan duel, America's number one sports.
0:52.4	Whether you're at a poker table or at home watching a basketball game, legal gambling has never been easier.
1:04.5	But gambling's got a complicated history in the U.S.
1:08.5	We allow some forms of it ban others.
1:11.5	We allow it in some places, but not everywhere.
1:14.3	It's like we can't seem to make up our minds.
1:17.0	So how did gambling go from an illicit vice to a ubiquitous industry?
1:22.0	What set that in motion?
1:24.1	Meet Ian Koss, a producer from GBAH in Boston,
1:28.5	a guy who recently got obsessed with one of the biggest forms of legalized gambling, state lotteries.
1:35.7	I think they help explain so much about the world we live in now.
	...

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