This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When I worked at the Washington Post early in my career,

one of my colleagues had a little bit of a side hustle.

Late in the week in the fall, he'd go around the office taking bets on the weekend's football

game, and then he'd relay those bets to a bookmaker. Now, a lot of us would put some money down

small bets. Nobody was losing their shirt, but still, we had a sense that it was somehow illicit,

something you did on the QT. Now, it sounds like I'm describing life hundreds of years ago,

because these days we are absolutely inundated with ads offering same game parlays and no sweat

bets. You just can't turn on pro football or listen to a call-in sports talk show without hearing the odds, without emphasizing gambling.

Wagering on the game now seems practically as important as watching it.

How did things change so much and so fast?

Literally, I was watching the last World series and right before the first pitch, they said, and by the way, here's a parlay you might

want to consider placing. Danny Fund has been reporting on the gambling boom for the New Yorker.

We've seen some pretty startling headlines lately. The former coach of the Portland Trailblazers was arrested in part for allegedly providing insider information to gamblers.

And then there was those two pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians who were indicted for rigging individual pitches.

They were purposely throwing wild pitches to align with live bets.

They've all pleaded not guilty.

Danny Fund's new book about the boom in sports betting is called Everybody Loses.

So can you give me a sense in dollar terms of how big a business this is now?

About $150 billion are wagered every year.

Just last November, New York set a record with more than $2 billion wagered in the state of

New York alone.

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