ICYMI - The Internet Has A Gambling Problem
ICYMI
Slate Podcasts
3.9 • 800 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode host Kate Lindsay is joined by Manny Fidel, culture writer and cohost of the No Such Thing podcast, to explain how gambling took over the internet. A recent betting scandal not only exposed the chokehold that gambling has on the sports industry, but opened up a larger conversation about how everything on the internet is influenced by gambling. People are betting political candidates and arbitrary fashion choices, all while putting themselves further and further into financial precarity. How did this happen and, most importantly, can anything be done to fix it?
This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Benjamin Frisch, and Kate Lindsay.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I, or in case you missed it, |
| 0:18.9 | Slate's podcast about internet culture. And with me, I have Mani Fidel. Welcome to the podcast, Manning. |
| 0:27.2 | It's a pleasure to be here, Kate. Mani, you are a culture writer yourself. You also have your own podcast, no such thing, which I have no family relation to my, what is it, brother-in-law |
| 0:40.5 | certainly is not your co-host. This is not a nepo situation here. I've never heard of this |
| 0:45.5 | guy. I don't know who you're talking about. Yeah. We'll get to why we thought you were the |
| 0:54.0 | perfect guest for this episode in a minute, but first I have to bombard you with the question that we ask all first time. I see why I guess, which is what is your earliest internet memory? |
| 1:05.1 | That would have to be me trying to download a game on Windows 95 on my Windows 95 PC in like 1998 or 9. |
| 1:18.9 | And it was like, it was something similar to Mind Sweeper or something like that. |
| 1:24.2 | A game that's, yeah, like a game that's probably five megabytes to download, but it was taking |
| 1:29.3 | our like hours, hours and hours to try and get this game off of the internet. I jumped straight |
| 1:35.1 | to like, oh, it must have been like, I don't know, FIFA or I had like high hopes for you |
| 1:41.8 | at that even though it was. No, this game was the size of probably like a calendar event in 2025, but it simply would not download to my computer. |
| 1:51.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:52.1 | Were you like a PC gamer growing up? |
| 1:55.1 | Not really. |
| 1:55.9 | Like after trying to get that game, we, we. |
| 2:00.2 | You said this isn't. We like you know what i think they make |
| 2:03.6 | they actually make consoles for this um so we switched over to to nintendo pretty quickly uh but actually |
| 2:10.6 | in my in my adult life i've switched back to pc gaming now that now that you can kind of customize |
| 2:16.8 | your pc um yeah i've gotten back into that |
| 2:19.7 | okay wait not to go like wildly off track but that is interesting to me because i was a PC gamer |
| 2:25.8 | i played uh FIFA harry potter obviously the sims um and i would say like the biggest loss of like, you know, one by one upgrading a computer |
... |
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