It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC.

Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian today.

And now we continue with the health and climate story of the week.

As some listeners know, Brian Lair show is building on and climate story of the week. As some listeners know,

Brian Laird Show is building on its climate story of the week series from the past years.

It's an effort to keep stories about the environment and public health from getting lost

in the shuffle during Trump's first 100 days in office. Today, with March Madness in full swing,

we'll take a look at online sports betting, how it became so ubiquitous and why some experts are sounding the alarm on what they believe is the early stage of a public health crisis.

In 2018, following a lawsuit from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the United States Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports betting.

Since then, 38 states have legalized it, with most permitting gambling on any device with an

internet connection. About 1% of U.S. adults have a severe gambling problem, according to the

National Council on Problem Gambling, and 2 to three percent have a mild or moderate problem.

That might sound small, but that amounts to somewhere between 7.5 and 10 and a half million people.

And crucially, in states across the country that have legalized sports betting, calls to addiction

outlines have been on the rise. Our next guest writes,

The result of the nation's sports gambling boom is a crisis,

an epidemic of a gambling disorder and financial disruption,

especially for young men.

So with the final four just ahead,

we're joined now by Jonathan Cohn,

historian and author of the new book, Losing Big,

...