Hello and welcome to the ProRata podcast, the podcast that takes 10 minutes to get you smarter, faster, on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Filling in for Dan Primak today, I'm Axios editor-in-chief Nicholas Johnston. On today's show, Facebook's decade of dominance and an increase in U.S. life expectancy.

But first, the NFL bounces back.

It feels like there's been a deluge of bad news for the NFL, starting with the flood of stories

about concussive brain damage and football, with the latest research finding that concussions

aren't the only way football damages the brain. As those stories spread, there's been a notable drop in high school football

participation. Perreuter's half a million fewer high schoolers played the sport in 2018 than the year

before. And it's not just brain injuries. The NFL has had other scandals in recent years, from domestic

violence incidents to kneeling controversies, and they're coming up on a deadline to reach a new collective bargaining agreement ahead of 2021.

Through all of that, NFL ratings had been declining until last year,

when a ratings rebound began.

After hitting a low of about 50 million viewers per game in 2017,

numbers have climbed back above 16 million.

Higher ratings are translating into higher prices at the Super Bowl.

With a storied franchise in the 49ers facing the Chiefs, who haven't played in the big game in 50 years,

interest is unusually high.

Tick-pick CEO Brett Goldberg told Yahoo Finance that the usual drop-off in prices after teams are announced didn't happen this year.

In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper on this with Axios Sports

editor Kendall Baker, but first, this. There is more news out there than ever before, but these

days, it's harder than ever to find it and to know what to trust. Axios AM takes the effort

out of getting smart by synthesizing the 10 stories that will drive the day and telling you why

they matter. Subscribe at signup.axios.com.

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