I am not, by temperament, a gambling man. As a suburban dad with four kids, a mortgage, and a minivan, I’m more likely to be found wrestling a toddler into a car seat than scouring moneylines or consulting betting touts. And as a practicing Mormon, I am prohibited from indulging in games of chance. Besides, I had always thought of gambling as a waste of time. This makes me an outlier among my generational peers: Since 2018, Americans have wagered more than half a trillion dollars on sports, and roughly half of men ages 18 to 49 have an active account with an online sportsbook.
When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed a work-around: The Atlantic would stake me $10,000 to gamble with over the course of the upcoming NFL season. The magazine would cover any losses, and—to ensure my ongoing emotional investment—split any winnings with me, 50–50. Surely God would approve of such an arrangement, my editors reasoned, because I wouldn’t be risking my own hard-earned money.
This spiritual loophole intrigued me. But for the sake of my soul, I decided I’d better consult a higher ecclesiastical authority than The Atlantic’s masthead.
A few days later, I sat across from my bishop, explaining the experiment and watching a look of pastoral concern come over his face. After some consideration, he said (a bit tentatively, if I’m being honest), “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong.” He grasped the difference between gambling with my own money and using my employer’s for research purposes. But he had also seen too many lives wrecked by vice to let me leave without a warning. He told me stories he’d heard about upstanding family men who had let an initially modest gambling habit ruin them, and a cautionary tale about a churchgoing lawyer who developed an unhealthy curiosity about sex work after handling a prostitution case and wound up devastating his family.
I promised the bishop that I would steer clear of slippery slopes. “This will really just be a journalistic exercise,” I assured him.
The Atlantic: Sucker – My year as a degenerate gambler – A fantastic longform article on gambling https://t.co/9ShN6LGFwD
— Aaron M. Renn 🇺🇸 (@aaron_renn) March 13, 2026
