For The Atlantic’s April cover story, “Sucker,” staff writer McKay Coppins reports from inside the country’s sports-betting epidemic, examining how gambling has come to consume American sports and culture. Prior to writing the cover story, Coppins had never bet on anything before––he is religiously prohibited from engaging in games of chance––but he received special permission from his Mormon bishop to gamble for reporting purposes, and The Atlantic fronted him $10,000 to bet over the course of the 2025 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.” Throughout the course of the piece, as Coppins narrates his wins and losses, he considers the societal consequences of the legalization of phone-based gambling for a generation of Americans, and for himself. As Coppins writes: “Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and …