From The Atlantic.
Are sports the most valuable commodity in the world? On this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel is joined by Pablo Torre for an examination of the role that sports and rampant sports betting are playing in our politics, culture, and economy. Pablo Torre is a longtime journalist and the host of the podcast and YouTube show Pablo Torre Finds Out, where he reports on everything from football fans on death row and what it’s like to be a trangender athlete in high school to analyzing the coach Bill Belichick’s shirtless ring-cam footage. Torre is a student of the internet as well, and a keen observer of our attention economy. Sports, he argues, are the last monocultural product—the only sure way to draw eyeballs on an ever-fractured internet.
In this episode, Warzel and Torre dig into why billionaires and nation-states are buying teams and partnering with sports leagues. Torre discusses what he’s learned about journalism from bingeing YouTube videos and why having good taste is more important than ever now online. Then Warzel and Torre turn their attention to sports gambling. Are same-day parlays the new American Dream? Are sports leagues at risk of losing their legitimacy? And why is nobody playing the long game?
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