How America became a nation of gamblers

Gambling funded America's early expansion

In the colonial era, lotteries were viewed as a voluntary tax to help fund infrastructure and capital projects. The idea came from Europe, which had used lotteries dating back to the 16th century. The image below is from a Massachusetts lottery in 1758.

Sports betting, explained

Since a 2018 Supreme Court decision overturned the Bradley Act, which spurred a state-by-state legalization of online gambling, sports betting has become a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry.

Browse a timeline of the fascinating history of board games in America.

Nevada legalized gambling in 1931

Las Vegas was originally a quiet town, but the legalization of gambling (along with relatively lax divorce laws) turned it into a Prohibition-era destination.

The complicated economics of horse racing

The Triple Crown commands big ratings (and enormous amounts of money in betting) but the sport as a whole is in a precarious position, thanks to limited tracks and an overreliance on subsidies. This special from Freakonomics unpacks what all that means for the future of the sport.

Tribal casinos have generated billions in revenue

After Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, granting tribes the legal right to operate casinos on reservation land, tribal gaming expanded dramatically. Today, tribal gaming ranks among the largest revenue sources for participating tribes.

Why Americans are drowning in credit card debt

Americans owe more than $1T to credit card companies. And with rising interest rates that prevent cardholders from paying down debt (not to mention the rising cost of living), that number is likely to keep growing. A podcast episode explains how the US got here, and what policymakers and individuals can do about it.

The US has used a wide variety of different currencies between the 1690s and today

From colonial money to national banknotes, people have used all kinds of forms of currency throughout the history of the United States before settling on the dollar bills and quarters that we pay for things with today.

How Americans have voted throughout history

From shouting candidates’ names, to hanging chads to electronic scanning, the nature of voting has a long, sometimes bumpy history in the United States. See descriptions and images in chronological order with this digestible timeline.

The history of March Madness brackets

Every spring, millions of Americans fill out their March Madness brackets in hopes of picking the winner. But where did this annual tradition start? This CBS News article tells the story of how a bar in Staten Island started a $10 pool with 88 participants in 1977, and grew it into a $1.5 million contest that ended up getting shut down by the IRS.

Hear how the Super Bowl went from a risky experiment to America's unofficial holiday

In this podcast episode, former Emmy award-winning ESPN producer Dennis Deninger traces the Super Bowl's unlikely rise from the AFL-NFL merger era to a national spectacle, explaining how it reshaped advertising, gambling, television, and American culture.

Cricket used to be America's pastime

Before baseball, American football, basketball, or hockey ever organized in the US, there was one sport which could be found up and down the East Coast: cricket. The second-most popular sport in the world, cricket is mostly ignored by Americans, despite its prevalence in early American history. Learn more about the forgotten role cricket played in the US with this article.

NBA referee Tim Donaghy was paid roughly $300K to fix games

Donaghy said he struggled with a gambling addiction, causing him to risk so much. In this interview, he explains the story of his scandal, and how the mob led to his eventual arrest.

Atlantic City was a major vacation destination in the early 20th century

The city’s boardwalk, filled with amusement parks and vendors, became a significant attraction for vacationing families. The town also became a hub for entertainment, with actors often starting there before heading to Broadway.

How income taxes evolved from a funding tool for war into a crucial revenue source for the federal government

Americans have long resisted income taxes. So, how did they become permanent? This overview explains how wartime funding needs, constitutional changes, and economic shifts gave rise to the modern tax system, from the Civil War to the payroll withholding rules we follow today.

From bartering to banking, temples to electronic transactions, here’s banking has evolved significantly since ancient times

A few historical facts about banking (like that one day, not long ago, certificates of deposit were physical pieces of paper) may not surprise you. But did you know that the church was the original lender? And that Julius Caesar himself invented foreclosure?

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

How the New Yorker went from poker game to powerhouse

After 100 years in print, the New Yorker is still going strong, publishing weekly issues featuring the best in long-form journalism, cultural criticism, and short fiction. This history of the magazine's founding and early years shows how its balance of high and lowbrow culture, along with a fortuitous game of poker, led to its longstanding success.

How the US built the Interstate Highway system

As late as World War II, it took a well-prepared motorist roughly 10 days to cross America from coast to coast in a car. That all changed when the nation undertook its biggest public infrastructure project in 1956, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, initiating a 36-year, $114B mission to lay 41,000 miles of roads across America. Watch a smart overview here.

Native Americans built democratic systems of governance

Indigenous nations, such as the Muscogee, a confederacy of towns in the present-day Southeast, practiced participatory governance centered on communal decision-making and the consent of the governed.

A group of daring bootleggers created NASCAR

When Prohibition made alcohol illegal in 1920, it didn’t stop Americans from making and consuming it. The law drove the practice underground. Runners risked their lives to deliver moonshine and began racing among themselves.

Hear how gerrymandering is like 'Moneyball applied to politics'

In a 2016 interview, journalist David Daley explained how Republicans used data-driven targeting after the 2010 census to lock in durable advantages, comparing modern gerrymandering strategies to the analytics revolution in baseball.

Why Americans keep buying McMansions

Some argue that McMansions—large, relatively newly built, amenity-filled, cookie-cutter homes—are ugly. Others say they're just not a good investment. And yet Americans continue buying them. This video explores why McMansions are still popular despite these criticisms, and how these homes got their start in the first place. Watch the video here.

Some US states are now revising their happy hour bans

While states like Massachusetts started banning happy hour in the 1980s as an anti-overconsumption measure, not every state has kept these bans intact. This article dives into the arguments for and against revising the happy hour ban in Massachusetts, the first state to institute such a ban.

The first Americans arrived between 14,000 and 40,000 years ago

Early peoples migrated to the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge or coastal routes, spreading across the continent as hunter-gatherers. Archaeological sites in present-day New Mexico containing stone tools and animal bones mark some of the earliest confirmed evidence of human life in North America.

Why America is obsessed with the stories of scammers

A "grifter" is someone who exploits systems at a high level. Notable cases like fake heiress Anna Delvey, Fyre Festival creator Billy McFarland, and startup faker Elizabeth Holmes, who deceived their way to success, captivate our culture. These...

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.