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So I've gotten pretty fed up with all the glorified Vegas crap. The lottery is a regressive tax on people with no hope. The predatory gambling practices of the Vegas casinos are despicable. And, I like poker too, but what's with all the poker nights all the sudden? It's not like cards were just invented! This is not about puritanism, I just think this hipster "risk it all" gambling phenomena is silly. Going to a casino is about as cool as going to McDonalds. This week we have stories about gambling, and there are none of those happy, quirky, British guy walks into a casino and bets his life savings on a roulette wheel and wins stories. These are only the horror stories of gambling: suicide, addiction, the lottery, and annoying poker night players. Joshuah Bearman (Other People's Stories, The Believer, McSweeneys), John Marr (Murder Can Be Fun), Kim Phillips-Fein (The Baffler), and Dr. James Westphal (UCSF gambling addiction expert) contribute. The hipster gambling backlash has begun. Those guys in Swingers were dorks. That was the point.
This program originally aired as Invisible Ink #57 on 4/25/04 on KALW in San Francisco.
Featured on Transom.org. For more information and conversation, visit the "The Anti-Gambler" on Transom.
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Piece Description
So I've gotten pretty fed up with all the glorified Vegas crap. The lottery is a regressive tax on people with no hope. The predatory gambling practices of the Vegas casinos are despicable. And, I like poker too, but what's with all the poker nights all the sudden? It's not like cards were just invented! This is not about puritanism, I just think this hipster "risk it all" gambling phenomena is silly. Going to a casino is about as cool as going to McDonalds. This week we have stories about gambling, and there are none of those happy, quirky, British guy walks into a casino and bets his life savings on a roulette wheel and wins stories. These are only the horror stories of gambling: suicide, addiction, the lottery, and annoying poker night players. Joshuah Bearman (Other People's Stories, The Believer, McSweeneys), John Marr (Murder Can Be Fun), Kim Phillips-Fein (The Baffler), and Dr. James Westphal (UCSF gambling addiction expert) contribute. The hipster gambling backlash has begun. Those guys in Swingers were dorks. That was the point. This program originally aired as Invisible Ink #57 on 4/25/04 on KALW in San Francisco.
Featured on Transom.org. For more information and conversation, visit the "The Anti-Gambler" on Transom.
2 Comments
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Review of Invisible Ink: The Anti-GamblerFirst off I want to say that I really like Invisible Ink as a concept, and I'm rating the series as much as the show. I'm just excited that people are making stuff like this, taking time to put the work into it. The Invisible Ink episodes I've heard are crafty, honest, interesting -- whatever tones I can think of to describe the kind of radio (and thought process) I like. And I'm down with the theme of this show because I hate gambling, maybe because I'm just too unlucky. Play this for everyone you know. |
Broadcast History
This program originally aired as Invisible Ink #57 on 4/25/04 on KALW in San Francisco. It was also broadcast on WZBC in 05/04.
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Jackson Braider
Posted on November 18, 2004 at 05:43 PM | Permalink
Review of Invisible Ink: The Anti-Gambler
An intriguing series of questions about gambling offered here: an essay on the regressive nature of the lottery, for example, or an interview with an addiction specialist, stuff about risk-taking -- all in all, mixed media in a pubrad talk/thinkfest format. Invisible Ink offers itself as a radio zine -- to my ears: a radio equivalent of a blog with the host as filter.
There's good stuff here, but listeners will have to find the host a compelling figure to listen through the full program. Personally, I wanted less host, especially when I learned he had been reading someone else's words for some five minutes without letting me know. Part of hosting is knowing boundaries -- I haven't gotten a sense yet of that happening here.