Why do we keep playing the lottery?

Every morning for as long as I can remember, my father has had the exact same routine: He goes to synagogue for his morning prayers, drives to the local gas station to pick up a cup of very bad coffee, and then plays the lottery. His lotto obsession has become somewhat of a punchline: Whenever he brings up the high costs of raising a Jewish family (there’s seven of us!!), my family reminds him that if he hadn’t bought lottery tickets, like, every single day of his life, and saved all that money instead, he’d probably be rich. Sure, this is a joke, but there’s also truth in it. Why has he been a consistent lottery player for decades, and why is the ritual as strong as his religious practice? Doesn’t he know he’s caught up in a game he almost certainly won't win? Vox copy chief Tanya Pai has a [fascinating piece this week on all things lottery-related](. Her deep dive into the game’s history helps me understand my father’s fascination with the game; it’s an old-school American tradition, and my dad is old-school! One particular line really struck me, though, because it gave me perfect insight into the mindset of my dad, a poor, Jewish kid from Brooklyn who was raised by Holocaust survivors and had supported his family since he was 15: “In a world where the American ethos of hard work and perseverance paying off seems increasingly like a lie, where the chips seem stacked against us anyway, why couldn’t it be me, or you, who somehow beats the odds and finds riches beyond measure at a Quick Check off the interstate?” —[Chavie Lieber](, senior reporter for The Goods Why we love to play the lottery when we know we won’t win [lottery balls]( Sarah Lawrence for Vox In the fall of 2018, America was infected with Mega Millions fever. The jackpot for the Mega Millions — one of the two biggest nationwide lottery games, along with Powerball — had climbed to an astonishing $1.6 billion, the highest in history, and across the country, cartoon dollar signs were popping into people’s eyes. After weeks of breathless media speculation, it was announced: A single ticket, sold at a KC Mart in Simpsonville, South Carolina, had won the grand prize — a feat with the approximate odds of [one in 302.6 million](. Yet the ticket went unclaimed for months. A winner only has 180 days to come forward with the prize ticket; otherwise, the money would be dispersed among the states based on ticket sales, and the expected windfall for South Carolina ($61 million) and even the clerk whose convenience store sold the golden ticket ($50,000) would evaporate. Finally, on March 4, just under the cutoff, a woman [came forward]( to claim the prize. But because South Carolina law allows lottery winners to remain anonymous, we may never know the name of the person whose stroke of luck let her walk away with a lump sum of nearly $878 million, the largest payout to a single winner in history. Four days later, news outlets had moved on: to the [story]( of an unemployed 54-year-old man who won $173 million off a Mega Millions ticket he bought — and mistakenly left — at a Quick Check in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and was able to reclaim after a Good Samaritan turned in the ticket for the store to hold. We love stories like this. Lottery wins are a staple of local news coverage, and periodically, when the jackpot climbs high enough, the national press gets in on the action too — and even people who otherwise would never think of it might find themselves shelling out for a ticket. It’s that potent combination of envy and hope; in a world where the American ethos of hard work and perseverance paying off seems increasingly like a lie, where the chips seem stacked against us anyway, why couldn’t it be me, or you, who somehow beats the odds and finds riches beyond measure at a Quick Check off the interstate? But while the game of lightning-strike fame and fortune might seem like a product of the modern culture that birthed Instagram and the Kardashians, the roots of the lottery in America are as old as the country itself. [Read the rest of the story >>]( As air pollution gets worse, a dystopian accessory is born [air masks]( Sarah Lawrence for Vox Last fall, two different wildfires destroyed huge swaths of California. The Camp Fire in Northern California covered 153,336 acres, destroyed nearly 20,000 structures, and killed 85 people; it also left a shroud of smoke and ash hovering over the area. Public schools in five Bay Area counties were closed, and residents were warned to stay inside and protect their lungs from the dangerous air quality. Stores for miles around sold out of everything from surgical masks to the recommended N95 painter’s masks — the only kind that can effectively filter 95 percent of the tiny particles that do the most damage to your lungs. Walking around the Bay Area in the weeks following the Camp Fire felt like living in a dystopian future — the sky a matte gray, the sun a red, alien-like orb, the streets empty save a handful of souls, nearly all wearing painter’s masks or bandannas or scarves over their mouths. Those two weeks might have been not just a dark blip but rather a glimpse into our collective future. And there are entrepreneurs poised to capitalize on it. Because in the tomorrow that the Camp Fire portends, we’re all going to need a good face mask. The global future of air quality doesn’t look so good. As humanity continues to make little progress fighting climate change, fires are expected to get more frequent. And in some cases, like in California, [that new pollution is erasing decades of improving air quality](. [The American Lung Association estimates]( that 133.9 million people in the United States are exposed to unhealthy air conditions every year. [The World Health Organization estimates]( that 4.2 million people die every year from exposure to air pollution. [A recent report from IQAir](, a group that surveys air pollution worldwide, highlighted the cities with the worst pollution, many of which were located in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Most of this air pollution comes from industry and other emissions. And then there’s the dust. All around the world, deserts are expanding. “The desert is creeping and nobody is noticing,” says Sumant Nigam, who recently published a study that found that the Sahara has expanded by 10 percent over the past century, largely due to climate change. “And eventually, it will swallow you.” [Read the rest of the story >>]( More good stuff to read today - [Tourists are flocking to locations threatened by climate change. That only makes things worse.]( - [How the Tinder algorithm actually works]( - [You can now shop on Instagram without leaving the app]( - [Hundreds of US cities are killing or scaling back their recycling programs]( - [Myspace, which still exists, accidentally deleted 12 years’ worth of music]( - [At-home shopping shows still make a lot of money]( Manage your [email preferences](, or [unsubscribe]( to stop receiving emails from Vox Media. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.