Gamble on Anything. Except Murder. (with Bobby Allyn and Grant Slater)

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next big short. Wildfires, missile strikes, the next word out of a president's mouth. Every disagreement has a spread, every catastrophe a payout. In this episode, NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn follows the money through Kalshi and Polymarket, the fast-growing, barely regulated prediction markets that have gotten tight with the Trump administration. These apps democratize insider trading. When reality pays out, the incentive isn't to predict what happens next. It's to make it happen. Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk Mentioned in this Episode: The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki (Book, 2004) Google Zero is here — now what? — Nilay Patel, The Verge (Article, 2024) Iowa Electronic Markets — University of Iowa (Prediction market experiment, est. 1988) A Cosmic Voyage Through Deep Time — (with Ross Andersen and Grant Slater) — Futurology (Episode, 2025) Where to find Bobby Allyn NPR X Bluesky Instagram Show ideas and feedback? Email: futurology@berggruen.org Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram: / futurologypod Twitter/X: / futurologypod Tiktok: / futurologypod Facebook: / berggrueninst LinkedIn: / berggrueninst Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

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There's No Such Thing as a Free Agent (with Gillian Tett and Dawn Nakagawa)

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. B...

11 Aug 1h 7min

We're Winning the Race to Replace Ourselves (with Tristan Harris and Dawn Nakagawa)

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one d...

4 Aug 51min

Is It Awareness All the Way Down? (with Annaka Harris and Grant Slater)

Science studies the world from the outside. But for thousands of years, meditators have been running a different experiment: sit still, pay close attention, and watch what reality does. The results of...

30 Juli 2h 7min

Can We Move Fast and Fix Things? (with Reid Hoffman and Dawn Nakagawa)

For 20 years, Silicon Valley's operating creed was 'move fast and break things'; the wreckage was the price of inventing the future. Today, we live amid that wreckage: institutions built for the last ...

21 Juli 1h 4min

The AI CEOs Are Terrified of Themselves (with Stuart Russell and Nils Gilman)

This year, two powerful AI CEOs said they want to stop building it and will… if everyone else agrees to stop too. Yet they race ahead with stock market valuations premised on making millions of worker...

14 Juli 1h 23min

Our Machines Evolved From Us (with Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Carlo Rovelli)

The machines were supposed to come from somewhere else as invaders. An alien intelligence, hellbent robots, a rival species. But nothing’s arrived. Instead, the machines came out of us, the same way o...

7 Juli 1h 23min

You Have Plenty to Hide From AI (with Meredith Whittaker and Nils Gilman)

Today’s tech industry can’t survive without mass surveillance. The US government, foreign powers, and ad brokers can buy a nuanced picture of you on the open market for pennies on the dollar. What kep...

30 Juni 50min