Everybody's Business – Episode Summary
Podcast: Everybody's Business (Bloomberg/iHeartPodcasts)
Episode: “Are the Markets Just Gambling Now?”
Date: October 10, 2025
Hosts: Max Chafkin & Stacey Vanek Smith
Guests: Joe Weisenthal (Odd Lots podcast), Casey Newton (Platformer, Hard Fork)

Overview:

This episode dives into the explosive rise of prediction markets and asks whether modern investing is increasingly indistinguishable from gambling. With the owner of the New York Stock Exchange investing $2 billion into Polymarket, the hosts analyze the cultural and economic implications of betting on everything from pop culture to geopolitics. The episode also discusses the parallels between contemporary financial speculation and age-old safe havens like gold, plus an in-depth conversation about the real utility—and overhype—around AI in business.

Key Segments and Insights

1. Prediction Markets: From the Stock Market to Taylor Swift Bets

Timestamps: 00:46 – 03:59, 07:08 – 19:22

• Main Topic: The episode opens with a discussion of prediction markets—online venues where people can bet on any event, from celebrity gossip to commodity movements and political outcomes.
• Growth Spur: The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE, owner of NYSE) just sunk $2B into Polymarket, demonstrating how traditional finance is merging with “betting” culture.
• Public Views on Betting:
  • Producer tape brings in “man on the street” reflections—some see stock market investing itself as a form of gambling (04:34).
  • “I would want to gamble on something that I feel informed about, like the various dimensions of Taylor Swift’s wedding.” – Anonymous, [04:42]
  • “What I do in the stock market’s more like gambling.” – Anonymous, [04:54]
  • Sidelining betting on elections: “That’s like really degenerate behavior.” – Anonymous, [05:14]
• Host Commentary:
  • Stacey: “I love this tape. I didn’t realize so many people were into gambling, which is weird because I’m in New York and that’s kind of what this whole city is built on.” [05:42]
• Preview: Another big Polymarket gambler is set to join a future episode [06:34].

2. Joe Weisenthal on How Prediction and Financial Betting Are Colliding

Guest: Joe Weisenthal (Odd Lots podcast)
Timestamps: 07:43 – 19:22

• What Are Prediction Markets?
  • “Wouldn’t it be great if we could incentivize people to sort of put a price on these views… if we could crowdsource it?” – Joe, [08:09]
  • These evolved on the web, powered by crypto and stablecoins, often skirting U.S. regulation (not accessible to U.S. users… without VPNs).
• Types of Bets:
  • “You can bet on anything from how many times Taylor Swift will mention Travis Kelce on the Tonight Show to whether or not Israel will bomb Iran, to who will win the Oscar for Best Actor.” – Stacey, [07:24]
• Why Are They So Big?
  • “The real action on these sites is sports… an alternative to traditional sportsbooks.” – Joe, [10:37]
  • Also popular are “fun” or trivial bets, political outcomes, commodities, and event-driven contracts.
• Gambling Versus Investing:
  • “Every entity… whether investing, hedging, speculating, gambling—they’re all merging. Every one of these platforms is going to offer everything from sports to politics to events, to crypto, to finance.” – Joe, [13:03]
• Is This Dangerous?
  • Max: “It just seems like people are doing really, really, really dumb things with their money right now.” [14:07]
  • Joe: “There is this cultural change underway where people do not think it’s legitimate for someone to say, ‘You can’t bet on X.’ Technology has made it so that all these bets are capable of happening at any scale.” [14:30]
• Economic Impact:
  • Joe: “We would have a stronger economy if people weren’t focused on betting… I would prefer to live in a world… without a speculation culture. But… this is just the world we sort of live in.” [15:43]
• Upside: Information Value & Transparency
  • Max: “I find Polymarket and Kalshi super interesting… it’s very informative. During the presidential election…it was a great way to think about new polls.” [16:24]
  • Joe: “Putting a number on what some of these things mean is really helpful… If new information comes out, people with money on the line metabolize it… As a vehicle for information consumption, I am a fan.” [16:44]
• Insider Trading:
  • “A lot of people would say insider trading is desirable if you want to get that price… it’s a way to bring greater transparency to the world.” – Joe, [18:26 – 19:22]
  • Stacey: “Are these markets fair?”
    Joe: “Some would argue that we want you to trade on inside information so that the prices better reflect the real world.” [18:35]

Notable Moment:

• Joe’s summation: “A concentrated number of entities are going to make a lot of money from this and a lot of people will lose money from this, which is the story of all casinos…” [15:43]

3. Is AI Actually Transforming Work?

Guest: Casey Newton (Platformer)
Timestamps: 19:49 – 32:31

• The “AI Slop” Problem:
  • Max: “Basically AI slop is keeping the entire economy afloat…” [02:02]
  • Casey: “40% of employees… reported having received work slop, substandard work output from one of their colleagues.” [20:30]
• Tension between Management and Reality:
  • Mandates to “default to AI” don’t map to practical, productive work. “There is no generally understood way to default to AI. If you use Google Docs, you’re not defaulting to AI. Should I write my docs in the ChatGPT text box?” – Casey, [21:52]
• Defining ‘Work Slop’:
  • “People are running… AI tools to generate multi-thousand word documents. Then they’re just passing them along to their coworkers… and that may indeed give your coworkers more work to do.” – Casey, [23:04]
• Productivity Gains?
  • “It’s very easy to use AI tools for a couple hours and tell yourself you’re getting a lot done… and then you realize you were just… typing into a box…” – Casey, [24:05]
• AI Hype vs. Reality:
  • Casey believes the tech is transformative, pointing to exponential improvements in certain models, like Anthropic’s, increasing working time from 7 to 30 hours autonomously in five months [25:54].
  • Max pushes back, likening AI to past overhyped technologies: “We have seen this movie before, right… technologists tend to overestimate how close their technology is… self-driving cars—very hard to get the last bit of reliability.” [27:19]
• Current Impact:
  • Casey: “AI is already transforming Hollywood… automating agriculture… early warning systems for earthquakes…patient diagnostics. Usually when you see people using something and finding it a little bit useful, my assumption is that thing is going to improve and people will find more ways to use it.” [29:03]
• Where Are We on the AI Curve?:
  • “If you asked a high school student, they’d say, ‘It can already do my entire education.’ … Now we have models working on problems for 30 hours at a time.” – Casey, [30:39]
  • “I think we’re past the beginning…” – Casey, [32:00]
• Anecdote:
  • “There are a number of software engineers who will tell you that their job right now is just to supervise the AI—they’re no longer writing code, just telling a box what they want it to do.” – Casey, [31:39]

4. “Underrated Story of the Week”: Gold—the Oldest Prediction Market

Timestamps: 32:43 – 36:45

• Stacey brings in the story of gold hitting a record high—“the price of gold has outperformed the US stock market since 2000, up more than 1,000%.” [33:15]
• “Gold is so old it has its own measurements.” – Stacey, [33:34]
• Physical Manifestation: Stacey brings in a family heirloom: a Queen Victoria-era coin, carried by her ancestor from England in 1896—“all her wealth in that coin.” [34:53]
• The appeal of gold in an era of volatile, speculative markets: “At a moment when there are all these new places to put money and grow money and store money, that this investment has appeal.” – Stacey, [34:01]
• Max’s skepticism: “If you’re investing in gold… you’ve got a bar of gold? …There’s so much… scamming and just, like, shadiness around the marketing of gold investments.” [34:17, 36:45]
• The overlap between gold and crypto as safe havens and signs of market anxiety:
  • “Crypto also has such similar narratives to gold. But I wonder if, like, someone’s going to take a crypto coin across the ocean to start their new life.” – Stacey, [36:22]

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Prediction Markets & Polymarket:
  • Max: “There are all these ways to bet on what’s happening. And the main way…has been to buy stocks and bonds… but there is this kind of new way which is sort of like halfway between financial services and gambling.” [03:59]
• On the Creeping Merger of Gambling and Investing:
  • Joe Weisenthal: “Every one of these platforms is going to want to be able to offer everything from sports to politics to events, to crypto to finance.” [13:17]
• On AI’s Ambiguous Impact:
  • Casey Newton: “There is no generally understood way to default to AI… There’s so much silliness around all of this.” [21:52]
  • “There are a number of software engineers who will tell you that their job right now is just a supervised AI. They’re no longer writing code, they’re just telling a box what they want it to do.” [31:39]

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------|--------------| | Prediction Markets Overview | 00:46 – 07:08| | Man-on-the-street: Gambling Views | 04:34 – 06:06| | Joe Weisenthal Interview | 07:43 – 19:22| | Discussion: Investing = Gambling? | 10:21 – 15:43| | Upside: Informed Pricing/Transparency| 16:24 – 18:16| | Insider Trading in Prediction Markets| 18:16 – 19:22| | AI at Work: Productivity & Hype | 19:49 – 32:31| | Gold: The Oldest Prediction Market | 32:43 – 36:45|

Conclusion

This episode offers a rich, nuanced discussion about how financial speculation, technology, and even centuries-old habits like investing in gold are fusing in the digital age. As prediction markets mature and AI reshapes productivity—but not without its skeptics—the line between “intelligent investing” and “betting” has grown thinner than ever. The enduring appeal of gold as a safeguard against uncertainty anchors the discussion, revealing that while technology changes, human nature may not.