
Prediction markets enter the arena & thieves get away with it?
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today. So you stole $100 million worth of crown jewels from the Louvre. Now what then?
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The NHL is cozying up with prediction markets, much to the chagrin of traditional Sportsbooks. It's Thursday, October 23rd. Let's ride.
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I know everyone's busy with work and brainstorming a Halloween costume, but it's worth a reminder that the government is still, still shut down. And yesterday, the 22nd day into the funding lapse, this government shutdown became the second longest in history, surpassing the 199596 shutdown from the Clinton administration. The odds are growing. It could become the longest ever, a record that stands at 35 days. President Trump is heading off to Asia later this week. House Republicans are staying home in their districts, and no one seems particularly eager to restart talks over expiring health care subsidies. This sticking point between the two parties that resulted in this shutdown. As GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, we have negotiated. I don't know what there is to negotiate. Kind of like me when Toby requests a ridiculous fantasy football trade.
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First of all, respond to my trade request. Second of all, it's pretty wild. Second longest in history, and we haven't really talked about it because of how little progress is being made. I mean, the Senate failed to pass the House bill for a 12th time yesterday. Tomorrow, federal workers will miss their first full paycheck. They've already missed partial paychecks. But tomorrow is the first full one for a lot of people, which could ratchet up the pressure once more. But now, I'm going to just put you on the spot here. How many days is this thing going?
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I'm going to GUESS we're going 56. We're tying Joe DiMaggio. And that's because in 50, not in 56. And 56 days from when this started, 35 days from now is Thanksgiving. And I think ahead of all the travel and flights that people are going to, TSA workers are still not going to be paid. I think the government is not going to take any chances with causing airport havoc, because if there's one thing that Americans will get frustrated with, it's not getting to their flights on time.
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So I did not put you on the spot. Clearly you were very prepared for that question. You even have the Joe Machio line lined up. But I like the way you're thinking about it.
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Learn more @Disney Campaign Manager.com that's Disney CampaignManager.com the NHL is daring to skate where no other sports league has before announcing new multi year partnerships with prediction market platforms Kalshee and Polymarket yesterday. The licensing deal will let the UPSTARTS Use the NHL's logos, team names and Stanley cup brand across their platform, so something other leagues have been hesitant to do. For instance, if you wanted to predict the winner of tonight's Chargers vs Vikings and NFL game, you would only see them referenced by their city names when you log on so as not to run afoul of licensing deals. So the NHL making the jump is a legitimizing leap for Calcium Polymarket, while for more traditional sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel and BET MGM, it's a warning shot. Remember, prediction markets let users buy and sell event contracts so financial instruments that pay out $1 if an event happens and $0 if it doesn't. They were especially popular during election season as traders and prognosticators alike turned to call she in Polymarket to get a read or make bets on who would take the White House. But the only thing Americans are more obsessed with than politics is sports, and the start of football season brought record breaking trading volume over $2 billion worth dwarfing the frenzied levels of election season. That is scary for sportsbooks because every dollar your dumb cousin wagers on kalshi is $1. That isn't going the way of DraftKings or FanDuel. Neil. Since the late September launch of Koshi's same game parlay style contracts, DraftKings stocks is down 18% and FanDuel's parent company Flutter is down 10%. To see them wooing over the NHL. These platforms are becoming a real threat to the big boys of gambling.
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Yeah, they're absolutely scared. And earlier this week they ran responded in part. DraftKings acquired Railbird Technologies. They paid $250 million for this company. It's a CFTC license exchange. It's a part of their strategy to enter the prediction market space because they are feeling extremely threatened. Their investors are a little, very scared that Kalshee and Polymarket are going to eat their lunch. So DraftKings acquired this company so they can start offering prediction markets and kind of fight back because they are getting hammered right now from the growth of Kalshi and polymarket, especially in the sports space.
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What are some of the advantages that these prediction markets have over traditional sportsbooks? They are actually not subject to the patchwork local gambling regulations that sportsbooks are. I mean, if I live in New York City, but then I travel to, you know, Washington or somewhere where sportsbook spare spending is not allowed, you cannot access your sportsbook anymore, which is for frustrating if you're a gambler. The prediction markets kind of play by a different set of rules because you are facilitating contracts between users rather than a house you bet against. They are considered financial exchanges. And so they are regulated federally by the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission. So they literally are playing by a different set of national rules than sportsbooks are, which make them a lot more accessible to everyday people. Which is why again, if you are a sportsbook one, you're mad about that because you're like, how come they get to do essentially the same thing that we're doing playing, but it's federally regulated at a national level, whereas we are subject to the whims of different states.
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Right. DraftKings and FanDuel say we filed the most paperwork you've ever seen in order to be licensed in the states that have legally allowed sports gambling. After the supreme court case in 2018, and especially in states like California and Texas, which still bar legal sports gambling. DraftKings and FanDuel and other companies cannot legally operate in Texas and California. Those are the two most populous states in the entire country. Meanwhile, Kalshi and polymarket skate in and they're like, hey, here you Go everybody. Texas and California. You can do this. I should add that polymarket is still not licensed in the United States, but it is moving toward that. They feel like they are FanDuel and DraftKings feel like they are getting an unfair shake here. And the Trump administration, even whether these this is actually allowed Kalshi it's operating in a very regulatory gray area for Trump administration has not really cracked down. Donald Trump Jr. The president's son, is it an advisor to both Polymarket and Kalshee. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of appetite in the White House or among regulators to crack down on these prediction markets, even though regular casino operators are pleading with them too.
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And then finally, it is probably something that is advantageous to you as a sports gambler, just like an everyday person to bet on these platforms versus against the House, quote unquote, where the sportsbooks are setting lines. One example I will give is that if in a football game a long pass is completed and it kind of shakes up the, you know, the calculus of the game, you can quickly go on Polymarket or Kalshee, buy an event contract of the team that maybe did the long completion of the pass and say like, hey, the odds just were swung in my favor and then other people might pile in after you and you can immediately sell that contract regardless of the outcome of the game. For versus, if you bet on a sportsbook and that happens, the sportsbook has to give you buyout odds and sometimes they can just stop it if things are moving too quickly. So you always have basically exit liquidity in these prediction markets. Versus you're at the whims of the sports books when you are betting on them. So these mid game wagers, these real time wagers are something that you could see become a lot more popular on Kalshi compared to something like a sportsbook where it's a lot more difficult to get your money out in critical junctures of the game. Moving on, important people are getting freaked out about AI killing us all again. So they wrote a letter to try and slow its progress. The more than 850 signatories of the new statement on superintelligence read like a who's who of modern tech and influence. Apple co founder Steve Wozniak, virgins Richard Branson, AI pioneer Jeffrey Hinton, former US military and security chiefs Mike Mullen and Susan Rice, and even Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. And in a show of ideological unity, their message was simple. Stop building machines that can outthink us at Least until we can be sure that they won't destroy us. The letter specifically called out threats ranging from mass unemployment and surveillance to full on civilizational collapse, urging the governments of the world to ban development of, quote, superintelligence until scientific consensus and public approval catch up. But while the letter was sounding the alarm about runaway progress towards superintelligence, behind the scenes at one of the biggest companies trying to manifest that vision, things aren't necessarily going all that well. Metta is cutting roughly 600 rolls from its superintelligence division just months after plowing insane amounts of money into building it up. The leader of Meta's AI efforts, Alexander Wang, said that the layoffs were less of a retreat and more of a tightening of ranks. By reducing the size of our team, Wang said in an internal memo, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision and each person will be more load bearing and have more scope and impact. But Neil, an interesting juxtaposition here. You have tons of notable figures crying out about slowing AI progress. Meanwhile, one of the very labs supposedly closing in on superintelligence is cutting headcount.
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Toby, I really wish you would be a little more load bearing. Everyone always wants. I've been told that a bunch in my performance reviews and I've taken it upon myself to become more load bearing here at work. I love how they just made the new guy fire all the 600 workers. Alexander Wang was brought in for $14.9 billion to to build Meta's news superintelligence team. Yes, they are framing it as trying to weed out some of the organizational bloat that has grown around this AI team. And they really just want these. They want like 50 super AI researchers who we know Zuck has been paying over $100 billion to to recruit from Apple, OpenAI and Google to build superintelligence. Because Zuckerberg thinks that Metta is not on par with its rivals. When you talk about the best AI models, often we talk about Gemini from Google or OpenAI ChatGPT. You don't often talk about Llama, which is met as model because in April it released its fourth iteration. Developers were not that impressed with it and Zuck got a little spooked. So he decided to go on this insane spending spree to bring in the best AI researchers. And he feels like, you know, the people maybe that they had already on staff or we're not up to par with this particular group that he's brought in. So he's trying to, you know, he's cut, he's Told Alexander Wang to lay off all these people. They're saying they're going to find other places at Metta for them, but it is a reorganization because they do feel like they're behind.
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Meanwhile, you have this letter that was published. It's kind of the AI Doomer versus, I mean, column, I guess. AI Boomers debate is not something that is new. It's been going on since this technology first emerged. But Doomers kind of pushed for precaution and regulation. This is not the first time. It feels like every few cycles or so we get another headline like this where a lot of people start pushing back saying we need to slow down because we are basically driving into the night with headlights we can hardly see in front of us. Is it smart? There might be a cliff in front of us, so maybe we should slow down here. And it is something that is semi reflected in the popular opinion as well. The Future of Life Institute found that only 5% of Americans support fast and unregulated AI development. So maybe this is something that you are hearing this group of people talk for the majority of people saying, I don't know if we want Zuck and Alexander Wang, you know, driving us towards superintelligence. Maybe we should take a step back and pause here. But then on the flip side, people are saying we're not even close to super intelligence. That is a word that's become a buzzword, but no one can truly define what it means. I mean, it means that you're smarter than humans, but. But right now our models are not nearly smarter than humans. Like they're quite dumb. Andre Karpath, he just went on a podcast and said that, hey, these are still models that don't think like humans. They don't distill information like we do. They're very good at memorizing stuff, but they're nowhere near actually being super intelligent. So it is fascinating to see both sides of the equation. No one wants us to plow towards superintelligence without thinking about it, but we're not really that close to begin with.
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And Andrej Karpathy is a very influential figure in modern artificial intelligence. He is one of the co founders of OpenAI and a lot of people hang on, is everywhere. So when he went on this podcast and said that, wow, these models really aren't up to snuff and we're still 10 years away from building artificial general intelligence, what Sam Altman has said we'll do by 2030 and Elon Musk has said we'll do by the Next one or two years. He's kind of pushing the brakes here. So maybe some of these concerns are a little unwarranted, according to him. All right. The Louvre reopened Wednesday for the first time since four thieves pulled off an Ocean's Eleven style heist over the weekend, taking off in broad daylight with what authorities called priceless jewels from the Napoleonic era. Except they do have a price, roughly what Juan Soto will make in his first two years with the Mets. The Paris prosecutor in charge of leading the investigation into the robbery said on Tuesday that the stolen jewels are worth an estimated $102 million, though that doesn't include their cultural value to France. This sum is indeed extremely spectacular, the prosecutor said, but it is in no way comparable to the historical damage caused by this theft. Investigators are making the number public in the hopes of persuading the robbers against breaking apart the jewels or melting them down to sell on the black market, because they'll be worth a lot less broken down than in their original form. Of course, the thieves probably won't care since the items wouldn't be able to be sold undetected unless they are separated from the museum pieces. In total, eight objects were taken from a gallery that housed the country's crown jewels, including necklaces, earrings and brooches belonging to French queens. Officials say that A team of 100 people is now investigating the heist, up from 60 previously, and their criminals remain at large. Toby, it's a race against time to find the perps before they turn over their loot to the black market. But it might not be as Easy to Launder 19th Century Lube Diamonds than you think.
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Yeah, because these things are very well documented. You can't exactly go to any reputable diamond dealer and say, hey, I got this crown here. Everyone's going to go, dude, I know what crown that is. So you obviously have to break it down. There's two parts to this. There's the gold aspect and then there's the diamond aspect. There's actually not that much gold in the pieces that they stole. So bummer for the thieves if you are the thieves, because gold's at an all time high right now, but they didn't actually steal that much gold. So a lot of the attention is turned towards diamonds and what you have to do. There's 9,000 individual gems here. So you're probably going to have to break them down, recut them, turn them into something that they weren't before. And that takes time. And then you have to go and sell them off through the black Market, there's often a rule of three that you want it to pass hands three times so it can't be traced back to you. So it's not an easy process. And the longer you sit on these jewelry, the longer you sit on these goods, the hotter things become because you do have 100 people, you know, looking into this. So that stealing this stuff was almost the easy part. Moving it is the more difficult.
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It did seem to be particularly easy because the director of the loot Louvre went in front of French lawmakers yesterday and she's probably the most wanted woman after these thieves in the entire country because she let this happen. And she acknowledged that the security situation at the Louvre was not. Well, she said it was not sufficient at all. They had one camera in this area where the thieves parked their truck, mounted lift to get into this, to get into this gallery, and that one camera was pointed in the wrong direction. So she said she even offered her resignation. But the culture minister in France said, no, we want you to keep this job. But there's a lot of heat on her and on these 100 investigators to find this before the thieves break down this jewelry. And they're trying to warn the thieves again, it's probably going to fall in deaf ears because they know all of this, that, that their loot is going to be worth a lot less than the market value. And in general, thieves rarely get more than 10% of a gem's market value for stolen goods. So whenever they sell, it's going to end up being a lot less than $102 million.
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I don't know if it's worth it. I mean, doing all that work, going through all that risk for 10%, I mean, I guess 10% of 100 million is $10 million, but I don't know. The math isn't math. And for me, we're going to take a quick break. And speaking of math, we're coming back with Neil's numbers. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky. And let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple of flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard.
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Rather have surgery performed by a junior resident or a department head?
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Is that even a question? Give me the doctor with the most practiced hands, please.
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With something as complex and significant as AI, you're probably going to want to have a seasoned pro in the room with you. Head to quest.com/brew to get started. That's quest.com/brew welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have you opening up your notes app to jot all these down for my first number. The PhD student could become an endangered species A report from the Harvard crimson found that PhD student admission slots will plummet in the school's Faculty of Arts and sciences over the next two years, a decline of 75% in the science division and about 60% in the arts and humanities. What does this look like in practice? The German department is going to lose all of its PhD student seats, and the history department's PhD class is shrinking for from 13 to 5 over the next two years. But it's not just the humanities, and it's not just Harvard. Across American higher education, PhD cohorts are drying up in the face of budget uncertainties and sweeping fiscal pressures from the Trump administration. In a survey of biology departments, 40 of 45 respondents said they had already downsized their expected PhD cohorts for the next academic year or planned on doing so, 33 of 91 astronomy and physics graduate programs said they were shrinking the number of admitted graduate students, sometimes to zero. Besides putting down demand for blazers with elbow patches, the shrinkage of PhD programs could cause the pipeline of new scientists and innovators to shrivel up. Toby, why such drastic cuts and why now?
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I mean, if you look at Harvard, they are staring down a $300 million annual endowment tax. They have $113 million operating deficit. These are a financial reality that they are grappling with. And so they have to make cuts to, you know, their academic explorations and PhD programs are what are on the chopping block right now. And so if you think about what's happening at Harvard right now and then you trickle down through all the universities who aren't Harvard. I mean Harvard is, has the biggest endowment in the world, so what must be going through the minds of other administrators at smaller schools with less financial resources. So, and it is devastating because this is where, you know, the next crop of experts come from in all of these various sciences. It's not just, you know, the liberal arts, it's astronomy, physics, the so called hard sciences that are missing an entire generation if these programs start to shrivel up and die a little bit. So it does have long winding consequences, not just at one university, but throughout all of the industries that are affected and populated by the pipeline of PhD students.
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If you got a PhD, would you put it on your Twitter profile? LinkedIn?
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Well, first of all, you would definitely call me Dr. Straight from the even if it was English, I mean, no shade to anyone, but I would be called Dr. Toby Howell regardless of what the actual degree was in.
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For my next number. Iceland is home to a lot of things. Volcanoes, Bjork, hot dogs made out of lamb. But it never had a mosquito until recently. Mosquitoes were seen in the wild last week, marking the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland. It knocks the country off the very short list of places on Earth where no mosquitoes live. A list that now includes just one place. Antarctica. The unfortunate discovery was made by a guy named Bjorn about 20 miles north of the capital Reykjavik. In a Facebook group about insects, he wrote. At dusk on October 16, I caught sight of a strange fly. I immediately suspected what was going on and quickly collected the fly. He contacted a scientist who drove to confirm Bjorn's suspicions. And together they collected three total mosquitoes, which is an incredible feat in of itself because I've never seemed to land a blow on those buggers. Experts didn't seem too surprised that a mosquito would eventually turn up in Iceland. Yes, mosquitoes do thrive in warmer, humid environments. But they've also made a comfy living on Iceland's frigid neighbors, Norway, Denmark, Scotland and Greenland. The species that was found on Iceland is quite resistant to cold. The going theory is that it hitched a ride on a ship or a container. As for global warming's role, Iceland is warming at a brisk Pace four times faster than the rest of the Northern hemisphere. And that heating does create a more hospitable environment for insects. But scientists warn there's not enough data to explicitly link climate change and the discovery of mosquitoes on Iceland. They simply may have been fed up with all their friends talking about how they had such a good time biking around the island and finally decided to pay a visit.
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I just love that he called the mosquito a strange looking fly. As someone being from Florida, mosquitoes are just the most banal thing. You see them every single day. So to call that something quite out of the ordinary is exciting. Also the end of one of the great trivia questions of our age of like, we're the only two places on Earth where mosquitoes have never been found. Iceland Falls. But yeah, we are entering what a lot of scientists call the mosquito age. As the planet warms, mosquitoes are going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries because they flourish in hot, in humid conditions. So it kind of a little bit alarming to see them pop in a place that you don't necessarily see before. But these conditions are becoming more frequent and more intense, so it might happen more than you think.
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And I'm about to pour my entire net worth into Icelandic bug spray.
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Oh, smart, smart.
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Okay, for my final number, speaking of Florida, Florida removed three times as many Burmese pythons from the Everglades this summer than they did last summer. Thanks to an innovative partnership with a leather company company. This July, 748 pythons were extracted, compared to 235 last July. A major boost for Florida's long standing battle against the giant snakes. Confused? Yeah. Here's a little background for those of you not from Florida on what this is all about. Toby told me every Floridian knows this story, but my New England but sure hasn't. So back in 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed a breeding facility for invasive Burmese pythons, releasing them into the wild where they bred like pythons. Meanwhile, more people began importing the snakes from Southeast Asia, then letting them loose in swamps when they inevitably got too big for their houses. Compounding the problem, since 2013, Florida has held an annual python challenge that offered amateur python hunters a prize to bag as many snakes as possible in 10 days. But that only moved the needle so much. This year though, officials made what appears to be a game changing decision. They partnered with Inversa Leathers, a company that turns invasive species into fashion items like wallets, belts, dresses and more. Through the public private partnership. And Versa is buying the Python skins from the hunters, creating a more robust market for snakes and incentivizing more python hunting. Toby, now I kind of understand why you are the way you are.
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I mean, I'm just as scared of the Everglades and pythons and the gators down there as anyone. But yes, it is true that a lot of Floridians know that the python problem in the Everglades is a major issue. These things are big too, because this is not necessarily their natural habitat. There is pictures of them eating alligators like they are legitimately large creatures here. But the thing that I thought about when I heard about inversely getting into the game and incentivizing these python killings is the cobra effect that happened in British India where British colonial officials wanted were offering bounties for every dead cobra because they had the same issue. They wanted these deadly snakes to be their population to be controlled, which led to locals breeding cobras and then killing them for to reap the reward. So I wonder if this sort of perverse incentive is going to be created by creating a marketplace. Like if the incentives become too high, then people might start, you know, breeding these pythons themselves. So fascinating to see how certain incentives can change and adapt people's habits. And what she's fascinating to see how these incentives can incentivize behavior and lead to either more python killings or maybe potential more pythons being released into the wild. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Tesla reported earnings yesterday and there was some good news and some bad news. First, the good the car company snapped its revenue losing streak this quarter reporting 12% growth after back to back declines. But the bad news is that profits plunged as AI&R and D spending ballooned. The company missed Wall street earnings estimates, setting shares down nearly 5% in after hours tradings. More bad news. Much of the quarter's sales were pulled forward by the expiration of US EV tax credits. But the good news is Tesla's energy division quietly became a major growth engine, now making up a quarter of the company's revenue. As always, Musk's focus was on robotics, AI and quote, futuristic visions which left investors uneasy about the company's near term roadmap. But one last piece of good news, Tesla is not being valued on its near term financial performance as a car company. So these results don't matter as long as you trust Elon's futuristic vision.
C
So I listened to the Tesla call. Elon Musk said nothing about demand for the company's EVs and anything about the federal tax credit expiring in September. There is zero mention of the cybertruck, nothing about tariffs on auto parts, nothing about what things look like for the fourth quarter in terms of cars. What he did say was Optimus the robot will be an incredible surgeon. You can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care. So Elon Musk is looking years into the future, but also everyone is looking toward November6, which is when this pay vote on Elon Musk's compensation package, which could lead him to become the world's first trillionaire, will be held. Elon Musk over the weekend and also yesterday said reiterated that if he didn't get this pay package, he was out from Tesla because he has all these grand visions about AI and robo taxis and Optimus performing incredible surgery. But if he doesn't get this pay package, which could be worth up to $1 trillion, then he's gone. So we'll see that that November 6th is going to be hugely pivotal for the future of this company. Finally, they're getting another league of their own. So this week, the new women's pro baseball league announced the four cities that will host teams for the inaugural season. New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Bringing the first US women's professional baseball league in more than 75 years. Closer to reality, the WPBL was announced last year and held tryouts for more than 600 players at Nationals park in D.C. including former Little League World Series phenom Monet Davis. And who threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Davis during tryouts. 97 year old Mabel Blair, a star of the first women's baseball league in the US The All American Girls Professional Baseball League and a big inspiration for the movie A League of Their Own.
A
Yeah, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco. The big four teams of this first new league. It is interesting, I was looking at the Twitter announcements of these teams and Boston was by far the most shared, most, you know, liked, most common on. They're the most pumped for it. But it is smart from this league because they're just going after the four biggest markets in the MLB as well and just saying, hey, there's clearly demand there. Let's go to these places. But I'm excited for this, honestly, because I remember when, you know, Mode a Davis was mowing people down at the Little League World Series, like there are girls who play baseball growing up and then they inevitably transition to softball because there's not necessarily the ecosystem or the architecture to support baseball. Beyond a certain level. And so why not? I mean, last time we had this was back in World War II era. That was maybe something that was driven more by the necessity. This is more driven by the boom in women's sports right now. So I'm excited to see this league kind of come online and mature and see what these people can do.
C
That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Thursday. If you have any feedback on today's episode, send a note to Morning Brew daily at Morning Bukom. Let's roll the credits. Credits Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is gone. Python Hutton. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Episode Title: Kalshi is Scaring DraftKings & How Do You Sell $102M of Louvre Loot?
Date: October 23, 2025
Hosts: Neal Freyman and Toby Howell
In this engaging episode, Neal and Toby tackle three high-stakes, newsworthy topics: the shake-up prediction markets are causing for traditional U.S. sportsbooks (namely DraftKings and FanDuel); the hurdles and intrigue of fencing $102M in stolen French crown jewels; and the latest tremors in the AI arms race as Meta pivots its superintelligence ambitions amid a broader AI “doomer” backlash. The hosts deliver their signature banter, sharp analysis, and a few memorable numbers you’ll want to jot down.
“I think the government is not going to take any chances with causing airport havoc, because if there's one thing that Americans will get frustrated with, it's not getting to their flights on time.” (Neal, 02:21)
“They are considered financial exchanges. And so they are regulated federally by the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission. So they literally are playing by a different set of national rules than sportsbooks are.” (Toby, 05:47)
“You always have basically exit liquidity in these prediction markets. Versus you're at the whims of the sportsbooks when you are betting on them.” (Toby, 07:53)
“Stop building machines that can outthink us at least until we can be sure that they won't destroy us.” (Toby, 09:01)
“Fewer conversations will be required to make a decision and each person will be more load bearing and have more scope and impact.” (Alexander Wang memo, as paraphrased by Toby, 10:38)
“Right now, our models are not nearly smarter than humans. Like they're quite dumb… These are still models that don't think like humans… nowhere near actually being super intelligent.” (Toby, 12:07–13:06)
“There's 9,000 individual gems here. So you're probably going to have to break them down, recut them, turn them into something that they weren't before. And that takes time.” (Toby, 15:20)
“She acknowledged that the security situation at the Louvre was not… sufficient at all. They had one camera in this area where the thieves parked their truck, mounted lift to get into this… and that one camera was pointed in the wrong direction.” (Neal, 16:20)
“PhD cohorts are drying up in the face of budget uncertainties and sweeping fiscal pressures…” (Neal, 19:44)
“Mosquitoes were seen in the wild last week, marking the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland.” (Neal, 21:57)
“They partnered with Inversa Leathers, a company that turns invasive species into fashion items like wallets, belts, dresses and more.” (Neal, 25:22)
“Optimus the robot will be an incredible surgeon. You can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care.” (Neal, quoting Musk, 28:24)
On Prediction Markets vs. Sportsbooks:
"Every dollar your dumb cousin wagers on Kalshi is $1 that isn’t going the way of DraftKings or FanDuel.”
— Neal, 04:12
On the Louvre Heist:
“Stealing this stuff was almost the easy part. Moving it is the more difficult.”
— Toby, 16:15
On Superintelligence Panic vs. Reality:
“No one wants us to plow towards superintelligence without thinking about it, but we're not really that close to begin with.”
— Toby, 13:24
On Harvard’s PhD Cuts:
“Across American higher education, PhD cohorts are drying up in the face of budget uncertainties and sweeping fiscal pressures from the Trump administration…”
— Neal, 20:33
On Iceland’s First Mosquito:
“The unfortunate discovery was made by a guy named Bjorn about 20 miles north of the capital Reykjavik. In a Facebook group about insects, he wrote, ‘At dusk on October 16, I caught sight of a strange fly. I immediately suspected what was going on and quickly collected the fly.’”
— Neal, 22:00
The episode illuminates the mounting disruption prediction markets pose to the gambling industry, the practical challenges of profiting from high-profile art theft, and the growing unease in both the tech and academic world about sustainability and the pace of change. Neal and Toby keep it lively, grounded, and accessible—a quintessential Morning Brew Daily start to your day.