00:01:23.640I can confirm that that is how Bridget processes things, and in the absence of recording Tanyodi episodes, a lot of that information has been processed at me.
00:01:45.380It's been a couple months since we were regularly on the air.
00:01:47.920And so, Bridget, what is this special occasion that brings us to listeners at the moment?
00:01:54.080Ironically, this special occasion is a little bit of a vacation because we are podcasting from the Bahamas, specifically Bahamar Grand Hyatt.
00:02:03.560They invited us here to use their beautiful state-of-the-art podcast studio.
00:02:08.800We're here with not only producer Mike, but also engineer Bree, who is an A.V. whiz and genius.
00:02:16.180I'm a little bit picky about my podcast setup.
00:02:19.280I podcast from a home studio that I have it just the way I like it.
00:04:34.860Yeah, she said that that's how they socialize with each other
00:04:38.420is with, like, little flamingo disputes.
00:04:40.480Which, honestly, me too. I identified with the flamingos in that regard.
00:04:44.920So, as much fun as we are having here at Bahamar, what I want to talk about today does kind of dovetail into some not-so-fun stuff.
00:04:56.160Quick trigger warning on this one, because we're talking a little bit about the Lindsay Clancy trial.
00:05:00.800And this trial is pretty grim. In fact, it's one of the reasons why it hasn't really made it across my desk, just because I have a sense of what the trial is about.
00:05:09.720I wouldn't say that I'm avoiding it or ignoring it, but knowing that the subject matter is so grim, I have intentionally not really kind of latched on to it, even though I recognize that it's all over social media.
00:05:25.400I have not. I mean, like you, I was aware that this was going on, but it wasn't the sort of story that I really wanted to delve into.
00:05:34.900Like it just seemed quite tragic, actually. But in the past, I guess, week or two, as the trial wrapped up and the jury started deliberating, I really saw an uptick in the amount of news about it that I was encountering in the various feeds that I look at.
00:05:54.040And boy, what a tragedy. And I also didn't really appreciate some of the bigger aspects to it, I guess, or like ways in which it was more than just a story about one particular family's tragedy, but but actually does have like pretty wide ranging implications.
00:06:13.200And so I guess before we get into that, Bridget, could you give us a quick recap of what the trial was about?
00:06:18.860Yes. So Lindsay Clancy, she strangled her three young children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, before a suicide attempt. That suicide attempt left her paralyzed. So she's currently paralyzed from the waist down.
00:06:37.620Her defense is that she suffered from postpartum depression and psychosis,
00:06:42.220so that she was misdiagnosed and not properly medicated,
00:06:45.060so that she should not be held criminally responsible.
00:06:48.200The prosecution says that she deliberately killed her children
00:06:51.280and should be held criminally responsible.
00:06:54.380The trial has really galvanized people, especially women.
00:06:58.780I want to be clear that it is very much ongoing.
00:07:01.560At the time that we are sitting down to talk about this, September 5th,
00:07:04.640The latest is that there was a mistrial because of one juror.
00:07:08.440But the trial isn't actually what I really want to talk about today.
00:07:13.900What I want to talk about today and why I feel that it's a story that is sort of a there
00:07:17.920are no girls on the Internet story, beyond it being something that's really galvanized
00:07:21.700social media, is because of a controversy that I saw about it just this morning.
00:07:28.640I've had two different people who are also podcasters text me about this.
00:07:31.980That's how kind of on my radar it has been.
00:07:34.640I want to do something that I almost never do, and that is talk crap about a fellow podcaster.
00:09:24.020So that strikes me as a very thoughtful take on the case that really sort of takes the time to deal with the sort of gravity of what we're talking about.
00:09:35.120I like that that post is grounded in the reality that we are talking about real life dead babies.
00:09:42.260You know, it's a very serious, grim topic.
00:09:45.080We're also talking about these, as you said, these issues that have importance outside of this specific trial, things like postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, getting into issues of women really not being taken seriously when we talk about our issues, medical neglect, all of these very serious issues.
00:10:04.980I really appreciate that her post names them. However, after she posts that, when they declare a mistrial, she makes another post. And this is the caption. The judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy trial. On at Polymarket, it was predicted the verdict would be not guilty. Are you surprised? Hashtag Polymarket partner.
00:10:31.640So if you don't get what's happening here, after making this like long, thoughtful post about all the nuance and this and that, how serious this is, Amanda from the Not Skinny, Not Fat podcast posted a sponsored ad by the prediction markets betting platform, Polymarket, encouraging people to essentially put their real money on the prediction that she would be found.
00:11:01.640not guilty so that's what polymarket is and when i saw this i mean i i would say i i almost
00:11:10.940experienced real nausea what are your thoughts producer mike it's almost like whiplash that
00:11:16.900she could write that long thoughtful compassionate piece and then shortly thereafter post this
00:11:26.200essentially ad on instagram it just really feels at least tasteless arguably probably like kind of
00:11:35.060cruel and callous uh to be trying to turn this terrible story that like not just about you know
00:11:44.520the the victims weren't just those kids it sounds like lindsey clancy herself like really suffered
00:11:49.460the husband's life will never be the same uh probably many other people's lives an entire
00:11:54.540Family and community. Yeah. To use that as like engagement bait feels really sad. And it just feels really crass. And I guess there are, you know, there's always been questions about journalism's relationship to terrible tragedies and writing about them.
00:12:12.660But this feels like it's just really pushing that envelope even further of inviting the audience to engage with the tragedy, not just engage with it, but like try to financially benefit from it for like fun and profit.
00:12:26.800It feels icky. It's not like this is totally new, right? Like maybe this is a very visible display of the way that these prediction markets are being used to exploit tragedies. But it's not super new, right? There are other examples and people have been warning about this, right?
00:12:51.920Yeah, this is not at all new. And, you know, back in April, Forbes, the publication, they put a prediction widget on a story about eight children who were murdered.
00:13:04.300And again, theirs is a little bit different because we're talking about digital tokens in that Forbes story, not real money. But they put a prediction widget where people could bet digital tokens in the Forbes universe or whatever on whether or not Congress would pass gun safety legislation on this story about eight Black children who were murdered.
00:13:25.580And I remember when I saw that, I was like, oh, this really mirrors, you know, Polymarket and other betting and prediction apps where people are encouraged to bet on real world tragedy.
00:13:39.920So that specific piece of it, people being encouraged to use prediction markets to bet on real world tragedies and gruesome stuff, that's not at all new, right?
00:13:49.680In fact, in February 2026, Senator Adam Schiff and a bunch of other senators sent a letter to the CFTC specifically warning about this, specifically saying that, hey, we are worried that prediction markets are encouraging people to bet on things like, quote, war, terrorism, assassination and other matters of human suffering and death.
00:14:11.880And there are a couple of examples that they shouted out. One of them was that Polymarket had a market originally titled, quote, Artemis 2 explodes, question mark. So basically betting on whether an explosion might happen on the NASA Artemis lunar mission. Do you remember that?
00:14:32.020I do remember that mission. I didn't know that they had a market betting on whether it would explode and kill everyone on board. I guess, of course, they did. But my God.
00:14:42.480So eventually that market was renamed and then ultimately withdrawn. But that was one of the markets that the senators were like, we don't know about that. Another one was Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Adam Schiff's letter highlighted that Polymarket allowed people to wager on whether Russian forces would capture specific Ukrainian towns and cities.
00:15:02.400In other words, that means that traders could essentially financially profit from correctly predicting the progress of Russians' invasion.
00:15:10.720The L.A. wildfires, the senators pointed to polymarket markets that were created during the 2025 L.A. wildfires,
00:15:17.660where people could wager on how many acres would burn, whether fires would spread to neighboring counties, and when the fires would be contained.
00:15:25.800More than $1 million was ultimately wagered across wildfire-related markets.
00:15:30.520This is according to an L.A. Times investigation.
00:15:33.180Twenty nine people died in those fires, by the way.
00:15:35.420So this is, you know, not just betting on property destruction or, you know, damage,
00:15:42.640but also talking about something that killed almost 30 people.
00:15:47.280And to be clear, the argument is not just that this is tasteless or in poor taste or
00:22:58.580gauging in like practices like prediction betting, I guess, where, you know, maybe some cases there really aren't any moral challenges, but it does kind of open the door to like greasing the wheels to do it in situations where it is increasingly fraught.
00:23:18.920You know, but, you know, we're not here to morally judge people, or at least I'm not.
00:23:43.260But what you are in the business of doing is talking about women and the Internet.
00:23:47.860And so why do you think it is that in these examples we're talking about specifically women in like collaborative partnership with prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, especially in this context when so many other advertisers are not reaching out and trying to partner with women in podcasting?
00:24:10.800Because the Clancy trial has been such a hot conversation with women specifically. If you look on TikTok, it is clear to me that this trial has really found a friction point with women.
00:24:23.320If I were to be asked why that is, I would say like, I think right now a lot of women are understandably not feeling supported, not feeling heard. And there's something about this trial that has like hit a wound about that. And so that's why it's really taken off with women specifically.
00:24:41.380But I think that the conversation around Polymarket and how it has been engaging in this trial specifically really confirms what I already kind of sniffed out in the air, which is that prediction betting apps like Polymarket are targeting women hard.0.99
00:25:00.120And I don't really come on this podcast and tell people what to do, but sisters, we must shut this shit down.1.00
00:25:23.840Even before they announced the mistrial, people were already betting on the outcome of the Clancy trial.
00:25:29.700Polymarket opened a market August 18th asking whether or not Clancy would be convicted of murder by the end of the year.
00:25:35.600Polymarket also attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading volume on the trial.
00:25:41.900The vast majority of that volume was on whether or not she would be convicted this year.
00:25:46.260Polymarket also offered a separate market on whether Clancy would be convicted of manslaughter.
00:25:51.780The trial was televised, so the developments in the courtroom essentially became like a real-world market-moving data point.
00:26:00.780As the jury was reporting that it was deadlocked, the price of a contract paying out on whether she was going to be convicted this year fell sharply.
00:26:09.140By the time of the mistrial, traitors were pricing a conviction by the end of 2026 as increasingly unlikely.
00:26:14.480So, again, because the trial was on TV, it basically was just like a real time market of what was going to happen.
00:26:22.960And we were talking earlier when we were in the green room about, you know, you were like, oh, it's so weird that the trial was televised. Is that why you think there are so many conspiracy theories and so much social media content? And I was like, you know, when we were talking about the PDD trial, I made a point that because it was not televised, that allowed for like AI slop channels on YouTube to just pump out conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about what happened at the trial, even though it didn't happen.
00:26:49.380And so we'll be like, Prince testified at the trial, even though Prince has been dead for years.
00:26:53.700And I was like, well, it's because the trial wasn't televised, they were able to do this.
00:27:21.740Maybe people are just going to latch onto the trial and create conspiracies and project fan fiction onto it, no matter whether it's televised or not.
00:27:34.460And, you know, I've said this on the podcast before.
00:27:37.440I got got by the Johnny Depp defamation Amber Heard trial. That trial was famously televised.
00:27:46.180And I got got by that. Like I was a low information person about the trial. I saw so many
00:27:52.580TikToks from the trial that I feel like I was very easily led to feel a kind of way about it.
00:27:59.500And then when I actually took the time to research it myself, I was like, all of that misled me.
00:28:04.100And so I would have thought that trials being televised would have been protective from people being so easily manipulated. I don't know. Now it's like I think anything is right for people being manipulated at this point.
00:28:17.640Yeah. I mean, it is worth reflecting on that, that the environment for misinformation and manipulation is just so rife and fertile that like maybe it is irrelevant whether actual real video footage exists or not. That's a grim thought.
00:28:33.060And I think that bit about the trial, the real-time trial being on television and thus turning into sort of a in-real-time market prediction, there's something about that.
00:28:44.460Because I, for whatever reason, maybe I'm a masochist, I do follow Polymarket on social media.
00:28:50.520And I have noticed a change in the way that they publicly post where I think that they are almost trying to get people to think of Polymarket as a news source.
00:29:01.180I think proponents of these prediction markets do hold up the markets as like a valuable source of information, like open source information about what might happen.
00:29:13.280You know, I think the theory is that these markets can act like crowdsourced information that decision makers can look to to help guide their understanding of what's going to happen.
00:29:42.600Just in, the internet declares Kanye West uncanceled after a Chicago concert brings out Travis Scott, Kid Cudi, Chief Keef, Young Thug and more.
00:29:51.720And then the next tweet from that is, there's a 28% chance that Ye performs in Russia.
00:29:56.020So I just think that something is going on where exactly as you said, they want Polymarket to be treated as just a source of information.
00:30:06.780Here's what the Internet is saying about X, Y, Z.
00:30:09.700You know, here's another one. Breaking.
00:30:11.420State Department warns Americans not to travel to Libya for any reason, advising those who go anyway to prepare a will, leave DNA samples and make plans for possible kidnapping or death.
00:30:26.020Why are they putting all caps breaking and a colon in front of anything when they're not a news site?
00:30:31.100They're trying to change the cultural attitude around how we think of polymarket and and like the role that it occupies in our media landscape.
00:30:42.700It feels like an invitation to participate in the news as it unfolds, like sort of like a mashup of real crime and something that TV shows do sometimes like Family Guy does this sometimes where they're like, if you want Brian to push Peter down the stairs, text this.
00:31:05.060If you want him to run into the kitchen, text this other thing, like as if you, the viewer, are able to participate in and sometimes influence the outcomes of events like that's what it feels like.
00:31:19.480Yes. And to bring it back to the Lindsay Clancy trial, Polymarket is not just hosting that market of whether or not she's going to be convicted this year.
00:31:26.120It's actively providing betters with analysis on the trial to make them feel like exactly what you just described is going on.
00:31:33.420Right. Their Polymarket's AI generated market context discussed the jury deadlock, reported about the jury split, included testimony concerning postpartum psychosis, the judge's instructions and the possibility of a mistrial as information relevant to the market price.
00:31:49.460So it's basically saying, here's all this context. We're reporting all of this context to help you understand the market price.
00:31:56.180Now, if you ask Polymarket, they'll say, oh, all of this is just experimental, right? And says that this AI-generated analysis that it provides does not determine how markets resolve. But that blurriness that you described about, are you a news site? Are you an analysis site? Are you a gambling site? Like, are you a social, like, what are you? That fuzziness and blurriness was very much on display with how Polymarket handled the Lindsey Clancy trial.
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00:34:04.420let's get right back into it notably after the mistrial the betting did not simply disappear
00:34:18.660right so you might think okay they got a mistrial case closed no polymarket is now offering a
00:34:23.680contract on whether clancy will be convicted by the end of next year 2027 effectively giving
00:34:29.520traders a way to bet on the outcome of a possible retrial, which, to be clear, we don't know if a
00:34:34.640retrial is coming. The prosecutors have said that they don't know if that's going to be in the cards
00:34:38.720yet right now. And so now you have Polymarket's own market analysis pointing better towards what
00:34:44.840is going to happen next in this actual criminal case. Its AI-generated context identifies the
00:34:51.060mistrial, prosecutors' pending decision about whether to retry Clancy, and an upcoming court
00:34:56.380hearing as new developments that could potentially affect the market. And as if all of this is not
00:35:02.060disturbing and gruesome enough, this structure turns this tragedy into a stream of financially
00:35:08.900relevant information because they have turned it into a betting market. Things like psychiatric
00:35:14.460testimony, even psychiatric testimony that's pretty intimate and grim. You know, like we're
00:35:20.260seeing texts from Lindsay to her family about her mental state, all of that. Jury deliberations,
00:35:26.380reports of a deadlock all of this stuff and potentially the jury's next verdict it just
00:35:32.000becomes part of somebody's sort of financial context for whether or not they're going to
00:35:39.420place this bet that they would financially benefit from it is like truly just gruesome stuff
00:35:44.720i think part of what makes it feel so bad is the reduction that happens there like reducing all of
00:35:52.040this complexity and nuance into just betting on an outcome that's going to be yes or no right like
00:35:57.600at the top of this we talked about all the the reasons that this case does have bigger implications
00:36:03.440and uh has captured people's attention you know like discussions of postpartum psychosis that's
00:36:10.300something that i didn't really know a whole lot about before this i did a little research into it
00:36:14.480before this case and it's like it's a very real thing it's a very established thing uh you know
00:36:19.140So it is described by reputable authoritative sources as a medical emergency that affects somewhere between point one and three women who give birth per one thousand.
00:36:33.680So it's like not vanishingly small and and it's just really complex and scary.
00:36:40.620And there's so many other angles like that where there's a lot of nuance and things that could be discussed to make us better, right, to, like, leverage everybody's interest in this story to help us understand more and do a better job providing for women who are in these circumstances where they are pushed into psychosis, if that's what happened.
00:37:07.840And I'm not saying that's what happened here.
00:37:40.020I'm not dismissing that, but like I expect it, you know, disappointed but not surprised.0.66
00:37:44.020When you are making content and media for women to reduce something that impacts women, that women are there's a stigma around to flatten that into a just a prediction market, like you said, is, I think, particularly awful.
00:37:59.020awful. And again, we're talking about people buying and selling contracts whose value depends
00:38:05.620on whether a woman whose defense centered around postpartum psychosis and depression, whether or0.85
00:38:11.120not she'll be convicted of strangling her three children to death, is crazy. I'm sorry. It's just
00:38:16.240like, it's like not a sign of a wealth society. And I guess we get signs that we don't live in a
00:38:21.240wealth society every day. But something about this one, it's just bad. And it's not just that
00:38:26.380one post when it comes to Dear Media. This host of the Not Skinny, Not Fat podcast is taking a lot
00:38:32.800of heat personally because she posted that sponsored post on her Instagram. But Dear Media,0.96
00:38:38.460the company that publishes her podcast, they actually have a branded podcast with Polymarket
00:38:44.100called What Are the Odds? It describes itself as a weekly pop culture podcast from Dear Media
00:38:49.720and Polymarket, where your favorite hosts breaks down what the world thinks about the stories
00:38:54.880everyone's talking about, where hosts tap into the world of polymarket to explore the biggest
00:38:59.220questions in culture, from celebrity relationships and viral moments to award shows,
00:39:03.920blockbuster movies, and internet drama. Each week, hosts will react in real time to what
00:39:08.460people are predicting, unpacked why certain takes are getting traction, and share their own
00:39:12.720unfiltered opinions along the way. Because it's not just about what's happening,
00:39:17.140it's about what people think happens next. And that'll leave you asking, what are the odds?
00:39:21.820So it's basically an advertisement for betting markets tailor-made for the girls, and that is why we have to talk about it.0.99
00:39:32.480Yeah. So, Bridget, let's talk about it.
00:39:36.560Why this focus on women by prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi?
00:39:43.340Are there others? Are they like the two that I know?
00:39:45.820Those are the two big ones. There are others.
00:39:47.800Yeah. One thing to know about Kalshi is that it is. I'll probably say this a couple of times during our recording. Kalshi is a federally designated contract market regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission or the CFTC. They would be 100 percent sending me a cease and desist if I did not say that because they are incredibly litigious. I know people that they have sent letters to and I do not want to be one of those people. That is one difference that they that Kalshi really likes to highlight is that they are regulated by the CFTC.
00:40:16.940I will give them that like when I first was researching for this episode, one big piece of my research was that these prediction markets are largely unregulated.
00:40:27.280That's not completely true. Like it feels true. And I think it's true enough to say it and have it have not have it not be a lie.
00:40:33.980But there is some regulation. And I think like we should be honest about that.
00:40:38.000Yeah. And I don't know the ins and outs of this particular industry, but I know that there are many others where a funny inversion happens where the industry will simultaneously be heavily regulated, but in a way where the regulations are set up to allow the companies to do exactly what they want.
00:41:31.580So bringing it back to women in prediction markets, what is the deal? Why the focus here?1.00
00:41:37.780Great question. So in general, for most of the recent U.S. sports betting boom, the stereotypical consumer is probably exactly who you're thinking, right?
00:41:46.740It's young men. Sports books have built much of their marketing around things like fantasy statistics, sports fandoms, parlays, promotional bets, and an overwhelmingly male sports dambling culture.
00:41:59.660And to be clear, that more or less is still holding true today.
00:42:04.480Women remain considerably less likely than men to place any kind of sports bet.
00:42:09.160A February 2026 Sacred Heart University Great Blue Research National Survey of 1,500 U.S. adults
00:42:15.080found that 29% of women reported placing a sports bet during the previous year compared with 44.3% of men.
00:42:23.560What an incredibly large proportion of men are regularly placing sports bets.
00:42:29.660Yo, you and I will like go out and it'll be just dudes on their phone doing sports bets like at the bar.
00:42:37.900At the bar last night, we met some dudes who were doing that.
00:42:42.380They'd come to the Bahamas with their friends, presumably, you know, spent a fair amount of money on airfare coming to the resort.
00:42:50.880They're surrounded by beautiful settings, beautiful women, beautiful men, all kind of beautiful people.
00:42:58.640everybody here is hot yeah and yet they're on their phones placing sports bets at the bar at
00:43:05.100like 11 p.m what are you doing they were very nice we were chatting with them i don't want to
00:43:09.260be rude i could not understand it i could not understand it like it is so foreign to me we
00:43:15.340were actually talking about this a little bit too because as i think the listeners have probably
00:43:19.060picked up by now i am not somebody who is a stranger to vice i am actually a big appreciator
00:43:26.880of vice whether it's drug or drink or sex i get i understand vice is something that i understand
00:43:33.980very well the one vice that like just does not compute gambling even for vices that i don't have
00:43:41.740i couldn't like appreciate them and like i'll i'll try them out about okay i can see why this
00:43:46.260moves people gambling is like it's just like something in me i don't i don't have part of
00:43:50.520me wishes i did because when we walk through casinos they look like they're having a great
00:43:53.740time and i i wish that i could sit down and be like yeah this is great but it's not in me i mean
00:43:58.800you're probably financially better off for it i mean i'm throwing money away on other kinds of0.97
00:44:03.340like again i'm not i'm not trying to make any kind of like moral equivalency i waste stupid0.89
00:44:08.500amounts of money on pure vice bullshit every day so i might don't don't worry i'm not i'm not i'm
00:44:15.220not making smart financial decisions here don't worry if that if that was your worry i'm not don't
00:44:19.140But it does feel particularly fraught when there are whole industries set up around these vices and just like their incentives are to keep people doing it, perhaps at levels that they otherwise wouldn't if they were just left to their own devices.
00:44:36.940Yes. And so that's kind of really what's going on.
00:44:39.100That gap between women and men when it comes to interest in use and gambling is commercially significant.
00:44:47.040Dambling and prediction markets, which are a totally separate thing.
00:44:50.240And I think this is what these companies are saying, that because right now it is young men who are mostly doing this stuff, they see that as a big commercial opportunity.
00:45:01.120Because women represent this huge population of potential customers who are not adopting conventional sports betting at the same rates as men.
00:45:10.800And prediction market companies are explicitly trying to change that right now.
00:45:15.600Kalshi's chief communications officer told The Atlantic in April that the proportion of Kalshi account holders who were women has risen from 13% to 26% in 10 months.
00:45:25.060Now, that number comes straight from Kalshi.
00:45:27.320When asked why they wanted to get more women using the platform, she gave a very clear, straightforward answer.
00:45:33.560She said, women are half the population and we want to get more women involved in this.
00:45:38.320And this is something that I have to kind of stop on because I hate it so much.
00:45:42.940it's almost like framing this as being about equality you know what i'm saying where it's0.88
00:45:49.260like oh well why are we going after women because of equality you know we want like women are half
00:45:56.820the population shouldn't they be more represented and losing their money to scams like men and to
00:46:02.940be clear that doubling of women using their app it happened during a time when there was a lot of
00:46:10.000advertising and promotion, encouraging women to do so. It's not like that just came about
00:46:15.240naturally and organically. What did some of those promotions and marketing look like?
00:46:23.720Yeah, so that piece I referenced in The Atlantic, it really did a good job of calling out this kind
00:46:29.440of striking new vibe of them trying to sell prediction markets aimed at women that I am
00:46:36.360personally seeing all over my social media feed. So instead of the conventional sports book imagery,
00:46:42.840they're using things like get ready with me videos or makeup videos or, you know, women
00:46:49.400drinking iced coffee and matcha, which funny, I did not know that iced beverages, iced caffeinated
00:46:55.520beverages were something that were apparently associated with women. I love an iced coffee. I
00:47:00.580drink iced coffee year round. I had, you know, I will drink it in the dead of winter. I didn't know
00:47:05.440that was associated with women until researching this.
00:47:34.420iced coffee is fine but these are just my personal preferences i feel like you think you're better
00:47:39.440than me because you drink hot black coffee and when we go to get coffee you'll be like one hot
00:47:44.700black coffee and then i can tell i can sense that you turn to me and you're like and then whatever
00:47:49.420complicated little thing this one's gonna order like you're having like a secret like bond with
00:47:56.000the barista about how annoying my iced coffee order is about to be okay well a lot of that is
00:48:01.080happening in your head okay okay i'm just trying to order my coffee and yeah i do part of the
00:48:08.340appeal is the simplicity you know i don't want to have a whole complicated discussion in the morning
00:48:13.040i just want to have my coffee the times where we've gotten coffee together though you will
00:48:19.000take a sip of my iced vanilla latte or whatever you're not you're not turning down sips you're
00:48:25.200not turning down sips yeah it's good you know people can like it people can do all kinds of
00:48:29.960things nobody's being harmed by a frou-frou coffee order fine so yeah it's all of these
00:48:38.300iced coffees and you know women talking about pop culture and gossip and i guess i would i would
00:48:44.820call it sort of female coded meme language like i can i can i can really tell that they're going
00:48:52.260for something gendered and then there's this vibe of women turning a compliment about women so like
00:48:59.740Something that I think is to be true about women is that we are very intuitive and that we, like, know things.
00:49:05.300And so highlighting that as a reason to turn that women's intuition into money and sort of this all being like a smart kind of financial decision.0.91
00:51:08.500Kalshi even operated a women-focused social media account called Kalshi Girls.
00:51:13.580And Polymarket has also experimented with female-oriented social media branding.
00:51:18.300So, again, this is not just putting a woman into a gambling commercial or something like that. It's really sort of culturally representing what betting is supposed to feel like for women.
00:51:32.780This is a total non sequitur, but thinking about that throwaway gag from the show Community when Shirley has a pregnancy test and the branding is, you know, girl.
00:51:42.120Yeah. And Jeff's like, are they really branding pregnancy tests toward black women?
00:51:45.900yeah it has that same feel yeah it does it really does so it's not like bet on the chiefs or bet on
00:51:54.400this or bet on that it's girl you're already an expert in this why don't you make money from the
00:51:59.900fact that you're always right i saw alex cooper the host of call her daddy she did a ad read that
00:52:08.320was very similar for a betting app and she said the ad was basically you know are you the friend
00:52:15.820in the group chat that is always right are you the friend who can just sense it when Taylor Swift's
00:52:20.460gonna drop a new album or whatever whatever why don't you make money from that I will give them
00:52:25.320it's like very clever marketing it is turning a cultural attitude about women that women are
00:52:33.460knowledgeable and intuitive into this pitch. It's like, well, why not make, like, you're intuitive
00:52:38.360and you know things. Girl, why don't you make money off of that? That'd be a really savvy
00:52:42.020financial play. And this is my least favorite thing. They're using what I like to call girl
00:52:48.840math logic. You might not know girl math. I hate it. Basically, it's this concept of if you buy a1.00
00:52:58.500pair of shoes and then you return the shoes, you then have, however, let's say you bought a pair
00:53:05.540of shoes for $50 and then you're like, I don't want the shoes, I'm going to return them. You've
00:53:09.640made 50 additional dollars that you can then spend. So really you can go out and spend $100
00:53:14.980because the shoes that you returned, you got 50. So if you add in the 50 that you've already
00:53:20.260earmarked for the shoes and the other 50 that you got back for returning the shoes, that's $100.
00:53:24.760so you can go out and spend $100 at Sephora.
00:53:27.940Thank you for breaking it down for me.1.00
00:53:29.420I did not know that that was how girl math worked.
00:53:32.540I thought it was just kind of like a general term0.99
00:53:34.340that meant like girls are bad at math or something.
00:53:53.340And if he goes out and spends five hundred dollars and makes a hundred dollars, he's made money.
00:53:58.760It's just bad math. It's just bad math. And it's bad math that is universal.
00:54:03.000I don't like applying it to women. It's like all kinds of people who are bad financially, myself very much included, are subject to this kind of thinking that is bad math.0.70
00:54:12.400That is a bad math that is specifically convenient for what they want to do.
00:54:15.380Yeah, I mean, this particular flavor of bad methods everywhere, right? Like, new cars, they will often offer you like, you know, $1,000 cash back or something like that. That's the same thing. Just lower the price.
00:54:29.100So, yeah, you're just you're just using little tricks to make me feel like, oh, now I have this money in my pocket. You don't.
00:54:35.980So this is what I'm saying. Like, it's everywhere. We don't need to gender it. I guess that's what I'm saying. And so basically, these prediction apps are using that same logic to suggest that the money made on prediction apps will effectively pay for a coffee or another purchase.
00:54:52.440So if you make $10 betting on, you know, whether or not Taylor Swift is going to drop a new album or not, even if you've spent $20 on the bet, making you be like, oh, but you made $10.
00:55:33.760But like, it does seem like that's part of it.
00:55:36.400Like the language that gets used is part of helping sell this idea of acceptability for betting on these things and turning these non-mathematical aspects of our lives into something that can be bet on.
00:55:54.760And you really see that in the sort of language of prediction markets.
00:55:58.600I don't even like the phrase prediction markets.0.99
00:56:01.240And I actually struggled with whether or not I was going to use that phrase because I feel like it lets the poly markets of the world create their own sort of like highfalutin language that elevates what they're doing.
00:56:53.540The market produces an implied probability.
00:56:57.480You know, it helps prediction markets differentiate themselves both legally and importantly culturally from what you think of as the traditional gambling business in a way that I just think is unearned.
00:57:09.080I don't think that you get to essentially recreate gambling in this sort of soft gray market using technology and then create an entire language and cultural apparatus to distinguish yourself from that both culturally and legally.
00:57:23.080I don't feel like you should be able to do that.
00:57:24.500But yet, like, that's essentially what they're doing.0.83
00:57:27.480The Atlantic found that some of these women oriented advertising leaned into the notion that prediction markets represented smart or savvy decision making, savvy speculation or a way to monetize knowledge rather than conventional gambling.
00:57:41.480Right. And so that's another bit of it. I think that they really want women to see prediction markets as something that is like higher minded than traditional gambling.
00:57:52.380And like a higher minded way to make a savvy financial decision based on your knowledge of cultural events that's different from like your scumbag ex gambling on the ponies or something.0.93
00:58:04.400Yeah, that concept of monetizing knowledge, that's that's really appealing and attractive.0.67
00:58:08.940I feel there's a lot of very positive messaging in other domains that is encouraging people to do exactly that right in their careers.
00:58:17.440And I would think that would be a pretty effective line of marketing for these folks.
00:58:23.420So let's look at what I think is the clearest case study of this.
00:58:28.720And that is the most recent season of Love Island, which I did not watch.
00:58:44.920Do you know how many episodes they had this season?
00:58:46.460the last time i watched it i felt like they were really inflating the number of episodes as well
00:58:52.420and by the end i was like i don't even know these people anymore that's kind of how i felt that's
00:58:56.780what kind of pushed me from watching and i actually people know that i'm in the middle of
00:59:01.640my first ever vanderpump rules rewatch and i i've been meaning to watch it my for a long time
00:59:07.540it is art i cannot believe i have not watched it for so long but the reason why i'm watching it is
00:59:12.740because i really like the host of love island ariana who was on brand of rules but how i can
00:59:18.800describe it is they don't respect the viewers time so it's like pushed me from watching it
00:59:22.340i also watch the clips on social media i feel like i get the gist i feel like i know enough
00:59:26.340to be like okay i mean i don't think it's a complicated gist you know complicated you know
00:59:30.780you don't need a lot of information just to stay abreast okay so we have briefed the listeners on
00:59:35.140the extent to which we are and are not watching love island back to its relevance to prediction
00:59:42.280OK, so this recent season of Love Island, Business Insider reported that this recent season of Love Island was Koushi the first time that they were offering Love Island markets and described the advertising effort as something that they were explicitly trying to target the audience's heavily female fan base.0.59
01:00:00.780Because there's a lot of women who watch Love Island and reality TV in general.0.60
01:00:03.440The Los Angeles Times reported that two out of every three new Love Island traders were women.1.00
01:00:37.060And so during this period, there is independent evidence that suggests that female usage really did rise, right?
01:00:44.280Business Insider reported data from the mobile intelligence company Aptopia showing that Kalshi's female weekly active mobile users increased 106% between the week of June 8th and June 28th, compared with 54% among male users.
01:00:58.900Again, that's coming from a third-party measurement, not just Kalshi.
01:01:01.780One thing to know is that even though it does seem like Love Island was a big generator of a new, you know, mostly women audience, Business Insider also found that the World Cup was happening then.
01:01:13.960So that was also a contributing a big amount of user growth, although Love Island certainly was helping.
01:01:21.000So I have an example. The L.A. Times spoke to a 21-year-old college student named Darvin McDuffie, who had never previously placed a bet in her life.
01:01:29.340And then she encounters an ad for Love Island trading on social media.
01:03:04.120for and like reading relationship cues. We're monitoring the situation on social media. You
01:03:09.580know, when I watch my reality TV shows, I watch them. I go straight to the subreddit. I go straight
01:03:14.140to the like other subreddit, the deeper subreddit, the uncensored subreddit. I want all the takes.
01:03:18.640give me all the takes, right? We're debating outcomes in group chats. We're ranking favorites.
01:03:23.280We're making predictions. And I think even if you're not somebody who's ever used a prediction
01:03:28.580market or a sports betting market before, that's just part and parcel for deep reality TV fandom.
01:03:35.880And I'll give it to them. Like, this is a clever place to show up if you're trying to get women to0.91
01:03:40.740make that jump into prediction markets. And so now you're basically just saying you're already0.98
01:03:44.700doing this when you watch reality TV, why not put money behind that prediction? And I think Love
01:03:50.240Island is a show that is particularly well-suited because the program runs repeatedly throughout the
01:03:55.360week, generating a continuous stream of potential possible markets. And so if you never watched
01:04:00.940Love Island, it's a show where people couple and they have challenges and people get voted off.
01:04:06.400And ultimately there's one couple that wins and they get money if they win, if they survive all
01:04:12.000these eliminations and all these challenges and so it's not just who is going to be the final
01:04:17.860couple standing it's also who couples up who survives a vote who gets to the finale who's
01:04:23.540eliminated and who ultimately wins love island really presents a whole different spectrum of
01:04:31.480things that people can potentially be betting on not just who's gonna win yeah that's a really good
01:04:36.620point it's almost like set up for it and i know maybe this is getting a little abstract but that
01:04:42.760feels also not coincidental right that like reality tv of that particular flavor like a
01:04:49.300contest show is really structured to produce winners uh and losers right yeah exactly and so
01:04:57.680like clearly starting with love island was like this like was a again i'll give it to him like a
01:05:04.760really smart place to be. By the time the Love Island finale aired, the LA Times reported that
01:05:11.440nearly 24 million dollars had been traded on the market for the winning couple. That's so much
01:05:18.220money. Yeah. FYI, that amount traded through the market was not necessarily the amount of money
01:05:24.580that users lost or that Kaoshi earned as revenue. That's just how much money was traded on the
01:05:30.000winning couple. I really wonder how that changes the viewer's experience of watching the show,
01:05:36.280because I know that in many domains, when somebody is doing something intrinsically because they like
01:05:44.040it, introducing payment and financial incentives can really change the way that the people think
01:05:50.820about it and engage with it. And I wonder the extent to which that is happening here with
01:05:55.740Yeah, I can tell you from that Sacred Heart survey that I cited earlier, they found that of the 546 respondents who had placed bets on sports, 70.4% said that they had watched a sporting event solely because they had money riding on it.
01:06:12.160So it does seem like betting on sports, that's what this poll was looking at, does change how people watch it and change their behavior around it.
01:06:21.560And then women who bet also reported meaningful behavioral effects.
01:06:26.42066.8% of female bettors said that betting made them more emotionally invested in individual plays or players compared with 65.4% of male bettors.
01:06:36.660And 58.3% of female bettors reported having rooted against a favorite team or player because of a wager compared to 55.5% of men.
01:06:45.820So it seems like not only this betting on the outcome of something, in this case, this was looking at specifically sports, changes your behavior around it.
01:06:53.720But that change also seems to be gendered, that women are, according to the survey, more likely to feel that emotional change based on whether or not they put money on something.
01:07:07.480I mean, we know from social psychology that once you introduce financial incentives or external rewards in some way, it can really undermine intrinsic motivation to do something and the sort of intrinsic rewards that one gets from an activity.
01:07:22.600Yeah, this is not what the survey like this is not coming from the survey.
01:07:25.700This is just like my interpretation of it.
01:07:28.600It seems to be that betting manufactures fandom in a specific kind of way.
01:07:32.840I guess that's my take on this, that once you put money on something, you kind of are, at least for women, according to the survey, it kind of forces you to treat it as a fandom in a way that you otherwise might not.
01:07:44.520Like, it kind of forces you to be, as these women said, more emotionally invested in the outcome than you probably would be if you just were watching it on TV and did not put a bet on it.