00:02:01.220And that's right, we are still coming to you from beautiful Baja Mar here in the Bahamas.
00:02:06.460We are on the most beautiful island recording at Baja Mar's beautiful studio space with Engineer Bree.
00:02:13.640I honestly cannot say enough good things about how lovely it is here.0.80
00:02:18.540It looks so cool in here that a group of women actually, as we were setting up, getting ready to start, they just burst in and kind of low-key demanded that we talk to them.
00:02:47.500That was somewhere in the gray area between a request and a man, but they were really nice. They seem like they're having fun. And we were talking to engineer Bree about it. And she pointed out that like something about like seeing a microphone set up, seeing a podcast set up really invites people to want to investigate and and participate as well.
00:03:07.980Yeah. As somebody who usually whenever I travel, I've never taken a real non-working vacation. Every time I go anywhere, I have my podcast mic with me and I've had to podcast from some pretty gnarly places like on my stomach and like laying on my stomach in the corner of a hotel floor because I had to do an interview after checkout time, you know, like that kind of situation.
00:03:32.920and any other situation people will just like walk see you and keep on walking if you're talking
00:03:38.340into a microphone people are like oh what do you do in a podcast oh you don't want your boss to
00:03:43.080know that you're actually recording from a different location and so you're pretending
00:03:46.460that you're at home but really you're in a hotel let me get on the mic like you know is this is
00:03:51.500this something about a microphone invites people to come right in sit down ask questions don't I
00:03:57.360know it yeah I mean it reminds me of what you often say about podcasting you know it's like
00:04:01.660such an intimate medium that invites connection.
00:04:04.960So I guess this is like the part and parcel of that.
00:04:09.440So this is part two of a two-part episode
00:04:11.840about women and prediction markets like Polymarket.
00:04:15.220Now, if you did not listen to part one,
00:04:48.140But it was yet another example of some of the, in my opinion, misguided ways
00:04:53.500prediction markets like Polymarket are going hard for women
00:04:57.560by encouraging us to bet on cultural moments.
00:05:00.720From really heavy, dark moments like the Lindsay Clancy trial to stuff like the outcome of reality television shows.
00:05:08.460All while these companies tell us it's empowering.
00:05:14.840So, as I said, Kelshi was using this season of Love Island this summer as their big draw to women.
00:05:21.720But prediction markets can transform almost any uncertain cultural outcome into something wagerable that you can bet on.
00:05:28.500Markets have appeared around subjects including reality show outcomes, awards, music, celebrity, weather, politics, entertainment releases, television competitions, and obviously, as we were talking about before, human suffering and tragedy like the Lindsay Clancy trial.
00:05:44.220So the larger product proposition is almost limitless.
00:05:49.180If an event can have an observable yes-no outcome, somebody somewhere can potentially create a market around it that you can bet on.
00:05:58.860And this really matters because traditional sports betting require a consumer to care and know about sports, but prediction markets don't.
00:06:07.060Someone's expertise around anything, The Bachelor, Love Island, celebrity gossip, Survivor, politics, whether a woman will be convicted for murdering her babies, can be used.
00:06:18.220And I think that's really what makes women's non-sport betting look different from traditional sports betting.
00:06:24.780That Sacred Heart survey that I keep referencing has some pretty useful independent data here.
00:06:29.760Among the respondents who had made non-sports bets, women's choices differed from men's.
00:06:36.820Among those female non-sports bettors, 43.3% said they had wagered on award shows.
00:06:42.62040.6% said they had wagered on reality TV outcomes.
00:06:46.440Men who made non-sports bets were more likely than women to report wagering on politics and elections or finance or cryptocurrency.
00:06:53.280currency. I have a friend who realized kind of before the sports betting, polymarket,
00:07:00.980Kalshi stuff took off that he had a problem with gambling. But he told me that he realized that he
00:07:06.560had a problem when there was no sports happening and he was putting money on the outcome of the
00:07:12.480Latin Grammys. And he was like, this is how I know I have a problem that I'm like getting into
00:07:17.740niche award show programming to just to scratch the itch. And what's funny is that from all of
00:07:24.040this, this was before you could bet on anything, really. This was like a very unusual thing to be
00:07:29.960betting on. Had he been experiencing that today in 2026, that might be so normalized that he might
00:07:36.360that might not even have been the thing that led him to understand that he had a problem around
00:07:40.380gambling. Wow, that's so interesting. It's like sort of the process we were talking about of
00:07:45.380people betting on their non-sports expertise but like taking that even further when it becomes a
00:07:52.160problem to betting on areas that are outside of one's expertise just for the thrill of betting
00:07:57.620just to feel something man i get it i get it so all this expansion of the domains in which people
00:08:03.760are betting um and the marketing that companies are doing to to women is there evidence that it's
00:08:11.020working what what do women think about this i guess we've seen a little bit of evidence but
00:08:15.380is there more? So the short answer is kind of. I found this March 2026 study published in BMC0.96
00:08:21.400Public Health that specifically examined new gambling industry strategies aimed at women
00:08:26.560among a sample of young women living in Australia. The researchers studied women's perceptions of
00:08:31.500marketing tactics, including things like influencers and celebrities, the novelty of
00:08:35.480betting markets, women's sports, social media promotions, gambling companies associating
00:08:39.780themselves with women's causes and gender equity messaging. The authors began from a documented
00:08:45.560shift, right? Gambling marketing has historically focused mostly on young men, but the industry,
00:08:51.440as we said, is increasingly adopting strategies designed specifically to appeal to women.
00:08:55.880So women in this study believed the tactics could actually normalize gambling and attract women who
00:09:02.600might not otherwise gamble. So it's exactly what you were just talking about, that normalization.
00:09:07.580The study wasn't asking them whether or not they think this is good or bad or they approve.0.78
00:09:13.300Basically, it's like, can you see this being an effective way of normalizing this kind of behavior among women?0.97
00:09:45.980I love these, like, qualitative studies of interviews of people because you can just, like, really get some good quotes of people, like, really speaking, like, a real truth that can often elude more quantitative measures of, like, big surveys with thousands of people, you know?
00:10:08.660Were there any particularly good quotes in this one?
00:10:11.000I really like this one. And it really kind of reminds me of what we were talking about with the Lindsay Clancy trial. Quote, it's a slippery slope. They start with something small, fun and aligned with your interests. But before you know it, you're betting on things you never even thought you'd care about. It is dangerous. That is from one 33 year old who participated in the study.
00:10:31.140So I mentioned that my least favorite bucket of thing that's marketing around gambling that these women could see as being effective was marketing gambling to women as empowering.0.50
00:10:45.920There is not enough time for me to get into how much I hate this.
00:10:49.420And it reminds me of this kind of just familiar commercial and cultural pattern where something that has historically and traditionally been coded as male just gets repackaged for women using this very empty language of empowerment.
00:11:07.440I think the reason I hate it so much is that it feels insulting to me that they would just like slap women's empowerment on something and they think I'm stupid enough that that's going to actually feel like meaningfully empowering to me.
00:11:21.160The classic example I'm sure everybody listening knows is remember those old Virginia Slims ads?0.81
00:11:27.480So Virginia Slims are the cigarette that they're really thin and they're sort of marketed for like a cigarette for women.
00:11:34.940And their marketing slogan, I know you know it, Mike.
00:11:59.720Yeah. Listeners know that I spent a lot of time in tobacco control, studying tobacco companies, and that wasn't the first time that they explicitly tried linking women's empowerment with smoking cigarettes.
00:12:12.060Back in 1929, the American Tobacco Company organized a group of women to march down Fifth Avenue in New York City, all holding cigarettes, and they called them Torches of Freedom, trying to link cigarette smoking to the suffragette movement, just like very explicitly trying to break this taboo of women smoking, which at the time was like somewhat taboo.
00:12:38.820And they worked on it for decades until they got to Virginia Slims, that very thin, slender cigarette.
00:17:45.660that could be financially lucrative or financially stabilizing from them, even if in reality that
00:17:51.400thing is not actually financially beneficial at all. I think the way that prediction markets
00:17:58.700are marketing toward people, specifically women, I think that they are trying to capture and kind
00:18:04.080of, I won't say like prey on, but kind of speak to, I think this feeling that a lot of us feel
00:18:09.840right now, this feeling of instability and worry and confusion around finances and the financial
00:18:15.820world. I'm not going to pretend to be some sort of financial expert, but it is difficult to know
00:18:23.560where your money is safest, whether that's in real estate or the stock market or in a coffee
00:18:31.860can under your bed or in your savings account. Things feel very volatile right now. And I think
00:18:36.420that these companies are really preying on that, especially when it comes to women, right? And
00:18:43.140they're rebranding gambling as potentially a smart financial choice, the same way they did with
00:18:51.420crypto, the same way they did with NFTs. And I would argue, in my opinion, the same way they're
00:18:55.300doing with AI adoption. Again, it's one thing to market this as this is just going to give you a
00:19:02.520thrill it's vice it's just fun you just do it for fun not that big of a deal i don't happen to agree
00:19:08.020with that but i get that remarketing this as this is what savvy financial people do you're not
00:19:15.140gambling you're making a prediction on a prediction market i just don't like the attempt at the
00:19:20.360rebrand well and i think the smart marketing play is to market on both right like when you are
00:19:28.220placing the bet or buying the the future of the market or whatever the terminology is
00:19:34.460it's just fun you know it's only ten dollars uh you're betting on the outcome of a show that you
00:19:41.040like like love island this is just like a fun thing to do uh the stakes aren't really that high
00:19:46.080but you could potentially win like big money you know and so if you win it's a positive
00:19:53.700financial decision that you have made if you lose it's no big deal it's only fun uh you get to have
00:20:01.140it both ways i hadn't even thought about that but i think you're so right as humans we love to find
00:20:07.400justifications for things we want to do even if that requires some logic that does not necessarily
00:20:13.580hold up to the light of day if we like really sketch it all out uh and companies know this
00:20:20.520Right. Like that's, I think, part of the challenge of the regulators thinking about how to regulate this industry when it's being presented as a commodity future trading enterprise, which is, you know, something that historically has been regulated from a framework of businesses making rational decisions.
00:20:43.780But now all of a sudden the same regulating entities are being asked to regulate a very personal behavior where the individual psychology of individual people is coming into play and emotions and the potential for addiction are just like a bigger part of it.
00:21:06.620It's a real mismatch in terms of how the regulation is happening
00:21:11.760for these small bets that people are making in entertainment
00:21:15.920and also sports, really, for both men and women's sports.
00:23:28.460I'm failing? Listen to No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez, part of My Cultura Podcast
00:23:33.980Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
00:23:40.740I'm Mimi Brown, and every day on Front Page Podcast, I help you make sense of the stories
00:23:45.600shaping our world. Each day, I break down the biggest headlines, provide important context,
00:23:50.820and explain how these stories could impact your life, your family, and your community.
00:23:55.860My goal is to deliver clear, trustworthy information in a format that fits your schedule.
00:24:01.200And when a story deserves a deeper conversation, I'll sit down with experts, newsmakers, and thought leaders to help you better understand the headlines.
00:24:09.420I spoke with Gary Mayer, Eddie Melton, about what's happening on the ground, whether race is playing a role, and what help is available for families who simply can't afford the added cost.
00:24:19.800Joining us now is Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson.
00:26:08.580So let's layer in social media to this conversation because I think that's where the conversation really changes.
00:26:16.700The traditional gambling image requires somebody to intentionally enter into a gambling environment, right?
00:26:24.120A casino, a racetrack, a sports book, a lottery counter.
00:26:28.060Places and situations that you don't really find yourself in unless you are like intending to gamble.
00:26:33.020But now there's this new customer journey that could start with open up TikTok.
00:26:39.180You see a creator like the host of a Not Skinny Not That podcast.
00:26:43.060She's talking about a pop culture prediction.
00:26:45.900You open the app, you make a deposit, you start making trades.
00:26:48.960So just like that young woman who said that she had never thought about gambling until she saw that sponsored ad on social media that led her to placing her first ever bet on the outcome of Love Island, the gambling opportunity now meets these new users in their existing media routines, right?
00:27:06.460And that distinction really matters when the advertising itself mimics normal creator content, like what we're seeing from podcasts like Call Her Daddy and Not Skinny, Not Bad, right, who have both done these poly market partnerships in ways that just feel like regular content, not necessarily advertising for gambling, right, which is what they actually are.
00:27:29.700In that Atlantic piece I was referencing earlier, they made this point that all of this prediction market ad content is meant to blend in and really look like and mirror ordinary women's lifestyle content.
00:27:43.000So I'm not saying that when Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy makes a Polly Market ad that it is inherently deceptive or I'm not even necessarily saying that it's inherently bad, but it does, I think, get blurry, right?0.77
00:27:59.760It blurs the lines of this being regular women's lifestyle content or pop culture content and this being an ad for a gambling platform, which it absolutely is.
00:28:08.720The same way that Polly Market is, in my opinion, exploiting that blurriness around being both a media outlet and a gambling platform.
00:28:19.940It can make the boundary between content and gambling acquisition a lot less visually obvious.
00:28:27.120And importantly, it kind of seems like it could be working.
00:28:31.620There's just tremendous potential for these companies because advertising that young people see on social media can be actually very effective at getting them to change their behavior.
00:28:43.040Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a big reason advertisers spend over 400 billion dollars a year just in the United States.
00:28:51.120They do it because it works. It's effective.
00:28:53.000Yeah. And so I guess that's my one of my big so what to the whole conversation is that I'm not just mad at Not Skinny, Not Bad because that Lindsay Clancy ad for Polymarket was in poor taste, which it was.
00:29:07.620It can also make women who were not interested in gambling before see gambling as something that they might want to get involved in.
00:29:16.480Like it can really be effective. That Sacred Heart survey that I keep referencing, they found that 47.5% of adults aged 18 to 34 said that sports betting advertising had a great deal or some influence on the likelihood of them gambling.
00:29:31.900A different question found that 42.3% of 18 to 34 year olds said that gambling promotions had at some point influenced them to open a new gambling account.
00:29:42.040That is crazy to me that, like, this is not just throwaway advertising.
00:29:47.820It sounds like it actually is having an impact.
00:29:53.320I mean, for every ad that we see, they probably tested 10 or 20 that didn't work as well, right?
00:30:00.440And the ones that actually worked because they measured, do they change people's attitudes?
00:30:04.700Those are the ones that they put money behind and run.
00:30:07.100And, you know, stepping back, as we mentioned, this podcast is supported by ads. It's not like advertising is inherently bad, but I think it's on all of us to really think about what is being marketed to us and make decisions about does it actually align with our values?
00:30:28.820Yeah. I do think that, listen, creators have to decide for themselves where their line is, but you can do that, right? And that's another facet that I feel like is really coming up a lot around this is people grappling in real time with what it means when these big creators do take these kinds of partnerships.
00:30:49.020Like, I can't speculate on how much money Not Skinny Not That makes.
00:30:53.500It's a huge podcast, so, like, I'm not, they're probably doing much better than us.
00:30:57.920But, and Dear Media, again, is, like, a huge platform.
00:31:12.540Among podcasters generally, she is among the most popular podcasters on the planet.0.99
00:31:19.020Homegirl does not need the money. Like, when you get to be that big, it surprises me that that would not encourage you to be choosier about whose checks you take. When you're small, I get it. You got to take what you can get. I get it. It seems cattywampus to me. It seems like the bigger you get, the more choosy you would be able to be. Not I'm so big, it doesn't matter.
00:31:42.760I mean, you have to wonder what direction causality runs here, right?
00:31:48.180Like, being willing to work with anybody, I can see that would have advantages towards getting big in the first place.
00:31:54.380There's this, like, Latina money management podcast that is hosted by Janice Torres, and she posted today,
00:32:02.000Sometimes having a moral compass as a creator is frustrating as hell.
00:32:05.220you watch people like Mel Robbins, Alex Cooper, and Amanda Kirsch keep getting rewarded with
00:32:10.380bigger platforms, louder praise, and fatter checks in exchange for having no integrity at all.0.99
00:32:15.760Meanwhile, creators who give a fuck, especially women of color, are asking,0.99
00:32:19.760is it harmful to my followers? Am I exploiting somebody with this partnership? Do I actually0.99
00:32:24.140believe in what I'm selling? And yes, that may mean slower growth for turning down money,
00:32:29.300but I refuse to believe the only way to become successful online is to abandon your values,
00:32:33.400platform harmful people, and treat controversy like a business model. I want the money. I want
00:32:38.700the reach. I want the influence. But I also want to recognize myself when I look in the mirror.
00:32:43.360Apparently, that makes me difficult to monetize. And girl felt. I really feel that. And I think
00:32:51.900that's kind of the crux of the conversation. I don't think it's a neutral thing to help normalize
00:33:03.060what I think can be really destructive behavior. I think that making it seem like betting,
00:33:12.020especially for women, is like a normal thing to do, I think is actually harmful to society,0.87
00:33:17.960right? And so I do think that all of this kind of cultural programming and cultural outreach1.00
00:33:23.940is working. That Sacred Heart study found that 74.6% of Americans now believe that sports gambling
00:34:08.660this level of gambling just like did not exist in the country. Right.
00:34:12.040It was only like a very small number of places that you could gamble.
00:34:15.880I think it was pretty widely understood that gambling was morally corrosive
00:34:23.000and harmful to society. And over the past couple of decades,
00:34:26.920We have just really broken that down and broken that down and broken that down.
00:34:31.700And, you know, I think it's worthwhile to ask, like, who has been driving this societal change?
00:34:38.440It's getting a little further afield here.
00:34:40.860But but boy, has it changed a lot in the past couple of decades.
00:34:46.060Yeah. And I think one of the unique harms of it targeting women specifically is that plenty of people can gamble.
00:34:55.300It's not advice that I particularly get down with, but plenty of people can gamble and it's not any kind of problem behavior in their life.
00:35:00.240They do it for fun, whatever. I don't get it, but whatever.
00:35:02.800But it is a behavior that one can get out of control, which is like anything else. Right.
00:35:08.020And so one of the specific reasons why it is so harmful to be targeting women specifically is that any kind of harm that impacts people, women are just understudied when it comes to the impacts of the harm.
00:35:21.600It's true when you look at a lot of medical things, you know, when you find out that something's only been tested on men or hasn't been tested on women, let alone trans folks, let alone non-binary folks.
00:35:31.380But like, you know, we are less likely to have our unique issues be spotlighted and looked at.
00:35:39.100Right. That's just like a norm about it, but a way that it is to exist as a marginalized person in the world.
00:35:43.620Right. So even as women are increasingly being targeted for gambling, women are still a lot less likely to be studied when it comes to things like problem gambling or gambling addiction.
00:35:56.480So those two things, it's incredibly dangerous for those two things to coexist, for women to be increasingly targeted for gambling and also pretty much understudied and underlooked at when it comes to the impacts or treatment.
00:36:09.040Right. A 2026 systematic review focused on women and gambling disorder found that dambling research and interventions remain heavily male centered despite increasing female participation.
00:36:21.300Only 18 studies, 18, met its criteria for prevention or treatment research reporting female specific outcomes.
00:36:30.180Wow, that is not a lot considering how many people are doing this and what's at stake.
00:36:36.400And there's also another gender asymmetry that's relevant here, which I think is the role that women play in supporting children and families.
00:36:47.080I mean, this is well documented in societies around the world that the financial well-being of women is so strongly connected to the well-being of children and families and economies in general.
00:37:02.280Like men are just more willing to do risky things with their money and the consequences of men spending money or going into debt, while not great in societies where there's just not a lot of money and wealth to go around, the impact on children in society at large is smaller than it is for women.
00:37:24.560And so that's just like one more reason why I think I am shocked at that low number of studies looking at women's gambling and treatment.
00:37:33.320And I would hope that there are researchers right now spinning up studies looking into this.
00:37:42.500Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that.
00:37:43.860We have an entire episode with economist and researcher Anna Gifty about exactly that thing, about how the health and wellness economically of women, specifically black women is what she looks at.
00:37:54.560is linked to the health and wellness of families and communities and essentially the country writ large.
00:38:00.900And so if black women and women are not doing well economically, which right now we're not,
00:38:05.400that's actually problematic for the everybody, for all of us.
00:38:08.100Yeah. Women and black women in particular, they are the safety net. You are the safety net.1.00
00:38:14.240Put that on a shirt, Mike. Put that on a mug.
00:38:16.480And so, yeah, I guess it's just that much more corrosive that we know less about gambling prevention and treatment specifically for women than we should at the same time where women are being so uniquely targeted in this way.
00:43:29.600Something that is uniquely weird about betting on reality TV that is different from betting on sports is that somebody already knows what happened.
00:43:51.600But that's got to be a question about how all this works and how all this is regulated.
00:43:58.520The L.A. Times raised concerns about this exact thing when it comes to reality TV prediction markets.
00:44:04.340And what's funny is that this has already kind of happened in a much higher stakes way than just a reality TV show, than just like Love Island.
00:44:15.020Gabriel Perez, he was a longtime White House teleprompter operator who had access to Donald
00:44:21.500Trump's speeches before Trump delivered them publicly. Perez allegedly used that privileged
00:44:27.900information to bet on Cauchy markets about what words or phrases Trump would say in upcoming
00:44:33.780speeches. Now, I will say, I got to give it to Cauchy. The reason why we know this is because
00:44:39.560of Cauchy's internal systems, like they did a review, flagged and saw some suspicious behavior,
00:44:45.320and that's why we know this. But according to the CFTC, Perez made $107,539.02 in profits
00:44:53.960from those trades. The CFTC concluded that he was trading using material non-public information of
00:45:01.620paying through his White House job in breach of his duty of trust and confidence. So he ultimately
00:45:06.480was ordered to pay back $107,539 in profits and then pay an additional $65,000 in civil penalties,
00:45:15.460bringing the total that he had to pay to $172,539. He is also barred from trading on prediction
00:45:23.780markets for three years, which honestly, that sounds like a low amount of time for me.
00:45:30.060It does. And I just find this so interesting and like struggle to think about how to think
00:45:33.240about it because on the one hand it does seem like the industry and in this case kalshi really
00:45:39.040is very interested and invested in doing a thorough job of policing and finding this kind
00:45:44.820of behavior uh that's certainly the impression that they're giving and i suspect that they
00:45:49.820probably are like truly doing that however that long list of people that you listed who have
00:45:56.460insider information that they could potentially use to cheat the system. It's just so many people
00:46:03.700and so many people on that list. These are not like seven figure jobs, right? Like these are
00:46:08.940people who probably many of whom probably have like an hourly wage, right? The incentive to use
00:46:14.620some of that information to make $20,000, $30,000 on a bet for somebody who's, you know, making 80
00:46:22.760grand a year it's just such a strong incentive and there's so many people at that level how could
00:46:29.840you possibly police them all what's funny is that when you were outside grabbing a beer producer
00:46:34.440and i were talking about this and she does like she has has done like event management and like
00:46:41.180specifically teleprompter stuff and she was like i feel like they would right away know it was him
00:46:46.560like if you know what i mean like oh who's betting on what's going to be on trump's speeches i feel
00:46:50.880like there's like a very small amount of people. And we were like, you know, what would have been
00:46:54.220a better thing if you were going to do this? Bet on the like White House cage fight, like that kind
00:47:00.620of thing. Like don't start with the thing where, OK, there's probably like a handful of people
00:47:04.300that could have been placing this bet and have this insider knowledge. But then there's so many
00:47:08.520of those kind of events where there's only a handful of people that I think the number pretty
00:47:12.020quickly gets pretty high. What do you think about him being banned from prediction markets for three
00:47:16.760years it doesn't seem like a very long time that's only a handful of years you know what does it get
00:47:22.960whoever to just be like you're banned for life you're one you're one dude who can't do this and
00:47:27.020you you lost your privileges forever that's that like three years seems like nothing to me yeah
00:47:32.780there's like so much interesting stuff in that like and that guy in particular right he was a
00:47:38.520white house employee so he had like a a federal duty which it sounds like is why the cftc was
00:47:44.700able to come after him which is like such a wrinkle that also probably does not apply to most
00:47:49.660people who are in this condition so very good point so what does that mean you know point so
00:47:54.240that's kind of a weird wrinkle to all of this but again when it comes specifically to betting on
00:48:00.480things like reality tv i don't really understand it because so we use the big example of love island
00:48:06.540love island was you know the calci their big foray into trying to target women this summer
00:48:12.740And Love Island is a show where the American public is, in some capacity, meant to be impacting the outcome through votes.
00:48:22.340Big caveat, I have no idea how serious of an election this is.
00:48:25.940You actually have a conspiracy theory that the votes don't matter at all.
00:48:29.060Yes, I do not think the votes matter at all.
00:48:58.120This is where Bridget takes the hard turn to, like, stop the steal, like, voting irregularity truther.0.99
00:49:05.980Yeah, like, how deep does this thing go?0.99
00:49:08.120What was your on-ramp to not believing the election results? Like, well, ever heard of a show called Love Island? Are you familiar with Ariana Maddox? Assuming that it's a real vote, and there's no funny business, that does produce this very weird situation where someone can have money riding on the outcome and also be eligible to participate in voting in a way that could help shape the program.
00:49:32.500And again, I don't know. It's not like anything has been alleged, but a viewer interviewed by the LA Times specifically raised this concern in a piece about how prediction markets are showing up in reality TV and vice versa.
00:49:46.380Yeah, it's, I think, a really reasonable concern, especially because of how easy it is for people to create like botnet accounts, for example.
00:49:55.780It wouldn't take a huge amount of imagination to imagine somebody developing a sophisticated apparatus using one of any number of cell phone farms located in Southeast Asia or Africa or wherever they're putting them now to really try to influence the election.
00:50:13.760of course maybe it wouldn't do anything for them since it's not real elections aren't real
00:50:18.300wait someone's gonna clip me saying that it's a joke you know there are certain phrases i will
00:50:25.780never say on the podcast i'm so sure someone's gonna like clip that and be like oh bridget todd
00:50:30.000says xyz yeah many of them related to kanye yes you know the thing i will never say on this podcast
00:50:35.900yeah but seriously though this it is just such an unusual and interesting situation where people
00:50:43.200who are able to influence the outcome are also betting.
00:50:48.340And I understand that that's against the rules.
00:51:06.320about whether he would attend the State of the Union address.
00:51:09.460And at the same time that he was placing these bets,
00:51:11.920He was also posting online about whether he would or he wouldn't in pretty classic, like, coy Santos way of like, like, he knew exactly what he was doing, in my opinion, you know, and I guess also the opinion of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
00:51:32.160Their opinion matters more than mine here.
00:51:34.080They said that he made over $14,000 through these actions of, like, making people think he would and then make them think he wouldn't.
00:51:41.520So he was fined by that commission. He was banned and fined by Kalshi. He had a whole cash settlement with the CTFC. Interestingly, in that case, which just happened a couple of weeks ago, Kalshi said that they would reimburse traders who lost money by betting on the markets that he had manipulated, which I found interesting.
00:52:01.080It just happened a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn't able to find any information confirming that they'd actually done that. So that might be an interesting thing for us to follow up on in a little while.
00:52:08.640I love that the White House employee who misused his, like, you know, oath or whatever, duty to the American people by virtue of his job at the White House, three-year ban.
00:52:20.420George Santos, let's just get him out of here forever.
00:52:23.380So you're saying he got a forever ban?
00:53:46.560And, you know, I do think there might be some moral ambiguity, at least for Pete Rose.
00:53:51.640I don't know about Lori Buckout, but Kalshi did not see it that way, fined and suspended her.
00:53:57.600And there have been other politicians as well.
00:53:59.560There's also a video editor for Mr. Beast who made over $5,000 betting on unlikely things that Mr. Beast might say. I think much like Trump's teleprompter guy, like he just had special access to what was going to come up in the videos. And so he bent on it and Kalshi investigated and found that he had near perfect trading success. Right. And I think, you know, that's another example where these cheats are not acting in very sophisticated ways. Right.
00:54:28.460Like, if you're really going to try to cheat the system, maybe you might string a couple losses in there.
00:54:33.660It's like when I would change my grades and when I was in high school, look at my report card.
00:54:38.340I was, like, notorious of my family for changing my grades.
00:54:41.260And I'd be like, don't give yourself all A's.
00:56:44.060He saw that a missile hit the territory.
00:56:45.940He reported on that. And here was somebody trying to get him to change that just so they could win a bet. Right. And this example really sticks out to me because not only were people with financial stakes trying to affect the outcomes of these bets, they were trying to pressure a journalist in a war zone to distort his reporting on what was happening.
00:57:05.520We depend on journalism to keep us informed about what's happening in the world outside of what we can immediately see out beyond our front door.
00:57:14.180But here, the prediction market was attempting to bend reality by altering that reporting in order to maximize the winnings of some people.
00:57:24.620And it just it just seems fascinating and particularly perverse there.
00:57:31.360Yeah, and I think it really clarifies the stakes.
00:57:35.240Again, it's one thing when we're talking about Love Island. It's quite another when we're talking about a journalist being pressured to change reporting on something like war. I should say, as a cover your ass thing, Kaoshi says that it will not list markets on war, assassination or violence.
00:57:54.400Its newer risk review system also specifically considers whether a seemingly ordinary market could be connected to a military action or physical violence.0.91
00:58:04.340So that's from CalChi. That's what they say about their markets and what they say that they disallow.0.96
00:58:11.420My sense is that they are invested in making themselves distinct in that way. That's my sense.
00:58:20.140Yeah, I get that sense as well. You know, and so in that case, there is a journalist reporting on war, getting pressured to change his reporting and make us all blinder to what was actually happening. But then there are other cases where there are suspicions of the people potentially involved in the decisions about military actions and war.
00:58:43.160Right. Like there are multiple cases where suspicions have been raised that somebody with access to insider information in the Trump administration's military plans use that information to make and win bets.
00:58:56.260Right. And there are two in particular. Again, these are no particular individuals have been alleged to have done this. But like there are suspicions.
00:59:06.580So before the U.S. started bombing Iran in February, six brand new polymarket accounts made about just a little over a million dollars, including one account whose first ever trade came just 71 minutes before the attack became public.
00:59:20.680So that's pretty suspicious. And then before that, before the capture of Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, another account reportedly bet thirty eight thousand five hundred dollars and turn that into almost five hundred thousand dollars, placing some major trades in the hours before that covert operation became public.
00:59:42.780That seems really coincidental. Like what a lucky person, right?
00:59:46.760Right? Yeah. What luck? Somebody just like woke up one day and said like, hey, I'm going to create an account and bet a large amount of money on this totally random thing that I do not have any insider information about. Hey, look at that. I won half a million dollars. It seems suspicious. Now, I mean, do we really think that somebody in the Trump administration would ever do something unethical to enrich themselves?
01:02:54.820We're not a medical company, so we should not have to follow medical rules because we call ourselves a tech company, not a medical company.
01:03:16.280So Cauchy argues that because it is a CFTC-regulated, designated contract market under federal commodities law, states generally cannot force it to obtain conventional gambling licenses for those contracts.
01:03:34.700Then the states, they argue that sports wagers are in fact gambling and that they should remain subject to their traditional gaming authority.
01:03:43.340Because if you go to a casino in Maryland, it is heavily regulated by the state.
01:03:51.800And so basically the question is whether the courts agree with Koushi that this is a different thing, does not need to be regulated by the states, or the states, which is like, this is gambling and we should be regulating it.
01:04:01.520Right. And I just want to underscore that analogy you made that, like, say you want to bet on the Ravens versus Commanders game, right?
01:04:08.920You could walk into a casino in Maryland and place that bet that the Ravens are going to win, and it's regulated as gambling.
01:04:17.840You could open your phone while inside the casino, place that bet online, and it's not gambling.
01:04:43.920I'm sure their lawyers are working on it.0.76
01:04:45.520I do think it matters to the gender angle of all of this.
01:04:48.740It's sort of where these two halves kind of connect.
01:04:51.680So imagine if you are someone who is, like, looking from the outside at a betting app like this.
01:04:59.160And you're asking, you know, you from the outside, you see, will X, Y, Z couple win Love Island?
01:05:05.620Culturally, you might experience that as gambling, as betting, as the traditional thing of putting money on the odds of whether or not something happens.0.62
01:05:13.840But under Kaushi's legal theory, that woman is not using a state regulated gambling theory.
01:05:21.860Instead, she is purchasing a federally regulated event contract on a derivatives exchange.0.99
01:05:28.100Sure. As you do. Yeah. As as girls are always doing that these days. So it sounds super wonky, but it is important. That distinction potentially affects which regulator has authority, state gambling licenses, minimum age rules, responsible gambling requirements, consumer protections, taxations and what markets can legally be offered.
01:05:48.240So this kind of pedantic sounding fight over whether we call this trading or gambling is not just semantics. There could be billions of dollars, not to mention the sort of gambling experiences of millions of people riding on that one single distinction.
01:06:03.440And again, people like me, I've definitely said that these spaces are totally unregulated and it's not completely true.
01:06:11.320Koushi is not simply operating without government oversight.
01:06:18.660And in February, the agency specifically warned prediction market participants that federal commodity rules against fraud and misuse of non-public information apply to events contracts.
01:06:30.280That said, states argue that this federal oversight is not a meaningful substitute for the gambling-specific regulatory systems that they have built that we're all pretty familiar with in the states, if your state allows gambling.
01:06:44.060So the dispute is not kind of regulation versus no regulation.
01:06:48.860It's more financial market regulation versus what we understand as like gambling regulation that have been around for decades and whether they both can apply.
01:06:58.500It's kind of an interesting, like, I know it's a little bit wonky, but it's kind of an interesting designation and fight.
01:07:04.380It is. Yeah. And I think it can quickly get very boring.
01:07:08.300But the topic of how are these things regulated just in general, how are industries regulated products when they have profound influence over our lives, I think is an important thing.
01:07:23.500And, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it gets resolved.
01:07:27.580Everything I just told you about, here's why I think it's happening. It's not because prediction markets, polymarket, Kalshi, give a shit about women, give a shit about empowerment, care about me as a woman and my particular struggles and how I feel about Love Island or whatever the fuck. No.0.99
01:07:44.060The reason why I believe these platforms are trying to expand beyond sports and into reality TV and other cultural events, beyond just wanting more market capture, is because still, right now, the main thing on these platforms, despite all of this, is still sports.
01:08:23.160If almost everything people actually trade on on prediction markets is sports, state regulators have a much easier argument with saying, oh, this is just good old fashioned traditional sports betting.
01:08:35.820With a more diversified platform, with markets around Love Island, politics, entertainment, culture, reality TV, that better supports the argument that prediction markets constitute an entirely new type of information, media, financial marketplace.
01:08:54.300So that's why I think, you know, other than just the good old fashioned wanting more of the market, wanting more women, more audience, yada, yada, yada. Yes, that. I also think they need to have this new cultural kind of like soft women's media stuff on there to legally distinguish them from being traditional sports book gambling that we all are familiar with. You get what I'm saying?
01:09:18.520I do. That is such an interesting angle that I had not even thought about. Yes. Thank you for connecting those dots. Huh. So they don't just want your money. They also want you as like a shield to protect them from regulatory oversight.
01:09:35.520oversight. Bingo. And this is where I must say, thanks to Engineer Bree, I have a camera that I
01:09:43.780can look directly in to address you women listening at home, which I never get to do in my kitchen,
01:09:48.980but I get to do today here in Bahamar. Women, I need to be so clear. We are not falling for the
01:09:57.900rebrand of prediction markets. We are too smart for that. Let's keep it that way. They did not
01:10:05.420just invent some cute new way for you to monetize how much you know about Love Island.
01:10:11.140They are trying to take gambling, put in a cute outfit, give it a matcha, and put it on your TikTok
01:10:17.260page because they want your money, because they want your attention, your eyeballs, and because
01:10:23.340they want you and your interest in this platform to legally designate them from traditional gambling.
01:10:30.100For years, the gambling industry has been very, very, very successful at getting men to turn watching sports into an opportunity to lose their money.
01:11:11.700You gambled $10 and happened to win once.
01:11:15.940And again, I find the language of empowerment so deeply insulting.
01:11:22.360Women spent generations fighting to have our expertise taken seriously, to control our own money, to participate fully in financial life.
01:11:31.820And now somebody has figured out a way to try and take the language of financial independence and use it to sell us on a wager of whether or not Taylor Swift drops an album or gets engaged.
01:11:44.000I say, no, you will not. Not today, Satan. Not ever. You do not need to monetize every opinion
01:11:51.840that you have. You do not need financial exposure to your favorite TV show. You are allowed to know
01:11:58.860exactly what's going to happen on Love Island and receive absolutely nothing for that other than
01:12:05.560the privilege of being probably kind of annoying in the group chat. And remember why they are
01:12:11.300suddenly talking to us this way. Women did not just suddenly discover that gambling could be1.00
01:12:17.180feminist. These companies looked at a customer base that was disproportionately male and saw1.00
01:12:23.260billions of dollars of profit and power still sitting on the table. That's us. That's you.
01:12:31.700They want your money and they want you to normalize this shit. Worse, they think that you are stupid1.00
01:12:38.180enough to pay them for you to do that work for them for free. So when an industry that has spent1.00
01:12:46.220years perfecting ways to separate people from their money suddenly shows up in your feed speaking
01:12:52.260fluent, cultural, kind of girly pop language, do not mistake being targeted for being empowered.1.00
01:13:00.100They did not make gambling for women. They just made gambling that looks and feels like it is
01:13:05.960not gambling do not fucking fall for it that's it that's all i have damn we're gonna have to get a0.98
01:13:14.640camera so that you can speak directly to camera i'm gonna start doing you remember when you would0.99
01:13:18.780stay home sick and watch jerry springer and it would be jerry's final thought where he would
01:13:22.000like he would have people on stage like punching each other and then he would look at the camera
01:13:26.140and be like let's be kind to ourselves and each other's friends i'm gonna start doing b's final
01:13:31.260Well, Engineer Brie has taken such good care of us here at Bahamar.
01:13:37.060Again, I'm quite picky about my podcast setup, and I could not have asked for a more professional setup and engineer.
01:13:52.720It's really just great to be in a professional space like this and know that we have such a beautiful spot outside to get back out to now that we're done recording.