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Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away.
There was an entire political era when party bosses were expected to conspicuously gamble on their candidates (even if they secretly hedged).
And in the 1980s, a few economists designed an election market that beat out election polling 74 percent of the time.
Today, we’re running an excerpt from our friends at Throughline, NPR’s excellent history podcast. Subscribe right now if you don’t already. And, listen to their extended version of the episode to hear about the early markets for betting on terrorism and military uses of prediction markets.
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Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious horror: a single employer with unchecked power. That employer is named Weyland-Yutani, a mega-corporation that dominates workers across the galaxy.
Weyland-Yutani is a sort of extreme example of what economists call a monopsony — when one employer dominates a labor market and gains power to underpay and mistreat workers. Sure, it’s science fiction. But a growing number of economists argue that monopsony power is a much bigger deal in the real world than previously thought.
We watch scenes from the movie Alien with labor economist Arin Dube, whose new book, The Wage Standard, shines a spotlight on the problem of monopsony power in the modern economy. We ask Arin what policy ideas he has that would have maybe prevented the worker tragedy seen in Alien. And we use his answer to try and rewrite the movie (spoiler: the movie becomes much shorter and less exciting).
Plus, we speak with Fede Álvarez, the director and co-writer of Alien: Romulus, which puts Weyland-Yutani’s poor treatment of workers front row and center.
For more on monopsony and anti-trust:
The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.
The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict has been out in the open, with bombs and blockades, but some of it has been invisible.
Recently some security researchers discovered a cyberweapon likely tied to that invisible conflict. It looks like it was designed to hide on nuclear scientists computers, then throw off their calculations--just as they got close to achieving their goals.
Sounds like something out of science fiction. But it was created 20 years ago.
On today’s show: a whodunit about hackers, ‘Cyber Paleontologists’, spy-vs-spy protocols, cryptic intelligence leaks, nuclear physics, high-precision math, and epistemological warfare.
Pictured: Juan Andres Guerrero Saade (JAGS) and his ‘Fast16 - NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CARRY ON’ tattoo.
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Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might have to pay a fee, or promise to plant replacement trees. But sometimes, the city won't let you cut down the tree at all, even a tree in your own backyard.
That's because trees are important for air quality, for flood control, and for public health. They help keep neighborhoods cool on hot days. But some think that tree protection laws have gone too far — that they might even be unconstitutional.
On today's episode, it's the latest showdown between property rights and local zoning laws. Typically, towns and cities enjoy a lot of power when it comes to zoning and permits. They can ban certain types of buildings. They can make you paint your house a certain color. But can they make it illegal to cut down a tree? And what does it mean to "own" a piece of property anyway?
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One specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding houses and single room occupancy units? If they lowered rents in cities, why did they go away? We have the history.
Then, let’s talk about corporate landlords. They’re blamed for driving up rents. Studies show they do the opposite. When corporate landlords come to town, they do buy up homes, which can raise the price to buy, but at the same time lower rents. We’ll parse the impact as we consider a Trump administration plan to restrict corporate home ownership.
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One reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation.
On today's show, we tell the story of a century-long battle between the U.S. government and … you, the people, blinded by your love of a magic pill.
We’re talking about protein powders, pre-workouts, creatine, stuff for gut health, joint health, vitamin C, turmeric supplements. All that. You might not wanna hear this.
Sources mentioned in the episode:
Have you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might one Starbucks or McDonald’s or Wetzel’s Pretzels sometimes be built so close to another? Are they friends or competitors? And how can that possibly be profitable?
Today’s show is one such example. Our pals at Hyperfixed got a knotty question we just had to help them untangle: Why are there so many Wetzel’s Pretzels so close to one another at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station?
To find out, Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi followed the dough all the way to the top. His journey led him to a jolly pretzel executive, a franchisee with a deep-fried American dream, and a brush with mall security.
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99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment.
It was supposed to require FDA approval for new additives. But food companies and chemical makers found a workaround. And the FDA formally okayed the loophole in the 90s — in the process bringing attention to a loophole to the loophole.
The FDA has essentially admitted it doesn’t have the capacity to verify the safety of new food chemicals. So they leave it up to food companies and chemical makers to declare their brand new chemicals are safe. These chemicals are used in everything from chocolate and smoked fish, to tea bags, protein drinks, popcorn, and seeds.
So, how’d the loophole get there, and what does it tell us about the priority the U.S. places on safety versus speed and innovation? And, how much can one lawyer do about it?
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This episode was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez, produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, edited by Jess Jiang, fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodrguez with help from Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
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Tax avoidance -- that is, legally reducing your tax bill -- is as American as apple pie. But the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is often a grey one.
On today’s show, a collaboration with Tax Notes, we listen in on the secret tapes that show how the wealthiest Americans avoid taxes.
We trace the lifecycle of a tax loophole: how it was born (in Malta), how it grew, how the Feds cracked down, and how the industry came to its rescue -- with the help of one high-ranking Trump administration official.
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How does a poor country become a rich country? There's a simple blueprint — or at least, that's what many economists used to believe. But over the years, a lot of rapidly developing economies have stalled out. These countries aren't poor anymore, but they're not rich either. They're stuck in the middle. The World Bank calls this problem the "middle income trap."
And if there's a poster child for the middle income trap, many would point to Brazil. For a time, Brazil had one of the fastest growing economies in the world. On today's show, we head to Brazil to understand why the old blueprint for economic development might not work so well anymore.
The story starts in the Amazon rainforest. With an audacious plan to industrialize the country as fast as possible.
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