It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: Oops All Gambling, Political Betting Joins the News

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Garrison explains how news networks have partnered with gambling sites to forecast the future and turn everyone’s phone into a casino of human suffering. Original Air Date: 12.9.25 Sources: https://news.kalshi.com/p/kalshi-cnn-prediction-market-partnership https://www.businessinsider.com/kalshi-cnbc-deal-cnn-data-integration-partnership-2025-12 https://x.com/Kalshi/status/1996233186251075862?s=20 https://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2008/3/Cherry.pdf https://www.axios.com/2025/11/20/time-galactic-prediction-market https://dune.com/datadashboards/prediction-markets https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/behnamstatement051024 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/appeals-court-allows-kalshi-election-betting/index.html https://www.datawallet.com/crypto/polymarket-restricted-countries https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/are-the-walls-closing-in-on-polymarket-after-latest-european-ban-2837953/ https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/polymarket-banned-romania-for-operating-without-a-licence/ https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2025/08/18/114882-polymarket-banned-in-australian-amid-crackdown-on-illegal-betting-election-wagering-concerns https://dune.com/rchen8/polymarket https://blog.uma.xyz/articles/unpacking-polymarkets-meteoric-rise-in-numbers https://www.marketwatch.com/story/polymarket-authorized-for-u-s-return-days-after-donald-trump-jr-joins-as-advisor-c3c8b348 https://truthpredict.net/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2025/12/04/alleged-insider-nets-1-million-on-polymarket-in-24-hours/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcPwUiMPj6w https://news.kalshi.com/p/zohran-mamdani-cites-kalshi-election-odds https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/tennessee-us-house-7-special-election-polls-2025.html https://www.natesilver.net/p/sbsq-26-do-prediction-markets-make https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/nate-silver-polymarket https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting-states/ https://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/23501236/supreme-court-strikes-federal-law-prohibiting-sports-gambling https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1996978855538823522?s=20See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters,

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Here, oversharing is encouraged. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lle Pons on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All Zone Media. Last week, two major news networks, CNN and CNBC, partnered with the so-called prediction market, Kalshi, an online political betting platform, to use Kalshi's real-time betting data in TV news segments, online news content, and, as Kalshi announced on X the Everything app, quote, to integrate prediction markets into CNN's global newsroom.

With Kalshi threatening, quote, a new era of media is here. This is, it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. regular CNN viewers may have noticed this integration has already been happening for some time. This past election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in place of an addition to polling data to weigh the likelihood of candidates winning elections. CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enton, a Nate Silver protege who used to work for 538, trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories earlier this year. Cali praised Enten by name in their announcement of the CNN partnership.

Quote, Enten is an expert at translating what data and polling are saying on any given issue, and through this integration, he can tap into real-time prediction markets data to better inform and fact-check his reporting, unquote. Here's an example of this reporting in a CNN segment from October 2025. If you go back six months ago, you go back to April Cape Baldwin, when what were we looking at? Well, we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear shot of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the Kalshi prediction market odds.

We saw them in an 83% chance, but those odds have gone plummeting down. Now we're talking about just a 63% chance, while the GOP's chances, up like a rocket, up like gold, up from 17% to now a 37% chance. So we'll look like a pretty clear, likely Democratic win in the House come next year, has become much closer would have tossed up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic. Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote-unquote odds are formed for what they really are. To a viewer who just tuned in or maybe isn't paying that much attention, it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed on screen the way you would see polling data or legitimate

information used in a newsroom. This short section, using the Kalshi prediction market odds, was then followed by three minutes of analysis using selective mid-term voting data from 2017 and 2018 to support the movement in these gambling odds. The gambling odds themselves were the load-bearing piece of information in this piece. Kalshi's main competitor, another so-called prediction market, called polymarket, partnered with X-The-Everything app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to integrate their prediction data into online news content. Time magazine and Sports Illustrated have also both launched

deals with the prediction market platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction markets and how do they function? On Polymarket and Kalshi, users can bet yes or no on the outcome of a question relating to world events, which is called a market. As more money is wagered on either side, the odds of the outcome change. Currently, top questions include various predictions for time person of the year, will the U.S. strike Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of the Epstein files, and who will be the next president? Calci has Trump's chances at 6%. Here's polymarket CEO Shane Copeland explaining on 60 minutes. You may make money if you're right, you lose money if you're wrong. And as a result, it creates this information

that's really useful for people. These companies would like you to believe that the ratio of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for the general public to forecast the future. Whether that's through betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner of a sports game, which days of the week Israel will buy. or what movie will win best picture. Almost $50 million is currently being wagered over a potential Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in 2025. Production markets currently have $3 billion in weekly trading volume.

I do need to note, these companies argue that hedging outcomes of world events legally is not gambling, because that would be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal under the unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, which suppressed the early prediction markets of the 2000s. But Kalshi is regulated as a platform for trading financial derivatives rather than securities trading or straight-up legalized gambling. And this determines what entity they have to register with and what regulations they're subject to. Cali launched in 2021 with a federal license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

And after a years-long battle, in October 24, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Kalshi allowing online prediction market betting on U.S. elections. Rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the practice was illegal gambling and their concerns that prediction market betting could undermine election integrity. Former CFTC Chairman Rostom Benham made a statement of May of 2024 reading, quote, contracts involving political events ultimately commoditize and degrade the integrity of the uniquely American experience of participating in the Democratic electoral process. Allowing these contracts would push the CFTC, a financial market regulator, into a position far beyond its congressional mandate and expertise, unquote. A week before his dad took office,

in January 2025, Donald Trump Jr. became a strategic advisor at Calci. Polly Market launched in 2020 without registering with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and was fined $1.4 million by the CFDC in 2022 for operating as an unregulated exchange and was henceforth prohibited from allowing bets from U.S.-based users, though the Polymarket CEO sees it a little different. It was a $1.4 million fine, and also... It was a settlement. And you could not have customers in the United States.

Yeah, we had to go and geo-block trading in the U.S. and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't, hey, you're banned from trading the U.S. It's like until you're licensed. I mean, it was breaking the law. I mean, people say breaking the law, it's like which law, you know? So if anything, it's incompatible. It's incompatible with the law.

Yeah, with the regulatory matrix that existed. The past two years, Polly Market has found to be facilitating a legal gambler and subsequently banned in the countries of Switzerland, France, the UK, Poland, Singapore, Belgium, Romania, and Australia. Most of these bans just require geoblocking users, which can be easily circumvented through the use of a VPN, and since the financial transactions on Pollymarket are all done through cryptocurrency, it's not clear that Pollymarket is taking any steps to enforce these bans beyond geoblocking. In the midst of facing regulatory hurdles and bans from across the globe, Polly Market still exploded in popularity last year,

attracting investment from Peter Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds of thousands of new users, primarily driven by betting on the U.S. presidential election, speculation on whether Biden would drop out of the race, and who Trump would pick as vice president, all despite the platform technically being banned in the United States. After the first presidential debate in July 24, around the attempted assassination of Trump and the RNC, Paulymarket gained 60,000 new accounts.

The year prior, Polly Market averaged 2,300 new accounts per month. August 2024 saw 70,000 new accounts. September, 90,000. October, 300,000. The month after Trump's second inauguration, 400,000. Currently, Polymarket has over 60,000 daily active traders and hundreds of thousands of monthly traders since October 24. To give another example of their recent growth, in April 2023, Polymarket's monthly volume was

about $3 million. A year later, it was $39 million. In November 2024, it was $2.5 billion. Last month, it was $3.7 billion. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish, right inside the free IHard radio app. Make some noise.

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to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories

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We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made?

Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here.

You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write. write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together

in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Joshua Hami, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Phineas. So I went home and I asked Billy if she wanted to sing it. She immediately made it her own thing. No faith.

You really know how to make me cry when you give me those oceans. So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In summer 2025, Cash Patel's FBI and the CFTC under Trump dropped investigations into whether Polly Market was illegally allowing U.S. users to place bets using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm invested in the platform and Trump Jr. himself joined Polymarkets advisory board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Jr. joined Polymarket, the Commodity Futures Training Commission announced it was going to allow Polymarket to operate in the United States after acquiring another company that held a U.S.

license. This past October, Trump's own Truth Social, announced it was partnering with crypto.com to launch TruthPredict, quote, a revolutionary predict. market backed by President Trump for enhanced decision-making, unquote. When Barry Weiss's 60 Minutes did a puff piece on Polly Market with its CEO last week, Anderson Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading. Polymarket's CEO, Shane Kaplan, seemed to think that a little bit of insider trading might be good, actually.

But predictive markets do rely on someone having. some inside information. Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need to curate them, and you need to be really clear and stringent on where the line is drawn and, like, sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this will happen, and there's a lot of benefits from it, and, you know, people will adapt. The CEO did not elaborate on what polymarkets practice of curating insider trading looks

like and where their quote-unquote stringent line is drawn, because in reality it doesn't seem this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through these vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the point of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their prediction markets more accurate, so it's a net positive. And if it fucks over some users on the other side of a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week, an alleged insider trader won over a million dollars for bets on Google's 2025 year-in-search rankings, listing 22 out of 23 in the correct order. This user has made a series of early bets related to Google the past year, like the exact release date of Google's Gemini 3.0, which they won $150,000

on. But because this polymarket user isn't trading stock, there's a lot of the same. There's a no clear regulatory mechanism to stop this behavior. And Polly Market can't reverse these trades because they run through the blockchain, not that they would even necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst, and Paulymarket advisor Nate Silver was also asked about insider trading on the China talk podcast two months ago. Are you worried about insider trading with all this political betting? I mean, there's an aspect of like, look, these are all crypto, you know, you get on these markets with crypto and like, like, there were markets, like, which way is Suzanne Collins going to vote? And, you know, the sort of the like, you know,

the tail outcomes for like a legislative assistant in her office are, you know, you can make 10 times your salary in like a minute, right? What's your, what's your thing on this? For sure. I mean, look, I think there are a couple of policies. though. Like, first of all, I think people on the inside often aren't as well as informed as they think and or there's some downsides to having an inside view and not an outside view. You might drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak, right? You might be in a bubble. Yeah, look, I mean, we've seen. But I mean, there are ones where it's like you can litter, I mean, there's been a lots of group chats people talking about like very, very sketchy trades and one-way bets that are being made in the stock market of like what's going to happen with a. trade deal. I mean, you can literally be the person who decides, right, and be vetting on the side. If there are, if there are incentives to make money in a world of 8 billion people, many of them are very competitive and all of whom, not all of them, most of them have access to the internet,

right? People are going to find a way, a way to do it, right? Let's pause here for a sec. What do you think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to political insider trading as, like, an unfortunate, but somewhat. inevitable consequence of our evolving system of finance. Like in the crypto space, we've seen an increasing number of like crypto kidnappings, right? Well, I mean, that's one of the consequences of people are worth vast amounts of wealth that isn't very secure. It's just, it's just going to happen until you up security or have better solutions or whatever else. And so like,

you know, I don't think there's necessarily anymore or less insider trading on like polymarket than there might be for in sports betting sites. We've seen a lot of sports spending scandals or for regular equities, you know, I believe the literature says that, like, members of Congress achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios. I'd have to double. I'm sure there's some debate about that. I'd have to, like, to double check that, right? It's fine, bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine, actually. So, Nate goes on to say that prediction market insider trading isn't that different from congressman doing insider trading on the stock market or like rigged sports betting.

But he really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed. And prediction markets intentionally skirt regulation. They currently have far less legal protections for users against unfair practices. And with crypto, they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors. And now news companies are legitimizing, turning everyone's phone into a corrupt casino for world events. Whether that's Israel, starving Palestine, or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish this week.

The day before, Kalshi announced their partnership agreement with CNN and NCNVC, CBS aired a 60-Minutes puff piece on Polly Market anchored by Anderson Cooper. When we met with Copeland last month, more than $3.6 million had been wagered on whether or not Venezuela's president Nicholas Maduro would be out of power by the end of the year. Polymarket users didn't think so. They gave it only a 23% chance. And if you buy no on that and you're buying it at 78 cents, and at the end of the year, he's still in power. Yeah, you get a dollar per share. So you've made a profit of more than $0.22 per share. I can see why this would be, I mean, I don't want to use the term addictive, but it would be compelling.

I mean, maybe it is addictive, I don't know, but it's certainly compelling. This is how I see it. If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela and try and get an edge. Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Kalshi partnered CNN as well as CBS's 60 Minutes, is so hesitant to call this clearly addictive. practice, addictive, quote-unquote, compelling. Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland explained the platform earlier in this piece. It's a site where you can basically bet on current events, some sort of question about the future, like an election, and as a result, when a ton of people are betting, you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how likely each outcome is.

And how accurate is it? It's the most accurate thing we have as mankind, right now, until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball. Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO, quote, may be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely on to something, unquote. In explaining how polymarket users attempt to seek truth and gain an edge, Copeland told the story of how in 2024, an anonymous French user made over $80 million on polymarket by betting on Trump winning the president.

presidential election. And to bolster his bets, he contracted UGov to conduct private polls in swing states. People thought he'd just like Trump. And he had actually commissioned a ton of private polls. He did something called neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think their neighbors are likely to vote for. For scenarios for an election where there's a stigma to saying you're going to vote for somebody and people feel some sort of social awkwardness. And what he noticed was there was huge discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the normal polling. And the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously. He thought Trump was undervalued. If this guy was not able to make 80 million, but rather able to make $80,000, he would have never gone through the hassle. But when you get

markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for people to go above and beyond to try and find truth. What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote-unquote find truth. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the CEO of Polymarket has a personal incentive to encourage, but Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of capital T truth, even though Donald Trump was way ahead in prediction market odds back during the 2020 election, which had his chances of winning that election far higher than what pure polling models showed. Cal She claims that prediction markets can help journalists quote-unquote fact check.

But doesn't explain how fact can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where is the fact in gambling? Well, we will find out after these ads. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free I-Hard radio app. Make some noise.

Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Las Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Open the free IHart Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all?

It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and IHart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

Naomi Osaka showing out. Be beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports.

On the Iheart radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years,

Today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do you think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself,

Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song.

I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much. that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles

to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy,

really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Joshua Hami, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Phineas. So I went home and I asked Billy if she wanted to sing it. She immediately made it her own thing. No faith. You really know how to make me cry when you give me those oceans.

So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To quote from Polymarket Advisor Nate Silver's blog, The Silver Bulletin, quote, it's basically good when people are more exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized. But, of course, I also analyze polls and build probabilistic models myself. In that capacity, I strongly disagree with the notion that prediction markets can serve as a good substitute for polls. These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by the prediction market companies themselves, including polymarket, to be fair. One minor pet peeve is that, Both reporters and readers often confuse probabilities for poll results, unquote.

As Nate goes on to explain, if Trump is up 55 to 45 over Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's not saying that Trump is expected to win by 10 points. It means that 10% more users on the website favor Trump winning, which is pretty close to a toss-up. This confusion is a huge problem, which is bolstered in both how prediction market companies market their platform, but also how journalists use gambling data in news stories. If you see a social media post, an advertisement, or a random news segment showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians in a race, without context, those betting numbers could be interpreted in a number of ways and influence someone's perception of an election,

and maybe even their choice on who to vote for or even whether to vote at all. In an October speech, Zoran Mamdani referenced to Kalshi billboards predicting a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary. When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election,

hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me. And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at nearly 80%, we knew that the so-called experts were set to get it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable. When you see the calci odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this. You are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June,

believing that his victory was promised. We cannot allow complacency. to infiltrate this movement. Cali excitedly shared the latter half of that clip, proclaiming, Breaking, Zoran Mamdani references his calci odds on stage. Calci is mainstream, unquote, despite this clip demonstrating how prediction markets

often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, discount Steve Kornacki, former 538 analyst and now CNN's data expert Harry Enten, shared this segment about the Tennessee District 7 special election on X the Everything app, with the caption, odds are Dems will come within 10 points of a win, if not outright win. I would say if you had to look at the congressional map, any district that Donald Trump won by 22 points, you would say, you know, you've got like nearly a 100% chance of winning if you're running for Congress there, but what are the prediction market saying right now?

Yeah, what are we talking about in terms of the prediction market odds? Look, the Democrat has a 15% chance of winning in that race, okay? A 15% chance, which ain't nothing in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points. But here I think is the key nugget on this side of the ledger. And that is a GOP win by under 10 points. There's a 68% chance of that. So there is a more than two-thirds chance that the Republican candidate, yes, they win, but they win by a significantly lower margin than Donald Trump.

We're talking about double digits, smaller. talking about a huge, huge shift to the left. We're talking about when you add these two together, we're talking about a more than 80% chance that there is a clear double-digit shift to the left and a 15% chance the Democrat actually wins in a district that Donald Trump on by 22 points. That just shows you how bad the environment is for Republicans right now, that the Democrat has any sort of a chance in this day. He's just authoritatively rattling off complete speculation on a Democrat victory as big screens display percentages in huge text, with source Kalshi in tiny text at the bottom of the screen. Ordinary polling showed that this was a close race that leaned red by

two to eight points, and the Republican did end up winning by nine points. To quote the broken clock, Nate Silver, quote, without having polls to look at, the prediction markets would probably kind of suck at making election forecasts. Translating polls into probabilities is considerably more complicated when there are many correlated races at once, such as in the battle for the electoral college or control of Congress. Prodiction markets had a strong 2024 in this regard. They leaned toward Trump when our model had it at 50-50. I don't think this was because of any special modeling insight per se, but because they incorporated some sort of prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls again. So give the markets credit for that.

These sorts of soft, quote-unquote, intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd need a lot of data to determine whether they add or subtract value in the long run, unquote. As Nate himself acknowledges, someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher betting odds throughout the entire New York mayoral race, than a purely statistical model would show. A contention I have with Nate, one of many, is though I call prediction market numbers

gambling odds, they are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't based on objective mathematical principles, like flipping a coin, the three-door problem, or even something like blackjack. These odds are created whole-collegible, cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or data-informed guessing, but still primarily through

people's intuition, which is susceptible to group impulses. Many random world events lack a reliable basis of continuous controlled data that's needed to form a probability, like that which is applied to legalized sports betting. This is quite evident in the betting odds around the last people conclave, which had very little relevant data to use for informed predictions. There was no existing probability to support the election of an American Pope, a first-time occurrence. With prediction markets, people can still do research to make an informed bet, but it's not really the case that ex-candidate is mathematically expected to win an election

80 out of 100 instances. A hive mind of users have formed that statistical division through the power of money. 80% of users are betting that a certain result is likely to occur. So the problem isn't just that, like Nate says, people are confusing probabilities for polls. It's that they're confusing prediction market betting odds for mathematical probabilities. It's this difference that allows betting on sports outcomes via Kalshian polymarket, even in states that ban typical sports betting. because you're not actually betting on fixed odds, you're betting against other investors.

And now news companies are not just manufacturing consent and normalizing political gambling, but are actively encouraging the use of these platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity of these gambling markets. Anderson Cooper calls it the quote-unquote wisdom of crowds. But we already have methods for learning, group consensus, like polling, which may have problems, but frankly, far fewer problems than gambling on world events. Beyond the moral qualms of betting money on human suffering,

prediction markets are susceptible to not just personal bias, but group bias based on the current ratio of odds. This in-group consensus can be influenced by short-lived trending topics, and these platforms cater to a hyper-online point of view. Prediction market users provide a very non-representational sample variety, pulling from a very specific type of guy who regularly uses these platforms. To quote from Kalshi's CNN partnership announcement, Kalshi has become the definitive source for staying informed about the future and is used by reporters, politicians, pundits, Wall Street, and Main Street.

He had recently called the New York City mayoral election eight minutes after polls closed, hours before the media. It's because of this accuracy that Cali's data will serve as a powerful compliment to CNN's reporting. Journalists can more easily surface credible information to their audiences about the real-time probabilities of future cultural and political events. Unquote. In practice, this reporting mixes gambling data and actually reputable or credible polls in a confusing way. like this recent CNN segment, which cites Kalshi odds on whether Trump will send tariff stimulus checks, as well as CBSUGO polling data on if tariffs lower prices back to back in the same segment. Do they think that the tariffs, that these rebate checks are actually coming?

And at this point, no, no, I mean, chance Trump tariffs, the tariff stimulus checks are sent to Americans by August of 2026. it's a 25% chance. That's 1 in 4, so that's not nothing, but the American people right now are craving, craving some relief, and at this point it doesn't look like it is coming. Although I will note, John Berman, this 25%, it is greater than this 6% who say

that tariffs decrease prices or that 5% back in March, which are just, you never see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5%. So, look, 25% ain't nothing, but at this point, it's low. Yeah, it's interesting. markets think that only one and four chance that will actually happen there. Is this really what the future of political forecasting is going to be?

Maybe, maybe not. But there are four horsemen of this political gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver, via his gamification of election predictions based on his time as a professional gambler, sports betting, especially since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of Nevada in 2018, resulting in almost 40 states subsequently legalizing some forms sports betting, which has facilitated the accessibility of gambling to grow dramatically across the country the past 10 years through the spread of online sports betting apps. The third horseman is Trump, or the Trump administration, through their removal of regulatory

hurdles facing prediction markets. And finally, that CNN guy, Harry Enton, a Nate Silver protégé who trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories the past year. These four horsemen, Nate Silver sports betting, Trump, and Harry Anton have created the cultural and political conditions for political gambling to spread like wildfire, which, hey, is also something you can bet on. During the LA fires, prediction market users could bet on how many acres would burn. So what is the end game of this?

This gambling apocalypse that seems to be inching its way. closer and closer. To answer that, here's a clip from Kalshi co-founder and CEO Terik Manser. The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We are living in a world where like we have an abundance of information, but there's a lot of noise and like we don't really understand what's real from what's not. And prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do a very, very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people. And you're seeing this sort of massive shift where like people are using them. whenever they think about questions about the future, you know, whenever they're debating about

anything. And I think that trajectory is going to keep going. That's a new consumer habit that I don't think it's going to be undone. This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting, this financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion, creating new, addictive consumer habits. These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports betting to everything where everyone gets to be their own little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino in their pocket getting addicted to gambling on speculation of world suffering. And CNN is complicit in this.

CNN and others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the people who decide when to drop bombs around the world to win millions of dollars by betting money on the choices they themselves are making at the expense of the rest of the world. And these companies think this is a good thing, because the betting odds can serve as a potential heads up that something is likely to happen. Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are not existent, are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more involved in regulating

online betting, and in the case of political events, it should just be completely banned. It is detrimental to a healthy society, it incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely, but it should return to being time and location locked. Go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets. Only the federal government can. And Trump's federal government certainly seems like it's not going to. considering the president's son works for both of the main platforms, Kalshi and Polly Market.

And while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polly Market social media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account, because that drives traffic back to their website where people can bet on the news stories that Polly Market is sharing, even if those news stories are speculative or completely made up. On December 5th, Polly Market posted, quote, Justin suspected J6 pipe bombers legal counsel projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon of those involved in January 6th,

unquote. This claim subsequently spread all around the internet, parroted by people of a variety of political orientations. But if you read closely, the original post says, suspected J6 pipe bombers legal counsel projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon. Polymarket is just spreading gambling information as if it is news content. Quote unquote, projected just means that polymarket users are betting on this. But these projected posts are mixed in with other posts just aggregating the day's news.

So unless you are paying super close attention, which rarely people on the internet are, this becomes a Trojan horse of disinformation. When news companies use the term projected on election night, usually that indicates with pretty clear mathematical certainty that an event is going to happen. When Pollymarket uses projected in news tweets, it only indicates that internet gamblers

are swinging around money in an effort to create truth. With once legitimate news companies, just complicit but active participants in this process. That is it for us today at It Could Have Been Here. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. India fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, A-O. Rewatch, our brand-new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling

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Listen to Podlandia. A.O. Rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and IHeart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka. Showing out.

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