Prediction markets are everywhere nowadays. You can go online and bet on political outcomes, or the weather, or how long Taylor Swift will stay together with Travis Kelce. But prediction markets have a long history, and one of the earliest involved betting on who would be the next pope. In fact, Renaissance Romans gambled on everything from papal elections to whether a particular noblewoman would give birth to a boy or girl. So why was betting such a big thing in 1500s Italy? How did the papal prediction market actually work? And what can it tell us about prediction markets today? We speak to Ryan Isakow, the author of the No Dumb Ideas substack.

Read More: A Live Experiment in Prediction Markets
Prediction Markets Are a Thing Now

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Housing affordability remains one of the single greatest sources of economic stress. Even if inflation measures were to come down, the simple cost of shelter is a huge burden on a wide swathe of the population. Hardly anyone disagrees with the idea of increasing supply, but this is easier said than done. There isn't a lot of spare construction capacity and the political fights over liberalizing zoning are tedious and slow. On this episode, we speak with Kevin Erdmann, a senior affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, who proposes a simple idea. He argues that after the Great Financial Crisis, regulators over-tightened lending standards, and in so doing, took out the entire "starter home" segment of the new housing market. He says that if Fannie and Freddie were to liberalize their lending standards, homebuilders would be incentivized to build more homes that cater to people with lower incomes and lower FICO scores, essentially re-creating a whole slice of the new home market that's disappeared over the last 15 years.

Read More:
US Homebuilders Face a Supply Chain Snarl From Tariff Battles
US Mortgage Rates Decline to 6.88%, Lowest Level This Year

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Markets have been selling off, with shares of tech companies like Nvidia down almost 20% so far this year. But even before the recent selloff, DeepSeek rattled the AI market and sparked questions over how US platforms will compete and actually monetize their technology. Despite all these hurdles, some investors remain tech optimists. Cathie Wood, the founder, CEO and chief investment officer of ARK Investment Management, is one of the most prominent, with ARK's Innovation Fund heavily invested in companies like Tesla, Coinbase and Roku. In this conversation, recorded live on stage at Bloomberg Invest, we discuss Cathie's view of potential opportunities in the space, and why she's expecting the Trump administration to create a Reagan Era-esque "golden age" for investors.

Read More:
Cathie Wood Sees Trump Era as ‘Golden Age’ for Wall Street
Cathie Wood May Have Lost $14 Billion. But She’s Interesting

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You’ve heard about Chinese EVs. You’ve heard about Chinese batteries and solar panels. And recently you learned that China is near the cutting edge of AI research. Here’s another category: biotech. In 2019, the Chinese share of molecules licensed to Big Pharma companies was 0%. In 2024, it’s now 31%. On this episode we speak with Tim Opler, a biotech industry investment banker at Stifel. He explains how this industry has taken off in such a short period of time. Among the factors he cites: a generation of Chinese research scientists working in the US who hit a ceiling in terms of promotion and thus went back home to start companies. It’s also far cheaper to run clinical trials in China, due to the structure of the healthcare system. We also talk about the broad history of the pharmaceutical industry, how it’s evolved, and what impact, if any, AI will have on drug discovery.

Read More:
Former J&J Scientist Bets on China Biotech
Chinese Health Stocks Surge on DeepSeek Integration Potential

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One of the first moves made by the Trump administration was to change the nature of grants made by the National Institutes of Health. Under the new policy, there's a 15% cap on "indirect costs" associated with a given grant. This is money that essentially pays for institutional overhead, not directly related to the new costs of the specific project itself. So how do NIH grants actually work? What are the direct and indirect costs? What is the effect that's already playing out? On this episode, we speak to Carole LaBonne, a biologist and researcher at Northwestern University, on what she's already seeing from the changes.

Read more:
Trump’s Science Agency Pick Says He Won’t Cut More Personnel
The US Is Withdrawing From Global Health at a Dangerous Time

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This week was a busy one and some of the most interesting things that happened came out of Europe, where policymakers announced up to €800 billion of additional defense spending and an easing of Germany's stringent debt rules. All of this comes as Europe responds to tariff threats from the Trump administration, as well as worries that the Trans-Atlantic security alliance may be over. So how significant could these changes be? And what do they mean for things like the euro, the dollar, and the wider financial system? And what are the vibes in Germany like right now? On this episode, we speak with George Saravelos, head of currency research at Deutsche Bank, about this huge moment.

Read more:
EU Backs German Push to Look at Easing Fiscal Rules for Defense
Trump Hails Tariffs as US Economy Barrels Into Trade Wars

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The 1970s were a pretty eventful time in markets. There was high inflation, the end of the gold standard, and a stock market crash. There was also a bunch of ideas coming out of the University of Chicago that would go on to be famous and highly influential for investors. Perhaps the most prominent is the Efficient Market Hypothesis, posited by Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama, which says that markets are right and it's useless for investors to try to outguess them. Fama later teamed up with David Booth, the founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, and has been a longtime collaborator with the firm, which now has $777 billion under management. Today, they're releasing a documentary directed by Errol Morris and called "Tune Out the Noise," which chronicles this important time. We speak to both of these investment legends about the development of their theories, how they put them into practice, subsequent criticism, and what comes next.

Read more:
Wall Street Math Wizards Are Decoding Private-Market Returns
Upstarts Challenge a Foundation of Modern Investing
Cliff Asness Says Markets Are Less Efficient — And Social Media May Be to Blame

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Almost whichever way you measure it, the US has a lot of debt. And, with the Trump administration recently proposing a budget that would see US debt levels swell even further, it doesn't look like this issue is going away any time soon. In this episode, we speak with Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and the author of the new book, How Countries Go Broke. We talk about how he thinks about debt cycles, the catalyst for when high levels of debt become an immediate problem, what a debt crisis actually looks like, and what the US needs to do to avoid a "heart attack" debt crisis within the next three years. We also speak about what investors should do in these scenarios, including Ray's thoughts on things like Bitcoin and gold. And, of course, we also speak about his role in helping create the Chicken McNugget.

Read more:
The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Bonds
‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Chatter Is Getting Wall Street’s Attention

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