Prediction markets want to be the news

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, let's talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways. My guest today is Liz Lapato, a senior reporter here at The Verge who owns what we cheerfully call the chaos beat.

Liz has been writing a lot about prediction markets. Lately, and especially why they all seem so intent on being perceived as sources of news. A position which directly incentivizes insider trading, which in turn creates a long list of very predictable problems. For example, this past weekend after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, the leading prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket erupted with activity. That included extremely contentious markets around the death of Iran's supreme leader.

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