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Planet Money

Do prediction market bettors make anything better?

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Have you noticed a lot of young people getting into antenna-maxxing as alpha? Or, maybe searching for any bit of copium after they fat-fingered and got rinsed? Or maybe they farmed during a yes-fest o...

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in love? This is Planet Money from NPR. My friend and colleague Bobby Allen has been covering the banana's growth of prediction markets for NPR. You know, the ones where you can bet on everything from Taylor Swift's wedding date to the war in Iran. And Bobby says this craze has kind of come out of nowhere.

Like a few years ago, when the CEO of one of the biggest prediction markets in the world reached out to Bobby. Like, hey, FYI might be worth incorporating some calcium prediction markets into your coverage

and I was like a prediction what? Like, how she is not a serial?

The first thing that made Bobby think, wait, this may be a really big deal happened last December.

First, he saw how she was partnering with CNN, meaning that CNN would be telling people the news and also telling them what people were betting on that news. And around the same time, people were actually betting on whether a famine would be declared in Gaza. Those two things colliding made me think like, what is this company all about? Who's using it? Why to CNN care about it? I guess WTF? How is this a thing?

Ever since, Bobby has been listening to calcium's proponents and its detractors and trying to sort of exactly what this company is doing, either for us or to us. And we at Planet Money, we asked Bobby to take us along on the ride he's been on. Starting with the calcium traders he met when he went looking for them, where they hang out in chats on discord.

My account isn't, it's like Bobby 176539, there's like no photo, like I look like a bot. But it's not. Definitely not a knock. Bobby was thinking that these prediction market apps might be the next frontier of online gambling addiction. So when he first got on the discord, he was asking around for stories of financial

ruin. And I got absolutely savage for this, like absolutely savage. Here walks in an NPR reporter who announces himself as an NPR reporter and asks, hey, I'm looking for someone who's like addicted to calcium and who lost a lot of money and they just utterly dragged me and we're just like who is this guy. You're calling us de-gends, which is like sling for like degenerate trader. Like you're just looking for a de-gene, you just want to ruin

this industry. Like what's wrong with you? Bobbi is actually learning all of this vocabulary as he goes. He starts keeping a glossary. The degenerate traders don't know what they're doing and will lose their life savings. So Bobby's like, okay, this is not a therapy group for losers. I get it. This was where the winners brag, where the whales are. What they call the sharps. No not sharps with the pee. Doing what they call printing. The very act of ones are extremely savvy

and they love putting in their Twitter bio, like from 10,000 to 900,000 on calcium, right?

So Bobby's like, how are they winning so big? He starts asking people about what they call alpha, how they're getting an edge so they can predict the future better. Like some people are buying powerful antennas so they can have a millisecond advantage listening to a press conference. And Bobby's trying to get them to talk by speaking to them in their own language. I go, well, here's my proposed headline, calcium bond sharps, turn to antenna maxing,

in search of market alpha, which is something that would never appear on mpr.org,

but was a nod to like the way they speak. And one guy says, "Defo a hit." Another guy says, "Ello, well, I think I like this guy. I hope somebody talks to him. He actually seems cool." Another guy says, "I just DM him." He's in. With your job history been like, "Yeah, so I graduated a little over two years ago." So now Bobby is madly typing notes in his interviews and he meets a guy named Logan Suddeth, who is 25 and last year quit his job at a

private credit firm to do prediction markets full time. Why do you think you get a new job? Are you doing trading full time? Yeah, I was making more from trading on quality after work. Then I was from my job. You're kidding. Like more every month than he was earning all year at his old job. He says, "It's amazing, dude." Wow. Logan's alpha is just research research. He made more than $40,000 for example on predicting time magazines per person of the year

by analyzing what they were covering the most. Bobby found a guy posting about his alpha

On a bet about how long it would take Charlie Pooth to sing the national anth...

I saw that Charlie Pooth was in San Francisco three days before. So I flew out there immediately, went outside the stadium. I was like, "Oh, this guy's a perfect example of someone who's willing to literally go to the extra mile to have an edge that people would think would be unfathomable." Caden Booth bought a stopwatch and this device used for listening to bird sounds and hung out on the sidewalk outside of the stadium waiting for the rehearsal to start so he could time it.

I thought I was going to show up here and there would be 500 people sitting outside. I really thought to be 500 people in launchers all trying to make easy money to me. I was like,

this is just common sense. And Caden did win many thousands of dollars. But where did that come from?

And what is all of this predicting doing to us? Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Mary Child's here with NPR's Bobby Allen. Hey, Mary, what's up? Never have you predicted.

We've been doing episode together but here we are. Okay. I also didn't predict it. The future is so strange. prediction markets are obviously great for the cadence and logons of the world who are making a bag and great for the companies that run these prediction markets who are also making a bag. These companies exist though because they have convinced regulators that they're also great for the rest of us that they're adding new knowledge to the world, making us more informed about the future.

And Bobby has been asking, is that right? Today on the show, the case Calshy has been making two regulators to the courts and to the public as to why what looks like gambling and seems like gambling is not. We will hear why that argument has been kind of working and if

it stops them, what prediction markets could do to our future?

This message comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply, ccapitalone.com/bank for details. Capital One NA member FDIC. So as Bobby enters this world of people who are sick, prediction markets with the next big thing, a route to prosperity, it's becoming richer, smarter, happier. He's like,

the first step towards understanding all this hype is to try it. Most people are downloading

these apps right now because of sports. It's the only place you can bet on sports in all 50 states. So that's about 80% of what's happening on Calshy. But then there's all this other stuff. Like questions about what will happen in the world in pop culture and politics, whether a world leader will be toppled. Plus something called mentioned markets, capital M capital M, where people bet on whether someone will or won't say something.

Bobby gave me a little tour through betting on mentioned markets, capital M capital M. I did get clearance from Marianne and Alex to do this. That's our reals as a planet money. I'm not allowed to do a lot. Okay. The day we tried it, President Trump was about to give a very important speech that lots of people were watching about the war in Iran. So we decided

to bet on which words he would say in the speech. Okay. Fund your account. How much should I put 50?

Oh, you're going to make some money or lose some money. The app is very brightly colored and super engaging. There's charts all over the place. You kind of can't stop looking at the thing. Okay. Deposit now. I'm going to push the button ready. You can literally see trades just flowing all over the screen in real time. I feel like I'm in arcade. I mean, that's that's exactly the point. Yeah. You see the probability of whether a word will be said or not. You're seeing

like a lot of, you know, number is going up, going down, depending on how traders are betting.

Oh, wow. 95 for epic fury. Is he, I don't know, nuclear? People 98 percent odds nuclear. That's

pretty good. Let's root for tariff. Do you think that's a good one? A yes or a no on tariff. Yes, tariff. Okay. I'm a yes on tariff. It's a low odds one. It's 17 percent only. That's not great. But let's, let's say. But I can, I'm right. I think he's going to say it. As we speak this evening, it's been just okay. Come on. Here it is. And here it is. After Trump started talking, he immediately said like 15 of the words on the list. And all these words on the list, by the way, they're known

as strikes. And he even said words that I had thought were pretty improbable. Like Barack Hussein Obama. Someone just said on discord. Holy yes fast. It's the yes fast. Oh, should we just put more money down? As we were watching, the odds of every word were jumping all around. And we just really locked in. Like the world stopped. We felt like we were looking at this through a soda straw. Did he say our word? Will he? It becomes all your brain can think about.

So when Trump starts talking about the economy, Mary's basically trying to go to him and to saying the word tariff. Our economy is strong and approving by this. Because of we are experiencing a very special kind of prediction market pain known as weave. Wow, he really almost said tariff twice.

This is crazy.

with that he's walking around it. Listeners, thank you for your faith in me, but I did lose five

dollars on my yes tariff bet. He never said it. Meanwhile, Bobby is a sentimental millionaire after

months of betting on these markets just to figure out. Yes, and I'm speaking to you now from my PJ. It's very palatial. And your first takeaway Bobby on your reporting journey is this feels a lot like gambling. It does. It's a game, right? You get this dopamine rush every time what you win. If you're

losing, you want to chase your losses and it's absolutely maddening and there's always another market

married the next hour. It just goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. And this feels like gambling experience. Bobby is definitely not alone. As he is following the story, he's reporting on all these lawsuits where lots of states are also accusing Calshy of being gambling. Some of them are triting out a very basic definition, which in Miriam Webster is the practice of risking money or other stakes in a game or bet. And there are early ads, Calshy even portrayed itself like gambling.

They were kind of cute about it. How they phrase it. They were basically like bet on the NFL, legal, and all 50 states. And important note, all the existing online sports betting apps are currently categorized as gambling. And as Bobby gets deeper into this giant fight with the states over whether Calshy is gambling or not, he realizes the whole existence of these prediction apps depends on the courts agreeing with Calshy that these yes or no questions about the future

are like derivatives, like swaps, a regular, regular financial instrument in which two parties with opposite views on the direction of some price or level agree to bet against each other. So I started digging into that. I really wanted to understand the argument that Calshy's CEO and co-fender has been making from the start into fence of these prediction markets. And that means I finally write him back and say, hey, hey, Dark. Sorry. I missed your message two years ago,

but here I am. I think I'm ready to talk now. Can you help me? Well, I mean, I guess you can. Yeah.

Yeah, that works. Actually, the first thing that's always says about why Calshy's not gambling,

at least not like a casino, is that there is no house. He says Calshy doesn't win when better's lose. Instead, it makes money every time people bet a little percentage of every bet. So their incentive is to have as many bets as possible. Touching. And then the next thing he's always claiming is just because you're speculating about the future doesn't mean you're gambling. I always say this speculation is not equal to gambling because if speculation is equal to gambling,

then our entire financial markets is gambling. Yeah, but I mean, if the comment section on NPR stories is any indication or like, I mean, many people think this is gambling. I mean, they say you're putting up money. You might win some. You might lose some. It's a uncertain outcome. That's gambling. To me, I know my customers and I know what they're trading. And why do they excited about this is because at the end of the day, they're trading the same way they trade in the

stock market. But in this case, they're trading on things that they're care about and they can relate to.

And Dark is always saying that it's better than regular financial markets. He says on Calshy,

your average individual trader is on a more even playing field with all the season professionals. Like the Hatch funds and all these guys have all the information and, you know, there's no way to really beat the market in those places. But people have opinions about politics. They have opinion about culture. They follow and track the economy. They follow and track sports. And this is a mechanism for them to express those opinions. The idea that prediction markets are basically

democratizing the world of trading is a talking point. Tarra has honed over the years. Because from the start, he had the convinced the federal government that betting on all sorts of crazy stuff on Calshy was not gambling, but something else, technically swaps. But Tarra often compares it to futures trading because, well, people are betting on future events. Great. Oil futures have a ton in common with betting on the Rotten Tomatoes score for the Devil Wirst product, too.

That's currently at 87% Interesting. What's really helped me understand Tarra's argument was to go back in time and look at all the ways Tarra has made his case that Calshy should exist. It started way back when he was an intern at Goldman Sachs around 2016. When he says he kept hearing about customers who wanted to bet on big world events. They were all trying to figure out what was going to happen to simple questions about the future. It was basically, yeah,

well, the Brexit happened or not. And it will trump when the election or not. The answers to those kinds of questions like will Brexit happen? Matter to them because they affect the market and the price of assets. And investors wanted to be able to bet on which way things would go. So Tarra thought it. Okay. We have a market to price companies. We have market to price commodities like physical things that you can touch that are in point to the economy.

Currency's interest rates like that. And what if we built one to price simple questions about the future? Okay, well, what is a simplest way of creating that is like, let's just make it a yes or no questions where you can buy yes if you think an event is going to happen and know if you think it's not. Right. So, you know, Tarra in his past life was, you know, a buttoned up Wall Street

Type, not exactly Gordon Gekko, but, you know, I'm talking about.

betting markets the next thing in the long line of futures. Starting with grain futures,

the very first futures to be traded almost two centuries ago, which by the way, people also

thought was gambling at first. So Tarra goes to the regulator of the futures market,

the commodity futures trading commission, the CFTC, to ask for mission to be able to run an exchange a marketplace. The whole idea of futures for farmers, for instance, is to avoid beast or famine cycles to smooth it out. So you can buy futures to lock in future prices. In case, there's like a drought that knocks out all your crops. It's a way of hedging against something that might threaten your business, like an insurance policy on your crop. And also, when they're

doing what they're supposed to do, futures help everyone figure out how much things should cost. Or if you ask Tarra, they can help predict the future more accurately. Like, they could be a tip sheet about what's going to happen. Instead of people guessing whether Brexit was going to happen or not, now you have a more objective source of, like, more objective, unbiased source of signal on whether Brexit was going to happen or not. And more noise. But Tarra is trying to turn his

idea into a marketplace. And in order to get designated as just another futures or swaps market, in the long line of them, the CFTC says Kalshi has to check a bunch of boxes. Like, the market cannot be easily rigged, no insider trading. Insider trading, bad. Kalshi submits lots of paperwork

about this. And in November 2020, at the very end of President Trump's first term, Kalshi gets

a call from the CFTC informing them that they have one regulator's over. And Kalshi's press release, they wrote that it was, quote, "the next natural step in the evolution of trading on future events." But that was just a first step. Once Kalshi was allowed to exist as a marketplace, the company also needed to get approval for every new market it wanted to list. Meaning if Kalshi wanted to put up a market for people to bet on how much rain will fall in Chicago next week, they had to get

permission. And this was just as President Trump was ending his first term, and the much more skeptical Biden administration was taking over. So during these first few years, Kalshi was hearing a lot of this one word. No. Because the CFTC had rules, any market on its exchange, had to be insider trading proof, and it had to have what they called public interest value. Like the way a market on oil futures or employment data or inflation might inform how corporations make decisions over

travel or hiring or firing. And also, the law strictly prohibited any markets to do with terrorism, assassination, war, and gaming. And the last one, gaming, that one ended up being

important for Kalshi. Because at first, that was a real issue for Tarek. Like back then,

this gaming restriction meant that he couldn't list sports. And also, lots of other events that seemed to the CFTC to be like games. And this was frustrating to Kalshi traders. So Tarek

decided to fight it. In 2023, Tarek proposed Kalshi's first election market. A market for

betting on what party would take control of Congress. Regulators blocked it as expected. They said election betting is gaming. It's not allowed. And that it would open up elections to interference among other things. But this time, Tarek sued. His lawyers argued there's no rules specifically against betting on elections. And this market would do what futures do best. You know, hedge against harmful outcomes, and provide more predictive data.

In their court papers, Kalshi referenced a whole academic experiment from the 1980s, where economists at the University of Iowa accepted bets on the 1988 presidential race. And it was more accurate than polls at the time. The wisdom of the crowds prevailed. And Kalshi's lawsuit prevailed too. The court did win, you know, and it really is our legal position that these markets are legal. There are a lot.

And that was a rock-a-booster for you guys when you guys are still a regulator and one. Yes, that was huge for you guys. That really opened the floodgates. Yes, it opened the floodgates.

It majorly boosted the rocket all of that. And here's the thing, once Kalshi got permission

to list election markets, they interpreted that approval to mean they could list all kinds of markets. Not just who will win a political race, but sports. The Golden Globes will Ariana Grande's streams be up on Spotify next week. And it isn't just that ruling that opens the floodgates. It's the huge political shift that comes next. Because the Trump family actually joins in on the love fest. Donald Trump Jr. becomes an advisor to Kalshi,

the CFTC's default setting changes. They go from default rejecting to default accepting, no matter how outlandish the market is. So that's basically where we are now. This is the reality that Bobby has sorted out during all these months on discord chats and on calls with CEOs and following all the core battles. Prediction markets are ascended. Kalshi is out there trying to pull in as many people into prediction markets as it can,

recruiting on college campuses, advertising all over subways. But I mean every time I log on to work, I see my inbox absolutely full with lawmakers really incense. Many people are trying to

Tear all of this down.

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Capital One in a member FDIC. Over the last month, Tark's team of PR handlers has been pushing him into the spotlight. He's making the rounds as the public face of Kalshi and all these prediction markets. And it's essentially saying, yeah, yeah, there's this big legal debate happening,

but listen to me for a second. These prediction markets are actually really important to society.

Like Tark keeps saying at a time when no one seems to trust anything, these markets can be an accurate crystal ball, a truth machine. And he says, they are better than polls, betting having skin in the game makes the wisdom of the crowd even wiser. And he says, prediction markets even make people better, more engaged citizens, like the opposite of social media. If somebody has is very careful about their belief, they will make more money and do better on

prediction markets than someone who has bad takes and extreme beliefs, right? But as that's not true for social media, like social media, someone who has a very nuanced, smart take gets five likes. Someone who says something crazy on social media or racist will get 300,000 lives. I know all of my most brilliant tweets get no likes, so I totally agree with that.

So that's what you should be pretty sure of my case. Oh, trust me, he is.

Yeah, it's all for the sake of journalism, I swear. I actually think prediction markets are a force for good because the incentive structure for prediction markets is rewarding the nuanced, the unbiased, the well calibrated takes. In my little mentioned market betting experiment with Bobby though, that is not what we found. Like, were we more engaged citizens when we were listening to that speech on Iran? The Korean War lasted for three years, one month duration of orders

did not have that in my bank account. Oh, this is the bank account. This feels pretty gross. Bobby, I will say you stop absorbing the content and you're just literally just like hearing the words as like as like as like a chair in the slot machine. Are you going to line up for a chair? Are you going to hit the jackpot? And he's over here talking about obliterating and decapitating an entire country, which is really steep.

Can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness.

Now, how we feel about all this is immaterial. Has nothing to do with weather or not calcium is legal? And after months of Bobby talking to all these people involved in calcium, not involved in calcium, watching it, worrying about it, he has basically concluded that calcium is working this legal loophole of being governed by derivatives law instead of gambling law. Like, this is gambling. It's just buttoned up and in a suit. And having covered tech startups for

years now, this whole like we're not this where that argument is something you hear over and over. A Airbnb isn't a hotel. It's a people-to-people marketplace. Uber is not a taxi, but a transportation network company. Now, calcium is saying, we're not gambling. We're this other thing.

I think that they followed the playbook of money in the tech industry. That's Amanda Fisher,

former chief of staff at the SEC. I would say crypto pay for the way for this, which is that they just, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. My dog's barking, sorry, once again.

And this is Bobby's dog, Kami, who's a good dog? I first came across Amanda,

dragging the prediction market rose on the app formally known as Twitter. She's now at a very pro-regulation advocacy group called Better Markets. Amanda says, "Cales, she's path to success has taken a page from another financial sector that bobbed and weaved its way through complicated legal obstacles." They used the playbook that the crypto industry, I think, started and perfected during the Biden administration, which is

framing their disruption of industries as a technological disruption. When I would characterize it, more is just a legal disruption. They are willing to take more legal risk and break the laws, and essentially take the approach of "catch me if you can." But Amanda's take is that prediction markets are not doing the things futures markets are supposed to do, which is to facilitate corporations in the real economy, fostering price discovery, and creating jobs,

and creating stable markets, and not for just gambling and speculation. Amanda says, "The fact that these prediction markets are getting rubber stamped by the federal government as basically futures trading. That's giving sports gambling apps ideas." Some of the sports gambling apps are themselves launching their own prediction markets, trying to get approval as futures marketplaces. Their execs are publicly admitting it's a

way to get sports betting into states where it is not legal. So Amanda posted this week, at least they're being honest." One of the things Amanda's other warning people about all the time is how understaffed and uninterested the currency FTC is when it comes to monitoring whether these apps are following any of the official rules, like insider trading. In the stock market,

Which is regulated by the SEC, where Amanda used to work, she says, "It's pre...

using insider access to windbick." The SEC has like eight times the staff of the CFTC.

"I would highly advise people do not insider trade in the stock market. There are a lot of surveillance tools and cops on the beat, at least stirring in administration that is predisposed to enforcing the law. I do not have similar confidence in prediction markets. Because prediction markets are partly responsible for policing their own services." There is a self-policing mechanism that was written into the rules back when futures markets

were all focused on grains and soybean prices and such. It is fascinating to me that

agree to which the CFTC sort of outsources regulation to self-regulation. What's up with that?

That's absolutely right. So in the past markets were pretty simple. It wasn't

every day that a financial intermediary would try to list a new type of grain future or soybean

contract. They didn't envision markets on whether the Supreme Leader of Iran would be outstanding. Exactly. They were basic markets in pretty boring commodities. So when Congress in the agency set up this market, that self-policing structure may be made sense. Now Amanda says, "You have prediction markets. Like how she applying the same self-certification tool to all kinds of markets that it was not intended for." They're also supposed to be policing their own

traders to make sure that they're not manipulating markets. But Amanda says she's not seeing any serious enforcement. What she hears instead is executives at these prediction markets talking about enforcement when big fishy-looking winds make the news. So the capture of

Maduro in Venezuela or the Iran strikes or any other policy announcement related to tariffs.

People have been making suspiciously well-timed bets on these kinds of events, but they are very hard to pin down as insider trading. Yeah, they really are. Just this week I was reporting on these French sludes who figured out that there was probably an insider trader on Polly Market who made a ton of money on President Biden's gardens and like the final hours he was in office, but it took them weeks to untangle all of this and we still don't know exactly who was behind the

bets. Now Bobby was a philosophy major in college and he says he hasn't read Simone Dubuque or Kant in a long time. But during these whirlwind months reporting on prediction markets, he has found himself falling into a big existential wondering about these prediction markets. We, we, we, as I stroke my chin, I've been wondering, how much are these bets on future events changing the future? When parties acting in their self-interest maximize their own gain over

that of the public in philosophy and economics, this is known as Sinister Interest, distributed to philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s and you can already see this happening. Yeah, I saw what some might call Sinister Interest in the real world recently. I was watching a mention market where people were betting on what words a federal reserve official was going to say in a meeting about the crypto industry. It was on Zoom. And when the officials were taking

questions from that Zoom, I saw calcium traders submitting questions as if they were just regular humans trying to really hard to get the official to say something they were betting on. And they can get way more Ick, perhaps the most stark example. Prediction market better is threatened to journalist over his reporting on the Iran War saying that they would kill him if he didn't change what he'd written about a military strike.

Now, Tarka's told me he's aware of the dangers and there are markets he would never list.

Yes, I mean, there are limits, right? Like I always say taking to the extreme things can be bad, but like any market's I can create a perverse incentive we avoid. What's a perverse incentive you might be wondering? Well, maybe a bet on California wildfires,

like how far will this fire spread that could encourage someone to set a fire?

But the problem is in practice. The prediction market companies themselves or the ones deciding what markets may have perverse incentives. And polymarket? They did have markets on the LA fires last year. So I've actually gone back and talked to all those big time prediction market sharps in the discord chats to ask them if they were worried about all the potential reality warping and insider betting on almost any future event. And some of them are like,

we're not that worried about it. But others are like, I don't really see how cowshies claim that this is a net plus for humanity really checks out at all. They try to say like, oh, you know, it's it's really important to have like these numbers from prediction markets to like accurately gauge things. This is Evan Samad who told Bobby he's been making close to $100,000 a month, Doug Calshy. So you might think he would be pretty game. But, you know, does the general public

really need something that's like one percent more accurate? I'm like the, I don't know, like, whether or not someone's going to score like over a certain number of points in the football game, like what what value does that actually add? I would say like none, like like literally none.

I talked to a one trader yesterday who said, you know, basically like they ha...

financially in terms of prediction markets sticking around that whatever party, whatever candidate

wants to let them thrive, they're going to back. Is that like your number one thing or is it a top thing or? No, so I like, okay, maybe this is like bad for me to admit or whatever. But like,

I don't think prediction markets are like a good thing socially. I think that there is like an

actual like pretty real dark side to prediction markets. These markets are only profitable for people

like me because there are people just throwing away money. I think that's probably pretty bad to be honest. Evan's bad vibes though are not stopping this industry. It seems like every day there's a new lawsuit or court ruling over the future of Calshy. Nevada has recently banned Calshy and New Jersey

meanwhile a court struck down a ban. It'll all probably end up before the Supreme Court one day.

But in the meantime, the rocket ship that is the prediction market industry keep soaring this past year alone, 70 new prediction market companies have started and the industry is projected to be

a trillion dollar industry in the next four years. Bobby, should we make a bet on it?

Hey, Mary. Mary Childs. Yeah. We want to play something for you. I'm Mary. It's the leap thing. Currently Vice Chair of PGM, former deputy national security advisor for international economics under the Biden administration, former head of the market's group at the Fed, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm calling because I heard you're leaving planet money. Oh, my God. You're saying too bad

because it was just about to cave to that interview you've been chasing me on. Literally have been

pounding this guy on words and upwards for you. Congratulations and please don't forget about the rest of us. This is the meanest thing. Congrats, Mary. We all love you. Thank you. It's true. I am leaving planet money for a new project details to come. Jokes on to leap though because I'm absolutely going to be following up. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Siamian Horst Kessler. It was edited by Mary and McCune. Fact-changed by Siamian Redwood as an engineer

by Siamian Liferido and the School of Mark is our executive producer. Special thanks to all the calcium traders. I have been hounding for months. Speaking of hounds, thank you to Kami. The dog. Good dog. I'm Bobby Allen. And I'm Mary Childs. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital one.com/bank for details.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

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