Betting on Taylor Swift or Who'll Be Made Pope: The Past and Present of Prediction Markets

Pushkin Industries

25 March 2026

A live mash-up between Business History and Bloomberg's Everybody's Business. On platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket you can bet on just about anything - from Taylor Swift's album sales to whether President Trump will say a certain word in a speech. Many people worry about these new prediction markets, but the concept is far older than some critics might think.  We go back centuries to Papal conclaves; hear about how counting drinking toasts stood in for political polling; and learn how the US government tried using betting markets to predict terrorist attacks.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.