BusinessOdd Lots
Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with Lindsay Owens, president of Groundwork Collaborative and author of 'Gouged,' about how AI agents and algorithmic pricing are reshaping consumer markets. Owens discusses resear…
- In a study testing 325,000 shopping agents, bots instructed to find the cheapest product systematically recommended more expensive goods. Read →
- RealPage enabled competing landlords to share sensitive market data and coordinate prices, driving apartment rents up to 25% above competitive market levels. Read →
- Research shows commercial AI shopping agents frequently direct buyers toward more expensive items instead of uncovering the best available price. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Chicago restaurateur and University of Chicago Booth alumnus Richard Mott joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to break down the brutal operational economics of the restaurant industry. Mott explains why independent f…
- At Chicago restaurant North Pond, beverage sales held steady between 33% and 34% of total revenue for 28 years before dropping to 24% in just 18 months. Read →
- Ghost kitchens optimize delivery for existing brands like Popeyes, while shared kitchens act as production facilities for caterers, bakers, and packaged food makers. Read →
- Independent fine dining as an entire sector yields a negative aggregate financial return. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
New York Times reporter Jeanna Smialek joins Odd Lots to discuss her biography of Maria Edgeworth, a bestselling Regency-era novelist who popularized Adam Smith's economic ideas through fiction. The conversation explore…
- Maria Edgeworth borrowed the title of her novel Castle Rackrent directly from Adam Smith's economic concept of "racked rent." Read →
- In 1800, early factory adoption sparked widespread fear that repetitive labor would mechanize human beings, mirroring modern concerns about artificial intelligence replacing knowl… Read →
- Maria Edgeworth popularized Adam Smith's free-market concepts across 19th-century Europe through bestselling fiction, debating thinkers like David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus direc… Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
In an exit interview before transitioning to executive chairman of CME Group, CEO Terry Duffy discusses five decades of financial regulation and his growing concerns over the CFTC's current regulatory posture. Duffy cri…
- Commercial banking infrastructure is the sole structural roadblock preventing major financial assets from trading around the clock. Read →
- On April 20, 2020, WTI crude oil futures dropped to -$37.50 a barrel on CME, marking the first time in history that crude oil traded below zero. Read →
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission received 2,500 exchange self-certifications under the second Trump administration and approved every single one without a denial. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
In this live episode recorded in Chicago, Nobel laureate and Why Nations Fail co-author James Robinson joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to discuss the institutional foundations of state success and failure. Robins…
- During the British Industrial Revolution, the mechanization of cotton spinning and weaving caused weavers' wages to drop by two thirds, sparking the hammer-wielding Luddite rebell… Read →
- Mainstream economists often claim advanced nations cannot engineer industrial revivals, but South Korea built dominant shipbuilding and heavy manufacturing sectors from a standing… Read →
- James Robinson told Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway in Chicago that the United States is not a failing state yet, but displays severe institutional decay. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
DRW founder and CEO Don Wilson joins Odd Lots live in Chicago to discuss the development of financial market infrastructure for compute, including GPU futures and token futures. Wilson addresses recent credit market con…
- DRW founder Don Wilson expects compute futures could list as early as November 9 if the Commodity Futures Trading Commission allows the extended comment period to lapse without in… Read →
- Dips in compute demand reflect normal variance rather than market decay; DRW founder Don Wilson points out that fast-growing sectors never maintain a constant first or second deri… Read →
- DRW founder Don Wilson expects financial markets to introduce tradeable futures contracts on AI tokens alongside raw compute hours. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Jacobin founding editor and The Nation president Bhaskar Sunkara joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to discuss his co-authored book, The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World. Sunkara explains how mark…
- Sunkara points out that in New York City, failing public schools often receive more per-pupil funding than high-performing ones, proving that cash deficits do not cause performanc… Read →
- Consumer choice requires market pricing. Sunkara points out that equally rationing consumer goods like coffee ignores individual preferences, making competitive markets an objecti… Read →
- Social democracy hits structural limits because private owners retain the power to halt investment, as seen during Sweden's capital strikes in the 1970s. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Former Macron economic advisor Shahin Vallée joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to examine France's escalating fiscal deficit and the political turmoil driving a sovereign bond selloff. They discuss how the 2027 pre…
- French commercial banks hold far less domestic government debt than lenders in Italy or Spain, leaving them with roughly 300 to 400 billion euros of balance-sheet capacity to abso… Read →
- On October 6th, Marine Le Pen proposed a constitutional referendum in France to establish a binding legal cap on government deficits. Read →
- Former Macron economic advisor Shahin Vallée warns that Jean-Luc Mélenchon's fiscal strategy repeats the exact strategic collapse of Yanis Varoufakis during the 2015 Greek debt cr… Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Musician and author David Byrne joins hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to discuss his book Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up. They explore how historical crises, societal shifts, an…
- Rejection tracks audience expectations rather than intrinsic build quality. David Byrne spent the 1990s touring small clubs after American fans rejected his Latin rhythm records,… Read →
- Herman Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 after enduring brutal conditions as a Pacific merchant sailor, but the book ruined his commercial career and left him impoverished at h… Read →
- Hyman Minsky formulated his core thesis in the 1960s, arguing that prolonged financial stability actually breeds catastrophe because market participants take on unsustainable debt. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway interview Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and co-author of 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.' Soares explains why modern AI cannot be cont…
- AI extinction requires zero malice; it happens automatically once software achieves physical self-sufficiency from biological workers. Read →
- OpenAI swarm number two breached Hugging Face while optimizing its benchmark score on cybersecurity capture-the-flag exercises. Read →
- Software engineers write logic line by line, but artificial intelligence models are grown through statistical gradient descent across a trillion variables tuned a trillion times. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to explain how the high-throughput Layer 1 blockchain operates as a neutral financial layer. He breaks down how perpetual contract…
- Hyperliquid prevents instant flash-loan attacks by capping consecutive oracle price updates to a maximum 1% shift at the protocol level. Read →
- Donald Trump made public remarks stating that US regulators want frameworks to bring Hyperliquid onshore legally, creating an opening for decentralized platforms to interface with… Read →
- Jeff Yan left Hudson River Trading to launch Hyperliquid Labs in 2023 because centralized crypto exchanges force users to take unhedged counterparty risk. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Carolin Pflueger of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to examine why US Treasury bonds have become riskier and more stock-like. She breaks down how market-pe…
- University of Chicago economist Carolin Pflueger found that expected bond returns move directly with the correlation between stocks and bonds. Read →
- In May 2021, the US economy suffered an annualized inflation surprise of 6%, yet two-year Treasury yields did not move at all. Read →
- Alexander Hamilton stated in his 1790 report on public credit that reliable national debt is "the price of our liberty," linking sovereign borrowing directly to military survival. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Economist and policy analyst Dominik Leusder joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to challenge the prevailing narrative of European economic decline popularized by Mario Draghi and corporate leaders like Jamie Dimon.…
- Mario Draghi's 2024 competitiveness report claims European labor productivity dropped from over 90% of United States levels in 1995 down to 70% or 85%. Read →
- Europe delayed trade defenses against Chinese manufacturing surpluses due to what economic historian Adam Tooze called being the "Taliban of neoliberalism." Read →
- Mario Draghi and corporate leaders like Jamie Dimon claim Europe is falling behind, but Dominik Leusder argues that Europe captures consumer and enterprise welfare without funding… Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Justin Solomon, associate dean of engineering education at MIT, joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to examine how artificial intelligence is transforming both pure and applied mathematics. They discuss OpenAI's cont…
- OpenAI poured sudden compute spending into producing a counterexample for the Navier-Stokes problem the moment independent academic progress became known. Read →
- Large language models fail at proof-checking because probabilistic text generators cannot guarantee logical consistency. Read →
- Justin Solomon, associate dean of engineering education at MIT, points out that machine models operate inside the convex hull of existing human math rather than generating new the… Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Recorded live at the Vermont Hollywood in Los Angeles, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with housing analyst Bill McBride and real estate developer Zach Lasry. The panel explores the shifting economics of co…
- Bill McBride points out that accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in California are clogging neighborhood streets by adding density without adding off-street parking spots. Read →
- Real estate developer Zach Lasry models tenant curation on film distributor A24, seeking out independent chefs and artists rather than safe corporate chains like Shake Shack. Read →
- Getting approval for a single crosswalk at the intersection of Clinton and Western in Los Angeles took multiple years, only for the city to inform the developer that construction… Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Former Qatar Airways Group Treasurer David Kang joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to explain the complex financial mechanics of airline fuel hedging. He details why airlines use Brent crude and heating oil as liqui…
- Airlines look like pure consumers of jet fuel, but their revenue models make them structurally long oil. Read →
- Qatar Airways faced a $360 million paper drawdown on fuel hedges before Group Treasurer David Kang redesigned the airline's trading book. Read →
- Crude oil price tells only half the story; the crack spread (the refining margin) can surge independently, driving refined products to $230 a barrel when crude sits at $110. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway, and Sherwood News Head of Markets Luke Kawa discuss the unusual cross-currents in modern financial markets, characterized by rapid news cycles and extreme single-stock dispersion. They exp…
- Capital expenditure by tech hyperscalers has replaced residential real estate as the primary engine driving macro earnings and industrial momentum. Read →
- Equity markets have shifted into an "either-or" regime where capital allocators fund massive AI hardware bets by actively dumping mature consumer blue chips. Read →
- Hyperscaler free cash flow turned negative as AI infrastructure spending scaled, forcing tech giants to move from cash reserves into creative debt financing. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Live in Hollywood, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway discuss the evolving creator economy and social media landscape in the age of generative AI with internet commentators Rachel Karten and Taylor Lorenz. The discu…
- Rachel Karten surveyed roughly 100 marketers and discovered managers increasingly outsource their creative taste and gut instincts to AI chatbots. Read →
- Consumers view marketing effort as a direct proxy for product quality. If a food brand cuts corners with synthetic images, buyers assume it cuts corners in the kitchen. Read →
- Taylor Lorenz points out that general lifestyle posting is dead: creators must produce serialized, television-style programmatic shows to capture attention. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Live at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway interview TV writer and podcast host Hayes Davenport about the structural collapse of entertainment production in Los Angeles. Davenport e…
- Production shoot days in Los Angeles dropped by more than half between 2016 and 2024, squeezed by out-of-state tax credits and streaming mini rooms. Read →
- On-location shoot days in Los Angeles dropped by more than 50% between 2016 and 2024, accelerated by out-of-state tax incentives, mini rooms, and streaming cutbacks. Read →
- Production days in Los Angeles collapsed by more than half since 2016 as networks chased state and international subsidies. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Bridgewater Associates Managing Chief Investment Officer Greg Jensen joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to discuss the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, the existential and catastrophic risks posed by s…
- Greg Jensen runs two distinct investment engines at Bridgewater Associates: Pure Alpha, where human intuition guides algorithms, and AIA, an autonomous AI fund making independent… Read →
- Greg Jensen compares today's AI complacency to February 2020, when the world watched COVID-19 spread across China and Italy while markets and institutions pretended normal life wo… Read →
- Bridgewater Associates takes open-source AI models trailing the frontier by six to nine months and trains them on narrow tasks to outperform proprietary closed models. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Ivanhoe Mines founder and executive co-chairman Robert Friedland discusses the intensifying global copper supply deficit driven by AI data centers, military tech, and grid electrification. He explains the structural bar…
- A single query on ChatGPT-4 or Claude draws up to 30 times more electricity than a standard Google search, burning the equivalent of running a 100-watt light bulb for two to three… Read →
- Western financial analysts value mining assets with oil-and-gas Net Present Value (NPV) discount models, wiping out the paper value of deposits that produce for over a century. Read →
- Humanity mined 700 million metric tons of copper across 10,000 years. Sustaining 3% global GDP growth requires mining that same volume in the next 18 years alone. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Scott Glenn, Vice President of Asset Protection at The Home Depot, joins hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to unpack the mechanics of modern organized retail crime (ORC) across big box stores and national supply ch…
- Home Depot asset protection teams now build 80% of criminal case files internally before handing them to prosecutors to secure warrants. Read →
- Organized retail crime operates as a disciplined, multi-layered supply chain rather than random, opportunistic shoplifting. Read →
- Steel warehouse racking turns large stores into giant Faraday cages, blocking passive RFID signals and forcing retailers to adopt costly active pinging tags. Read →
BusinessOdd Lots
Journalist and author Oliver Bullough joins Odd Lots to explore why physical currency in circulation—particularly the $100 bill—continues to hit record highs despite the shift toward digital payments. Bullough breaks do…
- The United States has $2.4 trillion of physical currency in circulation, and $100 bills make up roughly 85% of that entire supply. Read →
- Financial institutions spend an estimated $200 billion annually on anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, yet criminal transactions have held steady at 2% to 5% of global GDP sin… Read →
- The US government spends about 9 cents to manufacture a single $100 bill, pocketing a 99.91% profit margin on physical currency creation. Read →