Business incentives and the DoorDash problem

Who's going to win the Super Bowl? What about the latest season of Survivor? Or the race to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve? Who will be Portugal's next president? How many times will Elon Musk tweet in the next week? On Polymarket, and other prediction markets, you can bet on all these things and more. Are we entering a world in which everything is gambling and gambling is everything? Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal joins the show to explain the rise of prediction markets, what's betting and what's investing, and more. Then, The Verge's Hayden Field teaches us about Model Context Protocol, a wonky bit of AI infrastructure that might be key to making AI agents work. MCP is barely a year old, and practically all of tech is ready to embrace it. Finally, Hayden helps David answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about why every AI company seems to want you to go shopping.

Further reading:

• Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting not

• Election night at Kalshi HQ

• Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg

• From Bloomberg: My Biggest Question About Prediction Markets

• Anthropic launches tool to connect AI systems directly to datasets

• AI companies want a new internet — and they think they’ve found the key

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