You Can Bet on Everything Now. What Could Go Wrong?
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gambling is infiltrating American life. Ads for online sportsbooks are everywhere. Prediction markets – which are not legally considered gambling – now allow betting on everything from the unemployment numbers, to the war in Iran, to how many times Elon Musk will tweet this week. Lots of news outlets are getting in on the action: CNN, CNBC, the AP, and others are partnering with prediction markets to use their stats in coverage. What could go wrong?
On today’s show, we’re joined by three journalists who cover gambling and prediction markets to answer that question. They tell stories about how gambling has already transformed sports, the unsettling ways betting seems like it’s already influencing the news and politics, and the not-so-crazy arguments for how it could lead to better informed citizens.
Also: hours after we posted this episode, federal authorities charged a soldier -- Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke -- with being the mystery bettor we talk about in the show, who made $400,000 on Polymarket by trading on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. When asked about it, President Trump said, "The whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino."
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.
Guests:
- Joon Lee, independent sports journalist and Youtuber. Find his channel here https://www.youtube.com/@iamjoonlee
- Danny Funt, author of Everybody Loses: the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Betting
- Kate Knibbs, senior writer at Wired
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- Listen to our supporter More Muslim , a narrative audio series telling deeply reported stories about the Muslim experience, wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want to tell you about a podcast that's been really interesting to me. |
| 0:04.0 | More Muslim is a new narrative audio documentary series from a group of Muslim reporters who've worked for the New York Times, Radio Lab, and More Perfect. |
| 0:13.0 | One of those reporters, a foreign correspondent who covered conflict zones for the Guardian and Al Jazeera, |
| 0:19.0 | got so burnt out after Gaza that she packed her life into a storage locker and moved to Cape Town after learning about South Africa's oldest Muslim community. |
| 0:28.1 | The reporter had no idea that there was a group of Indonesians who'd survived 400 years of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid through a form of resistance so subtle, the oppressors never even |
| 0:40.3 | recognized it as resistance. Here's a clip from the episode. |
| 0:46.5 | Before I traveled to Cape Town, I knew about the UK's role in the transatlantic slave trade |
| 0:52.3 | that enslaved black Africans in the 1600s, |
| 0:55.4 | but I had absolutely no idea that just around the same time, Dutch colonizers were deporting |
| 1:03.0 | and enslaving Indonesians and had brought them all the way to South Africa. |
| 1:10.9 | That was a preview of the podcast, More Muslim. |
| 1:14.0 | Listen to More Muslim, wherever you get podcasts. |
| 1:21.5 | So this is a bet I can make right now. |
| 1:29.2 | I'm hanging out with three reporters who cover gambling, and I'm about to place a bet, an experimental online bet. |
| 1:35.5 | One of the reporters is Danny Funt, who wrote the book Everybody Loses, The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. |
| 1:42.1 | What's your game of choice? |
| 1:43.5 | Crops. |
| 1:44.0 | Okay. Yeah, how about you? Probably game of choice? Crapes. Okay. |
| 1:44.5 | Yeah, how about you? |
| 1:45.2 | Probably Blackjack if I'm at a casino. |
| 1:46.9 | Okay. |
| 1:47.2 | Just post up at a table. Yeah, crap. My grandfather taught me craps like when I was a teenager, and it's like the thing we did in common. Wow. Yeah, got that connection for me. I like it a little too much. The bets I have in front of me now on my laptop are totally different than Papa's craps. |
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