Odd Lots
Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday, Thursday, and Friday.
Episodes
How Franchise Restaurants Opened the Door to the Gig Economy
When the fast food industry began booming in the 1950s, it did so via a new business model known as the franchise. This model allowed independent operators to license trademarks from a business like McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts, and it soon spread across the country, with huge consequences for how Americans are employed. Legal battles fought by franchises eventually opened the door to what's now kn
Why Apple Is Heading Into a Pivotal Moment
There used to be a time when the latest product release from Apple was a huge deal. But lately, it's been kind of 'meh,' and a lot of the hype in the tech world has been directed at companies doing things with AI. For better or worse, Apple seems to have largely missed the AI boom. But there are signs things might be changing. In addition to appointing John Ternus as the new CEO to replace Tim Coo
The Creator of Claude Code on The Hottest Piece of Software in the World
2026 has been, in terms of software, the year everyone is talking about Claude Code. Indeed, Anthropic's coding agent incited a market scare — and helped usher in the era of vibe coding — through its promise of streamlining software development for both pros and amateurs. Famously, Claude Code began as a side project of Anthropic led by Boris Cherny, who speaks to us today about the ea
Lev Menand and Nathan Tankus on Why Fed Independence Is Now Hanging by a Thread
Last August, President Trump made the unprecedented choice of moving to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. The administration claimed she was being terminated with cause, citing an ongoing investigation in alleged mortgage fraud committed by Cook. The legal battle between Cook and the administration has been tangled in the courts for the last year, eventually reaching the Supreme Court. This June, in a
Why Soccer Analytics Works Like Volatility Arbitrage Trading
American sports fans have long been comfortable talking in the language of stats and analytics. Soccer embraced the 'moneyball' revolution later; the sport was once perceived as too complex to model analytically — there were too many players on the pitch, the game's progression was too random and chaotic to reliably predict. That's no longer the case, and soccer watchers are well aware of st
NY Governor Kathy Hochul on Her One Year Data Center Moratorium
On July 14, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a one-year moratorium on new large data center projects in the state. It's the nation's first such pause at a time when anti-data center politics is on the rise around the country. But Hochul insists that she's not anti-AI, and that she's an avid user of the technology, as well as a believer that it can be a force for economic growth. On this ep
Why AI Might Actually Create More Work for Lawyers
It seems obvious that among the many industries that AI might disrupt, the legal profession might face some of the most adverse outcomes. When clerical, research-based tasks like searching through databases and reading contracts are automated, what is left for lawyers to do and how might they justify all those billable hours? In this episode we speak with Gary Wingens, chair and partner at the law
The Korean Levered ETFs Shaking Markets All Around the World
Retail participation in the stock market is booming. And of course the biggest story in markets is the AI trade, which has created an incredible amount of demand for chips and memory. These two broad themes have come together in the form of leveraged, single-stock ETFs. And while these products are popular in the US, the scale coming out of Korea is enormous. It's a good week to talk about this in
One of the World's Largest Hedge Funds on Its 86x Growth in Token Spending
We've gone through a number of a technological revolutions in investing, whether it was the dawn of the high frequency trading era or the introduction of robotraders. When it comes to AI, the big question that remains in the investment context is whether or not the technology will be implemented like those past tech innovations — meaning it will be integrated into the flow of the business wi
These Are the Sharps Actually Making Money on Prediction Markets
Here's a couple things about prediction markets. A lot of it is pure gambling and speculation, much of it on things with very little economic relevance. Another fact is that in all likelihood, if you yourself started trading right now, you'd probably lose your shirt. But there is money being made by some dedicated traders, really focused on areas like politics and economics. On this episode, we sp
How a Major Grocery Store Chain Can Dramatically Lower the Cost of Food
In June, grocery giant Aldi opened a store just off of Times Square in Manhattan. It's the company's first location in Midtown and, according to their US Chief Commercial Officer Scott Patton, Aldi has to orchestrate a "logistical symphony" to get groceries into the middle of one of the busiest places in America. For instance, they use shorter trucks to navigate the tight corners of New York City
What Dan Wang Saw on His Last Trip to China
There's this weird contradiction that hovers almost all conversations regarding the Chinese economy. On the one hand, the growth and rising material prosperity is undeniable. And of course, Chinese industrial giants are at the frontier in all kinds of things, like batteries. On the other hand, you always hear about a soft domestic market, and a general state of unease among workers who fear that p
Baidu's CFO on How It Became a Full-Stack AI Player
In the China tech space, Baidu is now a full-stack player in the AI industry. The company makes its own chips, has its own AI models (Ernie), its own cloud system, and it's integrating AI into its self-driving car business, Apollo Go. But before all this, Baidu was known for being China's leader in search. Things, obviously, have changed a lot since the company was founded in the late 1990s. In to
How Lenovo's CFO Is Allocating Capital During One of History's Biggest Booms
We know that companies around the world are investing heavily in AI. So intense is the race to win the AI battle, that it feels like there's almost no upward limit on how much you could spend on it. So how are CFOs thinking about capex in the AI age? In this episode we speak with Winston Cheng, CFO of Chinese-founded multinational tech firm Lenovo. Lenovo is known for its personal computers, espec
Rory Johnston on Why His $200 Oil Prediction Didn't Turn Out Right
The Strait of Hormuz has (mostly) re-opened! Crude prices are still up since the start of the war with Iran, but popular predictions earlier this year of $200-a-barrel Brent didn’t pan out. Why is that? We last talked to Rory Johnston, the founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, at the start of the conflict. And in that conversation he said that the Strait’s closure would lead to
How the 1994 World Cup Transformed the Business of Football Forever
The last time the World Cup came to the US was 1994. Before then, the World Cup was an enormously popular event with surprisingly limited commercial significance; the 1990 tournament in Italy, for instance, lost money for broadcasters. But that all changed in 1994, when American companies sought to make their mark in the form of advertisements and sponsorships: firms like McDonalds, Mastercard, an
Grace Shao on What the World Should Know About Chinese AI
China's AI industry has changed a lot since DeepSeek released its cheap frontier model last year, and briefly sent US tech stocks falling. After being locked out of the most advanced chips, Chinese companies are now allowed to buy some Nvidia H200s. In fact, many of the big Chinese tech companies — like Baidu — are making a push to become full-stack players, with their own chips, model
How Substack Creators Are Covering This Strange Markets Era
We closed out our New York live show on May 28 with a panel that featured three of our favorite Substackers: James van Geelen of Citrini Research, Sam Ro, founder of The TKer, and journalist Jasmine Sun. They've all been Odd Lots guests before, and we wanted to get them together to discuss how journalists and analysts are supposed to cover this incredibly strange and highly pressurized moment in m
Anthropic's Co-Founder and Top Economist on Doing Research at the AI Frontier
There’s a lot to unpack with AI right now — everything from its potential impacts on the labor market and society to more extreme questions about existential risk. Anthropic, which builds frontier models like Mythos, Fable, and Claude, is actively grappling with these issues, including whether governments should limit AI development. Just last week, the Trump administration forced Anth
Jeremy Grantham on How to Tell If a Bubble Is About to Burst
Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and long-term strategist of GMO, has a long history of calling bubbles. As he recounts in his new memoir, The Making of a Permabear: The Perils of Long-Term Investing in a Short-Term World, that includes spotting the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, which some people see as analogous to the current excitement over AI. And when it comes to today's market, there are a l
The Iran War’s Lasting Scars Across Asia
An interim deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz offers relief, but Asia’s economic woes are far from over. Beyond the chokepoint, the conflict has forced long-lasting shifts in Asia’s food and energy flows.On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, Oanh Ha joins Odd Lots co-hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal to discuss why Asia is reeling from the conflict and what the “new norm
Carmen Li's Plan to Build a Futures Market for Compute
When we spoke to DRW's Don Wilson last year, he talked about building out a GPU market that might be bigger than oil. Now, a year later, he is working with Carmen Li to do just that. Li is the CEO of two companies — Silicon Data and Compute Exchange (where she works alongside Wilson). The former company is building the index for GPU pricing while the latter is a spot marketplace for GPU proc
Anjney Midha's Plan to Radically Lower the Price of Compute
Anjney Midha wrote the first check to Anthropic. He teaches a viral course at Stanford on how AI works. And he was, until recently, a partner at a16z. In other words, he is AI-industry royalty. Midha's new project is AMP PBC, a company that believes it can radically lower the price of compute. To accomplish that, he is working on building a compute grid that turns GPUs into a standardized utility.
How a Vibecoded Newsletter Is Making the Hay Market More Transparent
The hay market is not a transparent market: It is very fractured by types of hay, whether it is alfalfa or clover hay. There are a few opaque, illiquid markets like this — scrap metal for instance — that require some hands-on investigating to figure out. Aiden Johnson is co-founder and CEO of the HayWire newsletter, which aims to make the hay market more transparent: He and co-founder
Why Tomatoes Are the Most Expensive They've Been in Four Decades
In April, the price of tomatoes was around $2.69 per pound — the highest seen in some four decades. And tomatoes aren't the only food getting more expensive. From cauliflower to lettuce, fresh produce is spiking all over the place. So what's driving the price spike? And what can tomatoes teach us teach about America's political economy including changes in trade and tariffs? Our guest today
How CoreWeave Sees the Market for Compute Right Now
When we last spoke to Brannin McBee, the co-founder and chief development officer of cloud company CoreWeave, his business was not yet public and sourcing GPUs was a key constraint on growth. But three years later, things look pretty different. CoreWeave IPOed and has been raising money in the bond market too, as well as signing more deals with chipmaker Nvidia. In fact, investors have basically b
Why Susquehanna Is Building a Prediction Markets Business
Prediction markets that enable you to bet on pretty much everything are everywhere nowadays. But there's still a big question over whether they can expand to include larger institutional investors like hedge funds. Part of the problem is that a lot of prediction market contracts are illiquid and trading volumes can sometimes be shallow. That's where trading firm Susquehanna International Group com
Inside Hudson River Trading's Blistering Token Burn
Today’s episode, which was recorded at our recent live show at New York’s City Winery, follows up on a conversation we had with Iain Dunning, head of AI at Hudson River Trading. Last year, we talked about how his firm uses AI. Now, some seven months later, we follow up on how one of the biggest market makers around is deploying this technology. We talk about the price of memory, bottle
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on Running a Bank in the Age of AI
There's a lot of debate about the future of AI — not just whether it will produce the returns investors are expecting, but also if AI will lead to mass worker displacement. Big banks are the perfect prism through which to explore some of these questions. Not only are they deploying AI very quickly, but they have a wide range of workers who are using the technology, from back-office employees
The Hidden Plumbing of Commodity Finance
We talk about the commodity supply chain all the time. We talk about the ports and the trucks and the ships and all of that. But there's another dimension to moving commodities all around the world, which is actually paying for it. Who funds the oil tanker and what happens when that tanker is, say, stuck in the Strait of Hormuz? Commodity finance underpins production, transportation and storage of
How the Invention of Rope Gave Us Modern Civilization
Rope is easy to take for granted. It seems obvious and straightforward. But of course, it had to be invented. Early humans discovered that by twisting fibers around each other, the resulting structure would be something durable and strong. Without rope, all kinds of things aren't possible, from lifting objects into the air to whaling or modern bridges. So how was it developed and what were the big
Gita Gopinath on Why Interest Rates Have Surged All Around the World
There's been a massive selloff in the bond market and rates are rising all around the world. Japan, Korea, the UK... You name it. Gita Gopinath, Harvard economics professor and the former first deputy managing director of the IMF, has long warned that bond markets are "in a fragile place." She sees a confluence of demographics, high levels of public debt, and the intense capital needs of the AI bo
Brendan Greeley on the Real 500-Year History of the Dollar
We love talking about money. And of course, we love talking about the dollar, in all its varieties — from bank deposits to eurodollars to stablecoins. But what fundamentally is a dollar and who actually controls it? To understand these questions, you need to understand how the dollar was born. Journalist (and current Ph.D. candidate in financial history) Brendan Greeley argues not only that
What It Takes to Run One of London's Most Popular Pubs
As our listeners know, restaurants are great microcosms for macro-economic trends. They sit at the intersection of everything from consumer confidence to commodity costs to the labor market. So on our recent visit to London, we wanted to learn about the business of pubs. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, approximately two pubs a day have closed in England during the first quarter
Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big
Not many people think of designing buildings as an exercise in economics, but the entire process is defined by constraints around resources (both physical and financial), and an iconic building can also have a huge impact on the wealth and development of the area around it. So how do you encourage private developers to consider the public good when designing new projects? And how are some countrie
'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller
A short seller is a gumshoe who roots out a particular story about a specific company and brings it to light. And Fahmi Quadir, the founder and CIO of Safkhet Capital, has been labeled "The Assassin" for being one of the most famous, successfully betting against companies like Wirecard and Valeant. In today's conversation with Quadir, recorded at our live show in London at Wilton's Music Hall, she
Why Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman Built The World's Largest Computer Chip
Size is the name of the game for the AI chipmaker Cerebras: Their chips are truly massive, about the size of a dinner plate. According to Andrew Feldman, CEO and founder of Cerebras, that is about 58 times larger than the average chip. That sheer size enables blazing fast inference for AI queries. Feldman joins us on the week of his company's IPO to talk about his core product and how it fits into
Deutsche Bank's Ozan Tarman and Aditya Singhal on Understanding the Macro Risks
It is hard to have a markets conversation that isn't out of date within a minute or two. But we think this one, with Ozan Tarman and Aditya Singhal of Deutsche Bank, is basically evergreen. This conversation, recorded at our live show at Wilton's Music Hall in London, is all about fundamentals: How Tarman, DB's vice chair of global macro, and Singhal, the firm’s head of EM trading across rat
Why the Price of Oil, Beef, Electricity, and Everything Else Makes No Sense
Whether it's the price of a barrel of Brent crude or a pound of beef, it's clear prices are skyrocketing for all kinds of goods and commodities. Price shocks and shortages are, if anything, the way consumers understand the economy right now — at the grocery store or at the gas pump. Certainly, current (and future) shocks can be explained by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But the enviro
Stripe's John Collison on How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape the Internet
The internet is made for shopping. For years, the main inputs for e-commerce transactions involved targeted ads, algorithmic recommendations, SEO, and lots of mindless scrolling. But agentic commerce might represent a sea change for e-commerce: With the rise of AI agents doing shopping on behalf of consumers, how are retailers going to adapt? John Collison, co-founder of the financial services and
Why SocGen's Albert Edwards Sees Double-Digit Inflation Coming Back
Making a long career as a bear at a sell-side institution is tough. Generally financial markets have done quite well which means forecasting doom and gloom is, usually, only tenable for so long. Which is why we wanted to talk to one of the most successful bears out there. Société Générale has let Albert Edwards out of the bear cage for today's episode. Edwards knows his
Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields
Last year, when we talked to Martin Wolf, the global order seemed like it was being upended after President Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs against nearly every US trading partner. A lot has happened since then. In fact, April 2025 seems almost quaint when compared to 2026 so far, from the Supreme Court's tariff ruling to the US-Israel war with Iran. The war's effect on the world's economy is
Samanth Subramanian on the Undersea Cables That Keep the Internet Alive
In 2006, then-Senator Ted Stevens coined an infamous term for how to understand the internet: It's a "series of tubes." The funny thing is, that's a fairly accurate description. Underneath the world's oceans, miles and miles of fiber optic-cables send packets of information from one location to the next, serving as the backbone of the internet as know it. This infrastructure is delicate, too: Memo
The Bank of England's Megan Greene on Monetary Policy in a World of Supply Shocks
Ever since Covid, central banks around the world have had the same problem. They have tools that are designed to modulate demand, but so many challenges have involved the supply side of the economy. Whether we're talking about supply chain disruptions, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran, these are all issues for which monetary policy is of limited value. Of course, the temptation is to "l
Mariana Mazzucato Thinks We Need More Moonshots
Today's guest Mariana Mazzucato is one of our most requested. Mazzucato, a professor of economics at University College London and the founding director of its Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, specializes in the political economy of technological development and public sector investment. In our conversation, recorded in Madrid while at the Bloomberg CityLab conference, she explains her
How an American City Can Become a Manufacturing Hub
The residents of Allentown are still sore about that Billy Joel song. While it's true the Pennsylvania city became synonymous with deindustrialization after the US steel industry began its decline in the 1970s, Allentown should be known for more: In the 1950s, for instance, some of the first mass-produced transistors were made in the city, which were the precursor of today's semiconductors. The ci
How Baltimore's Mayor Is Fighting the City's Vacant Housing Crisis
Since Mayor Brandon Scott took office in 2020, he's fixated on a very visible problem in Baltimore: the tens of thousands of vacant homes that dot the city. It's hard to build new houses when there are so many that sit empty and unused. And the process of tracking down owners, convincing them to sell their vacant properties, and then converting those homes into usable housing supply is a tall task
Inside the Booming Market for Dinosaur Fossils
Two years ago, Citadel's Ken Griffin paid almost $45 million for a stegosaurus skeleton, making it the most expensive fossil ever sold at auction. So why are dinosaur bones joining the collections of millionaires instead of museums? How does the private market for fossils actually work? And how similar is it to the market for art and other antiquities? In this episode, we speak with Salomon A
How Taiwan Became the World's Most Perilous Geopolitical Chokepoint
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has highlighted the potential for long-running theoretical chokepoints to turn into reality, with dramatic results for both geopolitics and the global economy. But the hypothetical scenario that policymakers have arguably been losing the most sleep over for decades is the prospect of a major conflict between China and Taiwan. So how likely is it, and what would
BlackRock's Rob Goldstein on the Next Megatrends in Finance
The last few decades have been marked by a number of megatrends in finance including the extraordinary growth of asset managers, the rising importance of technology, and the ascent of private markets. BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, is emblematic of all these developments. On this episode, we talk to BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein about the company's early technological history, the dev
What's Actually Going On With Private Credit
The private credit market has grown enormously fast in recent years — so much so that by some estimates it's now bigger than the market for junk-rated corporate bonds. So what's driven all that growth? What impact has private credit had on other types of corporate debt? And why are there so many concerns around the space right now? In this episode, we speak with John Sheehan and Craig Manchu
Understanding the Most Viral Chart in Artificial Intelligence
We live in an era of charts that are going up and to the right. This image obviously describes the stock market, particularly any company whose business is adjacent to artificial intelligence. But beyond stocks, another sort of chart we keep seeing is of AI capabilities also going up and to the right. The most famous and viral of these comes from an organization called METR, which stands for Model
James Bosworth on the "Orange Wave" Happening Across Latin America
We're living in an extraordinary moment for Latin American politics. From the ousting of Maduro to the ongoing oil blockade of Cuba to Javier Milei revving up a chainsaw at CPAC. Various leaders in different countries are taking different approaches to their relationship with the US. Each is aware that there is a high value in being close to Trump, but also each know that Trump won't be the US Pre
Google's Liz Reid on Who Will Own Search in a World of AI
Not too long ago, search engines were the dominant form of querying the internet. But that's changing since the rise of large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Gemini. More and more people are getting their online info through AI, effectively bypassing the search bars of old and creating a tension for large tech companies that offer AI models, but also make money from web traffic
Daniel Yergin Sees a 'Different World' Emerging After the Hormuz Crisis
When it comes to the history of oil and energy, nobody is more famous or well respected than Daniel Yergin. He is the Vice Chairman of S&P Global, and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of both The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power and The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. So we had to get his insights on the war in Iran, and its historical significance. Yergin t
Brad Jacobs on His Big Bet on Building Insulation
He's done it again. On Sunday night, building supply company QXO announced that it would be acquiring TopBuild for $17 billion. TopBuild sells and installs insulation for both the residential and commercial markets. For Brad Jacobs, the CEO of QXO, this is just the latest in a lifetime of deals he's made. In fact, he's made over 500 deals in his life across numerous public companies that he's foun
Jack McClendon on Why It's So Hard to Create a New American Oil Boom
The White House wants gasoline prices to be lower, and it wants to see American oil companies drill for more oil. But of course, these ideas are in tension. If prices are going lower, why drill more? This tension has only grown sharper since the shale busts of the mid-2010s, as American producers got burned multiple times by prioritizing production over profits. So what now? How do US producers th
Alex Imas on Why Economists Might Be Getting AI Wrong
Everyone knows that new technologies can be really disruptive to the labor market, but eventually new jobs emerge and things come back into balance. And there is a sense in which many view AI with the same lens. Yes, there will be pain in some sectors, but then there will be productivity gains and new sources of demand and new opportunities for labor that we can't conceive of yet. But could it be
Planet Money Turned Everyday Annoyances Into an Economics Book
There are a lot of things to be annoyed about in modern life. The high cost of food and housing and childcare. Dating apps that don't seem to work. The fear of AI replacing you at your job. These are all common complaints and concerns, and each of them can be traced to a specific economic phenomenon or market structure issue. Once you start thinking about the world in this way, you can't unsee it.
Brad Setser on the War in Iran and the Future of the US Dollar
It's possible that the war in Iran could reshape financial flows in significant ways. Perhaps the Gulf states will end up as less desirable places to do business. Perhaps Iran will have a tollbooth at the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps this episode will accelerate the world's shift away from oil. It's impossible to say. But given the uncertainty, fresh questions are being raised about the existing fina
War in Iran Is Already Reshaping East Asia's Energy Future
The war in Iran has caused the price of all kinds of commodities to surge, and that has a negative economic impact almost everywhere. But the squeeze is really being felt hard in East Asia, which is the ultimate destination for a lot of oil and gas that come out of the Gulf. And though the Strait of Hormuz may eventually re-open, and the acute pain may pass, this episode may already be reshaping t
Presenting What Next TBD: Why Everyone is Freaking out About Private Credit
It's fueling the A.I. bubble, it's coming to your retirement portfolio—and it's flashing a lot of warning signs right now.In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, private credit or “shadow banking” grew as an alternative to the regulations and shared risk that institutional banks operate within. What happens if a crisis hits the trillions of dollars that are outside of those gua
Ziad Daoud Explains How War with Iran Will Reshape the Gulf
Regardless of whether the war with Iran continues, it seems likely to have a lasting impact on the Gulf states. They may have to rebuild damaged pipelines and other infrastructure, or create new ones that bypass the Strait of Hormuz. They might have to spend more money on their own defense, or intensify a push to diversify their economies away from oil. New political alliances may be formed, and o
The Big Macro Force That's Been Driving Stocks Higher for Years
Stocks have gone up over the years because corporate earnings continue to grow. That part is straightforward. But in addition to rising stock prices, we've also seen rising stock market valuations. For years, investors have talked about stocks being unreasonably priced, and yet they haven't reverted to historical norms. But perhaps there's a good explanation for this, beyond just animal spirits. J
How Shipping Insurance Really Works During a War
When the conflict with Iran started, some of the first headlines we saw had to do with shipping insurance. Marine insurers were said to be canceling war risk coverage for vessels going through the Strait of Hormuz. Premiums were said to surge. Meanwhile, the Trump administration announced it would offer its own insurance for ships traversing the Persian Gulf, in an effort to get things moving agai
Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets
Right now, when you think about prediction markets, you basically think about two main companies: Polymarket and Kalshi. And then when you think of what's being traded on those platforms, there's a whole range of stuff from elections to sports to real economic outcomes, to totally gonzo random stuff, like who will win the next season of Big Brother. So far, sports is where a lot of the money
Search Engine Presents: Are you a good driver?
The story of how a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads. And, an answer to the question: are the robots actually safer drivers than we are? Find Part 2: “The Trial of the Driverless Car” HERESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gina Raimondo on How European Industry Is Getting Crushed
The relationship between the US and Europe is deteriorating along both security and economic dimensions. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs, while also being sharply critical of NATO allies. So what are European leaders to do? Hope things go back to normal in the US? Or perhaps become closer with China? Our guest on this episode says the latter would be a grave mistake. This episode was
Scott Bok Explains What Investment Bankers Actually Do All Day
There's obviously a lot of talk these days about AI and possible destruction of white collar jobs. Intuitively bankers might be expected to be victims of this. But before we can answer whether AI can disrupt an industry, or a line of work, we have to know what the job actually entails. What do investment bankers actually do, and why are they paid for it? To answer this question, we speak with Scot
This Is How to Tell if Writing Was Made by AI
When you consider the fact that many people don't know how and where to place a comma, it's safe to say that AI is already better than most people at writing. It's clean copy. It can be surprisingly persuasive. And sometimes, it's even informative. But there's frequently still something about it that just seems... off. Many people can tell quite quickly when they're reading AI-generated text. And
Javier Blas on Why Oil Could Go Much, Much Higher
Oil has shot up by a lot since the start of war with Iran. But it could still get much worse. So far, the massive disruption (due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz) has been cushioned by the drawing down of inventories and distributions from strategic stockpiles. Meanwhile, there is some oil still on tankers that has yet to be delivered. According to Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas, t
Why NASA Hired a Chief Economist
This week, NASA is scheduled to launch Artemis II, a mission that will send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. But this comes at a time when the space agency is facing some pretty big funding challenges, as well as growing competition with private players like SpaceX. In this episode, we speak with Alexander MacDonald, who served as NASA's first chief economist an
Goldman CIO Marco Argenti on the Warp-Speed Improvements in AI
When we last spoke to Marco Argenti, chief information officer at Goldman Sachs, we were talking about how the bank was deploying AI, including the development of its own internal tools. But that was a year and a half ago and a lot has changed since then, especially with the arrival of agentic platforms like Claude Code. So what exactly is Goldman Sachs doing with AI now? And what has its experien
Anthropic, the Pentagon, and the Future of Autonomous Weapons
The last big story right before the war in Iran started was the collapse in the relationship between the Pentagon and Anthropic, with the latter objecting to any potential use of its models in either fully autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. Of course, this story immediately become more relevant with the start of the war, and the reporting that Anthropic's technology was in fact utilized
Now There's a Helium Shortage and It Affects More Than Balloons
Ripple effects from the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to widen. There's yet another brewing shortage, this time in helium. While most people associate helium with balloons and funny voices, the element is used in a surprisingly wide variety of industrial settings, including semiconductor production, where its role in advanced lithography has been growing rapidly. But
This Is How Big Money Is Trading the War in Iran
Markets are often said to be "headline-driven," but that cliché has rarely felt more true than it does right now. A single tweet or Truth Social post can send prices sharply higher or lower, and investors (especially in the rates market) have been forced to rapidly reposition in response. But even as volatility has increased, traditional safe haven destinations like gold haven't been rallyi
The Petrochemicals Shock That's Already Rippling Through Plastics
Everyone knows by now that war in Iran is curbing the flow of oil around the world. But oil isn't just a gasoline and jet fuel story, of course. It's also a crucial feedstock for a bunch of petrochemicals, including the building blocks of a variety of plastics. And we're already seeing polyethylene prices start to surge, with some producers in Asia declaring force majeure and curbing their output.
David Shor and Byrne Hobart on the Politics of a White-Collar Wipeout
Nobody knows when or if AI will lead to mass displacement of white-collar work. But the anxiety is clearly here now, and there's very little evidence that our politicians are taking it seriously. Of course, there are at least two questions operating at once here. The first is whether or not AI really poses a significant threat to the existing labor market. And then the second one is about the corr
What the Iran War Means for Dubai's Luxury Boom
Dubai has become a huge destination for the rich, with an influx of high-net-worth residents driving up property prices and boosting the UAE's tax revenues in recent years. And of course, Gulf countries more broadly have a lot of oil wealth that they've ploughed into everything from real estate to private credit and tech. But the situation with Iran looks set to test that prosperity. In recent wee
Here's Why The Iran War Is Prompting A Safe Haven Rethink
Here's Why is Bloomberg’s short explainer podcast, where we take one big news story and break it down in just a few minutes with help from our experts across the newsroom. We're dropping into your feed with a special episode featuring Joe Weisenthal, who joined us to discuss why the Iran war is prompting a safe haven rethink. In times of geopolitical turmoil, investors look for somewher
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