Odd Lots

AI Agents Are Already Changing the Price of Goods

It's obvious that things are getting more expensive, and there are plenty of reasons behind the surge in prices — whether it's wars or inflation or companies padding thei

How a Chicago Restaurant Has Stayed Open For Nearly Three Decades

Richard Mott's first foray into hospitality was in the 1980s at the University of Chicago, where he started running a coffee shop in the basement of the business school w

The Forgotten Godmother of Economic Literature

In 1776, the field of economics was born with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And among the book's earliest readers, and most ardent advocates, was

Bhaskar Sunkara Thinks the Market Has a Place Under Socialism

In September, Gallup released a poll that showed that 43% percent of Americans viewed socialism positively, the highest approval since Gallup began the poll back in 2010.

James Robinson on What It Looks Like When a State is Failing

The third and last episode from our Chicago live show is with James Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago and a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economic

CME's Terry Duffy on the Disconcerting State of Finance Regulation

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was practically brand new when Terry Duffy started working at CME Gropu almost five decades ago, and over the course of his caree

Don Wilson on the GPU Market's Trillion Dollar Question

When we spoke to Don Wilson, founder and CEO of DRW, in Chicago last year, he told us he wanted to build a market for GPUs that would eventually be bigger than oil. A yea

David Byrne Explains How Forgotten Ideas Come Back to Life

History is littered with ideas that have been tossed aside, only for them to gain relevance at some later date. Think of Moby-Dick: forgotten in Melville's time, but now

The French Political Crisis That's Turning Into a Debt Crisis

Just about everyone is worried about what is going on in France right now: the country's public finances are in sorry shape and there are fears that the French bond sello

Jeff Yan's Plan to Bring the Entire Financial Industry Onto Hyperliquid

Traders and market watchers around the world started talking about a crypto platform called Hyperliquid earlier this year, when speculators used markets built on top of i

Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us All

Since the Hugging Face incident, concerns over AI doomsday scenarios has entered the mainstream. But of course, some people have been warning about this for years, long b

How AI Is Upending the World of Mathematics

Last month, OpenAI announced that it had produced an AI-generated proof for the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the most famous unsolved questions in mathematics. LLMs used

What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Economic Problems in Europe

In so many conversations, there's a widespread view that Europe is falling behind. Or it's in trouble. It has been two years since the publication of the Draghi report an

Why Treasuries Are 'Risky' Again

We all know that US Treasury yields have been surging, alongside bond yields all around the world. So what explains the selloff and does this mean that bonds are becoming

How Airlines Actually Hedge Higher Fuel Prices

Fuel is a huge expense for airlines, and even on a good day, jet fuel prices are pretty volatile. Throw in two major wars now effecting energy infrastructure, and fuel pr

Everything in Markets Is Now Moving Incredibly Fast

The market is acting in ways that make it very hard to get a handle on what exactly is going on right now. The overall indices are surging, while many individual stocks a

Why Building a Crosswalk in LA Is Kafkaesque

Bill McBride did not just predict the 2008 housing bubble, he helped invent financial blogging with his Calculated Risk newsletter. Zach Lasry, meanwhile, is much newer t

Hollywood Was Cooked Before AI, and Now It's Only Getting Worse

Is Hollywood just screwed? Writers are earning less. There are fewer shoots taking place in Los Angeles. And people are freaked out about AI. But according to Hayes Daven

AI Is Upending the Lives of People Who Do Social Media Professionally

Social media is really strange these days: Increasingly, our feeds are starting to look uncanny, as AI slop proliferates all over the Internet. And for the professionals

How LA Is Quietly Becoming America's New Industrial Tech Hub

The story you hear nowadays is that America is struggling to make things and can't compete with China when it comes to advanced manufacturing. But of course, there's tons