Why Mixing Catastrophes With Prediction Markets Is More Dangerous Than It Looks With Jamie Pietruska

The LA wildfires burned more than a hundred thousand acres. They destroyed thousands of homes. And while they were still burning, people were placing bets on them.Not insurers. Not reinsurers. Not catastrophe modelers running exceedance probability curves. Anybody with a crypto wallet and an opinion.That's the world of prediction markets — platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, where you can trade event contracts on everything from Fed rate decisions to wildfire containment timelines. The industry calls it speculative finance. Critics call it arson betting.My guest today has been thinking about this longer than most. Jamie Pietruska is a historian at Rutgers University whose work traces the long arc of weather gambling — from illegal temperature pools in American cities a century ago to the prediction market dashboards on your phone right now. Her argument is that what looks new is older than we think, and what looks like progress may be a step backward.Dr. Peitruska's Aeon articleSubscribe to Risk Market News