Odd Lots

If you go out to eat at a restaurant, whether it's a fast food chain or a Michelin-starred bistro, there's a good chance the ingredients on your plate came from the same source. Sysco is the dominant foodservice distributor in the US, using its massive logistics network to quietly supply the food that goes into meals in thousands of restaurants across the US. Sysco's scale and product standardization have helped define what America...

A few years ago, governments and corporations were brimming with optimism about the prospect of getting to net-zero in the efforts against climate change. Today, you hear a lot less about that. And while there's renewables getting added to the mix all the time, one energy source that's really boom...

Some economists expected that the dollar would strengthen when the tariffs were imposed. Instead, the opposite happened. The dollar fell sharply and it's been a poor performer all year. Concurrently, it's been a great year for a lot of dollar-denominated assets, like stocks. Even US Treasuries have rallied this year. So what's going on? On this episode, we speak with recurring Odd Lots guest Hyun Song Shin, Economic Adviser and Hea...

The 2010s saw economic weakness across Europe's periphery. Countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and so forth were the sites of so much stress. In the 2020s, however, it's reversed. The periphery is holding up well, but the industrial core is facing stress. Germany, in particular, the old powerhouse of the continent, has been slammed by the surge in electricity costs and competition with China. Other Northern states have felt simila...

Gold has been surging. Risky assets (with a few minor hiccups) have also been surging. And yet, central bankers (most notably the Fed) are in rate cutting mode. Why is this? And what kind of risks are being conjured up? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Raghuram Rajan, a professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, as well as the former Governor of the Reserve ...

Make sense of the world with one essential conversation, every week. Mishal Husain, one of Britain's best interviewers, brings her signature blend of curiosity and tenacity to weekly conversations with world leaders, business titans, and cultural icons, revealing who they really are and how they see the world changing around them.

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Earlier this year, we traveled along with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly on a trip to Alaska. You may remember the episodes we did with Mary at the time, as well as business and other leaders in the state. But we also had the chance to sit in with Mary while she talked with her contacts on the ground. On this special episode, you'll hear some of those discussions and get a sense of exactly what happens when a regional Fed pr...

It's nothing new for the US government to use public money to support private American companies. The Biden administration, via CHIPS and the Inflation Reduction Act, was aggressive about using loans and grants to accelerate US industry. But the Trump administration has been engaged in something more novel: taking direct stakes in US companies like Intel and MP. But what is the legal basis for such ...

Argentina is getting bailed out again, with $40 billion of help from the Trump administration. Of course, this is a recurring phenomenon for Argentina, and this time it's happening under the free market-oriented Javier Milei, who has slashed spending to bring down inflation. So why is it in trouble again? And why is this such a recurring feature of the Argentine economy? In this episode, we speak wi...

Almost everyone is talking about us possibly being in a bubble. Regardless of how AI investment ultimately pan out, there is an incredible amount of retail speculative mania in the air. So, how does this environment compare to past periods of exuberance? On this episode, we speak with Andrew Ross ...

These days, there's a non-stop drumbeat of concern that China and its dominant companies will eat America's economic lunch, so to speak. Of course, this isn't the first time in our history that there were worries about a rising Asian industrial power. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a lot of concern about the rise of corporate Japan. And that fear was seen all over movies and pop culture, from Die Hard to the Michael Cricht...

What changed between 2019 and 2025? Why are interest rates so much higher? Why does it seem virtually unfathomable that the Fed will return to ZIRP anytime soon? Why do investors expect this rate cut cycle to be so shallow? The answer, theoretically, is that the neutral rate of interest has gone u...

Money has been flowing into the AI space, with billions pouring into GPU clusters, data centers, gas turbines, and the infrastructure needed to train and deploy bigger and bigger models. So what comes next? On this episode, we speak with James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research. We talk to hi...

We're used to talking about the Federal Reserve changing "benchmark interest rates." But the mechanics of how the central bank actually tightens or loosens policy are a lot more nuanced. For years now, the Fed's been doing this through the federal funds market — where US banks lend and borrow their excess reserves. But that could be changing. Last week, Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan argued that the fed funds target is outd...

CME Group is one of the oldest exchanges around, tracing it's history all the way back to the late 1800s, when it specialized in agricultural commodities. It's best known for things like futures and interest rate swaps that tend to be favored by professional traders. But as retail trading becomes big business, the CME is expanding its footprint in the space, including a recently-announced partnership with sports-betting platform Fa...

For over 20 years, people have been talking about prediction markets or event markets are the next big thing. But mostly, with some niche exceptions, they haven't taken off, in part due to regulatory constraints. But now they seem to be booming, and the regulatory environment has gotten much more friendly. On this live episode recorded in Chicago, we speak with Tarek Mansour, the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, one of the prediction ...

Don Wilson has built a career diving into some of trading’s thorniest problems, including figuring out ways to trade new and niche markets. Now, the founder and CEO of DRW has his sights set on the GPUs powering AI, which he thinks could end up being a bigger market than crude oil. In this episode, which was recorded live onstage at our show in Chicago, we talk about how such a market would wo...

Kindbody, one of the largest fertility companies in the US, sought to disrupt egg freezing and IVF by combining spa vibes with Silicon Valley efficiency. The startup raised millions, opened dozens of clinics, and became a billion-dollar unicorn. But its ambition came with consequences. In IVF Disrupted: The Kindbody Story, reporter Jackie Davalos takes listeners beyond Kindbody’s millennial-friendly waiting rooms and into the...

We know that the top-tier AI labs are spending unbelievable amounts of money on talent. But what are these researchers actually working on? And how do we know that they're making progress? And furthermore, how can we even measure that progress? On this episode, we speak with Jack Morris, an AI researcher and Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, who is also a part-time researcher at Meta. We talk about what he does, and why breakt...