A small prediction-market bet on Spencer Pratt becomes a lesson in political judgment, authenticity, and the changing media environment of American campaigns.

My first prediction-market positions, small enough to be a lesson rather than a strategy.

In this conversation with Mikayla Novak, I discuss entangled political economy, the limits of the market-versus-state framework, and why democratic politics should be studied as part of the same social order as economic life.

Martha Stewart’s story pulls me in because it represents a form of freedom so few women in history ever had: the freedom to build a self-defined life.