States vs. federal government in prediction market battle

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor Raymond James, a firm where wealth management, banking, and capital markets solutions start with the connections between people. That's the power of personal. Disclosures at RaymondJames.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. Either the federal government will back down or it will end up in the Supreme Court. It's an important precedent. It's an important thing to fight for. State lawmakers are taking prediction markets to court. Want to bet on who wins?

0:47It's Thursday, July 30th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, one hack to raise the prestige and pay for caregiving roles? Get more men to do them. Because of the long legacy of sexism, we tend to see women's work as less deserving of high compensation. Also, more and more people are using cannabis to help with sleep. sleep. But a weed gummy before bed is not always a great idea. You know, for the first few weeks, it helps. And then they start to find that it actually doesn't help at all. And it may make things worse. The science of sleeping under the influence coming up in about 15 minutes.

1:36Before we get to that, though, you can bet on anything in prediction markets, including the regulation of prediction markets. But that's a tough thing to predict at the moment, with states and the federal government clashing over this new breed of gambling sites that say they're not really gambling sites. On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked a Minnesota law that would ban most prediction markets from operating and advertising in the state. The two biggest platforms, Polymarket and Kalshi, sued the state in response. And while state officials across the country have been calling for more regulation, President Trump has said only the federal government should be allowed to regulate prediction markets.

2:19Ali Velshi has been following the news for MS Now, and he discussed it with Hindira Lakshmanan. This is a very important topic. It is, and people will remember it because there have been some really high-profile cases of insider trading. The U.S. soldier who was charged with using classified information to get$400 ,000 from betting on the raid that removed Venezuela's leader. the White House teleprompter operator who allegedly bet on what Trump would say in his speech, and the guy knew it, allegedly. So what is being done to prevent that kind of illegal activity? Well, so whether you are betting or you're trading in the stock market, generally speaking, in both cases, there are rules against insider trading, right?

3:01There are some exceptions, by the way. Members of Congress can insider trade, but the rest of us can't. It's against the law. The trick with these betting markets, these prediction markets, is that they're in this gray area that's not properly regulated right now. And in theory, they should be regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the federal government. That said, most of the federal regulators right now aren't doing what people necessarily think they should be doing. So states are taking it into their own hands to say this is dangerous. It's not just dangerous, it's unfair because we haven't clamped down on the fact that people with inside information seem to be making money off of these things.

3:40So a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota granted an injunction that blocked a Minnesota state law that would have banned prediction markets. Basically, this was supposed to go into effect on August 1st in Minnesota. You weren't going to be able to use prediction markets. This judge has now granted an injunction. So for the moment, you're going to still be able to bet on Polymarket and Calci in Minnesota. There's going to be a final ruling in this case. There are lots of cases around it, but fundamentally what we don't have is any form of regulation to prevent somebody who's got insider information from placing a bet and making a lot of money in doing so.

4:21Yeah, and that's the sort of key here. All right, you've explained the tug of war between states and federal authorities over prediction markets, but states insist that they are in charge of gambling. The federal government insists prediction markets are not gambling, that they're a different financial product called a swap. Who's right here? You know, someone smarter than me would have to answer that because that would have to go to a court and that would have to be determined. It's very hard. I mean, is the stock market gambling? is betting on a team that you studied or a horse that you studied for a long time gambling.

4:57You know, the economist, the economic journalist in me suggests that this is actually gambling, but that's an argument for court. Part of the problem is that Donald Trump Jr. advises both Calci and Polymarket. That's right, and he has a financial stake in Polymarket as well. He's got a stake in Polymarket. Not only that, they gave him, Calci gave Donald Trump Jr. in his role as a strategic advisor$300 ,000 worth of shares. They're worth many more times than that. So now you've got this extra layer of complication. There's insider trading. There's who's regulating it. And there's the fact that the federal government, which is tied to Donald Trump Jr., because his father is the president of the United States, has a stake in Calci and Polly market prevailing in this argument.

5:43Right. So it's beyond just a legal argument. It's now become a political argument. Yes. So you've anticipated my question, but just very briefly, you know, could a court, could someone prove that this is a conflict of interest for the Trump administration to regulate prediction markets when his own son who runs his businesses has these financial stakes? Yeah. I mean, it's a completely different part of this whole conversation, right? The attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, has said to your first question, prediction markets are gambling, plain and simple. So that's job number one, to prove that is the case.

6:16The second part is to prove that, wait a second, this whole thing about how the federal government should be regulating it, it sort of makes legal sense and there is precedent for that. Except what happens when these companies are being advised by or invested in by people with ties to the federal government? Now, the White House's response to that is that Donald Trump Jr. holds no position with the federal government and is not otherwise involved in the federal government. But this is the trickiness that is surrounding this massive issue. In the meantime, real people can stand to lose a lot of money on this.

6:46We hear about the people who make a lot of money, but you can lose a lot of money if you don't have information that you're betting against somebody who does have information about. All right, Ali, 30 seconds left. What options do states have now to regulate these markets considering the stay that we're seeing in this Minnesota case? Well, I'll point you to the Paramount Warner Brothers deal in which states got together and said this is an antitrust violation. And a judge paused that deal and said this is going to go to trial. We're going to figure it out. So the bottom line is states attorney generals do have more power than we all think they do.

7:20This may end up going to court. Well, we're going to have to have you back to talk about this ahead of the midterms because that's going to be a big betting event. MS Now's chief data reporter and host, Ali Velshi. Thanks so much. OK. Coming up next, we hear a lot about the need to get more women in STEM careers. But what about getting more men into the HEAL careers? That's short for healthcare, education, administration, and literacy. In just a minute, we'll hear from one psychologist about how to close that gender gap by emphasizing caregiving roles for men. Stick around.

8:03Here and now producer James Mastromarino recently became a father. Congrats, James. And he read a book that got him thinking. It's called Dad Brain, The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives by USC psychologist Darby Saxby. One thing the book tries to convey is the importance of caregiving roles and how to get more men involved in them. Here's her conversation about that with James. I think care is a measure of what makes a good society, how we look out for each other, how we protect the vulnerable, how we teach our young. And I would argue that our society has undervalued care relative to its importance.

8:50So I think elevating the transformative power of care and looking at the ways in which our neurobiology adapts to make us sensitive caregivers helps us understand what an important part of human experience caregiving can be. You know, give us some concrete examples. Why do you think we undervalue care? Well, if we look at how we pay early child care workers and teachers relative to the importance of their jobs to society and to the well-being of children, I think it's pretty clear that we're not compensating caregivers as much as they contribute. And the same is true if you look at elder care, if you look at other kinds of sectors that focus on caring for others.

9:41and one reason that those sectors have historically been undervalued is because they've been seen as part of women's work and I think because of the long legacy of sexism we tend to see women's work as less deserving of high compensation and as such if you look at fields that are dominated by women, you often see lower salary levels. When men enter an occupational sector, salaries typically rise. In my book, I use the example of computer science as a field that was actually originally dominated by women. They had a job title that was called a computer, and they perform calculations that were used in early computing.

10:27And it was really only in the 70s that the But technology and programming became more male-dominated fields. And as they did, salaries and prestige levels rose. Well, and listeners are very probably aware of STEM, the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and the many efforts to get women involved in STEM. They may not have heard of HEAL careers, which stand for Health Education, Administration, and Literacy. you say that you're really surprised there aren't as many efforts to get men into heel careers as there are women into STEM. Why? That's right. And in fact, men are more underrepresented within heel careers than women are within STEM.

11:10So you have fewer early child care educators who are male, for example, than you have engineers who are female. Part of that is just about the value we place on feminine activities. And I think we see that when men are engaging in those activities, they're somehow diminishing their perceived status as men. Yeah. And do you think this is a particularly American problem? Well, I think we do have this rugged individualism that's baked into American culture, and you see the kind of lone cowboy ideal of masculinity. And if you look across different cultures, you do see different roles for dads that are shaped partially by the policy environment.

11:57So you have very generous paternity leaves in the Nordics, for example, and you have dads who are spending a lot of time with their kids. And so some of those cross-cultural differences are just driven by the extent of the support that men get for caregiving. You know, I hear you, and of course I'm biased because I am a father of an 11-month-old. I got a fairly generous parental leave for the states, at least. But what do you say to people unconvinced that this is something that should be everyone's responsibility, that are perfectly content for there to be a division of labor when it comes to raising children?

12:41So I would say children are literally the future of our society. They're our future workforce. They're our future citizens. We all have a stake in raising thriving kids. And there's really no more important job that a society does than raise its next generation. So I think to whatever extent we see that job as valuable, we want to get talented people to do it and to be committed to it. And I think gender biases can slow us down and actually make us less efficient in the way that we assign work to people depending on their talents. There are a lot of men who are fantastic parents, and we should celebrate their involvement in fatherhood.

13:30Psychologist Darby Saxby speaking with Here and Now's James Mastromarino. Her book is Dad Brain, The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives. Interesting stuff. And you can find lots more about that book right now at hereandnow.org, including another conversation all about the physical changes that constitute dad brain. We also have another story at hereandnow.org about how only about one in eight nurses are men, But their share is growing, thanks to the strong job market for health care workers and sustained efforts by nursing schools to welcome men, including in the South. A lot of times men need permission to be in the nursing field.

14:11Will we ever be 100 % gender neutral? I don't know that. Can we help move the needle a little faster? Sure, there's opportunities for that. You can find that whole story at hereandnow.org. But we've got one more conversation for you coming up on today's show. In just a minute, we'll ask an expert how using cannabis before bed affects your sleep.

14:40Stick around. Hey, how are you sleeping lately? That can be a loaded question. Lots of people have trouble getting to sleep for tons of different reasons. and there are just as many purported remedies for insomnia, including using cannabis. A recent study published in the scientific journal Sleep Health estimates nearly 10 % of American adults use cannabis, maybe an edible gummy or a joint, as a sleep aid. But is that really a good idea? We asked Matthew Hill, a neuroscientist at the University of Calgary. He told Anthony Brooks, Everyone's different, but there are some indications cannabis could affect sleep quality.

15:24One of the things that we do know that cannabis, especially THC from cannabis, seems to do is reduce the time spent in rapid eye movement or REM sleep and start engaging in REM sleep later into the night's sleep cycle. We have less dreams under the influence of cannabis because your brain has different patterns of activity in it that are actually more similar to being awake because that's where a lot of dreaming and kind of going through events of the day or memory consolidation. It's just kind of a lot of stuff that's going on during that phase. But what we do see is it's kind of a shift because we also have non-REM sleep, which is usually what people would call kind of deep sleep.

16:03And that aspect of sleep tends to be slightly increased under the influence of cannabis or THC. So it's more like a shift in the kind of sleep dynamics that someone has. Right. But so how is sleep quality affected by cannabis? I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. So again, I mean, I think it depends on the person. So if you look at someone who has like a post-traumatic stress disorder or chronic pain or some of these other conditions that people often use cannabis in conjunction with, Those conditions often come with really poor quality sleep. And on the background of that, there is accumulating evidence that cannabis might actually improve some aspects of sleep.

16:43But if you're kind of talking about a general population of people who don't have pre-existing sleep issues, then in that kind of larger population, the outcomes might be less positive and a little bit more detrimental. because in that group, we more often than not see, even if people kind of subjectively tend to say they report having better sleep, objectively their sleep quality tends to be less good. I see. Well, let me back up and ask a really basic question. Explain why sleep and the quality of sleep is so important for our health. It's required for our body to restore and recover. So we do need to have good sleep for physical health.

17:21It's also really important for our brain because it's believed that there's a lot of clearance through glophatic systems and stuff that our brain will essentially clear itself out during sleep. And on top of it, there's this other aspect of what exactly is happening with REM sleep. What is dreams contributing to normative functioning? Because like I said, we believe that there's a lot of processing of daily events, memory consolidation, linking things together that kind of happen as we sleep and our brain kind of goes through everything and makes sense of the day. Got it. Yeah. Now your research, if I understand it correctly, at least in part, examines the role of our brain's endocannabinoid system.

18:03Can you explain what that system is, what role it plays in our brain and body function essentially? Yeah. So it's very similar to endorphins. I think most people seem to be familiar with endorphins. Endorphins are kind of like the brain's endogenous version of morphine. That's where the word endorphin comes from. It's like endogenous and morphine collapsed into one. And so we have molecules our brain makes that are similar to opiates and they're involved in, you know, pain suppression and things like that. So endocannabinoids are very similar. So our brain and body does make molecules that are similar to THC.

18:39Really the main thing that endocannabinoids seem to do is promote what we call homeostasis, which is making sure that our brain and body stay in the optimal range of functionality. And so I study stress primarily. And one of the things that we know that endocannabinoids do is when we get stressed out, our body produces a wave of endocannabinoids kind of at the end of that stressful experience. And part of what they do is help us calm back down so that we don't stay in this state of stress and anxiety for prolonged periods of time. And so there are similar theories, while they haven't been tested, as explicitly that the way that the endocannabinoid system itself actually fluctuates throughout the day may relate to arousal state and sleep states.

19:20I see. And do we know anything about how taking cannabis, whether it's smoking a joint or eating a gummy, affect the brain's natural endocannabinoid system? Well, we know if you use it chronically, it tends to decrease the number of receptors that either endogenous cannabinoids or THC can act on. Chronic use is kind of hyper-stimulating the receptor. And so to try and balance that out, the brain will adapt to it. And so it will down-regulate the number of receptors that are available. You know, that tends to happen with almost all drugs that people use, regardless of what their target is, which is why when you stop using a drug, you tend to have a rebound effect or a withdrawal effect, because your brain has kind of adapted to, you know, expecting that drug to be around all the time.

20:03And so it's made some changes to accommodate towards that. And if that drug suddenly isn't there, then you have this rebound effect. So as we mentioned, nearly one in 10 Americans take some form of cannabis to help them sleep based on what you know. And I think I know the answer. Is this a good idea? Or is the answer, you know, it might be a good idea for some, maybe not for others. How do we answer that question? How do we think about it? Yeah, it is. I mean, again, it's like, you know, everything like this is always complicated. But I would say there's never a straightforward answer with anything to do with cannabis, period.

20:33But there is certainly emerging evidence that in some disease states where there is problems with sleep and possibly even people who just have primary insomnia, that there may be some benefit in those situations for people using cannabis because it can certainly help them kind of de-arouse and have the ability to go to sleep. And they might actually end up getting a slightly longer amount of sleep during the night. There are a lot of people who, you know, start using edibles or cannabis to help themselves sleep and they find, you know, for the first few weeks it helps. And then they start to find that it actually doesn't help at all and it may make things worse.

21:06And that's largely consistent with the population level data that has been kind of analyzed is that it really doesn't seem for the majority of people to be super beneficial. But again, those are people that don't really have a sleep disorder or sleep problems in the background. So if you're starting at a good state, it may not be the best thing for you and may result in more sleep-based problems. But if it's someone who is struggling to sleep to begin with, there's some possibility that some cannabinoid-based products might provide some benefit for them. But I mean, if people are wanting to sample this, my advice is to just try and document your sleep.

21:41If you have sleep watches, just kind of pay attention to your sleep architecture and your sleep quality. see how that's being registered because that'll be a good indication of how your body is reacting to cannabis. Well, that's very helpful. Even if it's not definitive, it's super helpful. Matthew Hill, neuroscientist at the University of Calgary. He studies the interaction between cannabinoids, sleep and stress. Matthew, thank you so much. Thanks a lot.

22:10That's it for the show today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR in WBUR Boston. I wouldn't recommend this show as a sleep aid, but I'm not going to say no if you want to try. Today's stories were produced by Jessica Carissa, James Mastromarino, and Wilder Fleming. Our editors were Todd Munt, Mikaela Rodriguez, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And here at now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.

22:45Thank you.