The Ozempicization of Everything Biohacking, gambling, and war

enjoy!!!!! kyla.substack.com/p/the-ozempi...

We've built an entire economy around selling people the feeling of control through bets, hacks, subscriptions, and optimization. But the model only works if people stay desperate.

New essay on control and agency, financial nihilism, belief markets, the manosphere, and spectacle during war.

Marketplace LIVE Marketplace LIVE with Kai Ryssdal This … is Marketplace. Join host Kai Ryssdal for an afternoon doing what he does best: unpacking the headlines of our economy – and what they mean for the rest of us ...

March 29: events.ticketleap.com/tickets/lais...

April 19: www.axs.com/events/12907...

April 20: artsandculture.cabq.gov/13522/13523

Some exciting public events over the next few weeks!! Come hang out if you can! 🙂

March 29th, Los Angeles: with Kai Ryssdal and David Brancaccio at the Aratani Theater

April 19th, Boulder CO: with Planet Money at Boulder Theater

April 20th, Albuequerque, New Mexico: with Planet Money

Links ⬇️

Opinion | Trump’s Way of Doing Business With the World May Cost All of Us

New NYT Opinion from me: America’s debt math only works if the rest of the world believes in the US… but they’re starting not to. What does that mean for our future (and for all this debt)? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/o...

Buying Futures, Renting the Past: How Speculation and Nostalgia Became the Economy Super Bowl ads, Jesus derivatives, and Gen Alpha's return to the theater

kyla.substack.com/p/buying-fut...

Betting on Jesus returning by 2027 and the Backstreet Boys singing about crypto are kind of the same thing. Speculation and nostalgia are both exit strategies from the present, and neither provides answers.

New piece on what happens when the economy grows without… people.

Opinion | The Dangerous Power of Prediction Markets

Enjoy! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/o...

HOW BETTING BECAME POLITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

In today's New York Times piece, I wrote about how prediction markets validate political events before Congress can respond, and how those market outcomes can end up deciding what's legitimate.

Audio version open.spotify.com/episode/2mGf...

The Great Entertainment Can you govern the world like a reality TV show?

New piece attempting to synthesize the past few weeks: media logic, market structure, geopolitical trust, and lessons from history. The bond market, the Fed, Japan, AI hype vs. energy reality, and what happens when the infrastructure that made the show possible starts changing channels.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin on What's Actually Happening in the Economy | Let's Appreciate | Episode 6 I sat down with President Mary C. Daly, President and CEO of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, and President Tom Barkin, President and CEO of the Richmond Federal Reserve to talk about the current st...

Audio: share.transistor.fm/s/f0f8689e

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin on What's Actually Happening in the Economy Now vs the 1970s/1990s, the persistence of uncertainty, and why cranes matter

Transcript: kyla.substack.com/p/san-franci...

NEW INTERVIEW

I sat down with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin to talk about what really matters in 2026. Are we headed for the 1970s or the 1990s? Why does the economy keep not breaking? And why should we count cranes?

Why My Generation Is Turning to ‘Financial Nihilism’ It might seem reckless for Gen Z to gamble money on meme coins and sports, but many of us have lost confidence in the traditional ladder of success.

Enjoy www.wsj.com/personal-fin...

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BETTING ON EVERYTHING

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I wrote about how an economy with fewer stable paths is pushing young people toward low probability, high payoff bets in search of upside - even though this is not what people actually want.

Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy Vibes, AI, open-mouth coughing, and lessons from 40 weeks of travel

link: kyla.substack.com/p/everyone-i...

In today's newsletter, I wrote about why everyone is gambling and why no one is happy

Everything Feels Like It Doesn't Make Sense Immigration, incentives, and the contradiction of Gentle Singularity

I wrote about the burning Waymos and gentle singularity and ragebait and how everything is coalescing into a giant contradiction kyla.substack.com/p/everything...

If anyone cares about the flight update, it got cancelled so I decided that I'd rent a car and just fly out of Nashville but turns out all the rental cars companies were out of cars (Even if you Reserved) so I have rebooked myself to fly out of this airport haha

But one could argue that the systems that profit by drowning us in information and platforms that make money by making everyone confused and angry are even scarier. The panopticon perhaps is less frightening than the slot machine.

Most dystopian narratives focused on authoritarian control like Big Brother watching, governments suppressing information, which we are increasingly experiencing.

Everything Feels Like It Doesn't Make Sense Immigration, incentives, and the contradiction of Gentle Singularity

I wrote about the burning Waymos and gentle singularity and ragebait and how everything is coalescing into a giant contradiction kyla.substack.com/p/everything...

Gamblemerica: How Sports Betting Apps Rewired a Generation's Relationship to Risk In dialogue with Jon Cohen on sports betting, dopamine, and the strange ways we turn human vulnerability into infrastructure

In dialogue with Jon Cohen, the author of Losing Big, about sports betting in the United States of America. We talk about the past, the present, and the future, and how we increasingly are turning psychological vulnerabilities into financial infrastructure. Enjoy!

kyla.substack.com/p/gamblemeri...

From rubbery crypto steaks to disappearing universities in Rust Belt towns, from robots named Ruby that know where they’re going (Mar Vista, to deliver exactly one KitKat) to humans idling in parking lots - we are all living inside a phase transition right now. But what happens next?

The Four Phases of Institutional Collapse in the Age of AI How democracy, expertise, and institutional memory are eroding during technological change - or @grok is this true?

We are living through massive technological change and are actively dismantling the very systems that are supposed to help us adapt.

kyla.substack.com/p/the-four-p...

Economic Lessons from the Screwtape Letters Rejection, Convenience, and the Budget Deficit

Rejection, convenience, and predictability are all core parts of the economy - think college kids trying to get jobs right now, Klarna and DoorDash and the defaulting NACHOs, and the downfall of Cartoon Network. What would CS Lewis think about where we are now? kyla.substack.com/p/economic-l...

Kyla Scanlon Kyla Scanlon

inthiseconomybookshop.com

Sticker drop! All stickers designed by me! Put them everywhere. On your dog. On your friend. On your friend's dog. Enjoy! Proceeds support independent economics education (aka my next big project 🙂). Link in next post!

Compliance is the New American Dream How risk aversion has shaped our schools, our government, and our global standing

The American economy isn’t built to think - it’s built to comply. Risk aversion is reshaping our politics, our education system, and our global standing. We’re raising a generation that’s optimized for survival, not innovation - and it’s costing us everything. kyla.substack.com/p/compliance...