Down Round

• Netflix Eats Everything

  Netflix wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Both for many billions of dollars. Why? We break down the $70 – 100 billion bids, the Ellison–Trump court politics, and why this could mark the final enclosure of the film industry by tech. Also: James chronicles the history of film industry disruption, and Raph reveals his long-awaited top ten movies of 2025 list. We also provide some follow-up on prediction markets after last weeks episode. Go to https://www.downround.net/ to sign up for PREMIUM and get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Everything is Sportsbet Now

  This week we're going deep on the rise of prediction markets — the hybrid of futures trading, sports gambling, and economic theology that suddenly seems to have eaten the world. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are booming and an increasingly big part of both tech culture and also gambling culture. We trace the whole arc: from Hayekian fantasies about prices revealing truth, to the far bigger truth: people just really, really like having a punt. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• The Slop Farms of X

  This week, we open with the final chapter of Frank, the student finance startup that sold JP Morgan a fake email list. Founder Charlie Javice is in prison for fraud, but the bank is still footing a $115 million legal bill that includes everything from luxury hotels to cellulite butter. Then we move onto Nvidia, which posted another absurd quarter with revenue up 60% year-on-year. Then finally X’s new location feature, which exposed the global industry of rage-bait posters farming Elon’s ad-share program with US culture war posting from the Global South. As expected, everyone is responding to this normally.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• It's Just Autocomplete

  This week we unpack a growing split inside the AI world, centred on Yann LeCun — Meta’s AI pioneer who thinks LLMs are a dead end. Reports suggest he’s preparing to walk, after being quietly sidelined under Meta’s “superintelligence” push and made subordinate to a 28-year-old ex-data-labelling kingpin, Alexander Wang. His alternative is the “world model” approach: systems grounded in physics and perception rather than predictive text. LET'S GOOOOOOOO.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Apple’s Passive Income Era

  Down Round hasn't checked in on Cupertino in a little while. This week, we take stock of Apple’s strange position in the AI boom — not really innovating very much, but quietly raking in billions as everyone else builds data centres. From Siri’s long road to Gemini, to the cult of thinness and the ghost of Johnny Ive, we talk about how Apple keeps winning by doing less. Plus: the Vision Pro flop, new MacBook Air rumours, and Apple TV.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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