Welcome back to the ‘A Little Wiser’ newsletter. Thank you to everyone who continues to share and support our work. I had some great conversations with readers after Wednesday’s edition on the childhood secrets to success. We’ve also got some exciting guest features coming up over the next few weeks, so stay tuned. Grab your coffee, and let’s dive in.

Yesterday, after Kalshi’s new valuation reportedly crossed $11 billion, its co-founder Luana Lopes Lara became the youngest self-made female billionaire since Taylor Swift. But who exactly is she and what is Kalshi? Founded by Luana and her MIT classmate Tarek Mansour, Kalshi is the first fully regulated U.S. prediction market where traders can buy and sell “Yes/No” contracts on real-world events. Unlike stock markets, you’re not buying ownership in a company rather you’re buying a stake in whether something will or won’t happen such as “Will U.S. inflation rise next month?” or “Will Beyonce announce a new album before December 31?” If a contract trades at 73 cents, the market is implying a 73% probability the event will occur. When the outcome is decided, the contract settles at either $1 (if correct) or $0 (if not), making prediction markets a kind of real-time probability machine powered by thousands of traders’ beliefs.

Kalshi took off because its markets often move faster and sometimes more accurately than polls or pundits. Two of its most traded markets this year were “Will the Fed cut interest rates at the next meeting?” and “Will the U.S. unemployment rate exceed 4% by July?” Hedge funds, political analysts, and college students all traded these predictions side by side. The mechanics are surprisingly simple: traders place orders just like on a stock exchange, and prices shift with supply and demand. High-volume markets can see millions of contracts traded in a day, meaning there is enough liquidity for people to buy or sell instantly without moving the price too dramatically. Kalshi also struck partnerships with institutions including major market-makers who provide liquidity and smoothe price swings. The buzz isn’t only financial: tech figures like Patrick Collison, Marc Andreessen, and Nate Silver have publicly praised prediction markets as one of the most efficient ways to forecast world events.

But the rise of prediction markets like Kalshi has also revived a familiar debate: is this forecasting… or just financialised gambling? Critics argue prediction markets risk normalising speculation on everything from elections to natural disasters, allowing people to profit emotionally or financially from chaos. The CFTC has repeatedly questioned whether certain markets cross ethical lines. There’s also a danger for retail traders: like options, event contracts can trick newcomers into thinking they’re predicting the future when they're actually trading against algorithms, institutions, and highly informed participants. Supporters counter that prediction markets reveal valuable information, improve policy forecasting, and democratise access to probability tools previously available only to banks. Both sides agree on one point: Kalshi’s rise marks a turning point. Prediction markets, once a fringe concept whispered about by economists, have entered the global conversation and whether they become a new forecasting revolution or the next glorified gambling craze now depends on how responsibly the world uses them.

Before he became the most successful commander in British history, John Churchill began life far from the glamorous world of court politics and continental warfare. Born in 1650 to a financially struggling gentry family, he was sent to the royal court as a servant to the Duke of York. Yet even as a teenager, Churchill showed two traits that would define him: extraordinary self-discipline and an almost magnetic personal charm. While serving with English forces in Tangier, Churchill rescued a group of wounded comrades under heavy fire which caught the attention of senior officers and launched his ascent. But he also acquired a very different sort of reputation at court as Louis XIV’s powerful mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, famously gave him £5,000 after a brief romantic entanglement. Churchill invested it wisely, turning scandal into seed capital for a military career.

What made Marlborough exceptional wasn’t just battlefield brilliance, but his ability to navigate the lethal politics of 17th-century England. He survived the fall of James II by switching allegiance at exactly the right moment; a move that looked like betrayal, but kept him alive and positioned for influence under William III. Once war with France erupted, Churchill finally found the canvas big enough for his abilities. His masterpiece came at the Battle of Blenheim (1704), where he marched an allied army 250 miles in 30 days, a logistical feat Europe had never seen, and crushed a French force that had dominated the continent for half a century. One astonished French officer wrote that Marlborough “attacked with the precision of a mathematician and the fury of a tempest.” Blenheim saved Vienna, shifted the balance of European power, and made Churchill a pan-European celebrity.

By the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, Marlborough had never lost a battle, not even once. Victories at Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet cemented him as one of the great generals of the early modern age. He was a strategist whose supply chains, battlefield mobility, and coalition management were studied by Napoleon a century later. Yet success came at a political price. His enemies at home, especially Queen Anne’s new Tory ministers, accused him of financial misconduct and forced him into exile. When he died in 1722, he left behind not only vast estates and the gift of Blenheim Palace from a grateful nation, but a military legacy so towering that Winston Churchill, his descendant, later wrote a multi-volume biography trying to capture it. Marlborough rose from obscurity to reshape Europe’s geopolitical map. Britain’s greatest general conquered battlefields not just with force, but with calculation, charisma, and timing sharp enough to cut through an era of shifting loyalties.

When the Buddha first taught the Four Noble Truths 2,500 years ago, he wasn’t offering a religion in the Western sense. His insight came from observing life as it is and how people age, fall ill, crave, fail, cling, and repeat the cycle endlessly. The First Noble Truth, dukkha, is usually translated as “suffering,” but the word is closer to “unsatisfactoriness”. It refers to the subtle grinding feeling that even good moments slip through your fingers. Birth, death, disappointment, frustration, even fleeting happiness all share one thing: they don’t last. The Buddha’s radical claim wasn’t that life is misery but that life as we normally live it can never fully satisfy us.

The Second Noble Truth identifies the cause of this persistent dissatisfaction: craving, the constant tug to have more, avoid discomfort, or freeze pleasant moments in place. It’s not the world that mainly causes suffering but the mind’s insistence that the world behave differently. Ancient Buddhist texts compare craving to a fire in that it burns endlessly, consumes everything in its path, and flares up again the moment you think it’s gone. But this isn’t a hopeless diagnosis. The Third Noble Truth declares that because suffering has a cause, it also has an end. If craving is extinguished, the mind becomes clear and spacious, no longer jerked around by every desire or fear. This state, nirvana, is less a mystical realm and more the quiet, steady freedom that comes when nothing inside is pulling the strings.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the practical roadmap: the Noble Eightfold Path. Far from abstract philosophy, it’s a concrete program of mental training and ethical living that monks and laypeople have followed for centuries. Right understanding and right intention reshape how we see the world; right speech, action, and livelihood create a life that doesn’t multiply suffering; right effort, mindfulness, and concentration train the mind to stay steady, present, and unhooked from impulse. Modern psychology is still catching up with the depth of these insights as mindfulness-based therapy, cognitive behavioural techniques, and emotional regulation strategies echo ideas the Buddha laid out millennia ago. The Four Noble Truths endure because they describe the restless machinery of the human mind, and the possibility that we can learn to relate to it with wisdom rather than warfare.

Below - an in depth overview for those interested in reading about the Noble Eightfold Path in more detail.

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