Reddit day traders who ganged up on hedge funds to beat them at their own game – sending shares of money-losing GameStop and AMC soaring in the process – portray themselves as Davids to Wall Street’s Goliaths. The stock market is seen as a giant casino that the hedge funds have been gaming for years. Why can’t the little guys get a turn at the wheel?

This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of markets, explains Alexander Kurov, a professor of finance at West Virginia University. As GameStop and other stocks were soaring, they severed their relationship with the fundamental value of their companies. This threatens what capital markets are designed to do, with potentially disastrous consequences for the economy overall, he writes.

Today we’re launching The Conversation Weekly, a new podcast featuring some of the best academic research and analysis from around our global network.

The first episode explores why February is going to be such a busy month for Mars. Three different space missions – from the United Arab Emirates, China and the U.S. – are due to arrive at the red planet within a few weeks of one another. The show features Jim Bell, who is leading the team behind one of the cameras on board NASA’s Perseverance rover. There’s also an interview with Félix Krawatzek about a new survey of public opinion in Belarus about the ongoing protests there, and their links with protests in Russia following the detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

You can subscribe to The Conversation Weekly via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or listen wherever you usually get your podcasts.

Also today:

• Why the federal vaccine sign-up system is failing
• Citizen scientists fill key data gaps during the pandemic
• The story behind a very sophisticated cyberattack