Can the U.S. Rein in Prediction Markets? + Joanna Stern on Her Year of A.I. Experiments + Our Producer Goes to Attention School
May 8, 2026 · 1 h 12 min
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Show notes
This week we’re taking another look at prediction markets and a new series of scandals. Is Congress finally ready to rein them in? Then, the journalist Joanna Stern returns to the show to discuss her new book “I Am Not A Robot,” all about turning her life over to a chatbot for a year. And finally, Hard Fork’s Rachel Cohn reports back on her month attending classes at the Strother School of Radical Attention, the center of a movement to resist the commodification of attention by technology companies.
Guests:
• Joanna Stern, chief everything officer at New Things
• Rachel Cohn, producer of “Hard Fork”
Additional Reading:
• Soldier Used Classified Information to Bet on Maduro’s Ouster, U.S. Says
• Soldier Pleads Not Guilty in $400,000 Betting Case Over Maduro’s Ouster
• French weather service alerts police to tampering after suspicious Polymarket bets
• The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie
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