Can the U.S. Rein in Prediction Markets? + Joanna Stern on Her Year of A.I. Experiments + Our Producer Goes to Attention School
5/8/20261 hr 12 min
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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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Kevin Roose· Host0:29
Well, Kevin, very nice to be with you here in New York City.
Casey Newton· Host0:33
Reunited at last.
Kevin Roose· Host0:34
Having a great ti- Are you having a great time in New York this week?
Casey Newton· Host0:37
I am. Yes. I got to see some friends last night, got to go to Brooklyn. Uh, I'm not seeing a show, but I am staying in Times Square, so I feel like I'm seeing a show every morning.
Kevin Roose· Host0:46
Wonderful. Well, I've also been, you know, out on the town, going to cool parties, meeting new people. [laughs] You know, I, uh, I met this, uh, gay guy the other day who said he was a listener to the show.
Casey Newton· Host0:58
Oh.
Kevin Roose· Host0:58
And, uh, I s- "Oh, hi," you know? And he said, "Oh, y- you're from Hard Fork. Which one are you?" And I said, "I'm the gay one." [laughs] And he said, "I thought you both were gay." And I had to explain to him that straight people also perform a cappella. [laughs] And that it blew his mind. [laughs] It completely blew his mind.
Casey Newton· Host1:18
Wow.
Kevin Roose· Host1:19
But yeah.
Casey Newton· Host1:19
I, I feel like I have talked about my wife a non-negligible amount on this show.
Kevin Roose· Host1:24
Yeah. It's reaching Borat levels- Yeah. [laughs] ... of, of talking about one's wife. And yet still,