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 “<a href="https://joannastern.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">I Am Not A Robot</a>,” 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 <a href="https://www.schoolofattention.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Strother School of Radical Attention</a>, the center of a movement to resist the commodification of attention by technology companies.
 
Guests: 
<ul>
 <li>Joanna Stern, chief everything officer at <a href="https://thenewthings.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">New Things</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/rachel-cohn" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rachel Cohn</a>, producer of “Hard Fork”</li>
</ul>
 
Additional Reading:
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/nyregion/polymarket-maduro-indictment-soldier.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Soldier Used Classified Information to Bet on Maduro’s Ouster, U.S. Says</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/nyregion/polymarket-special-forces-maduro-bets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Soldier Pleads Not Guilty in $400,000 Betting Case Over Maduro’s Ouster</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/89be7df3-b7b8-4b4a-8b88-e24e877b439d?syn-25a6b1a6=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">French weather service alerts police to tampering after suspicious Polymarket bets</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/opinion/attention-world-war-2-technology-nazis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie</a></li>
</ul>
 
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/hardfork" rel="noopener noreferrer">YouTube</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@hardfork" rel="noopener noreferrer">TikTok</a>.
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Can the U.S. Rein in Prediction Markets? + Joanna Stern on Her Year of A.I. Experiments + Our Producer Goes to Attention School

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