I saw something new this week. What did you see? So I was on a flight. I went to the East Coast for a

wedding last weekend. And on the flight back, I saw a woman play Bellatro, the mobile phone game

for six hours. Honestly, one of the least surprising things you've ever said to me on this podcast,

because I've absolutely played Bellatra for multiple hours in the row.

She did not look up.

She did not get a drink.

She did not go to the bathroom.

She was locked in to her phone for the entire flight.

And I think this game should be outlawed.

I've never even, like, really played Bellatra.

You tried to get me into it.

But something that they're putting in that game is driving people to madness.

It's the, it is the perfect phone-based game because it can fill up any amount of time from 30 seconds to six hours, you know, like, and that is just a precious thing. So I have wasted many hours on a flight with Bellatro. And for what it's worth, I do not experience this game as something that's, like, so addictive that I can't put down. I experience it as, oh, I got some time to kill. I know the perfect thing that will help me do that. But as soon as like, you know, I'm with a friend, like I'm not thinking, oh, I got to get back to Balatro. Yeah. Actually, one time my boyfriend's friends were over, and there was a lot of, like, discussion back and forth about what kind of takeout we should order. And it was just kind of clear that I was not really going to be staring this decision. And I just kind of like started thinking, you know, I'm halfway through a balatro run.

I might like, and so I got my phone out of my pocket and like I played a couple of hands.

And then afterwards, my boyfriend was like, it would be great if you didn't play balatro while my friends were over.

And he was right. and I apologize to you.

Yeah.

I'm Kevin Roussa Tech columnist at the New York Times.

I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

And this is Hard Fork.

This week, the backlash against GPT5 and what AI companies are learning from the fallout.

Then, Perplexity CEO, Arvin Srinivas, returns to the show to discuss his $34 billion

...