No-one knows what the future of AI has in store for us, and one journalist has raised concerns about the impact of the technology.

When investigative journalist Karen Hao started looking into Sam Altman’s OpenAI, she had hopes for the technology, but extensive research and unparalleled access to those closest to the AI arms race left her with a different view.

Her work in this space has made her one of the foremost tech journos covering AI. She’s been listed in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

She's heading to New Zealand for the Auckland Writers Festival with her book EMPIRE OF AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination.

"My criticism of companies that use this kind of rhetoric is that they are essentially just leveraging the lack of a shared definition as a way to just hype up their technologies."

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Olympic paddler Luuka Jones-Yaxley's lined up an unexpected project after her success in Paris.

Shortly after retiring from the high-performance canoe Slalom at the Paris Olympics, Luuka received a call and an offer to appear as Charlize Theron’s stunt double in the Netflix film Apex.

She says the offer felt like an 'April Fools joke' at first, but she was on a plane to the South Island to begin filming before she knew it.

"I just received at text from a friend down in the South Island and he called me and said he's been doing a bunch of water safety on some films and that this film had approached him and they needs a kayak double for Charlize Theron - and it kind of went from there."

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Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. Natalie Heller Mills drifts into marriage with a real loser, and in a last desperate attempt to help him make something of himself, gets her father in law to fund them onto a remote ranch in Idaho where she raises a brood of kids, embraces a traditional way of life, and sends it all via Instagram to a rapidly increasing audience. The trouble is, Natalie doesn’t entirely subscribe to the situation she finds herself in - and when one day she wakes up in the year 1855, in exactly the environment she’s been emulating, the things she’s been espousing and pretending to live like suddenly become all too real. This is terrifically well done - full of side-eye and quips to the reader amid a situation from which there is no escape.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. He’s the author who gave us the wonderful Empire of Pain a few years ago. This is about a young man whose fall from the balcony of a high end apartment block beside the Thames was filmed by MI6 cameras across the river. Zac Brettler always wanted more, and passed himself off as the child of a Russian oligarch which ultimately resulted in him getting in with the wrong crowd. Despite the footage, the Metropolitan Police refused to investigate and when Radden Keefe got involved he found a great deal to answer for. This is fascinating, investigative writing of the highest order.

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Travel expert Megan Singleton's been in New York seeing the sights, and making some unexpected discoveries.

After she learned the Abyssinian Baptist Church was booked out, she checked out the spring blossoms in Central Park, explored the Met and visited Little Island - which is built on wine glass shaped stilts across 4 acres in the Hudson River.

Read more of Megan's travel tips here.

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This week on The Sunday Panel, broadcaster and journalist Wilhelmina O’Keefe and Resident Economist at Opes Partners, Ed McKnight, joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!

ACT has recently revealed their new immigration policy - what do we think? Is this going to attract the right people to New Zealand? A lot of what ACT is talking about here is just about enforcing existing laws - have we been too soft in the past?

There's been disagreements in the coalition this week - do we see them lasting until the election? Is Winston Peters trying to get one over Chris Luxon?

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Additives are added to processed food to keep it fresher for longer but these might unexpectedly affect the health of the microbes in our guts.

A diverse microbiome is key for our overall wellbeing, as it influences everything from our mood to our metabolism and our brain health, and processed food can have a harmful impact.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explained further.

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On the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast for Sunday 3 May 2026, Francesca speaks to investigative reporter and influential AI expert Karen Howe, who initially supported the development of AI, but now sees a darker side to the newest tech trend.

Luuka Jones-Yaxley has gone from being an Olympic Silver Medalist to Hollywood Stunt Performer. Francesca gets the details on her journey, including rubbing elbows with some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Francesca gives her thoughts on a chaotic week in politics, backed up by a visit from ACT Party Leader David Seymour, who has just announced a new immigration policy.

And doctor Michelle Dickinson tells us where the safest spot to sit is on an airplane.

Get the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast every Sunday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Last week I started my editorial with: ‘Well, it was a rather chaotic, eventful week in politics wasn’t it’, and went on to speak about how I thought it was a mistake that the Prime Minister has decided to decline appearing in a weekly spot on TVNZ’s Breakfast.

But it appears that ‘chaotic’ and ‘eventful’ is likely to be how we’re going to describe the next 27 weeks until the election, if the coalition can hold itself together through to November.

The nonsense and the scheming this week included what could quite possibly have been a leaked story about embattled TVNZ reporter Maiki Sherman, lawyers letters flying between media companies keen to report the juicy details, Winston Peters releasing emails under an OIA request revealing the Prime Minister’s potentially damaging views on the US war against Iran, and a feisty retaliation by the National Party on NZ First. All I could think at the end of this week was - surely both the media and politicians can do better.

I get it - everyone is coming out firing on all cylinders - that’s what you’ve got to do in election year. National has a new campaign leader and communications adviser, and I am sure many National voters like the new fighting spirit being shown by the Nats. After all, the Foreign Affairs Minister was out of line this week.

But with Winston Peters stating, 'No, we won’t do a deal with Labour or their Marxist and separatist mates', then you’d think that having ruled out being part of an opposing coalition there would be some shared effort to sell this one to voters.

The number of people who this week said to me, 'I don’t want to vote for any of them' was a bit of a surprise. Civility is often put aside during an election year, and yet I think it’s what most of us are craving right now. We’d like the people we have entrusted to run the country to act like grown-ups and get on with the job without the backstabbing.

Budget month is going to be tough, and yet all National and the coalition have to do to sell this budget is deliver it straight-up. We all know the story - whatever economic recovery and confidence we were gaining heading into 2026 has been wiped out by decisions made elsewhere in the world.

It’s not just our story - it’s happening everywhere. This week, the Bank of England warned inflation could hit 6.2 percent in the UK by early 2027, and food prices could rise by 6-7 percent by the end of this year. In Australia inflation rose to 4.6 percent in March, with an expectation it will peak higher with consumer prices now growing at their fastest pace in two and a half years.

No. It’s not the economic recovery story National was hoping to campaign on, but with little policy or innovation coming from the Labour Party there is an opportunity to double down on their fiscally responsible approach to managing the economy.

The revelation of Christopher Luxon’s support for the war wrecking our economy - isn’t helpful for him. But what would be more damaging is having coalition party leaders calling out each other for poor judgement over the coming months.

Luxon has done a good job keeping the coalition together, but if they’re going to spend the next 6 months sabotaging each other rather than continuing to work on how they can come together on policy, selling the budget will be the least of National’s problems.

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