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Union leader Dave Regan has spent decades wielding California’s ballot system against the healthcare industry. Now, he’s the man behind California’s billionaire tax — a one-time, 5 percent tax proposal that has “unleashed a political earthquake” and pissed off everyone from Elon Musk to Gavin Newsom.  Guest: Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) Want more Wha...

Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck are joined by Reuters Media Editor Edmund Lee to revisit their 2016 predictions for the Comcast/NCBUniversal merge r, now that the companies have announced their split. Then, they explore how the World Cup fits into our very American media landscape. And finally, the hosts look at Donald Trump’s latest mandatory earnings disclosure, which revealed t...

As sex becomes more online, not only does it become more solitary, but also more surveilled. For instance: Back in December, OpenAI announced that they’d allow adult users to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT. On today’s encore episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by porn historian Noelle Perdue , author of the Porn World newsletter. While advances in AI and sex surveillance are intended to d...

The Supreme Court just wrapped the term with a blitz of extremely consequential decisions, and the smoke hasn’t cleared yet. (In fact, it’s looming like a dark storm cloud over our Fourth of July and America 250th festivities…) In this week’s episode, cohosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern focus on two of the term’s bleakest legacies: first, the court’s catastrophically bad use of history a...

WARNING: This episode spoils Toy Story 5. Right on the heels of two new directors with two fresh new films, comes a five-installment franchise: Toy Story 5. But the consensus is split on this big screen screentime critique. Guest: Sam Adams , Slate senior writer and editor. This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusi...

Thanks for joining us during the holidays. White our team is taking a break, we want to share a series with you that we think you’ll love. It’s called Diving In.  Getting food delivered should be simple — but somehow it's gotten outrageously expensive. Economist Justin Wolfers breaks down why food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub make it nearly impossible to compare prices,...

This week, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Ruth Marcus discuss this week's momentous Supreme Court rulings. The FTC/ Slaughter case overturns nearly a century of precedent protecting independent agencies from presidential power while Cook makes a suspicious exception for the Fed, birthright citizenship prevails on constitutional grounds but the close vote further reveals what's broken a...

Hosted by Kate Helen Downey, CRAMPED is an investigative deep dive, exploring what the research actually says about menstrual pain and reproductive health, and the gap between what science knows and what options are given to patients. New episodes cover everything from pelvic floor PT to period poops, AI diagnoses to the history of women's health care. In this episode, Kate thinks about her own "a...

Elizabeth and Zak talk with Ash Brandin, author of Power On , about managing screen time without guilt or panic. They discuss realistic strategies and why screen time doesn’t define parenting quality. Then, a listener’s question about school tech mandates gets some thoughtful answers.  If you’re not part of the Slate Plus community, we hope you’ll consider joining! Keep reading to learn how....

Well, the movement to change society so it stops heating up the world didn’t take, so now we need to figure out how to change society to deal with a hotter planet. That means new forms of insurance, new models for construction and—yes, looking at you, Europe—more air conditioning. Guest: Jeff Goodell , contributing writer at Rolling Stone and the author of the book The Heat Will Kill You First: Li...

It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust? In this episode of Decoder Ring,...

A eulogistic weepfest? A “valediction forbidding mourning”? A conscious unthroupling? All of the above? Believe it or not, the time has come for Steve, Dana, and Julia to convene the Culture Gabfest panel for the very last time.  Before saying goodbye, they look back at the very first piece of culture they ever gabbed about on their inaugural episode in February 2008: the film Juno . Does the...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, creator of The Trend Report , to talk about how so many of our favorite influencers have started to retire. Glitter and Lazers deleted her entire digital footprint , and longtime vlogger Zoella has not posted since January, and parasocial fans are having to reckon with the fact that anyone they love online could just disa...

The Supreme Court wrapped up a year of giving Trump and the Republican Party nearly everything they could want. And even in the final, birthright citizenship case, what is remarkable is not that Trump lost, but how close he came to winning that one too. Guest: Jay Willis , editor-in-chief at Balls and Strikes.  Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the wh...

It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust? In this episode of Decoder Ring,...

It was a weird and wild ride as the Supreme Court handed down the last decisions of the term that started all the way back in October of 2025. We were so much younger then. After 58 argued cases and a steady, sneaky stream of shadow docket orders, the court issued its final four decisions Tuesday, and one justice was retired and unretired in short, confusing order.  The headline win: The cour...

The Gilded Age has nothing on the present when it comes to a huge—and growing—portion of wealth being controlled by a smaller and smaller group of men—and they’re doing their best to keep it that way. Must everything that goes up come down? Guest: Paul Krugman , Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plu...

A lot has happened in Jeff Hiller’s life since he was last on the show in 2024.  Last year he won an Emmy for his role on the HBO show Somebody Somewhere and then went viral for his sincere and funny acceptance speech. He’s had featured roles in the AppleTV hits Pluribus and Widow’s Bay and joined the revolving cast of the Broadway show Celebrity Autobiography . And his memoir Actress of a Ce...

The end is nigh! Or, the end of this Supreme Court term is nigh, at least.   On the second to last day of this term, the court’s right wingers delivered a sweeping ruling that will reshape the federal government for years to come. In Trump v. Slaughter , the conservative supermajority voted 6-3 to allow the president to fire members of independent regulatory agencies—overturning Humphrey...

How far does Zohran Mamdani’s political approach and appeal carry beyond liberal strongholds in city centers?  Guest: Perry Bacon, staff writer at The New Republic and host of the TNR show Right Now With Perry Bacon .  Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Appl...

We’re all familiar with the concept of a one-hit wonder, but what about artists who hit it big a second time—and never again? This week on Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy lays out the ground rules for one of pop's most misunderstood chart distinctions and sorts through the roster of this ultra-exclusive club, which counts Gloria Gaynor, Hozier, the Clash, and Dead or Alive among its members. Then, Chri...

This week: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan passed away at the age of 100. Today: Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck examine Greenspan’s legacy and the way it’s being emulated by the Fed’s current chair, Kevin Warsh. Then, the hosts discuss succession at JPMorgan now that CEO Jamie Dimon’s latest heir apparent, Marianne Lake, has left the company. And finally they...

Donald Trump ran for office threatening to use mass deportations, closed borders, and emergency wartime powers to “clean up” American immigration. On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority gifted him with two stunning victories in that crusade—effectively reshaping life for more than a million people living in the country with temporary protected status, or TPS, and forcing asylum...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Will Oremus, tech writer at The Atlantic and author of “ The Feel-Good Story of the World Cup Is Too Good to Be True .” While our social media feeds have been flooded with thousands of viral and wholesome moments from the World Cup, Will discovered that a number of accounts behind some of the biggest posts aren’t what they seem. Some are using AI...

Across the nation, we’re getting ready for July 4, 2026: Taylor Swift’s wedding weekend. Also Donald Trump is either dying or dying to be thin, JD Vance is vying to seem human, and Bill Cassidy is determined to go out in a blaze of obsequiousness. This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —y...