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Through stealing your job or simply tanking the stock market—whichever comes first—the rise of artificial intelligence (companies) is a very futuristic sounding problem. It may have some very old-fashioned sounding solutions however. Guest: Cory Doctorow , sci-fi author, journalist, blogger and author of “ The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. ” Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus...

In this exclusive Opinionpalooza extra, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern take stock of today’s truly horrendous decisions handed down by a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that’s marching in perfect lockstep on immigration, gun rights, and almost everything else. Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss Tuesday's NY congressional primaries won by three Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and what they could mean for the Democratic Party, two new Supreme Court immigration rulings siding with the Trump administration, and the ongoing Reflecting Pool debacle as the symbol of a presidency of obsessive ego and shiny objects. For this w...

Newborn babies need a lot of care, and so do new parents. In this episode, Kaytura dives into life after birth, and how Black community midwives hold families during the postpartum period, a time when support systems tend to fall apart, and conventional medical care often falls short. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode: Let’s talk about sex, baby! Lucy Lopez , Elizabeth Newcamp , and Zak Rosen are joined by sex therapist and author Dr. Rebecca Howard Eudy to get tips and advice for keeping the spice alive after kids. They talk about how to find flirty moments when life is overwhelming, a little advice from the movie Hitch (remember that one with Will Smith?), and Dr. Eudy explains the power of wh...

Where do negotiations with Iran stand at the moment? Well, Iran’s out from under a more-than-four-decade-long sanction and could start making bank, plus it controls the Strait of Hormuz and hasn’t agreed to any concessions on its nuclear program. On the American side, JD Vance got to see Switzerland.  Guest: Tommy Vietor, co-founder of Crooked Media and co-host of the political podcasts Pod S...

The Gabfest’s end is nigh but we’ve still got a few bits of culture to gab upon. This week, Steve and Dana are joined by longtime Gabfest star pinch hitter Dan Kois.  First up for consideration: Pixar’s Toy Story 5 . In this fifth installment of the computer animation studio’s flagship franchise, the threat to the vital bond between toy and child are computers themselves. Will Pixar, of all e...

On today’s episode, in collaboration with No Such Thing , host Kate Lindsay is joined by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devan Joseph to talk about payment apps, and how they’ve changed the way we think about money. Plus, Kate reveals her own payment app predicament, and, with the help of the boys and a handful of experts, brings an unspoken, decade-long Venmo feud to a close.  This podcast i...

Eight years ago, Slate editor Bryan Lowder and writer Christina Cauterucci, with the help of producer June Thomas, kick-started a new podcast that aimed to enrich and expand the conversation around the biggest cultural and political stories affecting the LGBTQ community. Whether it was marriage equality, trans visibility, or gays buying guns, nothing was off limits. For this final episode, Bryan a...

Most people probably don’t think about the reflecting pool on the National Mall much, but Donald Trump sure does. His efforts to cosmetically raise it to his standards have been staggeringly expensive, and ineffective in surprising ways. It encapsulates the Trump presidency experience pretty succinctly. Guest : Christina Cauterucci , Slate senior writer Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus...

In this Money Talks: Emily Peck sits down with Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown , co-authors of How to Win a Trade War , to discuss how recent conflicts have changed the rules of international trade and which strategy they believe is the key to “winning” a modern trade war.   Podcast production by Jessamine Molli. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With lethal injection drugs getting harder and harder to procure, states are legalizing death by firing squad. It may seem like a return to a more barbaric time, but there’s reason to believe that execution methods like lethal injection or nitrogen gas are even less humane. But even moreso, it may force us to confront our feelings about the death penalty as a nation. Guests: Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood , C...

Growing up, whenever Anna Konkle's parents fought–which was frequently–she usually sided with her dad. As she got older, she started to see those memories differently. Was her dad actually the bad guy? This week on Death, Sex & Money , Konkle talks about her new memoir, The Sane One , and the challenges of unpacking morally ambiguous memories. She also narrows in on her relationship with her d...

It has been 250 years and America still doesn’t know how to talk about the genocide of indigenous peoples that kicked the whole thing off. Guest: Rebecca Nagle, host of Pushkin’s First America podcast , Crooked's This Land podcast, and author of “ By The Fire We Carry: The Generation-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land ”. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening t...

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani , holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never histo...

Emily Bazelon interviews Senator Chris Murphy about his new book Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America . Murphy argues that Trump is not the root cause of America's political crisis—he's a symptom. The real diagnosis: a country ravaged by loneliness, disconnection, and the collapse of community. From gun violence to Jan. 6, Murphy traces our troubles b...

This week: We saw just how many people are willing to invest in Elon Musk. Felix Salmon , Elizabeth Spiers , and Emily Peck , look at what makes SpaceX’s massive IPO so strange and why investors are willing to overlook things like Musk’s obsession with going to Mars. Then, they discuss Donald Trump’s deal with Iran and what the war has done to Iran’s economy. And finally, Emily unpacks the origin...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Bridget Read, a features writer at New York Magazine whose recent piece “ What If It All Came Out? ” reports on the hackers who are weaponizing our extensive digital footprints against us. While public figures have long dealt with embarrassing leaks and exposed group chats, regular people have started grappling with the same problems thanks to the...

Everyone needs a hobby. Unfortunately, instead of, say, model trains, the world’s first trillionaire’s seems to unwind by boosting calls for anti-immigrant violence on his social media platform. Guest: Nitish Pahwa , Slate staff writer covering business and tech. This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes...

People are asking artificial intelligence large language models how to do everything—even how to harm themselves and others. And while companies claim there are guardrails in place for those situations, we’ve already seen real-world instances of an LLM’s advice being used to plan a mass shooting. Guest: Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones and author of “ Trigger Points: Inside th...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what the U.S. is getting and what it is giving up with the deal to end Trump's Iran war, how Trump's UFC fight at the White House intentionally used the symbols of the presidency to divide rather than unite Americans, and the intensifying conflict between the government and powerful AI companies. For this week’s Slate Plus bonus epi...

On this episode: Lucy Lopez , Elizabeth Newcamp , and Zak Rosen are talkin’ periods! They are joined by Chloe Potter, co-founder of The Menstruality Academy , who walks them through preparing your kid for their first period, harnessing the power of the cycle, and breaking free from societal shame. (Chloe’s endometriosis podcast recommendation .) This week on the Plus Playground: planning the perfe...

Oil prices fell when Trump announced a deal had been struck with Iran, but don’t mistake that for things going back to “normal.” We left “normal” a long time ago. Guest: Justin Wolfers, economist and professor at the University of Michigan, and author and host of Platypus Economics . Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across a...

In Australia, no wedding or school dance is complete without the Nutbush, Australia’s unofficial national dance. The Nutbush – a simple line dance to the song “Nutbush City Limits,” by Ike and Tina Turner – has become as stereotypically Australian as kangaroos, boomerangs, and Vegemite. And yet, hardly anyone outside of Australia even knows the Nutbush exists. Here at Decoder Ring, we certainly di...

Steve, Dana, and Julia gather once more—for almost the last time—to unpack the week’s culture. This week, conversation has to include the cultural, cinematic juggernaut Steven Spielberg and his new film Disclosure Day . Starring Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt, it’s a sci-fi, action thriller about the longheld Spielbergian obsession: extraterrestrial life. Does it deliver that trademark Spielberg se...