Slate Daily Feed

When Miss USA abdicated her throne, people noticed that the first letters of each sentence of her resignation letter spell out “I am silenced.” Shortly thereafter, Miss Teen USA stepped down with a letter that opens with a quote from Nietzsche.  What’s going on at the Miss USA organization? Has the idea of a national pageant outlived its usefulness? Guest: Constance Grady, senior Culture correspon...

Rachelle and Candice dive into their mutual obsession: the  Selling Sunset  subreddit . Across seven seasons, the Netflix reality show has taken viewers into a glamorous and over-the-top real estate agency in Los Angeles. Aside from selling mansions, the show’s most successful endeavor has been its online community, built on social media platforms like Reddit. r/SellingSunset has more than 250,000...

On this week’s show, the hosts begin by dissecting The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , the fourth chapter in the Apes franchise. Set “many generations” in the future, the latest installment (directed by Wes Ball and starring Owen Teague) is an undeniably well-crafted summer blockbuster – but does it achieve the level of complexity and thought its predecessors did? (Read Dana’s review for Slate...

Hit with an $800 million lawsuit, missing Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch, and facing competition from fanatical fringe-right media, Fox News might look to some viewers like it’s slipping. But election years are the network’s bread and butter, and the old “everything is terrible and the Democrats are why” song still resonates with voters.    Guest: Justin Peters , Slate correspondent and author...

This week Bryan and Jules are joined by new contributor Mathew Rodriguez for a round of advice. They tackle who gets to use ‘they’, raising polite and inclusive kids, and help one listener navigate the aggressive gender politics of straight weddings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vivian’s eating disorder started in college. She meticulously tracked calories and the number on the scale. Once she graduated she became less rigid with food, but her fixation with numbers took a new form: budgeting and saving money. In this episode, Anna talks to Vivian about her long and complicated relationship to mental math, how tracking calories and paychecks has helped distract her from pa...

What would it take for the Democrats to hold Joe Manchin’s crucial Senate seat in West Virginia?   Guest: Zach Shrewsbury , Democratic primary candidate for U.S. Senate in West Virginia.  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 Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the...

The “Fama–French model” is a Nobel laureate-designed tool for predicting the stock market. It guides hundreds of billions in investments. The problem? Its numbers keep shifting. For this Money Talks, Felix Salmon chats with Planet Money host Mary Childs about her deep dive for Bloomberg into finance mathematics. They question the nature of investing, markets, and reality itself. If you enjoy this...

Joel Anderson and Josh Levin are joined by the Washington Post’s Ben Golilver to talk about the NBA’s conference semifinals. Jackie Powell of the Next also joins to preview all the big storylines leading into the most-anticipated WNBA season ever. Finally, one of the WNBA’s top draft picks in 2023, Maddy Siegrist, explains what the 2024 rookie class can expect in their first year as pros. NBA play...

On this episode: Zak, Jamilah and Elizabeth answer a question from our Slate Parenting Facebook group about the eternal struggle of the messy preteen bedroom. It seems like no matter what you do, there just keeps being stuff. Everywhere. So, we’ll offer some practical suggestions to help.  We also dole out a round of recommendations — and then, for Slate Plus, we muse on how anyone expects anyone...

They’re suspicious of the 2020 election results, their donors, and each other. Now, the MAGA wing of the Michigan GOP is in control—and has kneecapped the state Republican party’s ability to fundraise, appoint leaders, and perform its most basic institutional functions.  Guest: Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate senior writer Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the wh...

The ability to choose the sex of your child through IVF is banned in most of the world. In America, however, parents can—and do—for a price. Guest: Emi Nietfeld , writer and software engineer, author of “ The Parents Who Want Daughters—and Daughters Only ” for Slate. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Sla...

In this week’s essay, John discusses the Pomodoro Routine (among other productivity routines), why he especially needs a meditation pillow, and how a particular teacher captured his heart.      Notebook Entries: Notebook 75, pages 8 and 9. September 2021 OReinstating the Pomodoro Routine… Starting Marshall again… Write Brice… Send Laura the larger project list… Work on budget to get accounts in or...

This week, Felix Salmon , Emily Peck , and Elizabeth Spiers are joined by legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran, author of The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America. Mehrsa explains the roots of the neoliberalism movement and how the myth of free market made the American economy more oppressive, especially against black and brown people. Also: A misogynistic party culture has been revealed...

Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC here.   In the second part of our series on Amicus and at Slate.com , Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are back on the originalism beat. This week they’re trying to understand the mechanisms of what Professor Saul Cornell calls “the originalism industrial complex” and how those mechanisms plug into the highest court in the land. They’re also a...

The second and final installment of our two part collab with Never Post!   Mike talks with mis- and disinformation researcher Joan Donovan about the line between gossip and conspiracy; then Candice and Rachelle join Mike to talk about what it feels like swimming in the wide open sea of monocultural event discourse. Also: C-SPAN’s earliest internet memories! Become a Never Post member at  https://w...

You might not know Brad Parscale by name, but you know his work: he was the digital campaign operative behind Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. This election cycle, he’s back—and advising conservatives on how to utilize A.I. in their campaigns.  Guest: Garance Burke, global investigative journalist for the Associated Press. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free...

We first heard from a listener we’re calling Tom in an episode about life transitions . He told us he had recently gotten his driving license revoked because of a health condition, and felt stranded at home and abandoned by friends. In this episode, we called Tom back to learn more about his life and circumstances, and also to put him in conversation with Anna Zivarts, author of the new book, When...

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss Stormy Daniels’s testimony in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial; marijuana rescheduling; and the media’s role and responsibility in defending democracy.   Here are some notes and references from this week’s show: Josh Gerstein for Politico:  Stormy spoke. Trump fumed. Jurors were captivated – but also cringed. Ivana Saric for A...

On this episode: we present two very special segments celebrating the lifelong journey of being a mom.  First up: Dr. Lindsay Cavanagh is back for mini therapy sessions with Jamilah, Lucy and Elizabeth — who each share a nagging guilt they have about being a mom (and a daughter).  Then: Zak, our resident dad, sit down with Luisa, mother of our very own Lucy Lopez. The two talk about maternal insti...

In 1978, state senator John Briggs put a bold proposition on the California ballot. If it passed, the Briggs Initiative would ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools—and fuel a growing backlash against LGBTQ+ people in all corners of American life.  In the ninth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Christina Cauterucci explores one of the most consequential civil rights battles in Americ...

Spare a thought for the judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. Justice Juan Merchan has gone from holding the former president in contempt of court… to telling Trump’s defense they probably should have objected more during Stormy Daniels’ testimony.  Guest: Jeremy Stahl , Slate’s jurisprudence editor. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Nex...

This week Bryan talks to Lucas LaRochelle, the creator of the online platform Queering the Map. Queering the Map is a community-generated digital archive and map of LGBTQ2IA+ experiences around the globe. They dig into the map’s beginnings, stories from the platform, and how this archive has been able to share queer joy, sorrow, and possibility across continents and in 23 languages.  Podcast produ...

This week, ICYMI and the  Never Post podcast  are collaborating on two episodes surrounding 2024’s biggest internet monocultural moment: Kate Middleton’s disappearance. It’s been more than a month since Kate  announced  she’d started preventative chemotherapy treatments following a cancer diagnosis. Which means it’s also been just over a month since  conspiracy theories  about the princess ran ram...

The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. These everyday chilies are a scientific and sociological marvel, and tell a complicated story about Mexican food and American palates. In today’s episode, we meet Dallas-based food critic Brian Reinhart , who f...