What Next | Daily News and Analysis

One influencer working for Amazon sued another influencer who works for Amazon for creating content that looks too similar to theirs. But with how the algorithms work and reward, was this an inevitability? What does this mean for the economics of the influencer position? Guest: Mia Sato , reporter covering platforms and communities for The Verge. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to...

For a very special holiday edition of What Next, Mary chats with Death Sex & Money host Anna Sale about the anthems they’ll be belting out the next time they do karaoke—and they take calls from colleagues and listeners about their own go-to barn-burners for this unsettled moment. You can find all these anthems (and more) on one Spotify playlist here https://tinyurl.com/whatnextkaraoke Guest: A...

Reports of flocks of drones, flying overhead nightly, are coming in from New Jersey down to Maryland. Are they UFOs? Nefarious foreign powers? Something even more pernicious? Something even more banal? Guest: Jon Ostrower , editor-in-chief of The Air Current. Ben Mathis-Lilly, Slate senior writer Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next fa...

How do you keep a grocery store open in a small or low-income community? The answer might involve regulating big box stores like Walmart and Kroger. Guest: Molly Parker , investigative reporter for Capitol News Illinois and a Local Reporting Network fellow at ProPublica. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favor...

What ABC’s huge defamation settlement with Donald Trump says about the state of the media, heading into Trump’s second term.  Guest: David Folkenflik , media correspondent for NPR. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on  Apple Podcasts  and  Spotify . Or,...

After a tepid embrace of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and a back-and-forth over Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” country music fans are all in on Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” How has this hip-hop-inflected country hit perched atop the charts for a record-tying 19 weeks?  Guest: Chris Molanphy , chart analyst, pop critic, host of the Hit Parade podcast , and author of Slate's “ Why Is This Song No. 1?...

The highest grossing documentary in 2024 was “Am I Racist?” from The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, and it’s not the only avowedly right-wing movie that’s enjoyed success at the box office this year. Is Hollywood going the way of the White House? Guest: Barry Hertz, Deputy Arts Editor and Film Editor for The Globe and Mail Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next...

Our lives, and our communication in particular, are increasingly conducted over the internet. This means we are increasingly able to be hacked and monitored, by governments, by the police, and more and more by anyone who can get their hands on the available software. Guest: Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and producer of the Max documentary “Surveilled.” If you enjoy this show, please conside...

Elon Musk has been down in Florida with Donald Trump, inviting his fellow rich Silicon Valley friends to stop by and weigh in on the next administration. How could policy and personnel be shaped by this input from successful (if totally inexperienced in government) individuals? Guest: Teddy Schleifer, covering politics for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to acc...

The hunt for the new chair of the Democratic National Committee is on and the winning candidate will be the one that party officials believe can guide Democrats back to the White House. So who’s throwing their hat into the ring? Guest: Gabriel Debenedetti is a national correspondent at New York Magazine and the author of The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama . Want m...

Daniel Penny’s trial over the death of Jordan Neely hinged on the question of how and when a “reasonable person” would feel threatened. Does the jury’s non-guilty verdict deliver a clear answer?  Guest: Katie Way , writer-editor at Hell Gate. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from...

Last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO prompted an outpouring of glee online. A look into UnitedHealthcare’s business practices—and the American healthcare system as a whole—can help explain why. Guest: Dan Diamond , national health reporter for The Washington Post. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. Y...

After more than a decade of civil war, Syrian rebels have toppled President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in just about a week. How was the dictator finally deposed, and what comes next for the war-torn country?  Guest: Josh Keating , senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate po...

Spotify is shaping listening habits, so much so that musicians are shaping themselves for Spotify. It makes your musical world a little more prescribed, a little smaller.  If it feels like everything’s getting a little stale, how do we get out? Guest: Tiffany Ng, culture and tech writer. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and...

From Dr. Oz to RFK Jr. to Donald Trump himself—the incoming administration looks like it will be populated with pitchmen and influencers. Will anyone take steps to divest from their businesses or avoid conflicts of interest—or will everyone just follow Trump’s lead from last time?  Guest: Drew Harwell , tech reporter for the Washington Post.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to acc...

During his first administration, Donald Trump tried naming Kash Patel as deputy director of the FBI, but members of the administration pushed back. Now with the second administration filled with loyalists, Trump has named Patel as his pick for FBI director. What does Trump see in this guy? Guest: Elaina Plott Calabro , staff writer at The Atlantic . Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock f...

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law late Tuesday, leading South Korea’s parliament to cross barricades to convene and vote it down. Though this episode resolved quickly and peacefully for the moment, where is the country’s government heading? Guest: Terence Roehrig , professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College specializing in Korean and East Asian sec...

How problematic is it for Joe Biden to pardon his son Hunter after promising, again and again, that he wouldn’t? Guest: Ankush Khardori , senior writer for POLITICO and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next sh...

The House already voted to pass the “The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” But with Donald Trump returning to the White House next year, some Democrats are viewing the power that the bill gives the executive branch—to label non-profit organizations as “funding terrorism” and strip them of their non-profit status—in a new light. But is it too late?  Guest: Emily Tam...

Anyone stuck in a knotted snarl of interstate clovers knows that GPS is both important and imperfect. But if GPS fails while you’re bringing a 737 in for a landing it could be catastrophic.  Why is “GPS spoofing” on the rise—and how can airlines protect their flights against being caught up in conflict zones. Guest: Drew FitzGerald , telecom reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Want more What Nex...

Whatever X is, it ain’t the Twitter so many users fell in love with. Since the election, Bluesky has been on the rise, but it’s still only a fraction of the number of users on Twitter—at its peak or even now—or even fellow upstart Threads.  Is Bluesky set to take over the role Twitter used to play, or is it just one of many networks in a Balkanized social media landscape?  Guest: Will Oremus, a te...

While the What Next team is having a holiday, take this journey with our colleagues over at Decoder Ring. What Next will be back in your feed on Monday. Adults have a long history of trying to find morals and lessons in children’s literature. But what happens when a seemingly innocent book about a boy and a hungry mouse becomes fodder for the culture wars? Over the last decade, Laura Joffe Numerof...

As Thanksgiving approaches the price of eggs is spiking again. But it wasn’t just inflation this time – it was also the rising number of cases of avian flu. How can the USDA, FDA, and CDC contain an outbreak in a country that both hates taking preventative measures and won’t tolerate any disruption in their food supply chain?   Guest: Marcia Brown , food and agriculture reporter at POLITICO . Want...

The Supreme Court threw out the last attempt to ban mifepristone, the “abortion pill,” because they couldn’t figure out who in the case was being injured. Now three states are claiming they are being harmed, because abortion access is preventing population growth for them  Guest: Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times from 1978 to 2008, author and winner of the 1998 Pulitz...

New curriculum for Texas public schools teaches vocabulary and reading through stories from the Bible and takes a noticeably Christian point of view towards history. When does teaching stop and preaching begin—and isn’t this a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment? Guest: Jaden Edison , public education reporter for the Texas Tribune. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad...