What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Members of an Orange County mosque noticed a new convert was asking some strange questions. He turned out to be an FBI informant. Will the Supreme Court allow the bureau to be held accountable?  Guest: Rowaida Abdelaziz , national reporter covering Islamophobia & immigration for HuffPost. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like ze...

You’ve likely heard about the great resignation -- this moment when millions of workers across the country have handed in their notice. Sometimes, people left because they were overworked. Sometimes, it’s because they wanted to change paths, or make more money elsewhere. But for every employee quitting, there’s an employer being quit on . These are stories from the great resignation: Who’s quittin...

A recent poll showed that about a third of parents of younger children would get their kids vaccinated, a third would not, and the final third said they wanted to wait and see how the vaccines worked. Public health officials are asking: what will it take to convince that third group that now is the time to vaccinate?  Guests : Julie Hamill Dr. Aaron Carroll , pediatrician and professor of pediatri...

Last Friday, a surging crowd killed at least eight people and left hundreds injured at Travis Scott’s music festival Astroworld in Houston. Public uproar over the needless deaths has placed responsibility at the rapper’s feet - and at those of police officers who failed to intervene and shut the show down. How did Scott’s signature “raging” spill over into a mass casualty event? And how do we teas...

The Los Angeles City Council has passed a new policy giving Council members the power to target specific encampments for cleanup. While the effort might eventually result in less visible homelessness in some parts of the city, critics say it might be more in service of political gain than anything else. Guest: Benjamin Oreskes , reporter at the LA Times. If you enjoy this show, please consider sig...

Minneapolis voters have rejected a referendum to dissolve and replace their police department by a dramatic 12-point margin. The election result reflects a different mood from what the city saw a year ago, when protesters booed the mayor for resisting the movement to defund the police. Why were the planned police reforms so unpopular in the city where George Floyd’s murder sparked an international...

In mid-October, Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that New York City municipal workers would have just nine days to get the COVID vaccine or risk being put on unpaid leave. Thousands of workers showed up the next week to protest the mandate. A week after the hammer came down, did Mayor DeBlasio correctly call their bluff?  Guest: Eric Lach , staff writer for The New Yorker. If you enjoy this show, ple...

In schools across the country, tighter digital controls were put in place to keep kids on task during the pandemic. Are they here to stay? Guests : Priya Anand , reporter at Bloomberg Host: Lizzie O’Leary Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Democrats suffered major losses in local and state elections this week. Are the results a harbinger for the party’s fate heading into the 2022 midterms?  Guest: Jim Newell , Slate’s senior politics writer. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—an...

It’s been over four years since white supremacists gathered in a violent and deadly demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now, nine people are suing the organizers and groups involved with the Unite the Right rally as they try to prove the protest was a conspiracy to commit racially-motivated violence. This isn’t the first time white supremacists have been taken to court -- but could this tr...

India Walton won the Democratic primary for Mayor of Buffalo, New York, in June. Her victory put her on track to become the first socialist mayor in the city’s history, and the first nationwide in more than half a century. The only problem is, her opponent - current mayor Byron Brown - refuses to bow out, and is waging a well-funded write-in campaign in the hopes of keeping his post. How has a sel...

The public scrutiny applied to Facebook has been building for years, as the company grows its user base faster than its ability to regulate its content. But distrust among Facebook employees is also building, as evidenced by the remarkable disclosure of internal Facebook documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen. A crisis of trust could be what undoes Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to dominate the intern...

The bots aren’t just buying cool sneakers. They’re buying concert tickets. Tickets to basketball games and Broadway shows. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were buying hand sanitizer and face masks. And later, they were booking vaccine reservation spots. Why are bots taking over certain markets? And is there anything we can do to slow them down? Guests :  Derreck Johnson , designer at Slate...

The bots aren’t just buying cool sneakers. They’re buying concert tickets. Tickets to basketball games and Broadway shows. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were buying hand sanitizer and face masks. And later, they were booking vaccine reservation spots. Why are bots taking over certain markets? And is there anything we can do to slow them down? Guests :  Derreck Johnson , designer at Slate...

Last week, five members of Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s Veterans Advisory Council publicly stepped down. In their resignation letter, they claimed that they were just “window dressing for her image” and called her “one of the principal obstacles to progress.” One of those veterans explains why she finally said enough.    Guest: Sylvia González Andersh, former member of Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s Veteran...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds many, if not most, of the world’s global health initiatives, so much so that the Foundation has become one of the most influential deciders of global health policy. With the distribution of vaccines to developing countries all but completely failing, how do we assess the Gates’ culpability? And is it time to imagine another model for global health cooper...

Sharifa Abbasi knows exactly what it’s like to board a plane to a new country. She immigrated from Afghanistan to the U.S. with her family in 1993. Now, she’s helping other Afghans navigate the complicated red tape of American immigration law after the Taliban takeover. For these immigrants, coming to America wasn’t easy -- being able to stay here might prove even harder. Guest: Sharifa Abbasi , i...

Last weekend, 17 foreign missionaries living in Haiti were taken hostage by a criminal gang demanding million-dollar ransom payments. Kidnappings have become routine in Haiti over the past two years, as the national government has weakened in the wake of years of foreign influence, corruption, persistent poverty, natural disasters, and political upheaval. But the latest mass abduction of so many A...

Between April and June of this year, Zillow bought nearly 4,000 homes. And they had no intention of holding onto them. The plan was to flip houses, often and at scale, joining the ranks of companies like Opendoor and Offerpad, also known as iBuyers.  So, why did Zillow put their plans on pause last weekend? Can online middlemen really change the way we buy and sell houses? Guests :  Tony Santos, h...

Between April and June of this year, Zillow bought nearly 4,000 homes. And they had no intention of holding onto them. The plan was to flip houses, often and at scale, joining the ranks of companies like Opendoor and Offerpad, also known as iBuyers.  So, why did Zillow put their plans on pause last weekend? Can online middlemen really change the way we buy and sell houses? Guests :  Tony Santos, h...

Once an obscure legal doctrine, the practice of qualified immunity for police has drawn widespread public scrutiny in the past year. But as mainstream support for ending qualified immunity grows, police unions are amping up their opposition.  Guest: Kimberly Kindy , national investigative reporter for The Washington Post. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plu...

Virginia’s gubernatorial election is just weeks away, with former Virginia governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, vying against newcomer Republican Glenn Youngkin. Many polls show a slim margin between the two candidates, as they spar over issues like critical race theory and Trump’s legacy in an election seen as a bellwether for the upcoming midterm elections. Guest: Ben Paviour , state politics rep...

Colin Powell, known as a “trailblazer” and “pathbreaker” in his military career, leaves behind a complicated legacy. The four-star general became a household name during the first Gulf War as the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later the first Black secretary of state. Thirty years after his rise to national prominence, Powell’s death has prompted reflections on the Iraq War...

Democrats spent months fretting last year about the Postal Service and the fate of democracy. Now the Democrats are in charge. So why is the mail slowing down? And could planned changes fix what ails the Postal Service? Guest: Jacob Bogage , business reporter for the Washington Post.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads o...

Over the last month, the domain company Epik and the streaming service Twitch have fallen prey to massive-scale hacks. The hackers revealed not just email addresses, but detailed personal information too. For Twitch, it was the entire source code for their site.  But the attackers aren’t holding this data for ransom. In fact, they don’t seem to want much of anything. What’s motivating this new wav...