What Next | Daily News and Analysis

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the latest round of “Tech CEO Goes to Washington.” On Tuesday morning, that CEO was Google’s Sundar Pichai, who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and was asked about data privacy, location tracking, Google’s plans in China, and of course, Republicans’ favorite tech topic: conservative bias. We’ll talk about what we learned fro...

No big deal. Did you see What Next mentioned in the New York Times ? We'll be back with more shows in January. Until then, these are some of our favorite episodes: The Gun-Owning Doctors Changing the Gun Debate , Nov. 15th Sins of the Fathers , Nov. 14th The Wildfires to Come , Nov. 13th Talk to you soon.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the news that Tumblr will soon be banning all adult content on its site -- this in response to some instances of child pornography that got it suspended from Apple’s App Store. Hundreds of thousands of Tumblr users are upset, and the plan appears to be backfiring. Then we’re excited to bring you a pair of interviews today, with two people...

On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the ongoing fallout at Facebook over the company’s decision to hire a conservative PR firm to surface opposition research in order to attack Facebook’s nonprofit critics by highlighting their funding ties to the liberal financier George Soros, playing into an untrue and anti-Semitic popular right wing trope. As internal and external turmo...

On today’s show, host Will Oremus will discuss the fallout from last week’s New York Times expose about Facebook with the company’s former Security Chief Alex Stamos. The Times story was headlined “Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Leaned Out in Crisis.” Stamos has been at the center of this story both as a critic and an advocate. The story has revolved partly around reports that Mar...

Sen. Jeff Flake is demanding legislation to protect the Mueller probe. High-profile conservatives are peeling off from the Federalist Society to stand up to the Trump administration. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick explains why she thinks this is a pivotal moment for the Trump administration and its discontents.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week doctors from all over America took to social media with the hashtag #ThisIsMyLane (or #ThisIsOurLane). They sent pictures of themselves in blood-drenched scrubs and shared stories of treating victims of gun violence. Much of this was in response to the NRA after a tweet they sent last Wednesday . Today on the show we talk to Dr. Brendan Campbell – a pediatric surgeon at Connecticut Child...

Survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse have gone after the church in a piecemeal fashion. But the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sexual abuse goes back decades, and experts say it reaches the upper echelons of church leadership. What would it take to go after the Vatican? We talk to someone who’s tried it: Marci Hamilton , a professor and founder of Child USA .  Hosted on Acast. See...

On today’s show, host Will Oremus will talk about the employee uprising at Google, and the changes that it and other tech companies have made to their sexual harassment policies in response. Joining him is Caroline O’Donovan, senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News, who was there to cover the employee walkouts in person and has continued to report on the fallout from them. And then, a story t...

Stephen Pyne has made fire his life’s work. He put them out for 15 summers and has thought about them ever since. Today on the show – the conversation we’re not having about wildfires and why despite the devastation in California this week, he remains hopeful that we can figure this out. Here’s how you can help the victims of the California wildfires . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...

Rick Hasen, founder of the Election Law Blog , explains how we got here: Shrinking away from the hard election reforms, ignoring the easy reforms, and enacting short-sighted remedies. Hasen is a professor at UC Irvine and a Slate contributor .  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just as he was getting kicked out the door, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions wanted to do one last thing: strongly limit the strength and use of consent decrees moving forward. It’s a move that deals a significant blow to the Department of Justice’s ability to reign in police abuse across the country. Today on the show: what is a consent decree? And what happens in one small town in Louisiana...

Ben Wittes of Lawfare and the Brookings Institution tells us four things to watch for in the wake of the ouster of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. For more from Wittes on this, check out the latest episode of The Lawfare Podcast . Plus, Mary McCord , who used to lead the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, explains why she remains hopeful that her old agency can keep its blind...

Democrats ran all sorts of different campaigns and won (or lost) in all sorts of different ways. Is there a lesson they could take from the midterms and carry into the next election? Plus, how did racism figure into the Florida and Georgia governor’s races? Jamelle Bouie joins the show to nurse our election hangover. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alfredo Corchado calls in from the border to talk about voter enthusiasm in his area. Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report shares her tips for watching election night returns. Slate’s Molly Olmstead explains why she’ll be eyeing the teacher candidates tonight. The Root’s Jason Johnson is our man in Atlanta following the Georgia gubernatorial contest.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...

With less than 36 hours to go until the final voting deadline for the midterm elections, it's important to know what's at stake. Amy Walter, a host on The Takeaway and National Editor of the Cook Political Report, knows that each election tells us a story and this one is no different. She joined us today to talk about what signals and trends she's looking out for and what that means for our future...

Will Oremus and April Glaser are bringing you a special episode of If Then, all about the midterm elections and the role of Silicon Valley and online media in our beloved democratic process. We’re going to start with a roundtable with two extra tech journalists, Kevin Roose from the New York Times and Paris Martineau of Wired who have been reporting on issues of online speech, misinformation, and...

Daryl Johnson tried to warn Homeland Security about the growing momentum behind right-wing extremists. He was not well-received. On Friday’s show, how the actions of the Obama and Trump administrations fueled far-right violence. Plus, there’s election shadiness happening in Kansas. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern explains.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Trump wanted to make this the election of the caravan. For red state democrats, that’s becoming the case. So with only days to go until midterms how will Trump’s immigration rhetoric shape close races? Slate’s Jim Newell joins us today to discuss the state of red state democrats. Plus, BuzzFeed’s Caroline O’Donovan spent the day in Mountain View, CA at Google’s headquarters to cover the...

Eric Nagourney, an international desk editor for the New York Times, explains the paper’s decision to publish harrowing photographs of malnourished Yemeni children. And Fatima Alasrar, a Yemeni and a senior analyst for the Arabia Foundation, explains why she thinks assigning blame for Yemen’s famine is complicated. We’ll be piloting What Next in public for the next several weeks. Tell us what you...

On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser look further into the presidential election in Brazil and how tech has played a role. On Sunday, the far right candidate Jair Bolsanaro was elected President, and many have attributed his victory to misinformation that spread like wildfire through WhatsApp in the months leading up to the election. And it’s time again for more gadgets. Apple unve...

There's a clause in the 14th amendment that people wanting to change it continue to come back to: "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Today on the show, Professor Garrett Epps of The Atlantic joins us to explain why its absurd for Trump to think he can end birthright citizenship with an executive order and, also, why it's not absurd to talk about him wanting to change it. Hosted on Acast. S...

Slate’s April Glaser explains the futility of expelling bigots from one social media platform, only to see them find safe harbor on another.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While we wait for news on the bomb suspect, a debate between Slate’s Mike Pesca and Mary Harris: Can we blame the potential explosives on provocative political speech?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When it comes to the people we vote for, how corrupt is too corrupt? With Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for USA Today and The Record. We take a whirlwind tour of the U.S. politicians hitting the campaign trail with a dark cloud hanging over their heads. We land in New Jersey, where Senate Democrats suddenly have to worry about a tighter race. The reason? Their incumbent, Bob Menendez, nar...