What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

From the coffee shop to the salon to the grocery store, Americans feel like they’re being prompted and prodded for tips more than ever—and they’re starting to resent it. Guest: Kelly Phillips Erb , tax and law reporter for Forbes.  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...

Out of the smoky backrooms, Vegas and clandestine dens, and straight to your phone—how did gambling on sports go from forbidden to inescapable seemingly overnight?  Guest: John Holden, associate professor at Oklahoma State’s Spears school of business  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 episode...

Space might seem to be heading from the domain of big government programs to a playground for billionaires. But just below the surface, a world of start-ups are getting ready to launch.  Guest:  Ashlee Vance , business columnist and author of When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach .  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus...

Artificial intelligence—as it already exists today—is drawing from huge troves of surveillance data and is rife with the biases built into the algorithm, in service of the huge corporations that develop and maintain the systems. The fight for the future doesn’t look like war with Skynet; it’s happening right now on the lines of the Writer’s Guild strike.  Guests:  Meredith Whittaker , president of...

Meta’s reached a sort of mid-life crisis. Between the layoffs, the stagnant metaverse and Facebook’s dwindling profile, does Zuckerberg have a plan here? Guests:  Naomi Nix , Washington Post reporter 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—and you’...

When television and screenwriters went on strike in 2007, Netflix had just started offering the option to stream content. This week, the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike to update pay structures for the streaming era—and to get ahead of A.I. and the changes it may bring.  Guests:  Michelle Dean , television writer and journalist Anousha Sakoui , entertainment industry writer for the Los An...

Two gig workers standing side-by-side can be offered the very same job and get offered two different wages. Set by an algorithm and based on calculations that are never explained to the workers themselves, this unequal pay for equal work is already subject to lawsuits that call it a form of price fixing and wage discrimination, but the tech is being tested in other industries. Guests: Veena Dubal...

Twitter’s “blue check” verification went from something you applied for, to something you could pay for, to something you had to pay for…to something that many celebrities wouldn’t even accept for free. Master of horror Stephen King told us he wouldn’t pay for a blue check, but he’s not going to fight it either—he just doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Does anyone at Twitter understand? G...

Weather apps can be frustrating. And with how much we rely on them to know if we should wear pants or shorts, they'll still leave you in the rain. But as the climate gets wilder, the questions of how to tell people what they need to know—and quickly—can be an issue of life or death. Guest: Charlie Warzel , staff writer at the Atlantic Daniel Swain , UCLA climate scientist   Host: Lizzie O'Leary If...

Reddit announced it will start charging companies to use its huge, ever-growing trove of text to train A.I. chatbots. It’s another expense for the fledgling tech and another knock against the “open internet” ideals that Reddit once embodied.  Guest: Mike Isaac , tech reporter for the New York Times. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits...

A new law in Utah that goes into effect next year states that anyone under 18 needs parental permission to use social media. Is it a necessary step to protect children from harms associated with social media, or are we blunting a tool of expression for the youth?  Guest: Dr. Mitch Prinstein , chief science officer at American Psychological Association Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, p...

Discord is a place to share a community online. Most often, it's for gaming. So why did classified intelligence from the Pentagon end up on a small server whose main interests seem to be video games, military equipment and memes? And how? Guest: Shane Harris , intelligence and national security reporter for the Washington Post. Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing u...

U.S. air travel is being strained on all sides—travel demand is back to 2019 levels, but the number of pilots and planes and ground crew hasn’t caught back up, and a rash of close calls are raising safety concerns about America’s aging flying infrastructure. Guest: Jon Ostrower , editor in chief of The Air Current . Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate...

While TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, is fighting to keep its flagship app from being banned in the United States, it’s also pushing a new app into the marketplace—Lemon8. One part Pinterest, one part Instagram and a dash of its sister app, Lemon8 is most likely saddled with the same security concerns that led lawmakers to consider banning TikTok. Guest: Sapna Maheshwari , business reporter fo...

CBP One, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's app that is supposed to make crossing the border more efficient, is littered with bugs. But even a perfectly functional smartphone app would pose problems for people seeking asylum on the southern U.S. border.  Guest: Arelis Hernández , Washington Post reporter Gia Del Pino, director of communications at the Kino Border Initiative Felicia Rangel Sampon...

As Medicare Advantage plans have increased their reliance on software to determine what their customers require—and, therefore, receive—elderly patients are being denied coverage for care they need. What happens when an algorithm — not a doctor — decides how much care you need and it’s not enough? Guest: Casey Ross , national technology correspondent at STAT Host: Emily Peck If you enjoy this show...

Elon Musk has been promising fully self-driving Teslas to the public for years and the beta version of Full Self-Driving is already in over 300,000 cars. But as a recent recall attests, the software still isn’t ready to take the wheel—and Musk himself may be a big reason why.  Guest: Faiz Siddiqui , tech reporter for the Washington Post Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider...

To most of its 150 million American consumers, TikTok is a fun app. To some creators, TikTok is a job and their platform. But to members of the US government, TikTok is a national security risk. As the fight over TikTok’s future comes to Capitol Hill this week, what’s next for the embattled social media platform? Guest: Emily Baker-White , senior writer, tech reporter at Forbes Host: Lizzie O’Lear...

Using just what you’ve posted to social media, generative A.I. can create a “puppet version” of your voice—one that’s close enough to scam your family into paying thousands in, say, bail money. And imitating public officials to create “deep fakes” who say whatever they’re told is even easier.  Guest: Pranshu Verma , tech reporter for the Washington Post. Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show...

The economy is doing well almost every but in tech, where headlines about layoffs have been replaced with news about Silicon Valley Bank’s demise. The collapse of “the central artery for the tech industry” looks like the end of an era. Where do venture capitalists, start-ups—and the industry writ large—go now? Guest: Priya Anand , reporter at Bloomberg covering venture capital and start-ups. Host:...

The online dating world can be brutal and repetitive—just the kind of thing you might want to automate. But, in one tech writer’s experience, artificial intelligence isn’t ready to make real connections—at least, not without a lot of help. Guest: Heather Tal Murphy , covers business and technology at Slate Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slat...

Just weeks before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a Nebraska woman and her daughter were charged with performing an illegal abortion, thanks to information that law enforcement uncovered by going through their Facebook accounts.  Guest: Johana Bhuiyan , senior reporter on tech and surveillance for The Guardian Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Sl...

The diabetes medication Ozempic has exploded in popularity, particularly amongst those in Hollywood looking to lose a few extra pounds. But a silver bullet for weight loss leads to a number of questions: Is “buying weight loss” via injection somehow worse than diet and exercise? Are so many people buying and using this drug that people who need it for its intended purpose are missing out? What hap...

It was reported this week that the U.S. Department of Energy now believes, “with low confidence,” that the COVID-19 virus came from a lab. But is there enough evidence for the “lab leak theory” to convince those who believe the virus emerged from animals in a wet market? Guest: Angela Rasmussen , virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Can...

New understandings of how our brains develop are changing how the law considers who is mature and who isn’t. But If our brains are still developing, when can the law treat us like adults?  Guest: Jane C. Hu , independent science journalist. Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bon...