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

For seven years, Ukraine has served as a virtual testing ground for a generation of cyber weaponry capable of taking down power grids, networks, and supply chains. With an invasion of Ukraine underway, will these weapons come into play? Guest: Andy Greenberg , senior writer at WIRED and the author of the book  Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers  H...

Over two years into the pandemic, much of the world remains either unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or lacking access to mRNA vaccines entirely. How did the leading effort to vaccinate the world go so wrong? Guest: Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project and a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation, in Bangalore. Host: Lizzie O'Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subs...

Last week, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Tesla. It accuses the electric vehicle maker of fostering a workplace rife with racism and discrimination. What's happening inside Tesla's Fremont plant? Guest: Dana Hull , reporter for Bloomberg Host: Lizzie O'Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcast...

In just a few short years, the Chinese fast fashion company Shein upended the way countless young women shop online. It’s approach could soon shape the way everyone else shops, too.  Guest : Louise Matsakis , freelance technology reporter Host: Lizzie O’Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions....

Facebook’s first crack at the metaverse has a problem: kids. Underage users seem to be flooding Horizon Worlds, potentially putting themselves at risk.  Is Meta doomed to repeat Facebook’s mistakes? Guest : Will Oremus, technology news analysis writer for the Washington Post.  Host: Lizzie O’Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate....

Banks, healthcare providers, and retailers around the world still rely on COBOL, a programming language originally developed in the 1960s. By all accounts the code is powerful, practical, and very rarely problematic. But the small group of people who still know the language are aging out of the workforce.  What happens when there are no more COBOL coders left? Guest : Clive Thompson , journalist a...

For Spotify, the last month has seen a cascade of controversies around its exclusive podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Is it time for the streaming service to rethink its role as a podcast publisher? And is it even possible to moderate podcast misinformation? Guest : Evelyn Douek , lecturer at Harvard Law School, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Host: Lizzie O’...

Ten years ago, IBM made a gamble. Through a monumental advertising and PR campaign, it promised that its AI technology–Watson–would transform the health care industry as we know it. A decade and billions of dollars later, Watson Health is being sold for parts.  What went wrong with IBM’s “moonshot?” And what does Watson’s failure tell us about the promise of AI for health care? Guest : Casey Ross,...

A recent advertisement for crypto.com, featuring Matt Damon, was met with widespread mockery online. But Damon’s ad is only the most visible example of a much broader—and more insidious—trend of celebrity cryptocurrency endorsements. Is the partnership between crypto and Hollywood really dangerous? And what separates the trend from run-of-the-mill salesmanship? Guests: Jacob Silverman , staff writ...

Today on What Next TBD: What is going on with little kids' vaccines? Why don’t they seem to be a priority for the government or the pharmaceutical companies, while parents are stressed to a breaking point? We discuss with Meg Tirrell, health and science correspondent for CNBC, and co-host of the Readout Loud podcast. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check o...

Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors this week in federal court. The former CEO, wunderkind, and blood mogul has been the subject of intense legal interest and public fascination ever since her company, Theranos, was beset by scandal in 2015. Today on What Next: TBD we follow-up with Rebecca Jarvis, host of “The Dropout” podcast and ABC News Chief Business, Technology & Ec...

This episode originally aired in July 2021 Last week, the U.S. government released a new report that attempts to categorize 144 verified sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or U.A.P. They could only definitively explain one of them.  The new report signals a shift in the way we think about U.A.P. As technology has advanced and evidence of these encounters have increased, the question has b...

This episode originally aired in September. In the U.S., the PCR test is the gold standard for COVID testing. Common knowledge would have it that the test is more accurate—and therefore more effective at containing the spread of the disease—than the rapid antigen test.  What if that isn’t quite true?  Guest: Michael Mina , assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Publ...

Using experimental technology to pull gigatons of carbon out of the air and bury it deep beneath the Earth sounds like a bad sci-fi plot point. If things don’t change soon, it also might be one of our only options. Guest : Clive Thompson , journalist and author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World Host: Lizzie O’Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscr...

The U.S. civil court system doesn’t get as much attention as the criminal courts, but it would be hard to overstate its importance. In 2018, for example, 47 percent of respondents to a Pew survey said they had dealt with the system in one way or another; from eviction proceedings, to debt collection, to child-support modifications.  What happened when the pandemic upended such an important pillar...

On Monday, Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. It’s not the first time he’s left the job.  Is this really the end for the man who guided Twitter through the Trump era? And how will the platform change without him at the helm? Guest : Nick Bilton , special correspondent at Vanity Fair Host: Lizzie O’Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out ou...

This episode originally aired in January 2021 The story of how GameStop went from the verge of a bankruptcy to a $15 billion market value isn’t an easy one to wrap your head around. But it helps to go back to the beginning; almost three years ago, in a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets. Guests: Brandon Kochkodin , reporter at Bloomberg Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through...

Over the weekend, Russia tested a new weapon​​—a type of missile that can fly into space and destroy a satellite in orbit.  The test created thousands of pieces of debris, which will hurtle around the Earth’s orbit for years to come. What’s the real risk of the rapid increase in space junk? And is there anything to be done about it? Guest : Laura Grego , Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT Host...

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...

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 Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic acc...

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...

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...

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...

The last month has seen a steady drip of leaked documents from inside Facebook, each seemingly more damning than the next. This week, the whistleblower behind the leaks revealed her identity. What motivates Frances Haugen? And can she do real damage to the social media giant? Guest: Jeff Horwitz , tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal.  Host: Lizzie O’Leary Need to set up your Slate Plus feed?...

Since 2018, internal research teams at Facebook have been studying the effect on Instagram on mental health. Their results couldn’t be more clear: Instagram is causing problems, especially for teen girls.  Why has it taken so long for their research to surface? And what can be done to improve the relationship between kids and the platform? Guest: Georgia Wells , tech reporter at the Wall Street Jo...