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

All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode originally aired in March. Memecoins are a niche type of cryptocurrency with no intrinsic value. But they remain a popular form of crypto, as seen earlier this year...

While the A.I. boom has created a data center boom, rich guys are turning their computing dreams to the skies. With its impending IPO, SpaceX stands to lead the extraterrestrial data center boom. Will it work out for Elon and company?  Guest: Eric Berger , space reporter at Ars Technica Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and a...

Whole Foods based its brand on a certain standard of quality—but there are some things that shoppers nevertheless want. Amazon believes it has found a way to keep the shelves looking like Whole Foods, while getting you the Tide PODS  and Cheez-Its you deeply desire. Guest: Peyton Bigora, staff reporter for Grocery Dive Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to...

The good news is voters are more persuaded by factual claims than emotional appeals or appeals to fear. But the bad news is that A.I. chatbots, trying to convince you, will keep making factual claims long after it runs out of actual facts. Guest: David Rand , professor of information science, marketing and psychology at Cornell University Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access...

Donald Trump—or at least the tech guys who have his ear—is ready to clear the regulatory runway for A.I. but other Republicans aren’t too sure. Can he bring them around? Or will the bubble burst first? Guest: Gerrit De Vynck , tech reporter for the Washington Post. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate...

A tech mogul who made bank from Paypal with his Stanford buddies and has endeared himself to right-wing politicians and enriched himself the same way? No not him; this one’s South African..no, not him either. Guest: Ryan Mac , reporter for the New York Times.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podc...

As the U.S. upgrades and updates its defense and military systems, the question isn’t whether A.I. will be integrated, but where, how much, and how much decision-making are we ceding to the machine? Guest: Josh Keating , senior correspondent at Vox and a fellow at the Outrider Foundation where he’s reporting on nuclear weapons and AI. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-f...

Note: This episode was originally published on July 27, 2025.  There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, skin care, even Greek Islands—and delivering you a cheaper knock-off to buy. Guest: Mia Sato , reporter for The Verge Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate pod...

Tracking a license plate across the country has never been easier, which is good news if your car has been stolen, but in an era of ICE and Border Patrol raids, these warrantless searches feel increasingly invasive—and unconstitutional. Guest: Joseph Cox , co-founder of 404 Media and host of the 404 Media podcast. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the...

Trump promised to stop the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry. He did call off the SEC investigations that began under Biden, and pardoned Binance cofounder and ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao. But is the crypto industry ultimately better off because of that?  Guest: David Yaffe-Bellany , tech reporter for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free liste...

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers. Guest: Jeff Horwitz , tech reporter for Reuters. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the...

They don’t cut cleanly along party lines, but data centers, and where they get built, became an election issue in Virginia. With so many more data centers to build, are we looking at a new trend?  Guest: Margaret Barthel , reporter covering northern Virginia for WAMU.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite S...

Tesla shareholders just approved a trillion dollar (with a t!) pay package for Elon Musk. Is it enough incentive to keep him around the company and away from verbal spats with government officials? Because the whole Musk empire is still reeling from that dalliance. Guest: Faiz Siddiqui , tech reporter at The Washington Post and author of Hubris Maximus: the Shattering of Elon Musk . Want more What...

Nick Fuentes—an openly antisemitic, openly racist, openly sexist type who once was persona non grata in all but the unseemliest of online spaces—sat down with former Fox News star Tucker Carlson this week, setting off a debate between the “whoa whoa whoa, we’re not Nazis over here” branch of conservatives and the “well now, hold on a minute” wing. Guest: Ali Breland , staff writer for The Atlantic...

President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance who had been convicted for violating anti-money laundering laws, after months of Zhao boosting Trump’s own crypto company. The crypto industry has really nailed the path to Trump’s heart: it was something Joe Biden didn’t like, and it feeds directly to the president’s bottom line.  Guest: Alex Kirshner, contributing writer at Slate...

One legacy of the internet is the millions of subcultures that it helps flourish. Another is pornography—and lots of it. At a “gooner meet-up,” the two collide.  Guest: Daniel Kolitz, author of “ The Goon Squad ” for Harper’s Magazine. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on...

For years, conservatives claimed that the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor conservative speech with no solid evidence.  In Trump 2.0, the administration is explicitly bragging about doing the very same thing they accused democrats of. What gives?  Guest: Renée DiResta , Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and author of “Invi...

This week’s AWS outage illustrates just how fragile and vulnerable our interconnected world really is—and how far we’ve fallen from the vision of a decentralized internet.  Guest: Samanth Subramanian , author of “ The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World. ” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all...

Paying a fraction of a penny per stream and diminishing the value of music were bad enough for Xiu Xiu, but when Spotify owner Daniel Ek announced an investment in a German defense contractor, they decided it was time to take the music back. Guest: Jamie Stewart, musician in the band Xiu Xiu . Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next famil...

As Trump throws out journalists and outlets that report anything negative about him, he’s limiting access to a group of right-wing influencers who work to further his agenda. Guest: Makena Kelly , tech and politics writer for WIRED. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on App...

At this very moment, police departments can gather more data than they have time to actually go through — audio and video from crime scenes, cell phone and search data, vast digital dragnets. This is where artificial intelligence comes in…as well as the civil rights questions. Guest: Gerrit De Vynck , tech reporter for the Washington Post. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access...

Though ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied their Freedom of Information Act requests, these journalists aren’t giving up without a fight—not until they get their hands on a document that outlines how much information Medicaid is sharing with ICE. Guest: Joseph Cox , cofounder of 404 Media.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate...

How one of the largest video game companies was bought for $55 billion by a group that includes Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner. Guest: Jason Schreier , Bloomberg reporter Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at...

TikTok exploded to popularity not by giving users what they asked for—but by figuring out what users really were interested in, and serving that.  What happens to this algorithm if Bytedance cedes control of it to the U.S.?  Guest: Emily Baker White, senior writer at Forbes and the author of Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access...

When you’re getting out of an Uber, Tesla’s unintuitive door handle can embarrass you. In an emergency, getting out of the car quickly can be the difference between life and death. Guest: Dana Hull , Bloomberg News reporter covering Tesla and Elon Musk  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. S...