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

For years, Silicon Valley has felt like a liberal enclave.. This election, a handful of powerful voices like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are expressing support for the Trump-Vance ticket. Is this a shift in ideologies in Silicon Valley, or just a few of the loudest voices?  Guest:  Nitish Pahwa , associate writer for business and tech at Slate . Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to ac...

In the hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, conspiracy theories started circulating all over social media, often amplified by powerful voices on both sides of the aisle. It shows a complete breakdown of trust in institutions during a critical election.  Guest: Drew Harwell, technology reporter at the Washington Post.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-...

The biggest companies in the world are now tech companies, which is why the biggest antitrust, anti-monopoly fights in recent memory are centered around Silicon Valley.  Guest:  Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice 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...

“Home diagnostics” are a $5 billion industry—and growing. Spurred by social media, people are buying into at-home health tests, without input from their doctors, and often, not even the FDA.   Guest:  Elizabeth Dwoskin, 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 podcasts. Su...

Boeing just pled guilty to felony charges of defrauding the federal government, leading to millions of dollars in fines, and new, external oversight. Is this how the company finally turns it around? Guest:  Oriana Pawlyk , POLITICO’s aviation 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. Su...

The downsides of the streaming era are coming into focus for movie fans—uncontrollable, changing libraries; lower fidelity; lack of extras and features. Can all of these be solved with a return to physical media?  Guest:  Ash Nelson , journalist and author of “ The Lost Art of the DVD Extra ” for Slate.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What...

The world’s population has never been bigger, and it’s still growing. but there’s a movement of “pronatalists” who see the slowing birth rate in wealthy, educated populations as a doomsday scenario in the making—and they’ve found their spokesman in one Elon Musk. Guest: Sophie Alexander, reporter for Bloomberg Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whol...

The story of IUDs is a story of technology, reproductive rights, shortcomings in communication about women’s health, and politics.  Guest: Mia Armstrong-Lopez, managing editor at ASU Media Enterprise and author of a recent piece on IUDs for Slate .  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. Subsc...

Saying any one storm or heat wave or weather in general was “caused by climate change” is tricky—summer is, after all, usually pretty hot, and storms happen. But researchers are working on a model that brings “climate change” from abstract into the particular.   Guest:  Daniel Swain , climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, studying how extreme events are cha...

As cars get smarter, automakers - with the help of third-party apps - are leveraging the new data they’re able to collect on people's driving habits to influence drivers’ insurance prices. The problem? Most people aren’t aware their driving is being monitored. Guest: Kashmir Hill, tech reporter for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to...

Amazon has installed digital palm readers at Whole Foods. The reader scans your palm , collecting biometric data, and links it to your credit card to pay for your groceries. What does exchanging vein mapping for eggs and butter mean for the future of data security and in-person shopping.  Guest:  Emily Moore , freelance tech and food journalist Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to a...

In 2021, one of the largest global law enforcement operations took place. It was all thanks to an encrypted phone service known as Anom, which was secretly run by the FBI.  The program was a wild success. But did the agency take it too far?  Guest: Joseph Cox, investigative reporter for 404 media and author of “Dark Wire, the Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever” Want more Wha...

On Monday, Tim Cook announced Apple was getting into artificial intelligence. Is Apple about to do for A.I. what it did for personal computers and smartphones? 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 podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podca...

It’s hard to imagine music fans mourning a break-up of Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, as a Department of Justice lawsuit requests. But even with this monopolistic middleman out of the way, touring musicians still seem destined to struggle financially. Guest:  Laura Jane Grace , musician Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What...

How well is the Biden administration coaxing semiconductor companies to build their chips in the United States? Compared to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan…or even mainland China, things are just okay. Guest:  Asa Fitch , reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering the semiconductor industry. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family a...

“Fecal microbial transplants” treat someone’s unhealthy gut with poop from someone else’s healthy gut, and proponents of FMT claim it can help treat everything from IBS to autism. But if your doctor isn’t ready to fill you up with someone else’s poop, the internet will happily oblige.  Guest:  Luke Winkie , Slate staff writer who published “ The Poop Broker .” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to...

His law firm won a $73 million dollar settlement against Remington on behalf of nine Sandy Hook families. Now he’s filing a lawsuit against the gunmaker Daniel Defense, the video game company Activision, and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, on behalf of families in Uvalde. Guest:  Josh Koskoff , attorney Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole Wha...

Last year saw a record number of healthcare hacks with more than 700 separate incidents. And with a subsidiary of United Healthcare forking over a $22 billion ransom this year, the problem isn’t going away. With so much sensitive personal information on file, why aren’t hospitals and their ilk better prepared? Guest:  Dina Carlisle, president of the local nurses union, OPEIU 40 in Michigan. Justin...

When OpenAI showed a demo for the latest version of ChatGPT —the one that you can chat with, you know, with your voice—one of the voices sounded eerily familiar. And instead of a victory lap, it was a reminder of all of the implications for intellectual property and one’s own basic human likeness that this technology carries with it. Guest: Sigal Samuel, senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect an...

In theory, crowdfunding sites offer an opportunity for anyone to give to any cause, including, say, strangers facing huge medical bills. In practice, crowdfunding suffers from many of the same inequities that led to someone needing to crowdfund to begin with. Guest: Nora Kenworthy, author of Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare , associate professor at the University of Washingto...

The 2021 subreddit-coordinated effort to raise the price of Gamestop stock was, in some ways, a proof of concept: the little guy can get into the market and make some noise. Because even though that “meme stock” rose and fell, the idea of the meme stock went has changed the way our stock market works. Guest: Alex Kirshner, contributing writer for Slate. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate...

The ability to choose the sex of your child through IVF is banned in most of the world. In America, however, parents can—and do—for a price. Guest: Emi Nietfeld , writer and software engineer, author of “ The Parents Who Want Daughters—and Daughters Only ” for Slate. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Sla...

You might not know Brad Parscale by name, but you know his work: he was the digital campaign operative behind Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. This election cycle, he’s back—and advising conservatives on how to utilize A.I. in their campaigns.  Guest: Garance Burke, global investigative journalist for the Associated Press. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free...

The California Journalism Preservation Act would make companies like Google and Meta pay publishers for the news content appearing in their feeds and search results—and force news organizations to spend that money on their journalists. How have similar laws worked in Canada and Australia? And could it solve journalism’s on-going revenue problem? Guest: Matt Pearce, former LA Times journalist, the...

Bird flu isn’t new, you may even remember past outbreaks. But showing up in milk ?  Is America ready if it leaps to spreading among humans? Guest: Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist, senior advisor to the CDC  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 “...