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This week: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan passed away at the age of 100. Today: Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck examine Greenspan’s legacy and the way it’s being emulated by the Fed’s current chair, Kevin Warsh. Then, the hosts discuss succession at JPMorgan now that CEO Jamie Dimon’s latest heir apparent, Marianne Lake, has left the company. And finally they look at the latest PowerPoint from SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and try to understand if a goose has value and if eggs can lay more eggs. 

In the Slate Plus episode: The...

Donald Trump ran for office threatening to use mass deportations, closed borders, and emergency wartime powers to “clean up” American immigration. On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority gifted him with two stunning victories in that crusade—effectively reshaping life for more than a million people living in the country with temporary protected status, or TPS, and forcing asylum seekers to jump through increasingly impossible new hoops. Those decisions came on the heels of Tuesday’s chilling news for green card holders who might want to travel outside the United States in the form of Blanche v. Lau, where that...

Across the nation, we’re getting ready for July 4, 2026: Taylor Swift’s wedding weekend. Also Donald Trump is either dying or dying to be thin, JD Vance is vying to seem human, and Bill Cassidy is determined to go out in a blaze of obsequiousness.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or...

Through stealing your job or simply tanking the stock market—whichever comes first—the rise of artificial intelligence (companies) is a very futuristic sounding problem. It may have some very old-fashioned sounding solutions however.

Guest: Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author, journalist, blogger and author of “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.”

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In this exclusive Opinionpalooza extra, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern take stock of today’s truly horrendous decisions handed down by a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that’s marching in perfect lockstep on immigration, gun rights, and almost everything else. Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients of temporary protected status, or TPS. Later: Why Justice Alito’s rejoinder to Justice Sotomayor’s dissent wasn’t just a crappy birthday present, but also the latest breach of decorum at the high court.

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This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss Tuesday's NY congressional primaries won by three Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and what they could mean for the Democratic Party, two new Supreme Court immigration rulings siding with the Trump administration, and the ongoing Reflecting Pool debacle as the symbol of a presidency of obsessive ego and shiny objects.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss a rare bipartisan win, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, its numerous provisions which aim to help ease the nationwide housing crisis, and how th...

Where do negotiations with Iran stand at the moment? Well, Iran’s out from under a more-than-four-decade-long sanction and could start making bank, plus it controls the Strait of Hormuz and hasn’t agreed to any concessions on its nuclear program. On the American side, JD Vance got to see Switzerland. 

Guest: Tommy Vietor, co-founder of Crooked Media and co-host of the political podcasts Pod Save America and Pod Save the World.

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Most people probably don’t think about the reflecting pool on the National Mall much, but Donald Trump sure does. His efforts to cosmetically raise it to his standards have been staggeringly expensive, and ineffective in surprising ways. It encapsulates the Trump presidency experience pretty succinctly.

Guest: Christina Cauterucci, Slate senior writer

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In this Money Talks: Emily Peck sits down with Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown, co-authors of How to Win a Trade War, to discuss how recent conflicts have changed the rules of international trade and which strategy they believe is the key to “winning” a modern trade war.  

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli.

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With lethal injection drugs getting harder and harder to procure, states are legalizing death by firing squad. It may seem like a return to a more barbaric time, but there’s reason to believe that execution methods like lethal injection or nitrogen gas are even less humane. But even moreso, it may force us to confront our feelings about the death penalty as a nation.

Guests:

Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, Catholic priest and founder of the Execution Intervention Project.

Maurice Chammah, staff writer for the Marshall Project and author of “Let the...

It has been 250 years and America still doesn’t know how to talk about the genocide of indigenous peoples that kicked the whole thing off.

Guest: Rebecca Nagle, host of Pushkin’s First America podcast, Crooked's This Land podcast, and author of “By The Fire We Carry: The Generation-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land”.

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Emily Bazelon interviews Senator Chris Murphy about his new book Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. Murphy argues that Trump is not the root cause of America's political crisis—he's a symptom. The real diagnosis: a country ravaged by loneliness, disconnection, and the collapse of community. From gun violence to Jan. 6, Murphy traces our troubles back to a spiritual unspooling, a loss of meaning and purpose. But his book offers solutions. Murphy lays out a provocative agenda for Democrats to call Americans to national service, break up corporate power, rebuild lo...

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani, holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never historically disqualified Americans from bearing arms. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern unpack the ruling, note what it does not settle about the still-murky Bruen test, and reflect on how dramatically the justices’ posture toward marijuana ha...

This week: We saw just how many people are willing to invest in Elon Musk. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, look at what makes SpaceX’s massive IPO so strange and why investors are willing to overlook things like Musk’s obsession with going to Mars. Then, they discuss Donald Trump’s deal with Iran and what the war has done to Iran’s economy. And finally, Emily unpacks the origin of tobacco-bonds and why they’re now failing.

In the Slate Plus episode: What if your digital secrets got out?

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Everyone needs a hobby. Unfortunately, instead of, say, model trains, the world’s first trillionaire’s seems to unwind by boosting calls for anti-immigrant violence on his social media platform.

Guest: Nitish Pahwa, Slate staff writer covering business and tech.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate...

People are asking artificial intelligence large language models how to do everything—even how to harm themselves and others. And while companies claim there are guardrails in place for those situations, we’ve already seen real-world instances of an LLM’s advice being used to plan a mass shooting.

Guest: Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones and author of “Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America.”

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This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what the U.S. is getting and what it is giving up with the deal to end Trump's Iran war, how Trump's UFC fight at the White House intentionally used the symbols of the presidency to divide rather than unite Americans, and the intensifying conflict between the government and powerful AI companies.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss today's narrow Supreme Court ruling in the case of United States v. Hemani. The hosts talk about the court's decision on gu...

Oil prices fell when Trump announced a deal had been struck with Iran, but don’t mistake that for things going back to “normal.” We left “normal” a long time ago.

Guest: Justin Wolfers, economist and professor at the University of Michigan, and author and host of Platypus Economics.

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Both the US and Iran are talking up a deal that will end the war and re-open the Strait of Hormuz. So why is Israel so upset about it? 

Guest: Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent for the Economist

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From the firing of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr., to the removal of the first Black four-star general’s portrait from the Pentagon, to striking Black and women Naval officers’ names from the promotion list, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s vision for the future of the military seems to come at the expense of Black servicemembers and their careers—leading many to question if this is even the right career path to be on. 

Guest: Clint Smith, staff writer at The Atlantic. 

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Two horror films by two young directors have outmuscled an honest-to-Grogu Star Wars to become the early box office surprises of the summer.

Guest: Justin Chang, film critic at The New Yorker

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Podcast production by Evan...

The Second Reconstruction is being dismantled piece by piece, and this past month has seen that project attain terminal velocity. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Stanford law professor and leading civil rights lawyer and scholar Pamela S Karlan, about a series of quick-fire moves from the high court and the Trump administration that, taken together, reveal a rapid disassembly of a series of hard-won civil rights laws in place for the past 50 years, known as the Second Reconstruction. 

From SCOTUS decisions in Callais and Milligan, to a new memo from the Jus...

This week: Inflation hit its highest rate in three years thanks to skyrocketing energy prices. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, parse through what the various inflation numbers mean and discuss the Fed’s and Donald Trump’s blasé reaction to the situation. Then, with the trustees warning of its depletion by 2032, the hosts talk about the possible consequences of losing Social Security. And finally, they look at the natural experiment that revealed the unexpected connection between the iPhone and lower birth rates. 

In the Slate Plus episode: Is Anthropic vs OpenAI the new Coke vs Pep...

It’s real: The two great flavors of What Next and What Next TBD together at last. But what’s not real? Where does a sincere speaker using a medium with a motive fall? And how much wolf can you cry before they just take you off shepherd duty?

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple...

Is Elon Musk’s SpaceX leading humanity to Mars? Or is that just grandiose window-dressing for an A.I. company leading several other A.I. companies to IPOs? 

Guest: Max Chafkin, reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek and cohost of the Everybody's Business podcast.

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This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss whether this week's resumption of open hostilities in the Iran war has changed the likelihood of an imminent end to the conflict, what to do about how California's slow vote-counting emboldens Trump's cries of election foul, and the most hotly contested D.C. mayoral election in a generation with guest Mike Schaffer from City Cast DC.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss how the online shaming of one couple for their reproductive decision has deformed an already hard conversation ab...

How Donald Trump rearranging the White House lawn to accommodate a UFC fight neatly mirrors the way the organization and its parent company have reshaped themselves around the president.

Guest: Luke Thomas, MMA journalist and host of the Morning Kombat podcast. 

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After being eradicated in the United States in the ‘60s, screwworm is back—at a time when beef is even more in demand and the American herd is already depleted. How long will consumers be forced to choose between high prices and, ugh, turkey burgers?

Guest: Kevin Draper, New York Times business correspondent covering the agricultural industry.

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Why would Trump choose Bill Pulte to be the new acting Director of National Intelligence? Pulte may not have a background in national security, but since he was already Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, you have to admit it was convenient to hire from the batch of people who were already around.

Guest: Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for the Bulwark. 

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In this Money Talks: Author and financial journalist Brendan Greeley tells Elizabeth Spiers about his new book The Almighty Dollar—and the astonishing power this currency held long before the founding of the United States.

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Podcast production by Jessamine Molli.

Hosted on A...

He’s treated Ebola; he’s had Ebola. Here’s what he thinks of the growing crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and how America can and should respond.

Guest: Dr Craig Spencer, emergency doctor, professor at Brown.

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One of the challenges of modern legal journalism is recalling that case law, doctrine, and Supreme Court decisions aren’t a complete picture, without including the lived realities of the people whose lives and communities are often turned upside down by changes in the law.

On Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s far-right flank vastly expanded its holding in Louisiana v. Callais to make it harder, if not impossible, to challenge racist voting maps designed to suppress Black votes. The shadow-docket decision misrepresented its own holding in Callais and discarded a case it had already decided. With...

This week: Google’s parent company announced an unexpected move to raise $80 billion for their AI ventures. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and guest host Mary Childs– host of the new show Mary in America–discuss the logic behind Alphabet's stock-based fundraise, which includes a $10 billion share sale to Berkshire-Hathaway.  Then, Mary explains why it’s getting harder for investors to avoid exposure to AI thanks to the index funds who are bending their rules for companies like SpaceX. And finally, they examine why Spain’s unemployment rate has dropped significantly and what that tells us about the relationship between immigration...

It’s a bit of an overstatement to say “the Pope came out as anti-A.I.” with last week’s encyclical—after all, Anthropic’s cofounder was there for the release. So what did the Chicago Pope actually say, what was he doing with his encyclical, and what’s an encyclical anyway? 

Guest: Lizzie O’Leary, host of What Next TBD

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Sla...

It’s an awkward time to have a Department of Education that seems so disinterested in, uh, education. It’s leaving teachers to grapple with how to integrate artificial intelligence into the classroom—if at all. 

Guest: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

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This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss whether Graham Platner's accumulating self-inflicted wounds will cost Democrats their best shot at Senate control, how Trump's evolving plans for America's semiquincentennial are giving us all a real time lesson in what the Founders were trying to avoid, and the political and social dimensions of being an American World Cup soccer fan.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss consuming escapist vs. difficult art and the turmoil of modern marriage through The Drama and Beef Season 2.

In...

Graham Platner has a lot of things in his favor as he runs for a US Senate seat in Maine: it’s an off-election year, the president’s approval rating is slumping and dragging down the whole GOP. Should be a breeze as soon as Platner gets through this latest scandal.

Guests:

Danielle Kurtzleben, White House Correspondent for NPR and “Masculinity politics expert.”

Ken Klippenstein, independent journalist covering national security and U.S. politics.

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The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices seem to be in a big rush to dismantle voting rights for non-white people. On Tuesday night, the right-wing supermajority handed down an unsigned shadow docket order that greenlights racial gerrymandering in Alabama and dramatically undermines voting rights protections nationwide. In this Opinionpalooza bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern examine the details of the case. They also explore how we got here, and what this court’s jurisprudential arrogance and voracious appetite for power means for democracy itself. By approving racially discriminatory maps, the high court’s MAGA...

It’s city vs. state vs. the feds at Delaney Hall, an ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, where prisoners have gone on a hunger strike to protest the conditions inside—while outside, protestors clash with authorities. 

Guest: Aymann Ismail, senior writer at Slate.

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It’s the war that’s been won since it started; the ceasefire with ongoing strikes, and the peace deals that are done except for the points of disagreement. Does the public have any reason to believe what Trump says about the Iran war? Does Iran?

Guest: David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic

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