What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Roiling like a wine-dark sea since the casting was announced, controversies surrounding Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” didn’t stop with the film’s release. But what turned a summer blockbuster into an IMAX-sized lightning rod? 

Guest: Sam Adams, Slate writer and senior editor covering culture. 

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As part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Cory Booker had questions for Todd Blanche—and made space for Jeffrey Epstein survivors. 

Guest: Cory Booker, US Senator for New Jersey, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Foreign Relations Committee, Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a department for wonks, by wonks. But under the dual pressures of the changing nature of work—like the growing gig economy—and an administration that doesn’t accept bad news, should next week’s jobs report be taken with a grain of salt? 

Guest: Ben Casselman, chief economics correspondent for The New York Times.

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On the heels of the success of GLP-1s like Ozempic, other peptide treatments are flooding the marketplace—and advertising spaces. But even as the Trump administration’s FDA discusses approving more treatments and the businesses selling them proliferate, many peptides are sitting in a legal and medical gray area. So how real - and safe - is this peptide hype?

Guest: Kate Knibbs, senior writer at WIRED.

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The US can’t leave Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz, but it can’t wrestle control away without committing ground troops—but it also can’t keep going on like this. So where does that leave everyone?

Guest: Josh Keating, senior correspondent covering foreign affairs at Vox. 

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In the wake of the success among members of the Democratic Socialists of America, The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait has turned in a series of articles that call the group anti-democratic, against the Democratic Party, and unnecessary or even a hindrance to accomplishing policy goals like universal health care. On the other hand, he thinks DSA member Zohran Mamdani is doing a pretty good job as mayor so far. 

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In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the NFL was holding moments of silence, Ezra Klein was waxing about how he was ‘practicing politics the right way,” and criticizing Kirk online could get you fired. Now, as the trial of Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s alleged killer, begins, something has replaced that reverence. 

Guest: Will Sommer, senior reporter for the Bulwark and writer of False Flag,...

Why are kids getting faster? Is it the shoes? Also, running the Boston Marathon is obviously a huge accomplishment, but if you ran the 2013 Boston Marathon, you should lead with that and not save it for an interview years after you meet someone.

Guest: Rob Gunther, producer for Slate’s What Next.

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Steve Witkoff is a real estate investor, an attorney, and now America’s Special Envoy to the Middle East. It may seem like a weird career shift for Witkoff, but he’s such an outlier that the famously transactional Donald Trump treats him like an actual friend.

Guest: Andrea Bernstein, investigative reporter and the co-host of four podcasts, including Trump Inc.

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Over the weekend, Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Florida after British prosecutors brought new charges of rape and sex-trafficking, which were added to charges from May 2025 and an on-going civil case. 

With 59 charges, for actions dating back over a decade, how were the Tates able to evade court for so long—and what does it mean that their popularity continued to grow even as the allegations became public?

A federal judge paused the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. This may not have been a necessary step if the Department of Justice had taken its corporate enforcement mandate more seriously. But under this administration, a proven method has emerged to keep the government out of your business: make it personally profitable for Donald Trump.

Guest: Liz Oyer, Former U.S. Department of Justice Pardon Attorney

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When Donald Trump seizes on an idea, he can riff on it nigh infinitely in any direction, which is why his fairly short and contained primetime speech on election security last week seemed so out of character. Why does Trump seem so determined to keep spinning his wheels on the likely-dead SAVE Act? How much damage can he do before the midterm elections this fall?

Guest: Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother...

A month after a pair of devastating earthquakes and more than six months after the US absconded with their president, how are the people of Venezuela faring under—wait, who’s actually in charge?

Guest: Josh Partlow, staff writer at The Atlantic

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Ah, New York—where it’s hot, loud, and the air is barely breathable. So it’s not especially surprising that Governor Kathy Hochul is opting out of adding to all of that and announcing a moratorium on building new data centers in the state. 

Guest: Nitish Pahwa, Slate staff writer

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Is Microsoft laying off 3,200 employees from the Xbox division just a new boss coming in and pruning an overgrown asset, or is it a sign that console gaming is coming to the end?  

Guest: Jason Schreier, reporter at Bloomberg News, cohost of Triple Click, author of Play Nice, Press Reset, and Blood Sweat and Pixels. 

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America is one nation under the fear of an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a food-borne illness that has given thousands “explosive diarrhea.” Where did it come from? What can you do to avoid it? And how will it end?

Guest: Nicholas Florko, staff writer at The Atlantic

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Todd Blanche’s hearing to become US Attorney General has begun. With a resume that includes the president’s $1.8 billion slush fund and, uh, the “handling” of the Epstein files, what could they possibly have to talk about? 

Guest: Harry Litman, former US attorney, former deputy assistant attorney general, host of Talking Feds, the podcast and Substack

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As the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston demonstrates, ICE’s deportation surge is continuing—and so is the violence. 

Guest: Arelis Hernández, reporter at the Washington Post covering the U.S. southern border, immigration, Texas and beyond.

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Mitch McConnell’s “extended absence” (let’s call it that) from the Senate has drawn attention to the fact that the average age of American lawmakers has been skyrocketing. Is it time to talk about mandatory retirement ages?

Guest: Sam Moyn, author of Gerontocracy in America, Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University.

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