What Next | Daily News and Analysis
The problem with the news right now? It’s everywhere. And each day, it can feel like we’re all just mindlessly scrolling. It’s why we created What Next. This short daily show is here to help you make sense of things. When the news feels overwhelming, we’re here to help you answer: What next? Look for new episodes every weekday morning. Get more of What Next with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of What Next and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/whatnextplus for access wherever you listen.
Episodes
November 14, 2025 • 25 mins
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.
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November 13, 2025 • 26 mins
Why would Elon Musk attempt to replace Wikipedia—which is already quite futuristic, utopian and accurate—with a faulty, hallucinatory A.I.-powered “Grokipedia”? Well, see, he called it “Wokepedia…”
Guest: Stephen Harrison, writer, tech lawyer, author of “Why Editing Wikipedia Is Becoming More Dangerous” for Slate and The Editors, a novel about Wikipedia.
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November 12, 2025 • 32 mins
It didn’t take long to go from Beyoncé holding for applause in front of the word “FEMINISM” to a headline in the New York Times asking “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” How long is this backlash going to last?
Guest: Danielle Kurtzleben, political correspondent at NPR.
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November 11, 2025 • 27 mins
It has been the longest government shutdown on record. Why did the Democrats choose this moment—right after elections proved how unpopular Donald Trump and his policies truly are—to cave in and end it?
Guest: Jamelle Bouie, New York Times opinion columnist.
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November 10, 2025 • 28 mins
Children with disabilities' place in public schools—though legally mandated—has often been tenuous at best. Now the Trump Administration is targeting the department that oversees special ed. What does that mean for kids and their parents?
Guest: Pepper Stetler, author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
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November 9, 2025 • 30 mins
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.
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November 7, 2025 • 5 mins
Well well well. Looks like being a truculent, aging sex pest who clearly hates the constituency he aspires to rule only works in national elections. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani overcame the longshot odds that came from being charismatic, energetic, and actually interested in government.
Guest: Aymann Ismail, Slate staff writer and author of “Mamdani’s Win Is a Reminder of What’s Possible.”
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November 7, 2025 • 25 mins
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 and author of “The Firewall Agai...
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November 6, 2025 • 28 mins
Trump’s tariffs went before the Supreme Court this week and even the extremely accommodating Roberts court was having trouble seeing how the president’s vast and capricious application of tariffs is constitutional. But that doesn’t mean they’re going away.
Guest: Justin Wolfers, economist and professor at the University of Michigan.
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November 5, 2025 • 25 mins
How Virginia Giuffre’s accusations of a decade ago finally brought His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, Duke of York, down to simply Andrew.
Guest: Imogen West-Knights, Slate contributing writer.
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November 4, 2025 • 27 mins
She won a special election on Sept. 23 but still hasn’t been sworn into the House of Representatives—even though new members have been sworn in during government shutdowns in the past. What explains Speaker Mike Johnson’s now record-long delay?
Guest: Adelita Grijalva, representative-elect for Arizona’s 7th congressional district.
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November 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Fearing a Democratic-led House of Representatives, Donald Trump set off a state-redistricting arms race when he asked Texas to find him five more safe GOP seats. This triggered California to go hunting for five more Democratic seats, and states like North Carolina and Missouri to search for other seats in the margins. But in some states, Trump’s demands are running into rare Republican resistance.
Guest: Ari Berman, voting rights ...
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November 2, 2025 • 30 mins
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.
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October 31, 2025 • 29 mins
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: David Kolitz, author of “The Goon Squad” for Harper’s Magazine.
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October 30, 2025 • 32 mins
Why SNAP benefits potentially won’t be replenished Nov. 1, and what happens to the people who depend on them to eat.
Guest: Dr. Lindsay Allen, health economist and policy researcher at Northwestern University.
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October 29, 2025 • 28 mins
Having successfully gotten their photo ops, the National Guard receded from the streets of Los Angeles, but an aggressive border patrol, with an eye on raising arrest numbers, has taken their place. In the South Bay, an activist group has formed to monitor where raids are happening, who’s conducting them, and try to help residents keep themselves safe.
Guest: Alexander Sammon, politics writer for Slate.
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October 28, 2025 • 29 mins
Last week, the FBI indicted more than 30 people in a series of NBA gambling scandals. The sports leagues are promising drastic action – but with everyone from the states to the owners getting rich off legal sports gambling, is the game rigged?
Guest: Jay Willis, editor-in-chief of Balls and Strikes.
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October 27, 2025 • 28 mins
Isn’t a government shutdown supposed to be a crisis? The Republicans, in control of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court haven’t taken steps to end it on their own, and the ship may have already sailed on the only real ask from the Democrats. So what now?
Guest: Jonathan V. Last, editor at The Bulwark.
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October 26, 2025 • 32 mins
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 “Invisible Rulers: The People Who T...
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October 24, 2025 • 6 mins
The streets are full of ghouls, masked horrors, and terrifying make-up—also it will be Halloween soon.
Guest: Luke Winkie, Slate staff writer.
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