What Next | Daily News and Analysis

In Pope Leo XIV, Donald Trump has finally run into someone he can’t silence, threaten, or sully. He’s not taking it gracefully. 

Guest:  Christopher Hale, author of the “Letters from Leo” Substack, “a chronicle of how Pope Leo XIV’s papacy intersects with American politics, faith, and the digital age during the presidency of Donald Trump.”

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In a single weekend, JD Vance managed to flunk out of peace talks with Iran and hitch the Trump wagon to Victor Orban’s star just in time for it to implode. Like Kamala Harris before him, the vice president is getting all the hard, unpopular assignments – and also like Harris, it could cost him his political future.

Guest: Asawin Suebsaeng, senior political correspondent with Zeteo, co-author of “Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump'...

The U.S. and Iran began (and ended) negotiations under a shaky ceasefire, and are now at the stage where America is threatening to also blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon have begun negotiating over Hezbollah, with conspicuously no ceasefire in place. 

Guest:  Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent for The Economist.

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Lurking behind—and sometimes explicitly out in front of — the Trump administration’s ire for DEI, its crackdowns on immigration, and its rhetoric about what kind of country America is, is “the Great Replacement theory.” But it’s not an exclusively American problem. 

Guest: Ibram X Kendi, author of “How To Be An Antiracist,” “Stamped From The Beginning” and his latest, “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.”

If you had as much trouble getting along with other humans as Sam Altman does, you too might be eager to issue in the artificial intelligence revolution.

Guest: Andrew Marantz, staff writer for the New Yorker. 

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With Congress again out for recess—instead of, say, working to end the partial government shutdown or doing something, anything, when the president threatens war crimes—one media organization had the savvy, gall, and, okay, shamelessness to deputize us all as honorary paparazzi. 

Guest: Harvey Levin, founder of TMZ.

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As OpenAI prepares for its IPO, the company decided to…pay millions of dollars for a tech talk show? Is this just what rich tech guys like Sam Altman are like now? 

Guest: Mike Isaac, tech reporter for the New York Times.

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An Israeli filmmaker, who returned home from abroad after October 7, attempts to capture the feeling of mourning becoming a thirst for revenge among his compatriots, in a film he describes as a “bomb.”

Guest: Nadav Lapid, Israeli screenwriter and film director of Yes!

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Where was Congress while the president threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight”? 

Guest:  Senator Mark Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia, top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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Last week, the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Randy George, joined a long and growing list of high-level military officers who have been fired, forced out, or otherwise induced to leave their positions during the second Trump administration. What does that mean for the war in Iran?

Guest: Idrees Ali, national security correspondent at Reuters.

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American Catholicism finds itself at a crossroads—split between its prominent conservative representatives in the Trump administration and in the priesthood, and the more inclusive, social justice-oriented messaging of the American pope. 

Guest: Colleen Dulle, Vatican correspondent for America Media, co-host of “Inside the Vatican” podcast, and author of “Struck Down, Not Destroyed.”

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One of artificial intelligence’s most hyped “abilities” is how it writes computer code. So much so that seemingly anyone can do it. So we figured… why not us? 

Guests: 

Greg Lavalee, Slate’s Chief Technology Officer.

Clive Thompson, contributing writer for the New York Times

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In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, private credit or “shadow banking” grew as an alternative to the regulations and shared risk that institutional banks operate within. What happens if a crisis hits the trillions of dollars that are outside of those guardrails? We may be about to find out. 

Guest: Tracy Alloway, co-host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast.

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Even with Trump in attendance, it didn’t look like the Supreme Court was buying his administration’s attack on the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship. But how the justices decide the case could leave the door open for another, savvier attempt to overturn birthright citizenship in the future.

Guest: Jamelle Bouie, opinion columnist at The New York Times. 

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The Iran war’s disruption to global oil supplies demonstrates another upside to switching to renewable energy sources. Instead, Europe is considering rolling back carbon regulations.

Guest:  Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark and anchor at MS NOW.

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A flurry of activity in the oil-futures market, minutes before Donald Trump made a big announcement about not striking at Iranian infrastructure, has all the appearance of someone using classified national security information to turn a profit. 

Guest:  Paul Krugman, Nobel-Prize winning economist and author of paulkrugman.substack.com.

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OpenAI is shutting down its video generator Sora less than six months after it launched, and just three months since it signed a deal with Disney. Is this an A.I. company fine tuning its offerings, or the long-awaited popping of the A.I. bubble?

Guest: Jason Koebler, cofounder of 404 Media.

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Artificial intelligence is working its way into every aspect of our lives, including law and immigration enforcement, and the industry is spending millions of dollars to ensure it can continue to do so unregulated. But as evidence of bias appears in this nascent tech, this congresswoman wants to ensure we’re not just recreating our historical biases and problems all over again—which is to say, she wants guardrails. 

Guest: ...

What YouTube and Meta’s loss in the “social media addiction trial” could mean for your feed.

Guest: Ryan Mac, business and technology reporter for the New York Times.

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