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 21, 2025 • 24 mins
Trump promised to stop the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry. He did call off the SEC investigations that began under Biden, and pardoned Binance cofounder and ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao. But is the crypto industry ultimately better off because of that?
Guest: David Yaffe-Bellany, tech reporter for the New York Times.
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November 20, 2025 • 25 mins
People have been talking about how the penny is more trouble than it’s worth for 50 years—so why drop it now? And—other than having nothing to put in our loafers—will it be missed?
Guest: Caity Weaver, writer at The Atlantic.
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November 19, 2025 • 29 mins
Ongoing civil war in Sudan has left tens of thousands dead, with millions displaced. A country of great natural resources, regional foreign governments have chosen sides—but foreign aid from the US that had mitigated some of the war’s damage is gone.
Guest: David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, former UK foreign secretary 2007-2010.
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November 18, 2025 • 30 mins
You can’t really blame Donald Trump for thinking he could just handwave away the Epstein Files. But for the first time in what feels like forever, his base, the GOP, and his own desires don’t quite align.
Guest: Will Sommer, senior reporter at the Bulwark.
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November 17, 2025 • 28 mins
Trump can’t seem to decide if the National Guard is needed in American cities to stop violent crime, or to assist ICE deportations, or something else entirely. And the lack of a clear and present crisis is starting to make some Guard members uncomfortable.
Guest: Kat Lonsdorf, news reporter for National Public Radio.
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November 16, 2025 • 32 mins
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers.
Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters.
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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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