Slate News
Daily news updates from across the Slate Podcast network.
Episodes
September 12, 2025 • 36 mins
Graphic, violent videos like the shooting of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk circulate across social media moments after they happen, finding an audience even among people who have made no effort to seek them out.
Guest: Craig Silverman, journalist and cofounder of Indicator.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscri...
Mark as Played
September 11, 2025 • 62 mins
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk amid an extremely troubling climate of political violence in America, another Supreme Court order with no majority explanation allowing racial profiling by ICE in LA, and a score-settling excerpt from Kamala Harris’s upcoming memoir 107 Days.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the astonishing ...
Mark as Played
September 11, 2025 • 30 mins
How a Supreme Court decision from the shadow docket opens the door to racial profiling, creates a nightmare for millions of Latino Americans, and drains dwindling legitimacy from the court itself.
Guest: Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate, and the co-host of Amicus.
Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorit...
Mark as Played
September 10, 2025 • 32 mins
Last week, Donald Trump announced the military had blown up what he said was a drug-smuggling boat. This week, we still don’t know why he believes the boat was full of smugglers.
But even if they were trafficking drugs, can the president legally blow up 11 people in international waters?
Guests: Shane Harris, staff writer covering national security and intelligence for The Atlantic.
Ana Vanessa Herrero, journalist based in Ca...
Mark as Played
September 10, 2025 • 44 mins
Kate Lindsay and Candice Lim dive into the online conversations surrounding recent Saturday Night Live cast announcements. With departing fan favorites (such as Heidi Gardner) come the arrival of new talent, and for the past few years, SNL has been sourcing their talent from your For You Page. From TikTok-prominent comedian Veronika Slowikowska to Dropout regular Jeremy Culhane, what does it mean when internet comedians step into S...
Mark as Played
September 9, 2025 • 26 mins
With Republicans holding both houses of Congress and the White House, Democrats don’t have a lot of ways to stall Donald Trump’s agenda—except for refusing to further fund the government and triggering a shutdown. They already passed on the opportunity once, but is the situation now so desperate that the opposition party needs to do something—anything?
Guest: Rep. Jamie Raskin, U.S. representative for Maryland's 8th Congressional ...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2025 • 64 mins
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Ben Lindbergh, and Lindsay Gibbs are joined by tennis writer Ben Rothenberg for a breakdown of the U.S. Open’s final days - where Trump was booed, Alcarez and Sinner battled, and Osaka was defeated. They also delve into the recent Steve Ballmer controversy, as well as Week 1 of the NFL. Finally, Ben has an afterball on the legacies of goalie Ken Dryden and second baseman Davey Johnson.
On the bonus episode ava...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2025 • 28 mins
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as HHS Secretary has meant turmoil for the CDC: thousands of employees have either been let go, or are unclear on their employment status; leadership has been stepping down; and there was a shooting at their Atlanta building in August. The result is RFK being yelled at in the Senate, thousands of CDC employees calling for his resignation, and a country less prepared for the next pandemic.
Guest: Apo...
Mark as Played
September 7, 2025 • 20 mins
An Inflation Reduction Act subsidy for electric vehicles is being shut down by the Trump administration at the end of September, and automakers are preparing for sales of EVs to slow. Can this nascent industry survive?
Guest: Ryan Felton, reporter covering the automotive industry for the Wall Street Journal
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mark as Played
September 6, 2025 • 50 mins
This week: Tesla offered Elon Musk an incentive package worth a trillion dollars. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck discuss Tesla's motivation and why Musk, already the richest man in the world, would be tempted by the outrageous number. Then, the big antitrust case against Google went out with a whimper, with the Judge ruling that they are a monopoly but they don’t need to break up the company if they follow a few n...
Mark as Played
September 6, 2025 • 51 mins
On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by Spitfire News writer Kat Tenbarge, who came to the defense of the Gaylor fandom (people who believe Taylor Swift is secretly queer) after they were accused of “crashing out” in light of her engagement to Travis Kelce. But who are the Gaylors, really? And why are they always the butt of the joke?
Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes...
Mark as Played
September 6, 2025 • 55 mins
There is a “stuckness” to American political life right now, which has become a seemingly inexorable centrifuge of polarization, victimization and power grabbing. The constitution is brandished as sword and shield, and also as though it is the word of God. Americans, it seems, have lost the ability to think creatively and expansively about the constitution, and our ability to amend it. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is in c...
Mark as Played
September 5, 2025 • 35 mins
We’ve been told that artificial intelligence can write, code, generate images—it can do everything…except feasibly turn a profit. But investing in A.I. has nevertheless become a pillar of the U.S. economy. Where is this leading us?
Guest: Ed Zitron, author of the newsletter Where’s Your Ed At and host of the podcast Better Offline.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Ne...
Mark as Played
September 4, 2025 • 60 mins
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what the spate of legal defeats for the Trump administration portends as cases wind toward the Supreme Court, the real world effects of RFK Jr. gutting the CDC with guest Dr. Josh Sharfstein, and whether Democrats should compel government shutdown or avoid it now that Congress is back.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss NASA V...
Mark as Played
September 4, 2025 • 27 mins
From the gold accents going up in the White House, to his orders to bring back classical design to federal buildings, Donald Trump is a president with a very specific aesthetic sensibility—which often is a manifestation of his politics.
Guest: Abdallah Fayyad, policy correspondent at Vox
Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podca...
Mark as Played
September 3, 2025 • 30 mins
Donald Trump has been working to expand his presidential influence into places that are supposed to operate independently, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve, and even into Congress’s constitutionally appointed “power of the purse.” As Congress returns to Washington, is this nominally co-equal branch of government willing to wrest its power back?
Guest: Luke Broadwater, reporter covering the White House fo...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2025 • 28 mins
From selling hats, NFTs and cryptocurrency, to stock boosts, swaps and golf-course deals made abroad, the Trumps are taking this presidency to the bank—for what looks to be billions. You can call it distasteful, but has it tipped over into “illegal”?
Guest: David Kirkpatrick, staff writer at the New Yorker.
Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your ...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2025 • 39 mins
In this Money Talks: Felix Salmon is joined by author and New York Times reporter David Gelles to discuss his new biography of enigmatic Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Dirtbag Billionaire. David does a deep dive into what makes the brand and its founder so unique, including the paradoxes of a wildly successful company trying to remain environmentally sustainable and a billionaire who believes all billionaires to be “policy failu...
Mark as Played
August 31, 2025 • 26 mins
A24 rose from “small budget indie movie studio” to “one of the most respected brands in cinema” on a reputation for treating filmmakers like auteurs. But as the studio is growing and exploring how to integrate artificial intelligence, it’s at odds with some of the very directors who helped A24 establish itself.
Guest: Alex Barasch, culture editor at the New Yorker
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-fr...
Mark as Played
August 30, 2025 • 57 mins
This week: Fed governor Lisa Cook is suing the Trump administration over her dismissal. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, along with guest Kashmir Hill of The New York Times, discuss the weak fraud case being used to oust the Biden-appointed Fed governor and its significance in the fight to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve. Then, Kashmir goes in depth on the many stories she’s reported on lately of peo...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel
The Megyn Kelly Show is your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures today. No BS. No agenda. And no fear.
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.