Slate News
Daily news updates from across the Slate Podcast network.
Episodes
January 8, 2026 • 31 mins
After the Trump administration launched a massive Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operation in Minnesota, protesters gathered to defend immigrant neighbors. Renee Nicole Good, a mother of a six year old, showed up with her wife and dog to film altercations between officers and community members. What happened next changed everything.
Guest: Jon Collins, senior reporter on the Minnesota Public Radio News race, class and commu...
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January 7, 2026 • 30 mins
How a mixture of real investigations, wild allegations, evidence of actual fraud, and the right-wing echo chamber ended Tim Walz’s governor campaign in Minnesota.
Guest: Deena Winter, Minneapolis City Hall reporter for the Star Tribune.
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 podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “...
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January 6, 2026 • 29 mins
The investigation into the 2021 attack on the Capitol was the largest in FBI history. Then Trump came back into office—and started undoing it.
Guest: Ryan Reilly, reporter covering the Justice Department and federal law enforcement for NBC News, author of Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System.
Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across al...
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January 6, 2026 • 36 mins
In this Money Talks: Journalist and author Tarpley Hitt joins Emily Peck to discuss her new book Barbieland: The Unauthorized History which reveals the shady history behind the super-star doll. They’ll get into inventor Ruth Handler’s so-called "inspiration" by a popular German doll, Mattel’s industry spies and many, many lawsuits, and how Handler single-handedly prevented Nixon-era maternity leave policies.
Join Slate Plus to un...
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January 5, 2026 • 29 mins
The Trump administration has a handful of answers to the question “Why did the United States pluck Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela?”—it was for narcoterrorism, or payback, or just oil. They’re even less clear about what’s going to happen with the country now.
Guest: Shane Harris, staff writer covering national security and intelligence for the Atlantic.
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January 4, 2026 • 36 mins
The Trump administration wants NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2027. They also want them to do it with their budget slashed, a leadership carousel and competing views that Mars is more important.
Guest: Joel Achenbach, freelance journalist and author of Moondoggle
If you want to support more of this reporting, in 2026 and beyond, consider signing up for Slate Plus. You’ll enjoy ad-free listening across the Slate network...
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January 3, 2026 • 52 mins
This week: 2025 ended on high for the US stock market but no one seems too pleased with its performance. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack the story of the US markets in 2025, why it was outperformed internationally, and the role AI has played. Then, the hosts discuss how, amid the uncertainty and chaos of Trump’s trade war, Mexico has found a way to come out on top. And finally, 2025 saw a boom for dealmaking...
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January 3, 2026 • 51 mins
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by The Atlantic staff writer and host of the Galaxy Brain podcast, Charlie Warzel. Charlie has been following the demise of Twitter, now called X, since Elon Musk took over in 2022. While many of Musk’s decisions have prompted people to declare the end of the app, the introduction of a new location feature undermines almost all of what was left of its relevance. Can we finally call it...
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January 3, 2026 • 59 mins
In a special new year retrospective, Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick revisits an important episode from early 2025. Back at the beginning of February, Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, pointed to the speed and viciousness of the very opening legal gambits in Trump 2.0 as evidence that America had already switched over to the fast track for autocrac...
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January 2, 2026 • 27 mins
Artificial intelligence boosters spent the year wedging the tech into our lives – whether we wanted it or not. But one new product brought A.I. from every app and website into the meatspace, forcing you to face it eye-to-eye.
Guest: Nitish Pahwa, staff writer at Slate covering business and technology
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January 1, 2026 • 41 mins
2025 might not have been a great year —but the music sure was stellar.
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 podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Ann...
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January 1, 2026 • 55 mins
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz revisit several favorite segments from Gabfests past to celebrate their 20th anniversary: the consequential and eye-opening “don’t call the police” debate, the segment in which John shows Bill Clinton how to apologize with his characteristic eloquence and grace, and that time a data scientist definitively answered the important question: which host interrupts the others the ...
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December 31, 2025 • 28 mins
With rising authoritarianism, terrifying speech crackdowns, and violence in the streets, this year we found ourselves turning to our friends over at How To for advice on finding peace and excitement in our lives.
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 podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of o...
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December 30, 2025 • 34 mins
If you were to sum up 2025 in a film, which would you pick? The question that nearly wrecked the brain of Slate’s chief movie critic.
Guest: Dana Stevens, Slate’s movie critic.
Dana’s ten best movies of 2025.
Her review of Sinners.
And her review of One Battle After Another.
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 podcasts. Subscr...
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December 29, 2025 • 28 mins
Canada and the United States usually have a pretty good-natured sports rivalry—but from hockey to baseball, that was not the case in 2025.
Guest: Alex Kirshner, contributing writer at Slate, co-host of Hang Up and Listen and the Split Zone Duo podcasts.
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 podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Pod...
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December 27, 2025 • 40 mins
This week: We’re celebrating a year full of hot takes! Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, debate and rate the hottest takes they’ve heard this year — like Elon Musk’s claim that there will be no poverty in the future, the idea that Trump’s tariffs didn’t matter – and the collection of fire takes Felix gathered from around the Bloomberg news room.
In the Slate Plus episode: The hot take that started it all: the $140,0...
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December 27, 2025 • 57 mins
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by internet culture writer Kat Tenbarge to break down the most important internet moments of 2025. But not just any internet moments—specifically, the moments that fall under the three key themes that emerged in online culture over the past twelve months: brain rot, surveillance, and big tech dystopia. These themes not only defined how we lived life online in 2025, but have set the st...
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December 27, 2025 • 69 mins
Over the past calendar year, the Supreme Court’s center has shifted to the right and then more to the right, and the justices’ decisions have time and again facilitated Trump’s agenda. But the Roberts majority is not simply focused on what the current president wants; it has its sights set on a larger project: voting. Suppressing and constraining and problematizing the core function of democratic rule. In this episode, Dahlia Lithw...
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December 23, 2025 • 35 mins
In this Money Talks: Planet Money’s Mary Childs joins Felix Salmon to share what she learned reporting on how private philanthropy is trying to cope with the influx of need now that USAID is gone. They’ll get into the headaches and heartbreaks charitable organizations Givewell and ALIMA are experiencing after the loss of billions of dollars of humanitarian aid, the practical costs of saving lives, and what you can do to give effect...
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December 22, 2025 • 74 mins
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh look back on 2025, picking their top sports stories from each month—from the Luka trade and torpedo bats to a Trumpy Ryder Cup and OKC’s championship. It's been a year!
On the bonus episode available exclusively for Slate Plus members, the panel unpacks Trump’s proposed Patriot Games.
January - April (3:51): CFP - Rory
May - August (26:58): Coco Gauff - Belichick
September -...
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