What Next

To kick off the new year, users on X have been asking Grok to nudify people - and kids - at an astonishing rate. And X leadership is egging them on. 

Guest: Jason Koebler, founder of 404 Media and host of the 404 Media Podcast

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While the U.S. was busy capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, someone online was  busy placing bets on prediction markets on the ouster. And these well-timed bets may have netted a still-anonymous someone more than $400,000. Was this a case of kind-of-legal insider trading? Or is America going all-out on its efforts to make everything a casino?

We’re going to be talking to pediatrician Dr. Lauren Hughes about the major chan...

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, cla...

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. 

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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.

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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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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

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Host Mary Harris appeared on stage a few weeks back to speak in response to a night of “Resistance Theater,” considering how she, as a journalist, is preparing to meet this political moment. 

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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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2025 might not have been a great year —but the music sure was stellar.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige O...

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.

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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.

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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. 

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With so much online content, it can be hard for a meme to stay in the collective consciousness for more than a few days. But one meme this year managed to capture seemingly everyone’s attention - and challenge the definition of a meme altogether. 

Guest: Kate Lindsay, host of Slate’s ICYMI podcast. 

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All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode originally aired in September. 

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 neverthel...

All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode is from August.

More than a thousand rabbis and Jewish leaders have signed a letter calling for Israel to end “the use and threat of starvation as a weapon of war.” This New York rabbi, who has felt a ...

All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode is from August.

From the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate Bridge, and places in between like Yellowstone and the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the National Park Service has been a point of Amer...

All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode is from October.

In an executive order, Donald Trump declared “Antifa” a terrorist organization. As it isn’t an organization, there aren’t leaders to target, so zealous conservatives took aim at Mark B...

All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode is from April.

The Trump administration’s actions on immigration and firing the federal workforce have drawn condemnation from all sorts of unions—from building trades to graduate students. What happen...