Slate News
Daily news updates from across the Slate Podcast network.
Episodes
October 20, 2025 • 32 mins
Off-cycle elections generally favor the party that isn’t in the White House. And with a large voting bloc of federal employees, Virginia Democrats were feeling good about the upcoming elections for governor and attorney general. Then texts from their AG candidate hit the news.
Guest: Eva McKend, correspondent covering national politics for CNN.
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October 19, 2025 • 21 mins
Paying a fraction of a penny per stream and diminishing the value of music were bad enough for Xiu Xiu, but when Spotify owner Daniel Ek announced an investment in a German defense contractor, they decided it was time to take the music back.
Guest: Jamie Stewart, musician in the band Xiu Xiu.
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October 18, 2025 • 52 mins
This week: The downfall of First Brands and Tricolor has led to finger-pointing between banks and private credit firms. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck discuss whether these fraud-related bankruptcies are a sign of major issues to come within the credit market. Then, car prices and sales are up across the board. The hosts cover the state of the auto industry, the spike in EV sales caused by expiring incentives, and w...
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October 18, 2025 • 54 mins
Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued in defense of the Voting Rights Act in the pivotal Supreme Court case, Louisiana v Callais this week. Nelson joins Dahlia Lithwick on this episode of Amicus to probe the implications of the case for voting rights around the country, and the role of the Supreme Court in a democratic system. Nelson warns that while the consequences of losing Section 2 would be catastroph...
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October 17, 2025 • 27 mins
As Trump throws out journalists and outlets that report anything negative about him, he’s limiting access to a group of right-wing influencers who work to further his agenda.
Guest: Makena Kelly, tech and politics writer for WIRED.
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October 16, 2025 • 58 mins
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the Gaza ceasefire and prospects for long-term peace with Rob Malley, Middle East policy expert and co-author (with Hussein Agha) of the new book Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine, which side is likely to fold first in the ongoing government shutdown, and who benefits as the Supreme Court hears arguments about whether th...
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October 16, 2025 • 35 mins
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 Bray, a Rutgers professor who wrote a book about fighting fascism eight years ago. The clumsy attempts to get him fired didn’t bother him—but the doxxing and death threats were enough to convince him he needed to leave America.
Guest: Mark Bray, assis...
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October 15, 2025 • 26 mins
The government shutdown isn’t hitting everywhere equally—infrastructure projects that rely on federal funding have been halted exclusively in states that voted for Kamala Harris. Do blue states have any recourse against a federal government that only functions to punish them?
Guest: David Faris, associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a La...
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October 15, 2025 • 42 mins
Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay get into tech’s latest effort to turn A.I. into a status symbol. Anthropic has been pushing “Thinking” caps into the trendy streets of New York. OpenAI has been handing out awards for power users akin to YouTube subscriber plaques. But one of the worst offenders is Friend, a $129 wearable necklace that spent a million dollars to infiltrate subway stations and bus stops. Why are A.I. companies trying so ...
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October 14, 2025 • 67 mins
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh are joined by the Times’s Martyn Ziegler to explain the ripple effects of the Gaza ceasefire on UEFA and Israeli soccer. Then, The New York Times sports reporter Ken Belson joins to unravel the continued drama surrounding Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show and the backdoor dealings of NFL owners. Finally, the hosts ask if the Seattle Mariners are this year’s team of destiny? B...
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October 14, 2025 • 28 mins
Bari Weiss has had a successful media career by any metric, save perhaps for broad appeal. But as she takes over as the head of CBS News, the “mass” part of mass media doesn’t matter as much, and the new order of the day—pleasing a few angry old billionaires—is absolutely her sweet spot.
Guest: David Klion, columnist for The Nation and contributing editor to Jewish Currents; author of a forthcoming book on neoconservatism.
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October 14, 2025 • 35 mins
In this Money Talks: Felix Salmon and Elizabeth Spiers are joined by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin to discuss his new book 1929, a detailed account of what led to Wall Street’s most devastating crash. They’ll discuss the lessons we should keep from the systemic failure that resulted in the Great Depression and why the knowledge feels as relevant as ever today.
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October 12, 2025 • 27 mins
At this very moment, police departments can gather more data than they have time to actually go through — audio and video from crime scenes, cell phone and search data, vast digital dragnets. This is where artificial intelligence comes in…as well as the civil rights questions.
Guest: Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter for the Washington Post.
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October 11, 2025 • 58 mins
This week: The price of gold has skyrocketed to over $4k an ounce. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck speculate why this might be happening right now – or if there even is a “why”. Then, Intercontinental Exchange has announced an investment of $2 billion in Polymarket, upping the valuation from $1 billion to $8 billion. The hosts discuss what makes prediction markets so big right now and the increasingly murky distinct...
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October 11, 2025 • 56 mins
Troops on America's streets, threats of “plenary powers”, and extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean have prompted members of the military past and present to say that we are in the biggest civil/military crisis since the Civil War. On this week's Amicus, how SCOTUS' immunity decision in Trump v. United States helped deliver us to this scary moment. Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Yale Law School military justice expert Eugene Fidell an...
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October 10, 2025 • 25 mins
Though ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied their Freedom of Information Act requests, these journalists aren’t giving up without a fight—not until they get their hands on a document that outlines how much information Medicaid is sharing with ICE.
Guest: Joseph Cox, cofounder of 404 Media.
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October 9, 2025 • 64 mins
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the extremely consequential new Supreme Court term beginning this week, the facts on the ground and the legal questions at play behind Trump’s escalating deployments of troops to US cities, and the likely legal defeat of state bans on conversion therapy.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the Treasury Department’s unironic pla...
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October 9, 2025 • 26 mins
ICE needs more agents to meet Trump’s promised deportation numbers. But is loosening standards and shortening training time to get more agents on the street a good idea, when ICE’s work is becoming more controversial, confrontational, and dangerous?
Guest: Robert Klemko, Washington Post reporter covering policing and criminal justice reform.
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October 8, 2025 • 30 mins
It’s clear President Trump wants to send troops to Portland, Oregon. But it’s not clear why—especially to people who live there.
Guests:
Isaac Stanley-Becker, staff writer for The Atlantic.
Elizabeth Lopatto, senior reporter at The Verge.
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October 8, 2025 • 45 mins
Kate Lindsay and Candice Lim wade through the negative reactions to Taylor Swift’s album The Life of a Showgirl. From outdated meme references to clunky shots at other female artists, Swift’s album indicates an oddly distant relationship with the internet. However, is she a devious online mastermind or a blundering millennial? Plus, why it’s important that this album’s backlash has gone largely unchallenged by fellow Swifties.
Get...
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