What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the...
Every Friday and Sunday, Slate’s popular daily news podcast What Next brings you TBD, a clear-eyed look into the future. From fake news to fake meat, algorithms to augmented reality, Lizzie O’Leary is your guide to the tech industry and the world it’s creating for us to live in.
76
The Immigration Data Dragnet
25 min
77
The Baby Monitor Trap
How a device designed to give parents some space demands that they pay more attention than ever.
25 min
78
The U.S. vs Meta
The U.S. alleges Meta has a social media monopoly. Meta claims that in 2025, that's simply not true.
20 min
79
TikTok: Somehow Also Affected by the Tariffs
Like everything else, TikTok finds itself subject to changing winds of one President Trump.
18 min
80
Trump Tariffs Hit Mushroom Kingdom
How Nintendo tried to save their console princess.
20 min
81
Why Wall Street Can’t Quit Elon
Your 401k loves him too.
29 min
82
Where DOGE Is Taking Us
What happens when you run the government like how Elon Musk runs a business?
24 min
83
This Is Your Brain On Ketamine
And Silicon Valley's too.
22 min
84
We Made a Memecoin
Because—how hard could it be?
27 min
85
Bezos 2.0
How the Amazon founder went from Trump critic to Trump donor.
25 min
86
Trump's War on Scientific Research
Cutting NIH grants–even temporarily–could have repercussions for years to come.
26 min
87
How Trump Is Trying to Kill Press Freedom
Inside the movement targeting free speech.
26 min
88
Will Tesla Survive Elon Musk?
From “Eco-Friendly” to “Swastiscar”
23 min
89
Zuckerberg and the Post-Factcheck Era
Does Meta know what they’ve done?
26 min
90
From 4Chan to Charlottesville to DOGE
How the far-right internet conquered American politics.
27 min
91
Cracking the Egg Crisis
An eggsplanation.
18 min
92
The DOGE Resistance
Lawsuits, protests and Elon Musk's Achilles Heel
24 min
93
$Trump
Crypto poured money into the campaign, now the first family is cashing in.
21 min
94
Elon's Endgame
He's slashing the federal workforce. He's gutting programs he doesn't like. But at the end of the day, what does he want?
30 min
95
Can You Pay Attention, Please?
Chris Hayes discusses his new book that calls attention “the world’s most endangered resource.”
23 min
96
Is Elon Actually Trying to Buy OpenAI?
Elon Musk's bid to purchase OpenAI is both an attempt to control the future of A.I. and a massive troll.
20 min
97
Why Trump’s Data Purge is a Digital Book Burning
Erasing wokeness, one dataset and line of code at a time.
23 min
98
Bonus: The Discourse | Why is Elon Musk Cheatin...
Not to game shame anyone, but doesn’t he have better things to do?
6 min
99
Is Elon Musk Unstoppable?
Inside the DOGE assault on the federal government.
23 min
100
The DeepSeek Panic
How one app brought the US-China A.I. war out into the open.
22 min