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.
1
How Elon Wields Power
You can’t run the country like a company. Musk is learning that the hard way.
30 min
2
Marc Andreessen’s New Deal
How the Silicon Valley kingmaker became a Washington mover and shaker.
22 min
3
Death of the Weather Forecast?
Climate and weather aren’t the same thing, but the Trump administration would have you understand neither one.
23 min
4
The Immigration Data Dragnet
25 min
5
The Baby Monitor Trap
How a device designed to give parents some space demands that they pay more attention than ever.
25 min
6
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
7
TikTok: Somehow Also Affected by the Tariffs
Like everything else, TikTok finds itself subject to changing winds of one President Trump.
18 min
8
Trump Tariffs Hit Mushroom Kingdom
How Nintendo tried to save their console princess.
20 min
9
Why Wall Street Can’t Quit Elon
Your 401k loves him too.
29 min
10
Where DOGE Is Taking Us
What happens when you run the government like how Elon Musk runs a business?
24 min
11
This Is Your Brain On Ketamine
And Silicon Valley's too.
22 min
12
We Made a Memecoin
Because—how hard could it be?
27 min
13
Bezos 2.0
How the Amazon founder went from Trump critic to Trump donor.
25 min
14
Trump's War on Scientific Research
Cutting NIH grants–even temporarily–could have repercussions for years to come.
26 min
15
How Trump Is Trying to Kill Press Freedom
Inside the movement targeting free speech.
26 min
16
Will Tesla Survive Elon Musk?
From “Eco-Friendly” to “Swastiscar”
23 min
17
Zuckerberg and the Post-Factcheck Era
Does Meta know what they’ve done?
26 min
18
From 4Chan to Charlottesville to DOGE
How the far-right internet conquered American politics.
27 min
19
Cracking the Egg Crisis
An eggsplanation.
18 min
20
The DOGE Resistance
Lawsuits, protests and Elon Musk's Achilles Heel
24 min
21
$Trump
Crypto poured money into the campaign, now the first family is cashing in.
21 min
22
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
23
Can You Pay Attention, Please?
Chris Hayes discusses his new book that calls attention “the world’s most endangered resource.”
23 min
24
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
25
Why Trump’s Data Purge is a Digital Book Burning
Erasing wokeness, one dataset and line of code at a time.
23 min