What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future
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.
- Update frequency
- every 3 days
- Average duration
- 28 minutes
- Episodes
- 601
- Years Active
- 2017 - 2025
End of an Electric Avenue
An Inflation Reduction Act subsidy for electric vehicles is being shut down by the Trump administration at the end of September, and automakers are preparing for sales of EVs to slow. Can this nascen…
00:20:01 |
Sun 07 Sep 2025
Is the A.I. Bubble Bursting?
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 nevertheless become a pillar of the U.S. ec…
00:35:05 |
Fri 05 Sep 2025
A24 Meets A.I.
A24 rose from “small budget indie movie studio” to “one of the most respected brands in cinema” on a reputation for treating filmmakers like auteurs. But as the studio is growing and exploring how to…
00:26:23 |
Sun 31 Aug 2025
The Great Celebrity Spotify Playlist Hack
The playlists of dozens of high-level government officials and tech executives were suddenly broadcast to the world on a website called “the Panama Playlists.” But the information wasn’t taken by sop…
00:27:15 |
Fri 29 Aug 2025
Trump Vs. Cancer Research
President Trump has proposed cutting $2.5 billion from the National Cancer Institute, which in addition to cuts to the National Institutes of Health and research universities almost makes you wonder:…
00:30:18 |
Sun 24 Aug 2025
The CDC Under Fire
Two weeks ago, a gunman fired over 500 bullets at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building in Atlanta. Between the anti-public health rhetoric coming from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the …
00:24:36 |
Fri 22 Aug 2025
Down the Text-Scam Rabbit Hole
The scam du jour arrives via a text message, offering you a job. What happens when you accept?
Guest: Alex Sammon, Slate features writer.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to acce…
00:33:19 |
Sun 17 Aug 2025
Trump Dips into NVIDIA’s Chips
Jensen Huang, cofounder of NVIDIA, finds himself president of a $4 trillion company, at the forefront of A.I. technology, and, consequently, something of an international diplomat, as he charms Presi…
00:26:45 |
Fri 15 Aug 2025
Here Comes the A.I. Music Slop
It’s hard to make money in the music industry. But if you could flood every streamer with hundreds of “original” songs without having to, you know, write or produce it yourself, there’s money there—a…
00:30:29 |
Sun 10 Aug 2025
What Happened After Meta Fired Its Fact-Checkers
In January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was moving from employing professional fact-checkers to letting its users fact-check each other. If you’ve heard that it’s going perfectly, then you, t…
00:28:57 |
Fri 08 Aug 2025
The A.I. Data Center Push That Wasn't
OpenAI’s Sam Altman, flanked by President Trump and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, announced a hugely ambitious investment in data centers across America to support all the artificial intelligence we’re g…
00:27:51 |
Sun 03 Aug 2025
The Death of an Online Whisper Network
A shadow app for the dating world had its data hacked and exposed, and it laid bare the perils of creating safe spaces for women online — and of relying on tech companies.
Guest: Kate Lindsay, hos…
00:28:54 |
Fri 01 Aug 2025
Dupes!
There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, skin care, even Greek Islands—and delivering you a cheaper knock-off to buy.
Guest: Mia Sato, reporter for The Verge…
00:33:24 |
Sun 27 Jul 2025
A Colbert Report
Was the Late Show too unprofitable, or too political?
Guest: Eric Deggans, NPR TV critic and media analyst, Knight Chair, Journalism and Media Ethics, Washington & Lee University.
Want more What Ne…
00:25:12 |
Fri 25 Jul 2025
When Bots Go Nazi
It’s kind of strange that Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot, went full Nazi a few weeks ago, and is just…still out there. But, then again, how are you supposed to hold an LLM accountable?
Guest: Drew Harwel…
00:28:52 |
Sun 20 Jul 2025
How The Epstein Files Blew Up MAGAworld
The MAGA world has been waiting for Jeffrey Epstein’s client list to be released since the first Trump administration. But with those like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who stoked interest in the list …
00:29:18 |
Fri 18 Jul 2025
When A.I. is Sycophantic
He started using ChatGPT to help with spreadsheets. But their relationship took a turn, and before long it was telling him he could leap off a 19-story building and fly.
Guest: Kashmir Hill, featu…
00:22:30 |
Sun 13 Jul 2025
Hot Measles Summer
It’s a record-breaking year for America: we’ve now had the most reported cases of measles since the disease was declared “eradicated” in 2000.
How did public health backslide so hard that it undid …
00:26:30 |
Fri 11 Jul 2025
How A.I. Lost (and Won) the Big Beautiful Debate
As the One Big Beautiful Bill bounced around Congress, one provision—the 10-year moratorium on states making laws to regulate artificial intelligence—fell out. But AI-fans don’t need to worry, there’…
00:27:55 |
Sun 06 Jul 2025
Rerun: Death of the Weather Forecast?
This episode was originally published on April 27, 2025.
The Trump administration has already begun cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the U.S. National Wea…
00:27:24 |
Fri 04 Jul 2025
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