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
Why Remote Learning Failed
In March, when schools across the country shut down, few people could have guessed that students wouldn’t return until the fall. Schools weren’t equipped to deploy remote-learning curricula, technolo…
00:22:12 |
Fri 19 Jun 2020
Is This the End of Facial Recognition?
This week, three of the leading developers of facial-recognition technology announced they would stop, or at least pause, selling this technology to police. The decision stems from evidence of racial…
00:22:39 |
Fri 12 Jun 2020
Your Delivery Habit Isn't Helping
In the midst of the pandemic, protests and police lockdowns, restaurants are turning increasingly to delivery apps like DoorDash and Grubhub to stay afloat. But with shady tactics, soaring fees, and …
00:20:22 |
Fri 05 Jun 2020
Trump and Twitter Go to War
On Tuesday, after years of inaction, Twitter fact checked President Trump’s tweets for the first time. Six words were added below the original text, directing readers to outside articles refuting his…
00:20:19 |
Fri 29 May 2020
What Is Elon Musk Thinking?
As the coronavirus shut down manufacturing across California in March and April, Elon Musk only wanted one thing: to start making cars again.
So when local government officials in Alameda County got…
00:19:08 |
Fri 22 May 2020
Decoding the Flood of COVID Data
Every week, it feels like some new piece of coronavirus information dominates the headlines. Mysterious symptoms, changing government directives. This constant trickle of updates can quickly turn int…
00:19:36 |
Fri 15 May 2020
Should You Get an Antibody Test?
Yesterday, New York City announced that it would provide 140,000 free antibody tests to residents who want to know if they have been exposed to the coronavirus. And New York isn’t alone: large-scale …
00:24:01 |
Fri 08 May 2020
How the Crisis Could Embolden Big Tech
This week, the world’s largest tech companies posted their quarterly earnings. And—unlike most other companies in the world—things aren’t looking so bad. With the global economy reeling, and people s…
00:18:35 |
Fri 01 May 2020
Can We Really Make a Safe Vaccine in 18 Months?
There are over 60 vaccines for the coronavirus currently in development. Four of them are already being tested in humans. As researchers move at breakneck speed to find a vaccine, they’re debating br…
00:22:58 |
Fri 24 Apr 2020
Can the U.S. Really Track the Coronavirus?
Before the U.S. can start opening back up, states will need to put systems in place for “contact tracing,” or meticulous tracking of the disease within communities. South Korea’s extensive tracing pr…
00:22:58 |
Fri 17 Apr 2020
The Limits of Coronavirus Predictions
As governments around the world try to predict the toll and duration of the coronavirus, they’re turning increasingly to a handful of forecasting models for answers. But many of the leading models di…
00:18:09 |
Fri 10 Apr 2020
Risking Your Life for $8.71
This week, workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, and Instacart have announced mass strikes across the country. Though demand for these services is high, pay and protection is low.
What exactly do we owe t…
00:18:45 |
Fri 03 Apr 2020
Where Are All the Tests?
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The United States failed to roll out widespread test…
00:24:50 |
Fri 27 Mar 2020
Big Tech Eyes the Pandemic
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Google has spent the last decade trying to find a fo…
00:22:59 |
Fri 20 Mar 2020
What If They Close All the Schools?
Last week, the superintendent of the Northshore school district near Seattle made a difficult decision. With the coronavirus spreading rapidly in the area, she closed all 34 schools in her district a…
00:18:00 |
Fri 13 Mar 2020
Did the Internet Doom a Pregnancy?
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For pregnant women in the U.S., there are plenty of …
00:21:31 |
Fri 06 Mar 2020
Did Money Corrupt an A.I. Utopia?
OpenAI was founded in 2015 with a billion dollars and an idealistic mission: Create artificial intelligence that could address humanity’s biggest problems, and do it out in the open. Then came the mo…
00:19:10 |
Fri 28 Feb 2020
Inside Facebook’s Supreme Court
After years of controversial content moderation decisions, from deepfakes to deplatforming, Facebook is trying something new. In January, the social network announced that its new Oversight Board, wh…
00:22:02 |
Fri 21 Feb 2020
Coronavirus Tests China's Surveillance State
Over the last month, as coronavirus spread across China, Xi Jinping’s vast surveillance and censorship infrastructure went into high gear. But with outrage growing over the death of a beloved doctor,…
00:18:21 |
Fri 14 Feb 2020
Iowa’s App-ocalypse
On Monday, the Iowa caucuses went off the rails. As the hours stretched into days, and still the results remained unclear, a new piece of election technology was identified as a central cause of the …
00:17:33 |
Fri 07 Feb 2020
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