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What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Data Centers on the Ballot Nov 14, 2025

Show notes

They don’t cut cleanly along party lines, but data centers, and where they get built, became an election issue in Virginia. With so many more data centers to build, are we looking at a new trend?

Guest: Margaret Barthel, reporter covering northern Virginia for WAMU.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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Political Gabfest - Who Really Won the Shutdown? Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why Democrats caved to end the government shutdown and what comes next, the affordability crisis with guest and editorial director for New York Times Opinion David Leonhardt, and the importance of this week’s spectacle of competing Epstein document drops.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the consequential career and historic legacy of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who announced her retirement from Congress.

In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book, The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements.

Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis

Research by Emily Ditto

You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.

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Slate Money - Money on the Mind: Can You Save for Retirement ... and Save Your Parents? Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

In a new, very special, Death, Sex and Money and Slate Money crossover, Felix Salmon and Anna Sale are once again joined by Felix’s financial advisor Adrianna Adams from Domain Money to talk about…parents. They dig into the emotions of trying to take care of your aging parents while also growing your own wealth, the importance of setting goals, and to do with aging children AND aging parents at the same time, and so much more. Plus! Rent or buy?

Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Video production by Micah Phillips.

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What Next - Wikipedia Enters the Culture Wars Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

Why would Elon Musk attempt to replace Wikipedia—which is already quite futuristic, utopian and accurate—with a faulty, hallucinatory A.I.-powered “Grokipedia”? Well, see, he called it “Wokepedia…”

Guest: Stephen Harrison, writer, tech lawyer, author of “Why Editing Wikipedia Is Becoming More Dangerous” for Slate and The Editors, a novel about Wikipedia.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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What Next - No, Women Didn't Ruin the Workplace Nov 12, 2025

Show notes

It didn’t take long to go from Beyoncé holding for applause in front of the word “FEMINISM” to a headline in the New York Times asking “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” How long is this backlash going to last?

Guest: Danielle Kurtzleben, political correspondent at NPR.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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What Next - How To Lose a Government Shutdown Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

It has been the longest government shutdown on record. Why did the Democrats choose this moment—right after elections proved how unpopular Donald Trump and his policies truly are—to cave in and end it?

Guest: Jamelle Bouie, New York Times opinion columnist.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Slate Money - Money Talks: Beyond The Pink Tax Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

In this Money Talks: Elizabeth Spiers is joined by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, to discuss her book The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid. They discuss Anna’s extensive research into how racism and sexism create real economic barriers in the US, why it’s not just women of color who should be worried about this disturbing trend, and what can actually be done about it.

Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.

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What Next - Is Special Ed Getting Left Behind? Nov 10, 2025

Show notes

Children with disabilities' place in public schools—though legally mandated—has often been tenuous at best. Now the Trump Administration is targeting the department that oversees special ed. What does that mean for kids and their parents?

Guest: Pepper Stetler, author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Why Tesla Is Paying Elon a Trillion Bucks Nov 09, 2025

Show notes

Tesla shareholders just approved a trillion dollar (with a t!) pay package for Elon Musk. Is it enough incentive to keep him around the company and away from verbal spats with government officials? Because the whole Musk empire is still reeling from that dalliance.

Guest: Faiz Siddiqui, tech reporter at The Washington Post and author of Hubris Maximus: the Shattering of Elon Musk.

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Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - When Tariffs Crashed Into SCOTUS Nov 08, 2025

Show notes

The Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have been treating the Trump administration with such extreme deference that we were honestly a little flummoxed listening to this week’s arguments over his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Shockingly, during Wednesday’s arguments in Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, it seemed like the justices were in fact, concerned with presidential overreach. But was this a true bridge-too-far-moment, or were they more concerned about their own pocketbooks? This week, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the arguments with Marc Busch, the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Busch is an expert on international trade policy and law, and signed onto an amicus brief on behalf of trade scholars explaining the history and context of IEEPA.

Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.

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