Stay ConnectedEvery Friday, 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.
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Over the weekend, Russia tested a new weapon—a type of missile that can fly into space and destroy a satellite in orbit.
The test created thousands of pieces of debris, which will hurtle around the Earth’s orbit for years to come. What’s the real risk of the rapid increase in space junk? And is there anything to be done about it?
Guest:
Laura Grego, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT
Host: Seth Stevenson
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A recent poll showed that about a third of parents of younger children would get their kids vaccinated, a third would not, and the final third said they wanted to wait and see how the vaccines worked.
Public health officials are asking: what will it take to convince that third group that now is the time to vaccinate?
Guests:
Julie Hamill
Dr. Aaron Carroll, pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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In schools across the country, tighter digital controls were put in place to keep kids on task during the pandemic. Are they here to stay?
Guests: Priya Anand, reporter at Bloomberg
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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The bots aren’t just buying cool sneakers. They’re buying concert tickets. Tickets to basketball games and Broadway shows. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were buying hand sanitizer and face masks. And later, they were booking vaccine reservation spots.
Why are bots taking over certain markets? And is there anything we can do to slow them down?
Guests:
Derreck Johnson, designer at Slate
Eric Budish, economics professor at the University of Chicago
Host: Seth Stevenson
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Between April and June of this year, Zillow bought nearly 4,000 homes. And they had no intention of holding onto them. The plan was to flip houses, often and at scale, joining the ranks of companies like Opendoor and Offerpad, also known as iBuyers.
So, why did Zillow put their plans on pause last weekend? Can online middlemen really change the way we buy and sell houses?
Guests:
Tony Santos, homeowner
Patrick Clark, reporter at Bloomberg
Host: Henry Grabar
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Over the last month, the domain company Epik and the streaming service Twitch have fallen prey to massive-scale hacks. The hackers revealed not just email addresses, but detailed personal information too. For Twitch, it was the entire source code for their site.
But the attackers aren’t holding this data for ransom. In fact, they don’t seem to want much of anything. What’s motivating this new wave of activist hacks? And who suffers?
Guest: Drew Harwell, tech reporter at the Washington Post
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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The last month has seen a steady drip of leaked documents from inside Facebook, each seemingly more damning than the next. This week, the whistleblower behind the leaks revealed her identity.
What motivates Frances Haugen? And can she do real damage to the social media giant?
Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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Since 2018, internal research teams at Facebook have been studying the effect on Instagram on mental health. Their results couldn’t be more clear: Instagram is causing problems, especially for teen girls.
Why has it taken so long for their research to surface? And what can be done to improve the relationship between kids and the platform?
Guest: Georgia Wells, tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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In the U.S., the PCR test is the gold standard for COVID testing. Common knowledge would have it that the test is more accurate—and therefore more effective at containing the spread of the dease—than the rapid antigen test.
What if that isn’t quite true?
Guest: Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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The final episode of Season 1 features Ted Ross, Chief Information Officer for the City of Los Angeles. His role became more vital than ever during the pandemic, with L.A.’s 4 million residents and 50,000 employees relying on the city’s complex technological operation for support. Ted helped his city navigate the challenge with tech solutions built on principles designed to serve citizens and inspire employees: focus on people, improve lives, and lean into promising innovations.
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