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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This week’s AWS outage illustrates just how fragile and vulnerable our interconnected world really is—and how far we’ve fallen from the vision of a decentralized internet.
Guest: Samanth Subramanian, author of “The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World.”
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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Paying a fraction of a penny per stream and diminishing the value of music were bad enough for Xiu Xiu, but when Spotify owner Daniel Ek announced an investment in a German defense contractor, they decided it was time to take the music back.
Guest: Jamie Stewart, musician in the band Xiu Xiu.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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.
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As Trump throws out journalists and outlets that report anything negative about him, he’s limiting access to a group of right-wing influencers who work to further his agenda.
Guest: Makena Kelly, tech and politics writer for WIRED.
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At this very moment, police departments can gather more data than they have time to actually go through — audio and video from crime scenes, cell phone and search data, vast digital dragnets. This is where artificial intelligence comes in…as well as the civil rights questions.
Guest: Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter for the Washington Post.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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 Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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Though ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied their Freedom of Information Act requests, these journalists aren’t giving up without a fight—not until they get their hands on a document that outlines how much information Medicaid is sharing with ICE.
Guest: Joseph Cox, cofounder of 404 Media.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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How one of the largest video game companies was bought for $55 billion by a group that includes Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner.
Guest: Jason Schreier, Bloomberg reporter
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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 Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.
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TikTok exploded to popularity not by giving users what they asked for—but by figuring out what users really were interested in, and serving that.
What happens to this algorithm if Bytedance cedes control of it to the U.S.?
Guest: Emily Baker White, senior writer at Forbes and the author of Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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.
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When you’re getting out of an Uber, Tesla’s unintuitive door handle can embarrass you. In an emergency, getting out of the car quickly can be the difference between life and death.
Guest: Dana Hull, Bloomberg News reporter covering Tesla and Elon Musk
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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.
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Why would Donald Trump rush to announce that Tylenol is a potential cause of autism, a claim unsupported by the research?
Guest: Dan Diamond, White House reporter for the Washington Post.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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If you’re hunting for a job, the odds are increasingly likely you’ll have an interview with an artificial intelligence “recruiter.” And why not? It’s also increasingly likely you’ll be working with A.I. anyway.
Guest: Danielle Abril, technology-in-the-workplace reporter for the Washington Post.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and 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.
Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.
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