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As sex becomes more online, not only does it become more solitary, but also more surveilled. For instance: Back in December, OpenAI announced that they’d allow adult users to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT. On today’s encore episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by porn historian Noelle Perdue, author of the Porn World newsletter. While advances in AI and sex surveillance are intended to divide us, Noelle is confident that AI’s attempted sex-takeover will fail. 

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay, with help today from Kevin Bendis. 

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WARNING: This episode spoils Toy Story 5.

Right on the heels of two new directors with two fresh new films, comes a five-installment franchise: Toy Story 5. But the consensus is split on this big screen screentime critique.

Guest: Sam Adams, Slate senior writer and editor.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.

Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.

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Thanks for joining us during the holidays. White our team is taking a break, we want to share a series with you that we think you’ll love. It’s called Diving In. 

Getting food delivered should be simple — but somehow it's gotten outrageously expensive. Economist Justin Wolfers breaks down why food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub make it nearly impossible to compare prices, and why that's no accident. 

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This week, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Ruth Marcus discuss this week's momentous Supreme Court rulings. The FTC/Slaughter case overturns nearly a century of precedent protecting independent agencies from presidential power while Cook makes a suspicious exception for the Fed, birthright citizenship prevails on constitutional grounds but the close vote further reveals what's broken at the Court, and the Court rules against transgender people, again, by upholding state bans on trans athletes.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, David, and guest host Ruth Marcus discuss how Trump's rally-turned-fireworks-delay, a militarized downtown, and a rebranded "Freedom 250" have turned DC's festivities into a loyalty test. They ponder whether skipping DC's fireworks means ceding the flag to Trump and if attending old-fashioned local cookouts and parades is the more patriotic move.

In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily Bazelon talks with Senator Chris Murphy about his new book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. Murphy lays out a provocative agenda for Democrats to call Americans to national service, break up corporate power, rebuild local communities, and create a bigger tent that reaches disaffected conservatives hungry for change.

Email your chatters, questions, and comments to [email protected]. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Nina Porzucki

Research by Emily Ditto

You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.

Want more Political Gabfest? 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 Political Gabfest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/gabfestplus to get access wherever you listen.

Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.  

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@SlateGabfest on X / https://twitter.com/SlateGabfest

Slate Political Gabfest on Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/Gabfest/

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Hosted by Kate Helen Downey, CRAMPED is an investigative deep dive, exploring what the research actually says about menstrual pain and reproductive health, and the gap between what science knows and what options are given to patients. New episodes cover everything from pelvic floor PT to period poops, AI diagnoses to the history of women's health care. In this episode, Kate thinks about her own "abysmal menstrual health education" and wonders if it has gotten any better. Are there more resources and support out there for a young cramper? She speaks with Kat Samedova, who recently graduated from Kingston High School and is the former vice president of the Period Power! Club there.

Period pain has been undertreated, understudied, and underfunded for decades. CRAMPED is here to ask why. If you—or your child–have ever been told your excruciating cramps were "normal", this podcast is for you.

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Elizabeth and Zak talk with Ash Brandin, author of Power On, about managing screen time without guilt or panic. They discuss realistic strategies and why screen time doesn’t define parenting quality. Then, a listener’s question about school tech mandates gets some thoughtful answers. 

If you’re not part of the Slate Plus community, we hope you’ll consider joining! Keep reading to learn how.

Join us on Facebook and email us at [email protected] to ask questions, share feedback, and suggest future topics. You can also call our phone line: (646) 357-9318.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an extra weekly grab-bag of content on the Plus Playground, an ad-free experience across the network, and support the work we do here on Care and Feeding. Sign up now at slate.com/careplus — or try it out on Apple Podcasts.

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Well, the movement to change society so it stops heating up the world didn’t take, so now we need to figure out how to change society to deal with a hotter planet. That means new forms of insurance, new models for construction and—yes, looking at you, Europe—more air conditioning.

Guest: Jeff Goodell, contributing writer at Rolling Stone and the author of the book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.

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 Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.

Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.

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It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin talks to artist Atalanta Arden-Miller about what’s happened to one of the oldest artistic traditions in the world—why so many contemporary statues turn out off-center, off-kilter, and off-putting. The answer takes us from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany to North Korea.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Josh Levin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder.

Special thanks to the Works in Progress Podcast, where we first heard Atalanta talk about the dismal state of statuary today.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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A eulogistic weepfest? A “valediction forbidding mourning”? A conscious unthroupling? All of the above?

Believe it or not, the time has come for Steve, Dana, and Julia to convene the Culture Gabfest panel for the very last time. 

Before saying goodbye, they look back at the very first piece of culture they ever gabbed about on their inaugural episode in February 2008: the film Juno. Does the indie darling written by Diablo Cody, directed by Jason Reitman, and starring Elliot Page as a sardonic, pregnant teenager hold up after 18 years? And, what does rewatching it in 2026 reveal about how culture has changed? They discuss.

Next, the panel welcomes on the grand poobah of SFOPs June Thomas to counsel them through the inevitable change in one’s cultural habits that comes after a big life transition. They get into why June stopped watching TV and the truly wild mix of things in her YouTube algorithm.

Finally, we hear from you our dear, dear listeners. Steve, Dana, and Julia respond to some of your many beautiful emails and voice memos.  

In our bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, past Gabfest producers spill the beans on what it was like to make this show over the years.

And, as always, thank you so much for being a listener.

Endorsements

Dana: The forthcoming book about translating ancient texts by beloved past Gabfest guest Emily Wilson, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature.

June: The podcast Drafting the Past hosted by Kate Carpenter about the craft of writing history.

Julia: Manhattan Beach's indie bookstore Pages and On the Calculation of Volume (Book 1) by Solvej Balle (definitely the first 30 pages and maybe the whole five book series).

Steve: In addition to the music of Red Garland, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and the poem “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur, Sparrowbush Bakery, a tiny, rustic bakery in Livingston, New York that is only open Fridays and Saturdays and serves the best bread made from fresh stoneground flour from locally grown grains you’ll ever taste.

Where in the World to Find the Culture Gabfest

Dana: Writing film reviews on Slate.com and kicking around a book idea that is still in the early stages. You can find updates and commentary on Bluesky. 

Steve: In the wind, to the sands... and also working on a new book about, among many other things, the 1980s.

Julia: Editing L.A. Material and soon appearing weekly on L.A. Material's about-to-launch podcast L.A. World. Also, on Twitter/X, Instagram, and Bluesky.

June: At her newsletter Where Are All the Emails?

For the time being, listeners can also still reach the panel by emailing [email protected]. And to keep tabs on the Gabfesters, subscribe to their brand-new newsletter, the Culture Gabletter, to receive occasional updates, endorsements and more. 

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Podcast production by the immensely talented Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by the brilliant Daniel Hirsch.

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On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, creator of The Trend Report, to talk about how so many of our favorite influencers have started to retire. Glitter and Lazers deleted her entire digital footprint, and longtime vlogger Zoella has not posted since January, and parasocial fans are having to reckon with the fact that anyone they love online could just disappear. What do these creators owe their fans, if anything? And how can we prepare for this to keep happening?

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay, with help from Kevin Bendis.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.