In a return to a classic party policy goal, Republicans want to add “work requirements” to Medicaid to offset costs in Trump’s “one big beautiful bill.” Work requirements for health insurance have been tried before, on the state level, and the end result is a lot of people—including working people—losing their health insurance.

Guest:  Leo Cuello, research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families and former Health Policy Director of the National Health Law Program.

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

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The intimate and extremely personal experience of bringing a child into this world? There’s an app for that…and forums…and so much advice…that contradicts other advice…and a surprising amount of eugenics.

Guest: Amanda Hess, critic at the New York Times and author of the book “Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age.”

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At his first press conference as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. gave a glimpse of what the department will look like under his leadership: a smaller overall budget, relitigating settled scientific questions.  

Guest: Kiera Butler, senior editor and reporter at Mother Jones and author of Raise: What 4-H Teaches Seven Million Kids and How Its Lessons Could Change Food and Farming Forever.

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

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To fly a plane, pilots must prove to the Federal Aviation Administration that they’re physically and mentally fit. But when it comes to mental health, the rules are complicated and, some say, outdated.

Pilots who need antidepressants are limited to a short list of approved medications and must take a mandatory six-month leave. Even common diagnoses like anxiety or depression can trigger reviews that could ground them.

The F.A.A.’s rules are born out of desire to keep the public safe, but in this episode we talk to pilots, aspiring pilots, and medical aviation professionals about their unintended consequence: incentivizing people to stay quiet about their mental health issues.

Read: Why Airline Pilots Feel Pushed to Hide Their Mental Illness 

Podcast production by Zoe Azulay.

Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles on Slate.com. Sign up today at slate.com/dsmplus.

And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected].

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Ever since March 15, when three flights carrying hundreds of men who had been afforded zero due process left United States airspace and landed in El Salvador, American democracy has been hurtling toward an internal conflict that the federal judiciary would very much prefer to avoid, but just keeps getting more unavoidable. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Mark Joseph Stern is joined by Leah Litman for the first half of the show. They discuss how, faced with a Trump administration that claims the ability to rewrite the Constitution on the fly, denies the ability to follow court orders, and dangles the possibility of extending its lawlessness to renditioning American citizens to a foreign prison, the federal judiciary this week did what the Supreme Court failed to do last week: explicitly call out the regime’s lawless actions. Aptly, Leah’s new book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, comes out on May 13 and they discuss how the highest court’s enabling of Trump and MAGA more broadly has brought us to the constitutional precipice. 

Next: In the six months since the re-election of Donald Trump, abortion and reproductive rights have been squished way below the fold, news-wise, obscured by an ever-mounting pile of terrifying headlines. But outside of the public glare, the legal landscape of reproductive rights has been shifting. Dahlia Lithwick talks to Mary Ziegler about her book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction.   Together, they examine how notions of fetal and embryonic personhood are fueling punitive actions against women, physicians, and those who provide or seek healthcare related to reproduction.

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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In an ongoing opioid epidemic, hospitals drug testing new mothers and their babies has an intuitive logic. But applied unequally, rife with false positives, and prone to disrupting those important early weeks, is it a best practice?

Guest: Shoshana Walter, investigative reporter for The Marshall Project

Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your  other 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 Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.

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At a time when skepticism about conventional medicine has become even more mainstream, we’re revisiting a story about the causes and effects of that mistrust. Archie Matlow’s mother refused to get a surgery that could have saved her life, which led to her and Archie trying to love each other while bitterly at odds.

You can listen to the full audio piece Archie made here, and you can order their memoir, Dead Mom Walking, here.

Also make sure to check out Archie’s New York Times piece, titled Why My Father Called Me Son, Daughter, He, She and It.

Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles on Slate.com. Sign up today at slate.com/dsmplus.

And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected].

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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that will determine whether South Carolina can cut Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.

But with clear legal precedent stating that they can’t, how did this case even end up before the Supreme Court? And, given how far the court has gone to accommodate the MAGA agenda, is the outcome of this case in doubt?

Guest: Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox. 

Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your  other 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 Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.

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Ketamine has gone from a recreational psychedelic to an approved treatment, and it has caught on in Silicon Valley in a big way. Are the long-term effects of using ketamine—recreationally or therapeutically—sufficiently known? Are we witnessing them right now?

Guest: Shayla Love, staff writer for the Atlantic.

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The National Institutes of Health is the primary engine of biomedical research around the world, which makes the Trump administration's dramatic cuts to its grant program both confusing and potentially incredibly harmful.

Guest: Katherine J. Wu, staff writer for the Atlantic.

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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