Slate Technology

This week, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers come with 0% interest and no fees! They discuss what the proposed merger between Capital One and Discover would mean for the rest of us and why the government probably won’t let it happen. Also: How long will Nvidia’s chip empire last, and why there are suddenly so many car washes everywhere. In the Plus segment: The gang reveals their all-time favorite kitchen gadgets. 

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Podcast production by Jared Downing and Cheyna Roth.

Clips and references in the show:

“‘I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.’: Constructing drunkenness”

1986 Discover ad

“Car Wash” by Rose Royce

Vintage car wash documentary

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Studies have found that, in tiny increments, America’s East Coast is sinking into the ground thanks to climate change. Can a new approach to urban planning mitigate the effect?

Guest: Matt Simon, senior staff writer at Wired.

You can read Matt’s reporting here.

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On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by Nadira Goffe to dive into the firestorm engulfing two recent interviews on Shannon Sharpe’s delightfully dishy podcast Club Shay Shay. Katt Williams and Mo’Nique sat down with Sharpe in separate three-hour-long interviews that have set the internet ablaze. Both of the legendary comedians dished about their long-standing beefs with figures such as Ludacris, Oprah, Tyler Perry, Cedric the Entertainer, Kevin Hart, D.L. Hughley, Tiffany Haddish and (somehow!) more. Accusations of Illuminati memberships fly. Cognac is sipped. And a new gossipmonger is born.

This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim and Rachelle Hampton.

ICYMI is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Shotspotter lost a huge contract and some face when Chicago opted out of its partnership with the gunfire-identification tech company. 

Why can’t new policing tech seem to break the old patterns and problems?

Guest: Jim Daley, investigations editor at South Side Weekly

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Apple Vision Pro goggles might be a crime against fashion but with the amount of data they can collect—both on the world around the user and on the users themselves—they have the potential to invade privacy right down to where you’re looking and for how long. 

Guest: Geoffrey Fowler, Washington Post tech columnist

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Check out Compiler here.

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Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim catch up on the latest stories churning the Taylor Swift media machine, from her lawyers sending a cease and desist letter to a college student, to her possibly leading a groundbreaking case against AI deepfakes. Then, they break down the backlash surrounding Emily Mariko, who was criticized by her followers for selling out — and shelling out — a tote bag.

This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim and Rachelle Hampton.

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The promise of artificial intelligence in medicine is that it can reduce the influence of human error and bias in health care. But there’s growing concern that A.I. in medicine –as in other fields– can reflect the biases and lack of diversity among its creators. And that can have life threatening consequences for African American patients. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson is joined by Margo Snipe, a health reporter for CapitalB News. They discuss how A.I. can sometimes fuel medical racism, and reasons to hope that it can change.

Guest: Margo Snipe, health journalist for CapitalB News

Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola

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The war in Ukraine reordered the priorities of the country’s growing tech sector, and has become a place for foreign companies to test out new tools with less regulation or scrutiny.

Guests: Vera Bergengruen, senior correspondent at Time

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The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture. In today’s episode, Kyle’s going to walk us through the recent history of the cafe, to help us see how digital behavior is altering a physical space hundreds of years older than the internet itself, and how those changes are happening everywhere—it’s just easier to see them when they’re spelled out in latte art.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Ben Frisch and Patrick Fort. 

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Candice Lim is joined by dating culture researcher Lakshmi Rengarajan and culture writer Kate Lindsay to discuss the past, present and future of dating apps. Online dating has been around since the days of dial-up. But apps like Tinder disrupted the market and changed the way we’ve dated for the past decade. Recently, there’s been several trends emerging, from Gen-Z abandoning the apps to baby boomers finding love later in life. So are we witnessing the death of dating apps or have they integrated themselves so deeply into our lives that we can’t live without them?

This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim and Rachelle Hampton.

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