Slate Technology

Shortly after take off from Portland, OR, the plug exit on a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet blew out – causing an uncontrolled decompression of the plane. Now, accident investigators are hard at work, trying to determine what happened in what's the latest catastrophe for the respected commercial airplane provider.

Guest: Jon Ostrower, Editor-in-chief of The Air Current

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Candice Lim is joined by Wailin Wong, co-host of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money. They dissect the drama and mayhem surrounding Royal Caribbean’s Ultimate World Cruise — a nine-month trip that TikTokkers on land and sea that we can’t stop talking about. The cruise is scheduled to visit more than 60 countries over 274 nights, but since it left Miami in December, passengers have been uploading room tours, buffet reviews and excursion vlogs daily — if not, hourly — so land-dwellers can keep up with this reality show on water.

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

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What the Cybertruck says about safety, regulation, and the degree to which Tesla is beholden to the whims of Elon Musk. 

Guest: Edward Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

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Candice Lim is joined by culture journalist Cat Sposato to trace the rise of this year’s most promising pop act, Tate McRae. McRae gained national attention as a 12-year-old dancer on So You Think You Can Dance. While pursuing a legitimate dance career, she posted an original song on YouTube that led RCA Records to bet on her as the next big pop star. After two albums, certain people on the internet still accuse McRae of being an industry plant, but her path has been oddly traditional and well-documented online. So was McRae an industry plant or an inevitable star?

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

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If A.I. and chatbots are the next wave of innovation, then the New York Times and other media organizations are determined to get paid this time.  

Guest: Megan Morrone, a tech editor at Axios

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Candice Lim is joined by Slate senior editor Rebecca Onion to talk about their love of romance novels. The romance genre grew rapidly this past year, becoming the fastest-growing category of fiction and generating over $1.4 billion in sales revenue. Partly thanks to Goodreads and BookTok, romance novels are getting into the hands of younger, more outspoken and vocal readers. But recent scandals, including last year’s Hockey BookTok disaster, question the limits of literary thirsting and ask whether we can ever quit romance.

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

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While the What Next: TBD team spends some time with their families during the holidays, we revisit some of 2023’s biggest, strangest, and best stories. Regularly scheduled programming resumes in January.

Artificial intelligence—as it already exists today—is drawing from huge troves of surveillance data and is rife with the biases built into the algorithm, in service of the huge corporations that develop and maintain the systems. The fight for the future doesn’t look like war with Skynet; it’s happening right now on the lines of the Writer’s Guild strike. 

Guests: 

Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NYU

Originally aired May 12th, 2023

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This week, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers chat with Henry Farrell, author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy. Henry explains how American hegemony shifted from guns and tanks to SWIFT codes and internet policies. Can China or Russia beat it at its own game?

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Podcast production by Jared Downing.

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On this episode, The Outward hosts break down the million dollar takeover ad on X for Prager University’s documentary Detrans: The Dangers of Gender Affirming Care. NBC reporter Jo Yurcaba joins Bryan, Christina, and Jules to tackle the misdirections and anti-trans agenda of the documentary and take a look at the transphobic shifts on the social media platform.

Email us at: [email protected]

Podcast production by Palace Shaw.

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While the What Next: TBD team spends some time with their families during the holidays, we revisit some of 2023’s biggest, strangest, and best stories. Regularly scheduled programming resumes in January.

Pedestrian deaths in America have been rising for the last decade, while dropping in Europe and Japan. What makes the U.S. so dangerous for pedestrians?

Guest: Jessie Singer, author of There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster―Who Profits and Who Pays the Price. 

Originally aired July 16th, 2023.

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