What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

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Every 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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Inside Crypto's House of Cards

10.01.2023

The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried marks the end of an era where crypto rose to dizzying, Super-Bowl-commercial heights. Where does the industry go from here? Guest: Zeke Faux, investigative reporter for Bloomberg and author of Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s ...

What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future episodes:

10.01.2023 Inside Crypto's House of Cards The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried marks the end of an era where crypto rose to dizzying, Super-Bowl-commercial heights. Where does the industry go from here? Guest: Zeke Faux, investigative reporter for Bloomberg and author of Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s ...
09.30.2023 Who Will Pay For A COVID Vaccine? After years of being a rare spot of universal, American-government-funded health care, this fall’s new COVID-19 vaccine is hitting the commercial market for the first time. So far, the rollout has been mired by hiccups and confusion. Guest: Jen Kates, ...
09.29.2023 Is Amazon a Monopoly? Amazon evolved from a place to get cheap used books to the “everything store”—one encompassing warehouses, logistics and shipping. But with the FTC now run by Lina Khan—who wrote the essay ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” while at Yale Law School—a new ...
09.23.2023 What Instacart’s IPO Means for Tech As other tech companies that rode the pandemic to success started sinking, Instacart managed to stay above water—they turned a profit and even made it to an IPO. But a stubbornly static stock price has some asking if Instacart—and the ...
09.22.2023 Did AirBnB Need to Go? The sword of regulation, which has been swinging over New York AirBnBs for over a decade, is falling at last. But will new laws for short-term rentals have the effect housing advocates are hoping for? And after many failed efforts, ...
09.16.2023 Can Politicians Keep Kids Safe Online? The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act has noble-sounding intentions, but has been called one of the most dangerous bills in years by the digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Guest: Richard Blumenthal, senior United States senator from Connecticut. If ...
09.15.2023 Google Makes Its Case A trial a decade in the making has started, as the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google and its unrivaled position as the top search engine begins. Is this the beginning of the government “taking on Big Tech” and ...
09.09.2023 Bad Air, Worse Vibes COVID’s still here but the public’s appetite for masking, social distancing, or remote learning is long gone. One palatable way to stop the spread: improving air circulation indoors. Guest: Apoorva Mandavilli, science and global health reporter for the New York ...
09.08.2023 Tech Disrupts the School Bus When Howard County signed a $27 million contract with the start-up Zum, the company promised to modernize the way schools provide transportation. But when the school year started, that’s not what happened. Guest: Daniel Zawodny, covering transportation for the Baltimore ...
09.03.2023 Social Media’s Pivot from News It wasn’t long ago when social media was a place to go for up-to-the-minute updates in an emergency. But even as internet access is more widespread than ever—and natural disasters more frequent—Twitter and Facebook are less useful than ever. As ...
09.01.2023 Is LinkedIn...Cool Now? As Twitt—sorry, X—continues to go through tumult, an unlikely, long-time player is emerging as the last acceptable place to post. Guest: Sarah Frier, tech editor at Bloomberg Businessweek. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. ...
08.27.2023 The Cost of "Sustainable" Pet Food Most pet food is made from the byproducts of the meat that we, humans, eat. Recently, there’s been a rise in high-end pet food products - including things like lab-grown meat - that are touted as sustainable options for your ...
08.25.2023 TikTok's Shady Deal with the U.S. In the spring, it looked like TikTok was on the verge of being banned in America. Since then, it’s continued operating business as usual. But this week, it was revealed that ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the ...
08.20.2023 Digital Life After Death Sorting through a loved one’s things after they’ve died can be an emotional, difficult chore. But now, added to that, people have to sort through the deceased’s password-protected online presence. Guests: Kate Lindsay, author of the internet culture newsletter Embedded ...
08.18.2023 How Crypto Fails Sex Workers At first, cryptocurrency seemed like the solution to the problems sex workers have had with traditional banks. But as the US moves to regulate the crypto industry, many are finding it hasn’t worked out like they hoped. Guests: Joel Khalili, ...
08.13.2023 Tech's Mask Off Moment When conservative writer Richard Hanania’s old posts, originally published under a pseudonym, came to light, people were shocked at just how racist and reactionary they were. Perhaps less shocking were the tech moguls who were revealed to be supporting him. ...
08.11.2023 Can Smart Guns Save Lives? A “smart gun” is designed to only work in the hands of the gun’s proper owner. With the first smart gun potentially coming to market later this year, can the tech deliver on its promise? Guests: Champe Barton, reporter at ...
08.06.2023 Another Summer of COVID After a quiet spring, COVID is surging back for the fourth consecutive summer. So, is this just life now? Guest: Katherine Wu, staff writer at the Atlantic If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate ...
08.04.2023 Tesla's Big Lie Tesla sold a vision of how electric vehicles would work: just like gas-powered cars, but cleaner, better. But as a scandal about misrepresented battery life and driving range unfolds, and the price of their cars remains high, it increasingly looks ...
07.30.2023 America’s Downtown Ghost Towns It’s 2023 – and less than half of all Americans have returned to the office full time. That means U.S. downtowns from San Francisco to New York are emptier than they’ve been in decades. Offices are actually trending away from ...
07.28.2023 Washington vs. A.I. At a White House summit late last week, some of the biggest names in tech - including Meta, Google and OpenAI - signed “voluntary” commitments to safeguard artificial intelligence. In Congress, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer recently introduced a “legislative framework” ...
07.23.2023 Why Tech Lays Women Off First When the tech industry started rounds of layoffs this year, almost half of the people let go were women—even though they make up a much smaller percentage of the workforce. What does this say about women in tech, and efforts ...
07.21.2023 America’s $5 Trillion Grid Problem To keep places like Phoenix habitable, we need to have air-conditioning. But to have air-conditioning, we need a functional, modern electrical grid. With America’s grid already aging—and more demand coming in the form of electric cars and more A/C for ...
07.16.2023 America’s Killer Car Problem 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 ...
07.14.2023 Will UPS Workers Join "Hot Strike Summer?" Contract negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS broke down last week and now a strike looms. With time running out, can both sides reach a deal? Guest: Noam Scheiber, labor reporter for the New York Times. If you enjoy this ...
07.09.2023 Is Your Son Watching Andrew Tate? Andrew Tate’s gross mix of self-help, toxic masculinity and misogyny captured the minds of young boys on the internet. It also led to indictments in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges. Guest: Lisa Miller, contributing editor at New York ...
07.07.2023 Threads vs. Twitter It seems like with each new Musk innovation, a new Twitter replacement appears in response. But Threads is backed by Meta and available in just a few clicks for an Instagram user. Could it be the one? Guest: Mike Isaac, ...
07.02.2023 Turning Your Face Into Your Ticket Even if you like the convenience of your phone unlocking after it reads your face, there are reasons to be wary of the TSA bringing facial recognition technology to the airport. Guest: Geoffrey Fowler, technology columnist for the Washington Post. ...
06.30.2023 The Never-Ending Cancer Drug Shortage A shortage of basic chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer is jeopardizing the care of hundreds of thousands of patients. The drugs aren’t expensive, or patented—so where are they? Guest: Ed Yong, science journalist at The Atlantic. Host: Lizzie O'Leary If ...
06.25.2023 Can Ozempic Cure Addiction? Semaglutide, better known by its brand name Ozempic, has been making headlines as a weight loss drug – despite only having FDA approval to treat diabetes. Now, some say it doesn’t just quell cravings for food – it helps quiet ...
06.23.2023 The U.S. vs Amazon Prime On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, accusing the online giant of “tricking and trapping people into recurring subscriptions.” The complaint says Amazon “knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime." With murmurs of a larger ...
06.18.2023 The George Soros Succession One son was preparing to take over George Soros’s multi-billion-dollar empire. Then, there was a falling out, and a new heir-apparent was chosen. Who is Alex Soros? And, as he takes over for one of the most influential figures in ...
06.16.2023 Reddit’s Rolling Blackouts Across Reddit, thousands of forums have gone “private” and effectively disappeared. Users are protesting the site’s plan to capitalize on its data, which has been enjoyed for free by people making third-party apps for Reddit, as well as some of ...
06.11.2023 Are You Ready For A.I. Generated Actors? As “deep fakes” have demonstrated, it’s getting easier and easier to swap an actor for a digital likeness—something that contributed to the Screen Actors Guild voting to authorize joining the writers on strike. Guest: Heather Tal Murphy, Slate writer covering ...
06.09.2023 Is Crypto Toast? This week, the SEC sued Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, and Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US. Is it a sign that the glory days of crypto are gone? Guest: Stacy-Marie Ishmael, managing editor for ...
06.04.2023 Tech’s Newest Trillion Dollar Company Until recently, Nvidia was a company known for graphics cards—a brand name among gamers but not necessarily the general public. But as part of the A.I. boom, Nvidia’s stock has skyrocketed, putting the company in Silicon Valley’s trillion-dollar valuation class ...
06.02.2023 When Your Childhood Was Their Content When someone posts a photo of you online without your consent, it should be easy to have it taken down or confront the person who posted it. But what if the poster is your parent, and it’s not just one ...
05.28.2023 The Trouble With TikTok Songs How the music streaming business opened the door to billions of dollars in fraud. Guest: Ashley Carman, Bloomberg News reporter covering the podcasting, music, and audio beat. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate ...
05.26.2023 Tweetering on the Glass Cliff How Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino finds herself on the edge of “the glass cliff”: when a woman is sent in to fix a big mess. Guest: Vittoria Elliot, reporter for Wired, covering platforms and power If you enjoy this ...
05.21.2023 A Tipping Point for Digital Tipping From the coffee shop to the salon to the grocery store, Americans feel like they’re being prompted and prodded for tips more than ever—and they’re starting to resent it. Guest: Kelly Phillips Erb, tax and law reporter for Forbes. If ...
05.19.2023 Why Sports Are All in on Betting Out of the smoky backrooms, Vegas and clandestine dens, and straight to your phone—how did gambling on sports go from forbidden to inescapable seemingly overnight? Guest: John Holden, associate professor at Oklahoma State’s Spears school of business If you enjoy ...
05.14.2023 Space After NASA Space might seem to be heading from the domain of big government programs to a playground for billionaires. But just below the surface, a world of start-ups are getting ready to launch. Guest: Ashlee Vance, business columnist and author of ...
05.12.2023 Who’s Afraid of A.I.? 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 ...
05.07.2023 What's Going on at Meta? Meta’s reached a sort of mid-life crisis. Between the layoffs, the stagnant metaverse and Facebook’s dwindling profile, does Zuckerberg have a plan here? Guests: Naomi Nix, Washington Post reporter If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate ...
05.05.2023 What the Writers' Strike Is Really About When television and screenwriters went on strike in 2007, Netflix had just started offering the option to stream content. This week, the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike to update pay structures for the streaming era—and to get ahead ...
04.30.2023 Is Your Uber Drivers' Pay Rigged? Two gig workers standing side-by-side can be offered the very same job and get offered two different wages. Set by an algorithm and based on calculations that are never explained to the workers themselves, this unequal pay for equal work ...
04.28.2023 Stephen King Is Just as Confused About Blue Checks as You Are Twitter’s “blue check” verification went from something you applied for, to something you could pay for, to something you had to pay for…to something that many celebrities wouldn’t even accept for free. Master of horror Stephen King told us he ...
04.23.2023 "Crap Apps": Why Weather Apps Suck Weather apps can be frustrating. And with how much we rely on them to know if we should wear pants or shorts, they'll still leave you in the rain. But as the climate gets wilder, the questions of how to ...
04.21.2023 Will A.I. Close Off the Internet? Reddit announced it will start charging companies to use its huge, ever-growing trove of text to train A.I. chatbots. It’s another expense for the fledgling tech and another knock against the “open internet” ideals that Reddit once embodied. Guest: Mike ...
04.16.2023 Will Banning Social Media Help Kids? A new law in Utah that goes into effect next year states that anyone under 18 needs parental permission to use social media. Is it a necessary step to protect children from harms associated with social media, or are we ...

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