Episodes
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Between a third and half of American schoolchildren have a form of “mental health monitoring” software on their school devices, which scans for and flags certain keywords.
While intuitively appealing, is it worth the false positives, privacy issues, and compromised trust?
Guest: Ellen Barry, mental health reporter for the New York Times.
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“Fecal microbial transplants” treat someone’s unhealthy gut with poop from someone else’s healthy gut, and proponents of FMT claim it can help treat everything from IBS to autism. But if your doctor isn’t ready to fill you up with someone else’s poop, the internet will happily oblige.
Guest:
Luke Winkie, Slate staff writer who published “The Poop Broker.”
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Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.
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Episodes manquant?
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One influencer working for Amazon sued another influencer who works for Amazon for creating content that looks too similar to theirs. But with how the algorithms work and reward, was this an inevitability? What does this mean for the economics of the influencer position?
Guest: Mia Sato, reporter covering platforms and communities for The Verge.
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Reports of flocks of drones, flying overhead nightly, are coming in from New Jersey down to Maryland. Are they UFOs? Nefarious foreign powers? Something even more pernicious? Something even more banal?
Guest: Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of The Air Current.
Ben Mathis-Lilly, Slate senior writer
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Our lives, and our communication in particular, are increasingly conducted over the internet. This means we are increasingly able to be hacked and monitored, by governments, by the police, and more and more by anyone who can get their hands on the available software.
Guest: Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and producer of the Max documentary “Surveilled.”
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Cheyna Roth, and Ethan Oberman.
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Elon Musk has been down in Florida with Donald Trump, inviting his fellow rich Silicon Valley friends to stop by and weigh in on the next administration. How could policy and personnel be shaped by this input from successful (if totally inexperienced in government) individuals?
Guest: Teddy Schleifer, covering politics for the New York Times.
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.
Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.
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Spotify is shaping listening habits, so much so that musicians are shaping themselves for Spotify. It makes your musical world a little more prescribed, a little smaller.
If it feels like everything’s getting a little stale, how do we get out?
Guest: Tiffany Ng, culture and tech writer.
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From Dr. Oz to RFK Jr. to Donald Trump himself—the incoming administration looks like it will be populated with pitchmen and influencers. Will anyone take steps to divest from their businesses or avoid conflicts of interest—or will everyone just follow Trump’s lead from last time?
Guest: Drew Harwell, tech reporter for the Washington Post.
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Anyone stuck in a knotted snarl of interstate clovers knows that GPS is both important and imperfect. But if GPS fails while you’re bringing a 737 in for a landing it could be catastrophic.
Why is “GPS spoofing” on the rise—and how can airlines protect their flights against being caught up in conflict zones.
Guest: Drew FitzGerald, telecom reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.
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Whatever X is, it ain’t the Twitter so many users fell in love with. Since the election, Bluesky has been on the rise, but it’s still only a fraction of the number of users on Twitter—at its peak or even now—or even fellow upstart Threads.
Is Bluesky set to take over the role Twitter used to play, or is it just one of many networks in a Balkanized social media landscape?
Guest: Will Oremus, a technology writer for the Washington Post
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Last May, a 12-year-old with sickle cell anemia was the first person to receive a new gene therapy to treat the disease. The process is painful, expensive, and still frightening and uncertain, but biomedical researchers are cautiously calling it a “cure.”
Guests:
Gina Kolata, medical reporter for the New York Times
Deb and Keith Cromer, parents to Kendric Cromer, the first person in the world to go through a commercially approved gene therapy for sickle cell anemia.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.
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The Department of Justice has released its recommendations for how Google’s monopoly on web search should be broken up. Top of their wishlist? Spinning off their web browser Chrome.
But with a new administration coming to the White House, will Google have to comply?
Guest: Leah Nylen, antitrust reporter for Bloomberg News
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Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.
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Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter—er, sorry “X”—has been slowly deflating. But given that soon you’ll be getting yelled at by right-wing trolls directly from White House press briefings, and your data is being swept up to train A.I., is there any reason to stay on the site at all anymore?
Guest: Nitish Pahwa, Slate business writer.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Alyssa Jeong Perry.
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Going on Joe Rogan’s podcast didn’t fit into Kamala Harris’s last month of campaigning, which consisted of a careful diet of traditional media and specifically selected appearances. It came up short against Donald Trump’s “get on mic with that guy and his big following” strategy.
Guest: Makena Kelly, senior writer at Wired.
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Many folks were surprised at how soundly Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the election, especially since they thought the polls made it seem like a coin flip. The problem is, that’s not quite what the polls were saying.
Guest: Tatishe M. Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science, Director of UMass Poll
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As Elon Musk channeled his considerable resources towards Donald Trump’s campaign, there was talk about what his role in the new Trump administration would be. If his stint leading Twitter is any indication, the federal government could be in for a bumpy ride.
Guest: Zoë Schiffer, incoming director of business and industry at Wired, author of Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter.
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Voters in swing states are being subjected to constant political messages—on billboards, commercials and, increasingly, via text messages. But are dozens of “make a plan to vote” texts you’re receiving going to make a difference?
Guest: Jacob Neiheisel, political science professor at the University at Buffalo
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Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.
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How did Elon Musk go from a poster to someone pumping millions of dollars towards Donald Trump? And what’s he hoping to get for doing so?
Guest: Max Chafkin, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist.
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He didn’t find his grandfather. But traveling to, photographing, and uploading his grandfather’s memorial stone gave him something else.
Guest: Tony Tran, senior tech editor at Slate and author of the feature “My Weekends with the Dead.”
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This election cycle, TikTok has evolved into a news-and-politics delivery mechanism. Will it make a difference?
Guest: Sapna Maheshwari, reporting on TikTok and other tech for the New York Times.
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Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.
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