Shows / What Next | Daily News and Analysis
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
The problem with the news right now? It’s everywhere. And each day, it can feel like we’re all just mindlessly scrolling. It’s why we created What Next. This short daily show is here to help you make sense of things. When the news feels overwhelming, we’re here to help you answer: What next? Look for new episodes every weekday morning. Get more of What Next with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of What Next and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from…
Episodes
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisBonus: A Muslim, a Dad, an American
In this political moment where hostility towards immigrants and outsiders is openly espoused, one of our own colleagues has released a book about growing up as…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisHow The Epstein Files Blew Up MAGAworld
The MAGA world has been waiting for Jeffrey Epstein’s client list to be released since the first Trump administration. But with those like Kash Patel and Dan…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCan Trump Bully Russia?
For years, Donald Trump was often the only Western leader with anything nice to say about Vladimir Putin.But with Russia and Ukraine still fighting six months…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisDeported—To a Country You've Never Been To
His client, Nyo Myint, is a refugee from Myanmar who was deported by the Trump administration—first to Djibouti, then to South Sudan—along with seven other…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisBehind the Democrats’ Losing Strategy
Why the Democrats’ electoral strategy of “hire consultants to tell you which positions poll well enough to take” has run its course—and where they should look…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWho Is Trump Promoting For Life?
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to vote on Emil Bove, who has been promoted from Trump’s personal lawyer to his current nominee for a…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWhen A.I. is Sycophantic
He started using ChatGPT to help with spreadsheets. But their relationship took a turn, and before long it was telling him he could leap off a 19-story…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisHot Measles Summer
It’s a record-breaking year for America: we’ve now had the most reported cases of measles since the disease was declared “eradicated” in 2000. How did public…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisStage Managing Sex in Hollywood
In the wake of #MeToo, Hollywood productions began hiring “intimacy coordinators,” people who work to ensure sex scenes are safe and comfortable for…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWas the Flash Flooding in Texas Preventable?
After one of the deadliest floods in American history in central Texas, people are looking at cuts to the National Weather Service and FEMA’s absence…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisIs Trump Running the Fugitive Slave Act Playbook?
A federal force—often defying local governance—coming to take people away without due process has happened before. What lessons can be drawn from parallels…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Spectacle of “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Point
Built in just eight days, Donald Trump and Kristi Noem toured “Alligator Alcatraz,” a migrant detention facility built on a disused airstrip in the Florida…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisHow A.I. Lost (and Won) the Big Beautiful Debate
As the One Big Beautiful Bill bounced around Congress, one provision—the 10-year moratorium on states making laws to regulate artificial intelligence—fell out…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisBonus: When the Internet Stopped Being Fun
Is anyone having fun on the internet anymore? Let’s all go touch grass. Guest: Scaachi Koul, Slate senior writer and author of “It’s Time to Log Off.” This…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisRerun: Death of the Weather Forecast?
This episode was originally published on April 27, 2025. The Trump administration has already begun cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisOne Big Deeply Unpopular Bill
Trump wants his “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by July 4. But the bill is so large and expensive—with deep tax cuts only partially offset by huge cuts to…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisIs This the End of NPR and PBS?
The Trump administration’s plans to strip funding from PBS and NPR is the latest in a long line of Republican fights against public broadcasting. The House has…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWe Need to Talk About the Supreme Court
Last week’s big Supreme Court decisions walked back rights for individuals and the powers of the lower courts—and in aggregate made it ever more difficult to…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWhy Is ICE Masked Up?
ICE agents have begun concealing their identities in masks and plainclothes while making arrests. Experts—including a former ICE official—say that endangers…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe FTC’s Merger Shakedown
Under a normal administration, a merger between two large advertising firms might attract the government’s interest for anti-monopoly reasons. Under this one…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Other Iran-Israel War
In addition to the three-dimensional war of bombs and missiles, Iran and Israel—and the US—are squaring off in a cyber battle. With everything from water…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisZohran Mamdani’s Former Boss Weighs In
How Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani upset the better-connected, better-funded, better-known candidate in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary—and how he…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisEven This Senator Had No Warning About Iran
When news broke that the United States had bombed Iran, members of Congress—the only people who can authorize war according to the Constitution—found out at…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Lawsuit Scaring Protesters
A jury recently found Greenpeace liable for more than $660 million in damages to the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline for its role in the Standing…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisTrump Bombed Iran. Are We at War?
The Trump administration bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. While the Pentagon says these facilities are severely damaged, a diplomatic end to the conflict…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisAirlines Are Selling Your Data to the Government
ARC, the data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, has been selling domestic flight data in the US to Customs and Border Protection. But in the…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisBonus: The All New Electric … Hummer?
Listen to What Next via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Stitcher, Overcast, Google Play, or iHeart. America’s most machismo and gas-guzzling car, the Hummer…
- What Next | Daily News and Analysis
We Deport. You Laugh?
The Trump administration's anti-immigration campaign has become defined by distasteful memes that gleefully portray the mass deportations being carried out…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisMighty Real Edition
As What Next celebrates Juneteenth, please enjoy this episode from our colleagues at Hit Parade. What Next will be back in your feed on Monday. Little…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisKristi Noem Understands the Assignment
As the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem has made herself the official face of the Trump administration’s military crackdowns on…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe War Netanyahu Always Wanted
On Friday, Israel launched massive strikes in Iran, targeting nuclear sites and killing top military leaders in the largest single-day attack on the country…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisVaccine Skeptics Just Scored a Big Win
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing members of serving industry…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisSummer Travel Tips To Not Get Detained
A guide to keeping your phone, and your digital life, safe when you’re crossing the border. Guest: Lily Hay Newman, senior writer for WIRED covering…
- What Next | Daily News and Analysis
New DOGE, New Tricks
Elon Musk has ridden off into the sunset acrimoniously (maybe), but the Department of Government Efficiency is just getting started. Will DOGE continue wildly…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisTrump’s Brittle Authoritarianism
Donald Trump is sending the troops to California, while also getting ready for a big birthday parade—for himself and the US Army—in DC. Does grasping for…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWill Israel Starve Gaza Into Submission?
In Gaza, two million people are at risk of starvation, as Israeli-controlled aid has been repeatedly interrupted and marked by violence towards aid workers and…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCorporate America Retreats From Pride
After years of bigger floats and bigger rainbow-ified logos, corporate sponsorship for Pride Month celebrations is dropping off this year. But, given that…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisTrump Sends in the Troops
When immigration raids began in the Los Angeles area last weekend, so did spontaneous protests. On Sunday, Trump federalized 2,000 California national…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Future of the Internet Hinges on Gail Slater
Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater inherited the government’s antitrust case against Google and is eager to follow it through—but likely not for the same…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisMain Character: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Sean Diddy Combs’s trial in New York started about a month ago and was expected to take about two months, so here at the halfway mark, we check in with a Slate…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisIs Palantir Building a Data Big Brother?
One of the goals of DOGE was to get rid of the “silos” that keep government agencies from sharing freely amongst themselves efficiently and instead organize…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisShe Was Tortured. America Shut Her Out.
Since January, the Trump administration has suspended the right to claim asylum at the southern border. One narrower form of protection—for those who had been…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCan Zionism Survive This War?
After 20 months of war, with violence erupting far from the Middle East, where is the future of Zionism headed? Guest: Isaac Saul, Tangle executive editor and…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisGeorge Floyd Square, Five Years Later
Five years after George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests, the legacy of that movement is still being written in Minneapolis and America writ…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCan the U.S. Learn from the U.K.'s Post-Brexit Mess?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: voter discontentment at the two major parties is creating an opening for a far-right populist with an…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisSo Long, Elon
His time in Washington was brief, but we’ll be picking up the pieces for a long time. What Elon’s exit signals for the future of DOGE, and Musk’s political…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Drone Wars
The war between Ukraine and Russia is being fought increasingly via drone —and NATO and US military leadership is training troops for future conflicts that…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisLegally Dead—And Pregnant
Adriana Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she was declared brain dead in February—far enough along that her fetus showed cardiac activity. The hospital then…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisDoes Gavin Newsom Have It All Figured Out?
Everyone assumes the reason Gavin Newsom has had right-wingers like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast is to burnish his credentials for an imminent…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisWhat Would You Pay to Stay Alive?
A Revlimid pill costs about 25 cents to make, and about a thousand dollars to buy—but it’s keeping him alive, so what choice does he have? Guest: David…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisThe Glaring Problem with Headlights
As What Next celebrates Memorial Day, please enjoy this episode from our colleagues at Decoder Ring. What Next will be back in your feed tomorrow. Something…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCrypto's Big Win
The crypto industry poured tons of money into the last election cycle. Is the GENIUS Act, which has bipartisan support, their big payoff? Guest: Hilary Allen…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisBonus: Main Character: The One Big Beautiful Bill
Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” cleared the House this week and heads off to the Senate where…actually let’s bring in an expert to explain what happens next…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisInside OpenAI's Empire
OpenAI started as a non-profit dedicated to building safe A.I. Now, they’re obsessed with building artificial general intelligence by any means necessary -…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisCan A “Morality Coalition” Succeed Against Trump?
Rev. Dr. Barber II is objecting to Republicans’ budget bill on the grounds of morality as much as politics—which is why he’s been praying, protesting, and…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisIf Trump Guts FEMA, Are Tornado Victims On Their Own?
One of the more surprising targets of Project 2025—and now, therefore, the Trump administration—is FEMA. How will proposed changes affect what FEMA can do, as…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisHere’s How the GOP Cuts Medicaid
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…
What Next | Daily News and AnalysisIs Immigration Still Trump’s Strongest Issue?
As Donald Trump strives to deliver on his harsh immigration enforcement campaign promises, the president’s approval rating on the issue has dropped. But very…
- What Next | Daily News and Analysis
TBD | You’ve Been Deepfaked
What do you do when your likeness has been turned into A.I.-generated pornography?—it’s a problem people are already facing. But legislation moving through…
- What Next | Daily News and Analysis
You’ve Been Deepfaked
What do you do when your likeness has been turned into A.I.-generated pornography?—it’s a problem people are already facing. But legislation moving through…