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 the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/whatnextplus for access wherever you listen.
Episodes
July 18, 2025 • 3 mins
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 a Muslim-American in the post-9/11 era—and raising his own kids now.
Guest: Aymann Ismail, Slate staff writer and author of “Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America.”
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July 18, 2025 • 32 mins
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 Bongino, who stoked interest in the list literally in power, the administration is now saying that no such list exists. For some MAGA fans, this is finally a bridge too far.
Guest: Anna Merlan, senior reporter at Mother Jones.
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July 17, 2025 • 29 mins
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 into his term, their friendship is on the rocks. Are we seeing a temporary spat – or a real policy shift?
Guest: Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia 2012-2014, author of the upcoming book “Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder.”...
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July 16, 2025 • 31 mins
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 men. His lawyer is now reaching out to the United Nations to intervene.
Guest: Jonathan Ryan, San Antonio-based immigration attorney and author of the Firewall Substack.
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July 15, 2025 • 31 mins
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 to start rebuilding.
Guest: Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate senior writer and author of “How Strategist Brain Took Over the Democratic Party”.
Cited in this episode:
The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Daniel Schlozman and Sam Ro...
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July 14, 2025 • 31 mins
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 lifelong appointment to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In any other administration, Bove would be a real outlier. But here? He’s par for a very strange course.
Guest: Jay Willis, editor-in-chief of Balls and Strikes.
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July 13, 2025 • 25 mins
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 building and fly.
Guest: Kashmir Hill, features writer at the New York Times.
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July 11, 2025 • 29 mins
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 health backslide so hard that it undid decades of progress—and is there any hope we can get back on track?
Guest: Dylan Scott, senior health correspondent at Vox.
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July 10, 2025 • 33 mins
In the wake of #MeToo, Hollywood productions began hiring “intimacy coordinators,” people who work to ensure sex scenes are safe and comfortable for performers. How are they working out so far?
Guest: Jennifer Wilson, staff writer at the New Yorker.
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July 9, 2025 • 27 mins
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 contributing to the devastation. But one looming problem is much, much bigger.
Guest: Jeff Goodell, writer covering climate change, author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet and The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of t...
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July 8, 2025 • 26 mins
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 between a law that led to the Civil War and what’s happening today with Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement?
Guest: Jamelle Bouie, columnist at the New York Times
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July 7, 2025 • 30 mins
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 Everglades. Even before Trump touched down in South Florida, branded merchandise was being sold. Soon after he headed back to Washington, the first detainees were brought in.
Guest: Sommer Brugal, Miami reporter for Axios.
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July 6, 2025 • 30 mins
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. But AI-fans don’t need to worry, there’s still plenty of industry support in the bill.
Guest: Will Oremus, technology news analysis writer for the Washington Post.
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July 4, 2025 • 4 mins
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.”
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July 4, 2025 • 30 mins
This episode was originally published on April 27, 2025.
The Trump administration has already begun cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the U.S. National Weather Service. What’s the advantage to understanding the weather less?
Guest: Daniel Swain, weather and climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
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July 3, 2025 • 32 mins
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 Medicaid and SNAP—there’s something in there for almost every member of Congress to hate.
Guest: David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect.
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July 2, 2025 • 33 mins
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 already voted to take back over a billion dollars it had previously agreed to pay. Will the Senate sign off on it next?
Guest: Brian Stelter, chief media analyst at CNN.
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July 1, 2025 • 34 mins
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 believe the court is anything other than another vehicle for delivering the outcomes favorable to Republicans and the conservative project.
Guest: Mark Joseph Stern, Slate senior writer covering courts and the law.
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June 30, 2025 • 33 mins
ICE agents have begun concealing their identities in masks and plainclothes while making arrests. Experts—including a former ICE official—say that endangers those agents, and violates the trust between law enforcement and the citizenry.
Guests:
Philip Bump, columnist for the Washington Post
Scott Shuchart, ICE’s Assistant Director for Regulatory Affairs and Policy Counselor to the Director, 2022–2025.
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June 29, 2025 • 27 mins
Under a normal administration, a merger between two large advertising firms might attract the government’s interest for anti-monopoly reasons. Under this one, the Federal Trade Commission is creating conditions to…ensure that X still gets advertiser dollars?
Guest: Kate Conger, technology reporter for the New York Times.
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