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What Next | Daily News and Analysis


What Next | Daily News and Analysis

TBD | Data Centers on the Ballot

Fri, 14 Nov 2025
They don’t cut cleanly along party lines, but data centers, and where they get built, became an election issue in Virginia. With so many more data centers to build, are we looking at a new trend? 

Guest: Margaret Barthel, reporter covering northern Virginia for WAMU. 

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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Wikipedia Enters the Culture Wars

Thu, 13 Nov 2025
Why would Elon Musk attempt to replace Wikipedia—which is already quite futuristic, utopian and accurate—with a faulty, hallucinatory A.I.-powered “Grokipedia”? Well, see, he called it “Wokepedia…”

Guest: Stephen Harrison, writer, tech lawyer, author of “Why Editing Wikipedia Is Becoming More Dangerous” for Slate and The Editors, a novel about Wikipedia.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across 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.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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No, Women Didn't Ruin the Workplace

Wed, 12 Nov 2025
It didn’t take long to go from Beyoncé holding for applause in front of the word “FEMINISM” to a headline in the New York Times asking “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” How long is this backlash going to last?

Guest:  Danielle Kurtzleben, political correspondent at NPR. 

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across 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.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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How To Lose a Government Shutdown

Tue, 11 Nov 2025
It has been the longest government shutdown on record. Why did the Democrats choose this moment—right after elections proved how unpopular Donald Trump and his policies truly are—to cave in and end it?

Guest: Jamelle Bouie, New York Times opinion columnist.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across 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.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Special Ed Getting Left Behind?

Mon, 10 Nov 2025
Children with disabilities' place in public schools—though legally mandated—has often been tenuous at best. Now the Trump Administration is targeting the department that oversees special ed. What does that mean for kids and their parents?

Guest:  Pepper Stetler, author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across 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.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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