Slate News

The Trump administration wants NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2027. They also want them to do it with their budget slashed, a leadership carousel and competing views that Mars is more important.  Guest: Joel Achenbach, freelance journalist and author of Moondoggle If you want to support more of this reporting, in 2026 and beyond, consider signing up for Slate Plus. You’ll enjoy ad-free listening across the Slate network, early access to tickets for live events, and you’ll never hit the paywall on the site. Visit Slate.com/whatnextplus to sign up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week: 2025 ended on high for the US stock market but no one seems too pleased with its performance. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack the story of the US markets in 2025, why it was outperformed internationally, and the role AI has  played. Then, the hosts discuss how, amid the uncertainty and chaos of Trump’s trade war, Mexico has found a way to come out on top. And finally, 2025 saw a boom for dealmaking with $2.4 trillion in global mergers and acquisitions. Meanwhile, old fashioned conglomerate Berkshire-Hathaway is changing hands with Warren Buffett stepping down at the age of 95. Will the new CEO keep with Buffett’s conservative investment strategy? In the Slate Plus episode: Food52 & Saks Run Out of Cash Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by The Atlantic staff writer and host of the Galaxy Brain podcast, Charlie Warzel. Charlie has been following the demise of Twitter, now called X, since Elon Musk took over in 2022. While many of Musk’s decisions have prompted people to declare the end of the app, the introduction of a new location feature undermines almost all of what was left of its relevance. Can we finally call it? Is this Twitter’s official time of death? This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, and Kate Lindsay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a special new year retrospective, Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick revisits an important episode from early 2025. Back at the beginning of February, Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, pointed to  the speed and viciousness of the very opening legal gambits in Trump 2.0 as evidence that America had already switched over to the fast track for autocracy on January 20th, 2025. An expert in the law of autocracy, Scheppele has seen firsthand what happened to constitutional courts, the media, the academy and the democratic norms that protected them in Russia and Hungary. In this interview, Scheppelle explains how Trump’s executive orders on everything from government funding to transgender people in the military reveal a familiar global playbook that has chillingly familiar endpoints.  Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial intelligence boosters spent the year wedging the tech into our lives – whether we wanted it or not. But one new product brought A.I. from every app and website into the meatspace, forcing you to face it eye-to-eye. Guest: Nitish Pahwa, staff writer at Slate covering business and technology Want more What Next: TBD? 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/tbdplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices