Author: Slate Podcasts

You can’t really blame Donald Trump for thinking he could just handwave away the Epstein Files. But for the first time in what feels like forever, his base, the GOP, and his own desires don’t quite align. 

Guest: Will Sommer, senior reporter at the Bulwark. 

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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Trump can’t seem to decide if the National Guard is needed in American cities to stop violent crime, or to assist ICE deportations, or something else entirely. And the lack of a clear and present crisis is starting to make some Guard members uncomfortable. 

Guest: Kat Lonsdorf, news reporter for National Public Radio.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers.

Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters.

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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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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.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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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. 

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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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.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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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.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

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