The city of Mariupol has been one of the worst sites of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces have held their ground, reports are now saying that Mariupol is likely to fall to Russian forces soon.
A man named Richard Moore in South Carolina is scheduled to become the fourth person executed in the United States this year. Moore was given the option of being killed by the electric chair or by a firing squad, and last Friday he announced that he chose the firing squad.
And in headlines: Protestors gathered to demand the release of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to adopt GOP-drawn legislative maps, and Florida officials said they rejected 54 math textbooks from next year’s school curriculum.
Mark Zuckerberg is best known for creating and leading Facebook, a company that’s made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. With an estimated worth of $80 billion, he poured hundreds of millions of his fortune into the 2020 election.
Here’s the thing: You probably had no idea at the time Zuckerberg was influencing the outcome of the most contentious presidential election in our lifetime. That’s because we didn’t learn the true extent of Zuckerberg’s financial contributions until the voting already took place.
Now, thanks to a new 40-minute documentary film from Citizens United Productions, we know what he did and how to prevent it from happening again.
The Biden Administration recently announced a new policy aimed at cracking down on ghost guns—homemade weapons without serial numbers, making them harder to trace. But with gun violence on the rise, will this particular move make a meaningful difference?
Guest: David Chipman, senior policy advisor at Giffords, a gun violence prevention organization.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Leah, Kate, and Melissa catch up on SCOTUS news (including more shadow docket activity and shady Thomas behavior) [1:04] and preview the cases the Supreme Court will hear in their last sitting of the term [35:54]. The justices will be going out with a bang, hearing cases about veteran benefits, Miranda warnings, immigration, and of course, religious liberty.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
A recent study found that working surge after surge in the pandemic, a majority of American health care workers experienced psychiatric symptoms — including depression and thoughts of suicide. And yet, mental health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee found that very few got help for these symptoms.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Or text the word home to 741741.
It's already pretty hard to tell what's really real when it comes to social media. But Jennifer Egan takes it one step further in her latest novel The Candy House where people can upload their actual memories, and let other people live in theirs. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad talked with NPR's Leila Fadel on Morning Edition about what it means to be "authentic."
Guest host Jane Coaston joins Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan live in Boston! Donald Trump tests his strength in the Republican party by endorsing a slate of extreme primary candidates. The internet cringes as Elon Musk tries to buy Twitter. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu join to discuss the local and national initiatives they're pushing to fight climate change. Then Markey stays for a game that asks the ultimate question.
Brain scanning experiments reveal how psilocybin works to relieve severe depression. Psilocybin is the psychedelic substance in 'magic mushrooms'. The psychoactive chemical is currently in clinical trials in the UK and US as a potential treatment for depression and other mental illnesses. Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London tells Roland about the research
Also in the show, worrying findings about the increase in premature deaths because of air pollution in growing cities in tropical Africa and Asia. An international group of climatologists has found that the tropical storms which struck Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar in early 2022 had been made more intense by human-induced climate change. And astronomer David Jewitt used the Hubble telescope to measure the largest known comet in the solar system - it's huge at about 120 kilometres across.
The team at CrowdScience has spent years answering all sorts of listener questions, which must make them pretty smart, right? IN this week’s episode, that assumption is rigorously tested as Marnie Chesterton and the team pit their wits against a multitude of mind-bending puzzles from an old TV game show - all in the name of answering a question from Antonia in Cyprus.
She wants to know: how do we work out how clever someone is? Is IQ the best measure of cleverness? Why do we put such weight on academic performance? And where does emotional intelligence fit into it all?
In the search for answers, presenter Marnie Chesterton and the team are locked in rooms to battle mental, physical, mystery, and skill-based challenges, all against the clock. Unpicking their efforts in the studio are a global team of cleverness researchers: Dr. Stuart Ritchie from Kings College London, Professor Sophie von Stumm from York University, and Dr. Alex Burgoyne, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.
They are challenged to face the toughest questions in their field: Why do men and women tend to perform differently in these tests? Is our smartness in our genes? And what about the Flynn effect – where IQs appear to have risen, decade after decade, around the world.