The DOJ releases a new tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files. A new report shows the economy has been growing faster than anticipated. And Californians prep for severe flooding on Christmas.
E18 - Congress required the Department of Justice to release (nearly) everything it had from the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell by December 19th, so of course they pretended to do that on time on Friday afternoon and then waited until everyone was just about to start heading home for the holidays before actually dumping 30,000 pages of anything resembling actual substance into the record on Tuesday morning. We review and discuss new revelations on how much more time Trump spent on Epstein’s plane than we ever knew, the 30-year-old FBI report that could have changed everything, the astonishing correspondence between the prosecution and the Epstein defense team throughout his 2008 plea negotiations, and so much more.
Opinion and Order from Judge Kenneth Marra in Jane Doe cases summarizing DOJ’s failure to advise Epstein survivors of the 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement and plea
Check out the OALinktreefor all the places to go and things to do!
Mary Katharine Ham and special guest-host Kelly Maher discuss the surprising amount of political news being made in the right-of-center coalition during the week of Christmas. It's like a Friday-night news dump for the whole year! We are on Widow Defense and Commendation for Erika Kirk for running AmFest, we get into Ben Shapiro's speech, Tucker Carlson's reaction, Megyn Kelly's anger at Shapiro and behind-the-scenes work for the Erika-Candace summit, and of course, the Candace Owens of it all. Also, the Heritage Foundation continues its come-apart.
It's Christmas Eve. A holiday celebrated by 2.4 billion people around the world, which centers on a 2,000-year-old story about a Jewish man born in Bethlehem who became a rabbi, who the Romans would later execute in Jerusalem.
But what most people don’t know is that the first people who believed in Jesus did not think they were starting a new religion. They were a small group of Jews who thought of themselves as history's last generation, with Jesus as their Messiah.
Of course, as we all know now, they were not history’s last generation. Instead, they became history's first Christians. How did that happen? When did Christ's followers begin to see themselves as distinct and separate from Judaism? Why did some Jews refuse to accept Christ as the Messiah? And how was that refusal, and the anti-Judaism of the early Christians, directly connected to the antisemitism burning across the globe today?
These first few centuries are essential for understanding not just Christianity and Judaism, but the way ideas spread, and why many of the ideas of this period—good ones, and also some very bad ones—still persist in our world today.
The surprising things we learn when we count everyone - a tour of the UK census through time.
We also figure out just how many parking officers there are versus soldiers in the British army.
Who really does all the housework? Plus - 20 years of ‘Freakonomics’ with Stephen Dubner.
And finally - were there really three wise men who visited baby Jesus? And were they kings as the Christmas hymn would lead us to believe?
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lizzy McNeil
Producers: Charlotte McDonald, Nathan Gower and Katie Solleveld
Production Coordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound Mix: Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
On the eve of Netflix shoveling a fourish-hour chunk of Stranger Things onto Christmas Day, we visit the past, present, and future of binge-dropped television shows.
The strategy of releasing an entire season at the same time has been key to taking Netflix from a little startup that used to lend us DVDs in the mail … to a company so big and powerful, it is maybe going to buy Warner Brothers and own Bugs Bunny and Tony Soprano and the Harry Potter movies.
But even Netflix may be flirting with some slightly less binge-y models of content release. Are we entering … the end of the binge drop?
On our latest: what data tells us about binge watching. Was it the greatest business decision, and who does binge watching really benefit?
This episode was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Meg Cramer. It was fact-checked by Dania Suleman and engineered by Maggie Luthar. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
Happy Holidays from The Indicator! For the next week, we're running some of our favorite shows from this year. On today's show, why celebrities are increasingly investing in their own brands.
All this week, What Next and What Next: TBD are re-airing some of our favorite conversations from throughout the year and checking back with the people in those conversations to see how things have – or haven’t – changed. This episode is from August.
From the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate Bridge, and places in between like Yellowstone and the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the National Park Service has been a point of American pride since its inception. And with a small budget and actually generating revenue, even fiscal hawks had no reason to complain.
So why is the Trump administration cutting their budget?
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.
We’re on a mission to get 100 people to join Slate Plus before the new year—and we’re even offering a 50-percent-off deal to folks who join us right now. VisitSlate.com/whatnextplus and use the code WHATNEXT50 to get a year of Slate Plus for $59.
Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.