The Trump administration has already begun cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the U.S. National Weather Service. What’s the advantage to understanding the weather less?
Guest: Daniel Swain, weather and climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
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As we approach President Trump’s 100th day in office (this time around) this Wednesday, Dahlia Lithwick checks in with one of the key architects of the litigation strategy that is successfully confounding the administration’s most exorbitant executive overreach. After almost 140 executive orders and scores of associated lawsuits, it’s hard to keep track of the state of play. But Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward is on hand to help us think through the main strands of anti-authoritarian litigation, and to explore how some recent wins in court against Trump 2.0 are upending the administration’s attempt to style itself as an all-powerful unitary authority.
Next, Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins to discuss the Supreme Court's recent actions, including a significant order halting deportations to El Salvador, reflecting a growing judicial resistance to the administration's overreach and a confusing claim that Presidents work for . . . their lawyers?
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One of DOGE’s goals is to get government data out of “silos” and make it more easily shared across departments. But there are good reasons for some data to be kept apart.
Guest: Vittoria Elliot, WIRED reporter covering platforms and power.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell and Patrick Fort.
The Trump administration’s actions on immigration and firing the federal workforce have drawn condemnation from all sorts of unions—from building trades to graduate students. What happens when labor speaks as one?
Guest: Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL–CIO.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther.
Chicken Soup for the Soul was the brainchild of two motivational speakers who preach the New Thought belief system known as the Law of Attraction. For more than 30 years, the self-help series has compiled reader-submitted stories about kindness, courage, and perseverance into easily digestible books aimed at almost every conceivable demographic: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul, and on and on. Since 1993, these books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling non-fiction book series of all time.
But in recent years, the company has become many other things that seem lightyears away from inspirational publishing: a line of packaged foods, a DVD kiosk retailer, and a meme stock. In this episode, with the help of journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis, we tell the story of how this feel-good brand went from comfort food to junk.
This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman and produced by Max. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Rachel Strom.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
Preaching for empathy and compassion, Pope Francis was at times seen as an agent of dramatic change in the Catholic Church. Did he succeed? Is that even an answerable question before the world knows his successor?
Guest: David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther.
Some of the nation’s biggest law firms have found themselves in Trump’s crosshairs and have pledged pro-bono legal service to maintain their security clearances and access to government buildings. Others, however, are trying to fight back.
Guest: Ankush Khardori, attorney and former federal prosecutor in the US Justice Department.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
If setting up a baby monitor in the room with your sleeping kids doesn’t allow you to pop out and enjoy the cruise ship, what are they actually good for?
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Ever since March 15, when three flights carrying hundreds of men who had been afforded zero due process left United States airspace and landed in El Salvador, American democracy has been hurtling toward an internal conflict that the federal judiciary would very much prefer to avoid, but just keeps getting more unavoidable. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Mark Joseph Stern is joined by Leah Litman for the first half of the show. They discuss how, faced with a Trump administration that claims the ability to rewrite the Constitution on the fly, denies the ability to follow court orders, and dangles the possibility of extending its lawlessness to renditioning American citizens to a foreign prison, the federal judiciary this week did what the Supreme Court failed to do last week: explicitly call out the regime’s lawless actions. Aptly, Leah’s new book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, comes out on May 13 and they discuss how the highest court’s enabling of Trump and MAGA more broadly has brought us to the constitutional precipice.
Next: In the six months since the re-election of Donald Trump, abortion and reproductive rights have been squished way below the fold, news-wise, obscured by an ever-mounting pile of terrifying headlines. But outside of the public glare, the legal landscape of reproductive rights has been shifting. Dahlia Lithwick talks to Mary Ziegler about her book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction. Together, they examine how notions of fetal and embryonic personhood are fueling punitive actions against women, physicians, and those who provide or seek healthcare related to reproduction.
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