Author: Slate Podcasts

Are we facing down yet another COVID wave right now? Does it matter?

Guest: Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic

Host: Lizzie O'Leary

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Bill Browder has been sounding the alarm about Vladimir Putin for decades. Formerly one of Russia’s largest foreign investors, Browder has made it his life's work to expose corruption in the country. Unsurprisingly, he’s one of Putin's personal targets. Browder believes that money is what's really driving the war in Ukraine.

Guest: Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. Browder ran the largest foreign investment firm in Russia until 2005, when he was kicked out of the country. His new book is Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath. 

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Pro-immigration advocates had high hopes when the Biden administration came to office that some of the harsher policies imposed by Trump would ease. Instead, immigration policy has been a mess inside the White House. The move to rescind Title 42 – a health policy that the Trump administration used to restrict migration at the U.S.-Mexico border is now further dividing Democrats. 

Guest: Tyler Moran, former deputy assistant to President Biden and senior advisor for migration. Moran co-founded the Immigration Hub and has 20 years of experience developing and implementing immigration policy. 

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Morgan Davis saw his job as an investigator in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services as a calling. As a transgender man, he joined the child welfare agency to be the advocate he never had while growing up. But Davis eventually quit, following Governor Greg Abbott’s order to investigate the families of transgender children. While Abbott’s order is currently paused due to an injunction, many families are still left in limbo due to open cases – and other child welfare workers are handing in their notices.

Guest: Morgan Davis, investigator at the Travis County office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. 

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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. 

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How did Intuit build its TurboTax empire?

Guest: Justin Elliott, reporter for ProPublica

Host: Lizzie O'Leary

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Is Musk's bid to take Twitter private a genuine attempt to mold the social network in his image? Or is he just going to have some fun, make some money, and walk away?

Guest: Felix Salmon, host of Slate Money and chief financial correspondent for Axios

Host: Lizzie O'Leary

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In the French presidential election five years ago, Marine Le Pen lost badly to Emmanuel Macron. Now, Le Pen is back for a rematch—and this time, polls are pretty tight. 

Guest: Henry Grabar, staff writer at Slate. 

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Walt Disney Company are at odds over a controversial Florida law dubbed “don’t say gay,” which would limit instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. While DeSantis is a big supporter of the legislation, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek eventually came out against it, vowing to work to repeal the law and setting up a showdown between the governor and the entertainment giant.

Guest: Mary Ellen Klas, Capitol bureau chief for the Miami Herald in Tallahassee, Florida.

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