What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

Can Patreon Build a Better Internet?

22 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The promise of an “internet for niche communities” and “the empowered independent creator” has been taking a beating as the web has become les...

TBD Tries…Roblox

17 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Under fire for what critics say is inadequate protection of its young user base, Roblox nevertheless remains incredibly popular. Are the company’s n...

Trump Visits the First World

15 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Between artificial intelligence, the Iran War, and the future of Taiwan, there’s a lot for the United States and China to hash out—not least of wh...

Does Anyone Like A.I.?

10 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone would probably hate A.I. less if we could just see some upside to it. But despite all the investment—into the companies, into infrastructur...

Buy Your Flights Now

08 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The not-always-beloved-but-indisputably-useful Spirit Airlines has given up the ghost. What does this mean for the airline industry and your summer tr...

Big Tech’s Climate Fight…on Pause?

03 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2020s, Microsoft committed to buying 75 million tons of carbon removal—somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the entire carbon removal...

Musk v. Altman

01 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This week marks the beginning of the jury trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. There are massive implications for the A.I. industry here, but at th...

How Mark Zuckerberg Finds Your Perfect Pair of Shoes

26 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The era of ads following you around the internet via cookies might be coming to an end. What’s replacing it?Guest: Sara Fisher, Axios' media corresp...

MAGA's A.I. Schism

24 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Is artificial intelligence a blessing to all humanity, or a demon sent to lead us astray from God’s path? MAGA is choosing between two extremes.Gues...

Iran's Memes Are Winning

19 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This very online administration (derogatory) is facing push back from Iran in their own home territory: the world of insipid memes, A.I. videos, and o...

Everyone Is Lying to You For Money

17 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the depths of the pandemic, what was an actor to do? Ben McKenzie started looking into cryptocurrency—and his research yielded both a book a...

Who is Sam Altman Anyway?

12 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

If you had as much trouble getting along with other humans as Sam Altman does, you too might be eager to issue in the artificial intelligence revoluti...

Why OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

10 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

As OpenAI prepares for its IPO, the company decided to…pay millions of dollars for a tech talk show? Is this just what rich tech guys like Sam Altma...

TBD Tries... Vibe Coding

05 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of artificial intelligence’s most hyped “abilities” is how it writes computer code. So much so that seemingly anyone can do it. So we figure...

Why Everyone Is Freaking Out About Private Credit

03 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, private credit or “shadow banking” grew as an alternative to the regulations and shared risk that instit...

How to Rein in ICE and A.I.

29 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence is working its way into every aspect of our lives, including law and immigration enforcement, and the industry is spending mil...

Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment

27 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What YouTube and Meta’s loss in the “social media addiction trial” could mean for your feed.Guest: Ryan Mac, business and technology reporter fo...

War Dot Com

22 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp views working with Western militaries not just as a business opportunity, but as a higher calling.Guest: Jaco...

Hank Green Still Believes

20 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Hank Green recently pulled a “reverse OpenAI” - he took his education platform Complexly and made it a nonprofit. In a world where outrage, A.I. s...

Why He Sued Roblox

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A half dozen state attorneys general have sued the online gaming platform Roblox after multiple investigations found child predators on the site and m...

Are We Ready for A.I. Warfare?

13 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Drone warfare has evolved immensely since Ukraine. The use of artificial intelligence in combat has evolved just since Venezuela. Guest: Steven F...

Why Hollywood Is Afraid of the Paramount-WBD Deal

08 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How does Paramount, an old-guard studio and media institution, buying Warner Bros., another of the same, change the landscape in Hollywood, on cable, ...

War in Iran, Shockwaves in Markets

06 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When you’re sending troops to war, it seems like there are more important things to consider than how it will impact the stock market. However, it d...

TBD Tries… Wearables

01 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How much would it change your life and approach to health if you had instant access to your quantified biometrics? RFK Jr. and the Department of Healt...

Anthropic vs. the Pentagon

27 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Pentagon wants Anthropic to hand over its A.I. with no strings attached. Anthropic doesn’t want its products used to surveil Americans or create...

The Future of Retail is A.I.

22 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

You might not think you need artificial intelligence added to your shopping experience. Store employees might not see the point either. So why is it t...

The A.I. Disruption Is Here

20 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Tech companies proudly touting that the imminent artificial intelligence revolution are pushing the stock market to ever higher heights, even as worke...

The Senator Going After Data Centers

13 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Data centers are a hot issue - tech companies say they need them, but communities don’t want to be anywhere near them. Senator Van Hollen stops by t...

Markiplier Goes to Hollywood

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Markiplier has been entertaining millions of fans on YouTube for over a decade. But his new movie Iron Lung - which he self-financed, directed, wrote ...

Escape from a Scam Compound

08 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Scamming attempts might seem to just come out of nowhere to suddenly appear in your WhatsApp, but a special economic zone in Laos has emerged as a hot...

Elon 3.0

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

He’s discontinuing Tesla’s signature models, taking SpaceX public, and putting more chips on A.I. and robotics. As Elon Musk prepares for his next...

Why Dictators Take Out the Internet

01 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Iranian government cut off nearly all internet access on January 8 as part of a crackdown on protestors, an example of why authoritarians attempt ...

Can Cell Phones Stop ICE?

30 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the immediate aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, federal authorities presented very different accounts of what h...

David Ellison, Eldest Boy

25 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Having already taken over Paramount, David Ellison was vying to add Warner Bros. Discovery to his portfolio. Are his dad’s politics behind his drive...

The Right’s Minneapolis Outrage Machine

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The administration’s justification for their actions in Minneapolis owe a lot to the right-wing influencers—and they seem happy to keep this vicio...

ChatGPT, MD

18 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Doctors are already using artificial intelligence to take notes while with patients—but are large language models ready to consult? Guest: Brit...

How and Why to Vaccinate Now

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Where do you turn for vaccination advice for your kids—or yourself—when the government’s own recommendations can’t be trusted anymore?Guest: D...

How Grok Filled X With Deepfake Porn

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

To kick off the new year, users on X have been asking Grok to nudify people - and kids - at an astonishing rate. And X leadership is egging them on.&n...

Betting on Venezuela

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

While the U.S. was busy capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, someone online was  busy placing bets on prediction markets on the ouster. And...

Are We Over the Moon?

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration wants NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2027. They also want them to do it with their budget slashed, a leadership carou...

2025: Dystopian Tech of the Year

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence boosters spent the year wedging the tech into our lives – whether we wanted it or not. But one new product brought A.I. from...

2025: The Meme of the Year

28 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With so much online content, it can be hard for a meme to stay in the collective consciousness for more than a few days. But one meme this year manage...

Is the A.I. Bubble Bursting? | 2025 in Review

26 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 peopl...

We Made a Memecoin | 2025 in Review

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 peopl...

Data Center Space Race

19 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While the A.I. boom has created a data center boom, rich guys are turning their computing dreams to the skies. With its impending IPO, SpaceX stands t...

Whole Shopping List

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Whole Foods based its brand on a certain standard of quality—but there are some things that shoppers nevertheless want. Amazon believes it has found...

Ready for Chatbot Canvassers?

12 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The good news is voters are more persuaded by factual claims than emotional appeals or appeals to fear. But the bad news is that A.I. chatbots, trying...

ChatGOP?

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump—or at least the tech guys who have his ear—is ready to clear the regulatory runway for A.I. but other Republicans aren’t too sure. ...

The AI & Crypto Czar’s Conflicts

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A tech mogul who made bank from Paypal with his Stanford buddies and has endeared himself to right-wing politicians and enriched himself the same way?...

If You Give A.I. a Nuke

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the U.S. upgrades and updates its defense and military systems, the question isn’t whether A.I. will be integrated, but where, how much, and how ...

Rebroadcast: Dupes!

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Note: This episode was originally published on July 27, 2025.  There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, ...

The Surveillance Interstate

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tracking a license plate across the country has never been easier, which is good news if your car has been stolen, but in an era of ICE and Border Pat...

Crypto Keeps Criming

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump promised to stop the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry. He did call off the SEC investigations that began under Biden, and pardon...

How Meta Profits Off Fraud

16 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Data Centers on the Ballot

14 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 c...

Why Tesla Is Paying Elon a Trillion Bucks

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tesla shareholders just approved a trillion dollar (with a t!) pay package for Elon Musk. Is it enough incentive to keep him around the company and aw...

The Nick Fuentes Problem

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Fuentes—an openly antisemitic, openly racist, openly sexist type who once was persona non grata in all but the unseemliest of online spaces—s...

Why Trump Keeps Pardoning Crypto Criminals

02 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance who had been convicted for violating anti-money laundering laws, after months of Zh...

Inside the Goonerverse

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One legacy of the internet is the millions of subcultures that it helps flourish. Another is pornography—and lots of it. At a “gooner meet-up,” ...

Did The Trump Administration Censor Speech?

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For years, conservatives claimed that the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor conservative speech with no solid evidence.  ...

The AWS Outage is Only the Beginning

24 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s AWS outage illustrates just how fragile and vulnerable our interconnected world really is—and how far we’ve fallen from the vision o...

Why Bands Are Leaving Spotify

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Paying a fraction of a penny per stream and diminishing the value of music were bad enough for Xiu Xiu, but when Spotify owner Daniel Ek announced an ...

Inside the MAGA Content Mill

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Trump throws out journalists and outlets that report anything negative about him, he’s limiting access to a group of right-wing influencers who w...

A.I. for Cops

12 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At this very moment, police departments can gather more data than they have time to actually go through — audio and video from crime scenes, cell ph...

The People Suing ICE

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied their Freedom of Information Act requests, ...

Saudi Arabia Gets into EA’s Games

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How one of the largest video game companies was bought for $55 billion by a group that includes Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushn...

Who Owns TikTok Now?

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

TikTok exploded to popularity not by giving users what they asked for—but by figuring out what users really were interested in, and serving that.  ...

Trapped in a Tesla

28 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When you’re getting out of an Uber, Tesla’s unintuitive door handle can embarrass you. In an emergency, getting out of the car quickly can be the ...

How Trump Got Obsessed with Autism

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why would Donald Trump rush to announce that Tylenol is a potential cause of autism, a claim unsupported by the research? Guest: Dan Diamond, White H...

Is A.I. Taking Your Job?

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re hunting for a job, the odds are increasingly likely you’ll have an interview with an artificial intelligence “recruiter.” And why no...

The Discourse | TikTok Ban: The Final Loop?

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

TikTok—which was supposed to be banned again on Wednesday but, again, isn’t—may be legal once more. The Trump administration says it’s meeting...

A Very Online Shooter

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the Charlie Kirk murder demonstrated, law enforcement, the government, and media all need more internet fluency. But their reactions in the wake of...

Her Daughter Killed Herself. Then She Saw the ChatGPT logs.

14 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After their daughter committed suicide, they found her ChatGPT log—and where artificial intelligence helped her write her suicide note. Guest:  ...

You Can't Escape the Charlie Kirk Video

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Graphic, violent videos like the shooting of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk circulate across social media moments after they happen, finding an audien...

End of an Electric Avenue

07 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An Inflation Reduction Act subsidy for electric vehicles is being shut down by the Trump administration at the end of September, and automakers are pr...

Is the A.I. Bubble Bursting?

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been told that artificial intelligence can write, code, generate images—it can do everything…except feasibly turn a profit. But investing ...

A24 Meets A.I.

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A24 rose from “small budget indie movie studio” to “one of the most respected brands in cinema” on a reputation for treating filmmakers like a...

The Great Celebrity Spotify Playlist Hack

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The playlists of dozens of high-level government officials and tech executives were suddenly broadcast to the world on a website called “the Panama ...

Trump Vs. Cancer Research

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump has proposed cutting $2.5 billion from the National Cancer Institute, which in addition to cuts to the National Institutes of Health a...

The CDC Under Fire

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Two weeks ago, a gunman fired over 500 bullets at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building in Atlanta. Between the anti-public health r...

Down the Text-Scam Rabbit Hole

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The scam du jour arrives via a text message, offering you a job. What happens when you accept? Guest: Alex Sammon, Slate features writer.  Want m...

Trump Dips into NVIDIA’s Chips

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jensen Huang, cofounder of NVIDIA, finds himself president of a $4 trillion company, at the forefront of A.I. technology, and, consequently, something...

Here Comes the A.I. Music Slop

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s hard to make money in the music industry. But if you could flood every streamer with hundreds of “original” songs without having to, you kn...

What Happened After Meta Fired Its Fact-Checkers

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was moving from employing professional fact-checkers to letting its users fact-check each other. If yo...

The A.I. Data Center Push That Wasn't

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, flanked by President Trump and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, announced a hugely ambitious investment in data centers across Ameri...

The Death of an Online Whisper Network

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A shadow app for the dating world had its data hacked and exposed, and it laid bare the perils of creating safe spaces for women online — and of rel...

Dupes!

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, skin care, even Greek Islands—and delivering you a cheaper knoc...

A Colbert Report

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Was the Late Show too unprofitable, or too political? Guest: Eric Deggans, NPR TV critic and media analyst, Knight Chair, Journalism and Media Ethics...

When Bots Go Nazi

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s kind of strange that Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot, went full Nazi a few weeks ago, and is just…still out there. But, then again, how are you s...

How The Epstein Files Blew Up MAGAworld

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The MAGA world has been waiting for Jeffrey Epstein’s client list to be released since the first Trump administration. But with those like Kash Pate...

When A.I. is Sycophantic

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

He started using ChatGPT to help with spreadsheets. But their relationship took a turn, and before long it was telling him he could leap off a 19-stor...

Hot Measles Summer

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a record-breaking year for America: we’ve now had the most reported cases of measles since the disease was declared “eradicated” in 2000....

How A.I. Lost (and Won) the Big Beautiful Debate

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the One Big Beautiful Bill bounced around Congress, one provision—the 10-year moratorium on states making laws to regulate artificial intelligenc...

Rerun: Death of the Weather Forecast?

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode was originally published on April 27, 2025.  The Trump administration has already begun cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad...

The FTC’s Merger Shakedown

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Under a normal administration, a merger between two large advertising firms might attract the government’s interest for anti-monopoly reasons. Under...

The Other Iran-Israel War

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In addition to the three-dimensional war of bombs and missiles, Iran and Israel—and the US—are squaring off in a cyber battle. With everything fro...

Airlines Are Selling Your Data to the Government

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

ARC, the data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, has been selling domestic flight data in the US to Customs and Border Protection. But in...

We Deport. You Laugh?

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration's anti-immigration campaign has become defined by distasteful memes that gleefully portray the mass deportations being carrie...

Summer Travel Tips To Not Get Detained

15 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A guide to keeping your phone, and your digital life, safe when you’re crossing the border. Guest: Lily Hay Newman, senior writer for WIRED coverin...

New DOGE, New Tricks

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elon Musk has ridden off into the sunset acrimoniously (maybe), but the Department of Government Efficiency is just getting started. Will DOGE continu...