One influencer working for Amazon sued another influencer who works for Amazon for creating content that looks too similar to theirs. But with how the algorithms work and reward, was this an inevitability? What does this mean for the economics of the influencer position?

Guest: Mia Sato, reporter covering platforms and communities for The Verge.

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Reports of flocks of drones, flying overhead nightly, are coming in from New Jersey down to Maryland. Are they UFOs? Nefarious foreign powers? Something even more pernicious? Something even more banal?

Guest: Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of The Air Current.

Ben Mathis-Lilly, Slate senior writer

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Our lives, and our communication in particular, are increasingly conducted over the internet. This means we are increasingly able to be hacked and monitored, by governments, by the police, and more and more by anyone who can get their hands on the available software.

Guest: Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and producer of the Max documentary “Surveilled.”

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Cheyna Roth, and Ethan Oberman.

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Elon Musk has been down in Florida with Donald Trump, inviting his fellow rich Silicon Valley friends to stop by and weigh in on the next administration. How could policy and personnel be shaped by this input from successful (if totally inexperienced in government) individuals?

Guest: Teddy Schleifer, covering politics for the New York Times.

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Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.

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Spotify is shaping listening habits, so much so that musicians are shaping themselves for Spotify. It makes your musical world a little more prescribed, a little smaller. 

If it feels like everything’s getting a little stale, how do we get out?

Guest: Tiffany Ng, culture and tech writer.

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From Dr. Oz to RFK Jr. to Donald Trump himself—the incoming administration looks like it will be populated with pitchmen and influencers. Will anyone take steps to divest from their businesses or avoid conflicts of interest—or will everyone just follow Trump’s lead from last time? 

Guest: Drew Harwell, tech reporter for the Washington Post. 

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Anyone stuck in a knotted snarl of interstate clovers knows that GPS is both important and imperfect. But if GPS fails while you’re bringing a 737 in for a landing it could be catastrophic. 

Why is “GPS spoofing” on the rise—and how can airlines protect their flights against being caught up in conflict zones.

Guest: Drew FitzGerald, telecom reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.

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Whatever X is, it ain’t the Twitter so many users fell in love with. Since the election, Bluesky has been on the rise, but it’s still only a fraction of the number of users on Twitter—at its peak or even now—or even fellow upstart Threads. 

Is Bluesky set to take over the role Twitter used to play, or is it just one of many networks in a Balkanized social media landscape? 

Guest: Will Oremus, a technology writer for the Washington Post

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Last May, a 12-year-old with sickle cell anemia was the first person to receive a new gene therapy to treat the disease. The process is painful, expensive, and still frightening and uncertain, but biomedical researchers are cautiously calling it a “cure.”

Guests:

Gina Kolata, medical reporter for the New York Times

Deb and Keith Cromer, parents to Kendric Cromer, the first person in the world to go through a commercially approved gene therapy for sickle cell anemia.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.

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The Department of Justice has released its recommendations for how Google’s monopoly on web search should be broken up. Top of their wishlist? Spinning off their web browser Chrome. 

But with a new administration coming to the White House, will Google have to comply?

Guest: Leah Nylen, antitrust reporter for Bloomberg News

Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.

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Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter—er, sorry “X”—has been slowly deflating. But given that soon you’ll be getting yelled at by right-wing trolls directly from White House press briefings, and your data is being swept up to train A.I., is there any reason to stay on the site at all anymore? 

Guest: Nitish Pahwa, Slate business writer.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Alyssa Jeong Perry.

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