For a very special holiday edition of What Next, Mary chats with Death Sex & Money host Anna Sale about the anthems they’ll be belting out the next time they do karaoke—and they take calls from colleagues and listeners about their own go-to barn-burners for this unsettled moment.

You can find all these anthems (and more) on one Spotify playlist here https://tinyurl.com/whatnextkaraoke

Guest: Anna Sale, host of Slate’s Death, Sex & Money

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Podcast production by Madeline Ducharme.

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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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How do you keep a grocery store open in a small or low-income community? The answer might involve regulating big box stores like Walmart and Kroger.

Guest: Molly Parker, investigative reporter for Capitol News Illinois and a Local Reporting Network fellow at ProPublica.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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What ABC’s huge defamation settlement with Donald Trump says about the state of the media, heading into Trump’s second term. 

Guest: David Folkenflik, media correspondent for NPR.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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After a tepid embrace of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and a back-and-forth over Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” country music fans are all in on Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” How has this hip-hop-inflected country hit perched atop the charts for a record-tying 19 weeks? 

Guest: Chris Molanphy, chart analyst, pop critic, host of the Hit Parade podcast, and author of Slate's “Why Is This Song No. 1?” series and the book Old Town Road.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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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The highest grossing documentary in 2024 was “Am I Racist?” from The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, and it’s not the only avowedly right-wing movie that’s enjoyed success at the box office this year. Is Hollywood going the way of the White House?

Guest: Barry Hertz, Deputy Arts Editor and Film Editor for The Globe and Mail

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Rob Gunther and Ethan Oberman.

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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.

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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The hunt for the new chair of the Democratic National Committee is on and the winning candidate will be the one that party officials believe can guide Democrats back to the White House. So who’s throwing their hat into the ring?

Guest: Gabriel Debenedetti is a national correspondent at New York Magazine and the author of The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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Daniel Penny’s trial over the death of Jordan Neely hinged on the question of how and when a “reasonable person” would feel threatened. Does the jury’s non-guilty verdict deliver a clear answer? 

Guest: Katie Way, writer-editor at Hell Gate.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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Last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO prompted an outpouring of glee online. A look into UnitedHealthcare’s business practices—and the American healthcare system as a whole—can help explain why.

Guest: Dan Diamond, national health reporter for The Washington Post.

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther. 

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