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America is one nation under the fear of an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a food-borne illness that has given thousands “explosive diarrhea.” Where did it come from? What can you do to avoid it? And how will it end?

Guest: Nicholas Florko, staff writer at The Atlantic

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Podcast production by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.

Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.
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Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most played, purchased and praised albums of all time. Yet its enduring legacy might be its supernatural chart longevity. Officially, the 1973 long-player has spent nearly a thousand weeks on the Billboard album chart. But that number probably understates its past performance, not to mention its future potential, with new generations of teenagers discovering Dark Side every year

Join Chris Molanphy as he explores Pink Floyd's deathless totem and traces the band’s evolution from ’60s psychedelic curios to dorm-room poster icons. Will Dark Side be able to hold onto the all-time Billboard record into the 2030s?

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.

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Most of us use GPS—the Global Positioning System—on a daily basis: to find our location when we’re driving, running, shopping, dating, and so much more. But GPS is even more important, and more vulnerable, than you think.

In the last few years, GPS interference has been reported all over the world, from war zones to shipping routes to public squares. What was once the fanciful plot of a Bond movie—bad guy manipulates GPS to start World War III—is increasingly plausible. How did the world come to rely so heavily on such an unreliable system?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin talks to journalist Katherine Dunn, author of the new book Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World. You’ll learn how GPS works, why it was created, how it became so ubiquitous, and why it’s now under attack. You’ll also hear from Dr. Todd Humphreys, an aerospace engineer who manipulated GPS to trick an $85 million superyacht into following his direction—for science, of course.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode
Burgess, Matt. “When a tanker vanishes, all the evidence points to Russia,” WIRED, Sep. 21, 2017.
Dunn, Katherine. Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026.
Dunn, Katherine. “How to Hack a Superyacht,” The Walrus, Jun. 13, 2026.
Hopper, Nate. “The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time,” The New Yorker, Sep. 30, 2022.
Hopper, Nate. “The Timekeeper of Ukraine,” The Atlantic, Sep. 21, 2024.
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Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have expanded from letting people bet on just sports to everything from political events to reality TV, and even the weather. But by injecting financial incentives into things like disease outbreaks, we’re even more susceptible to bad actors and manipulation. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by creator Austin Evans to talk about the spread of prediction markets, and how a tool once believed to help us make sense of society ended up making everything even more chaotic.

***GET TICKETS TO OUR LIVE SHOW HERE!!!!***

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Todd Blanche’s hearing to become US Attorney General has begun. With a resume that includes the president’s $1.8 billion slush fund and, uh, the “handling” of the Epstein files, what could they possibly have to talk about?

Guest: Harry Litman, former US attorney, former deputy assistant attorney general, host of Talking Feds, the podcast and Substack

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across 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.

Podcast production by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.

Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.