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Does Meta’s $17 billion (give or take) settlement address people’s concerns about social media and its impact on teenagers… or is it already too late?

Guest: Paresh Dave, senior writer for WIRED.

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Podcast production by 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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When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia?

What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical; Stephen Cole, co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler, longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
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This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss how a narrow Supreme Court majority used aesthetic standing to greenlight Trump's ballroom construction, why bond yields are rising around the world and how that impacts everyone with guest Jason Furman, and how the extradition showdown between Texas and Minnesota over an ICE officer involved in a shooting betrays fraying relations among the states.

Here are this week’s chatters:

Emily: Does Cutting Flower Stems Underwater Really Help?; Rachel Feltman for The Washington Post: How to keep fresh cut flowers from dying (with science)

John: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Line of Duty on Rotten Tomatoes; The Economist: What Democrats—and Republicans—can learn from Raphael Warnock; Lia Picard for Huffpost: The Hidden Health Benefits Of Eating Leftovers For Breakfast

David: Simon Ducroquet and John Ismay for The New York Times: The Logistics Nightmare Facing U.S. Warships; The Last Ship on Netflix

Listener chatter from Daniela Koontz in Houston, Texas: Anthropeum

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss Army secretary Dan Driscoll's resignation as the latest high-level Army official to run afoul of Pete Hegseth, whether Hegseth is capable of leading the military through a moment of real strain, and the increasing leaks from inside the Pentagon.

In the latest Gabfest Reads, David Plotz talks with John Lanchester about his new novel, Look What You Made Me Do, a darkly funny psychological thriller about two couples in modern-day London whose lives collide in a story of infidelity, obsession, and revenge. The book explores the performance of niceness, class, intergenerational frictions and how technology makes vengeance not just possible but almost exceedingly easy in the modern age.

Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Nina Porzucki

Research by Emily Ditto

You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.

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Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.

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Extraditing someone who was arrested in one state for a crime committed in another state is an extremely routine process—or at least it was. But an ICE officer charged in a shooting in Minnesota was arrested in Texas and, rather than being sent to Minnesota for trial, he was simply released 90 days later.

Guest: Quinta Jurecic, staff writer at The Atlantic.

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 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.

The rise of AI has led to a rise of distrust, but the “tools” used to identify AI and plagiarism are perpetuating preexisting biases. Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor who was found dead in his home last month, is the latest in a string of headline-making scandals targeting writers and academics of color, while white infractors fall quickly out of the news cycle. In today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by The Drey Dossier to discuss why plagiarism and AI accusations are our weapon of the moment, and why institutions, not individuals, should bear the brunt of our frustrations.

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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