SchadenFriday: Is the Pope Girlbossing AI?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s a bit of an overstatement to say “the Pope came out as anti-A.I.” with last week’s encyclical—after all, Anthropic’s cofounder was there for the release. So what did the Chicago Pope actually say, what was he doing with his encyclical, and what’s an encyclical anyway?
Guest: Lizzie O’Leary, host of What Next TBD
This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Patrick Fort, Rob Gunther and Paige Osburn.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Happy Friday Slaterers. Welcome back to another edition of Shadden Friday. These are our |
| 0:08.1 | Slate Plus exclusive conversations for when you want to laugh at the news instead of cry. |
| 0:14.1 | And there is so much going on in the world. So much that is not good. Stuff like Ebola spreading |
| 0:19.0 | at a breakneck pace in Congo. Stuff like the Iran war still |
| 0:23.5 | happening and kind of there's not a ceasefire and oil prices are rising. In mania of Graham |
| 0:29.1 | Platner with another scandal on his hands, we have so much, so much. But we are not talking about that |
| 0:33.4 | here because this segment is about finding the joy. And over the past couple weeks, I feel like I found a little joy over the fact that the |
| 0:41.2 | Pope has begun grappling with AI in his first very long encyclical. |
| 0:47.1 | And that's why Lizzie O'Leary is here because Lizzie, you and the folks over at What Next |
| 0:52.8 | TBD know so much more about tech than I do. Truly. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Hi. It's actually really nice to get to hang out with you. I did not think that we would be talking about the Pope, but, you know, I just mean, like, in general, who knew that the Pope would be on my beat? |
| 1:11.8 | But you know what? |
| 1:28.6 | That guy is trying to be on everyone's beat. He's on it. He is trying to be on everyone's beat. They're like memes about Chicago Bob. He just did like a video about like sport and the World Cup and how it can like bring us together. And I'm like, you're really, you're just on all the things here. I mean, have you seen the pictures of him wearing old school nikes? |
| 1:29.1 | Yes. |
| 1:29.9 | Fesments. |
| 1:30.4 | Yeah. |
| 1:30.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:28.6 | They got to burn. us together and I'm like, you're really, you're just on all the things here. I mean, have you seen the pictures of him wearing old school Nikes? |
| 1:29.1 | Yes. |
| 1:29.9 | His vestments. |
| 1:30.4 | Yeah. They got to bring back the Pope Force one. Okay. Okay. I'm going to make you talk about the encyclical. It came out a couple weeks ago over the weekend, Memorial Day weekend. And I think if you were just reading the push notifications about it, you'd be forgiven for just thinking, |
| 1:48.8 | Hope really took on AI here, right? |
| 1:51.6 | Because this is a 42,000 word document. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 27 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.