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Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week: Fed governor Lisa Cook is suing the Trump administration over her dismissal. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, along with guest Kashmir Hill of The New York Times, discuss the weak fraud case being used to oust the Biden-appointed Fed governor and its significance in the fight to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve. Then, Kashmir goes in depth on the many stories she’s reported on lately of people forming intense relationships with AI chatbots that lead to dire consequences including psychosis and death. She and the hosts discuss the role of this new technology in our society, the unknowable consequences of its unchecked ubiquity, and what can be done to protect users from potential dangers. From the Numbers Round: Emily’s Birthday Pancakes PLEASE NOTE: There is discussion of suicide in this episode. If you are in need of help, 988 is the three-digit, nationwide phone number to connect directly to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Text, call, or chat 988. In the Slate Plus episode: Big Money on Taylor & Travis Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week.
0:18.4	I'm Felix Salmon. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires. It's New York Times.
0:21.8	Hello. I'm here with Emily Peck, with Axios. Hello.
0:25.5	Emily has some fabulous news that she's going to drop at the end of the show. It's huge and
0:30.2	awesome. But before we get there, we first need to introduce the one and only Cashmeat Hill.
0:36.2	Cash, welcome. Thank you for having me. Cash, we love having you on this show, but for those of us who
0:43.4	don't remember the last time you're on, who are you? What do you do? I'm Kashmir Hill. I am a
0:48.6	features writer slash technology reporter at the New York Times. And you have been on a tear. You had,
0:54.1	what, three stories published in a week or something?
0:58.0	Yeah, usually I publish like one story a month, so I'm exhausted. I'm glad people can't see me on the Zoom because my hair looks crazy.
1:04.0	I've got like bags under my eyes. It's been a month.
1:07.0	It's been a month, but we are all the better for it. You've done an amazing amount of reporting
1:11.4	on us chatbots and suicide and big deep issues like that, which we are going to talk about.
1:17.5	We do, of course, need to talk about Fed independence as well, and this attack on Lisa Cook,
1:23.2	who's a Fed governor by President Trump, who's tried to fire her. So we're going to talk about all of that.
1:28.6	We have a sleep-lust segment on Taylor Swift, of course, because we have to.
1:32.4	There's a rule about that.
1:33.4	It's all coming up on Slate Money.
1:40.2	I need posters, socials, and a presentation by Friday.
1:44.6	Oh, I'm swamped.
1:46.0	Try Adobe Express.
1:47.8	It's fast with thousands of high-quality templates, stock images and fonts.
	...

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