What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - The Great Celebrity Spotify Playlist Hack
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The playlists of dozens of high-level government officials and tech executives were suddenly broadcast to the world on a website called “the Panama Playlists.” But the information wasn’t taken by sophisticated hackers infiltrating any mainframes—it was all already publicly available.
Guest: Mike Isaac, New York Times Silicon Valley correspondent.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are some things you should always check, like the hygiene rating on your local takeaway, |
| 0:06.2 | the setting on your razor, and whether the party actually is fancy dress. |
| 0:11.1 | The other thing you should check is your Experian credit report, especially if you're looking to borrow money. |
| 0:17.2 | It lets you understand what lenders see, so you can increase your chances of getting the best deals. |
| 0:22.8 | It's dead easy to check it and completely free. |
| 0:26.6 | See it in seconds. Download the Experian app today. |
| 0:30.9 | The Monopoly game at McDonald's is back. |
| 0:33.6 | There's over two million pounds worth of cash prizes to be won. |
| 0:36.6 | And a chance to hit your hands on some epic prizes. |
| 0:39.7 | Go on. It's your go. |
| 0:43.0 | 18 plus UK ends 21st of October. |
| 0:45.5 | Selected menu items. |
| 0:46.4 | At may be required. |
| 0:47.3 | May depend on winning moment. |
| 0:48.5 | See victory rules.co.uk.uk.uk. |
| 0:53.3 | About a month ago, Mike Isaac, a tech reporter at the New York Times, received a strange message on his phone. |
| 1:02.9 | Yeah, it was actually, it was funny. It was like 10.30 at night. And it's basically just like this note out of nowhere, I'd do accept their request because I didn't know who it was. |
| 1:11.9 | And it was like, hey, Mike, just FYI, I've been scraping the, you know, open playlist data from a number of public figures for about a year now. |
| 1:22.7 | And created a website just to kind of show off how much of people's listening habits are public. |
| 1:29.4 | Oh, by the way, you're on it too. Take a look. |
| 1:32.5 | The website was called the Panama Playlists, a riff on the infamous Panama Papers, |
| 1:38.0 | a massive leak that exposed millions of financial records from big spenders using an offshore law firm. |
... |
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