On the Media
Summary: The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Host Brooke Gladstone examines threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
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- Artist: WNYC Studios
- Copyright: © WNYC
Podcasts:
A breaking news consumer's handbook for plane crashes, the challenges of choosing the right words in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and humor when the news is bleak.
Whether you think the internet is a great or terrible place is partly a reflection of which parts of the internet you choose to visit. It's also a reflection of who you are, and how people online react to you. Mikki Kendall is a writer who deals with an extraordinary amount of trolling and vitriol online. Mikki is a black woman in real life, and she created an experiment to see how her online life would change if she were a white man.
How a pill called Truvada is changing the face of gay sex, reporting on every gun death in America, and why Central Americans continue to make the perilous journey north.
This is a repeat of TLDR #8. This episode contains some explicit language. This week, we investigate one of the few internet hoaxes we actually deeply enjoyed being fooled by -- about a social media bot for Pace Picante Salsa going insane and inadvertently revealing an entire world of corporate conspiracy. We talk to the comedian behind the hoax, Randy Liedtke, who has his own very funny podcast called The Bone Zone.
A CIA agent gets fired over a FOIA request, the truth behind the current immigration crisis, and the Chicago Tribune’s overnight crime reporter on covering endless shootings.
This is a repeat of TLDR #2. Christopher Hermelin has a project called "The Roving Typist," where he writes stories for people in the park on his typewriter. One day last summer, he found his photo posted to Reddit, and suddenly his image was the butt of jokes all over the internet. We talked to him about what it feels like to become a meme.
An exploration of Hispanic media today, including the remaking of popular American shows into Spanish, a conversation with Hispanic TV's star newscaster, and a challenge to Bob and Brooke to discuss it all without sucking.
Last month, documents surfaced that showed a company called the Internet Research Agency was paying people in Russia to go to an office and post pro-Kremlin comments all day. Alex talks to Buzzfeed's Max Seddon about why they do it, and how successful they actually are at swaying public opinion.
How the suppression of a free press in Egypt is reversing the course of the Arab Spring, challenging the conventional wisdom on student debt, a defense of True Crime, and more.
ISIS's Twitter and television offensive, the effects of language on your morals, and what NPR is and what it isn't.
Rob Dubbin accidentally built a teenage girl named Olivia Taters who lives on the internet. She may not always communicate in complete sentences, but she's convincing enough that teenagers actually converse with her. Also, she's very, very funny. PJ talks to Dubbin about how Olivia came into existence, and what she's been talking about lately.
This week On the Media analyzes the Bowe Bergdahl controversy - the story of a prisoner exchange that has quickly become a partisan issue. Plus, a conversation with the creator of Slender Man - the online horror meme at the center of at least two deadly assaults.
In February of this year, Philip Welsh of Silver Spring, Maryland, was murdered. His murder remains unsolved, largely because he didn't use the internet, and left no digital trail. Alex talks to Philip's family and reporter Dan Morse about the case. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. If you'd like to hear more of Josh Welsh's band Meatyard, they're on iTunes, Spotify, and SoundCloud. And if you have any information about the murder of Philip Welsh, please call the Montgomery County Police Department at 240-773-5070.
Our fluctuating interest in Snowden and his leaks one year later, your digital life after death, and the viral photo fiction that changed Tom Cruise's career.
A couple weeks ago, Matt Haughey, the founder of TLDR's favorite website, Metafilter, announced that his website is dying. And he says it's because Google algorithmically stopped directing traffic to the site over a year ago. Alex tries to figure out what you do when Google's algorithm decides it no longer likes you. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.
