On the Media

The eerie digital afterlife Elliot Rodger left behind, a former "tabloid hack" dishes about tabloids, and the brains behind #YesAllWomen

Most people use social networks to present themselves as happier than they really are - it's hard to get an honest read on anyone. But writer Charlie Warzel believes there's a secret method you can use to find out how someone is actually feeling online. On TLDR this week, we try to use Charlie's method to divine the secret heart of Drake, the rapper. Thanks for listening. Eric's tumblr, photos Drake liked, is here. Charlie writes about internet stuff here. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. Or Drake on Instagram.

Balancing visitor experience and harrowing tragedy at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, how the Chinese media are reacting to the Justice Department's hacker indictment, and the often head-spinning reporting of health news.

How Boko Haram caught the international media's attention, why The New York Times fired Jill Abramson, and a look back at joke censorship in the Soviet Union.

For OTM's special hour on Washington DC, Bob spoke with Armando Iannucci, the creator and executive producer of HBO's hit comedy "Veep." We liked that conversation so much, we decided to put up an extended cut here. Iannucci tells Bob about his fascination with American politics, how the show manages to capture the unglamorous details of the nation's capital, and why everyone inside the beltway claims to know a "Jonah," but no one claims to be one.

Kim Correa loves the online game DayZ, which lets you interact with other humans during a zombie apocalypse. DayZ's appeal is that it allows weird, spontaneous interactions between players. It also allows really terrible ones. Kim talks about her experience of being raped in a virtual world -- something she doesn't quite know what to do with. We also talk to writer Julian Dibbel, who wrote about how one online community dealt with a virtual rape back in 1993. You can read Kim's essay about her experience here. Julian Dibbel's piece about how one online community dealt with virtual rape is here. 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.

OTM has traveled the world exploring the nexus of media and society, reaching such far off places as Russia, China, and Egypt. But the center of American politics and power had been overlooked—until now. This week Bob travels to Washington, DC to investigate perception and reality, money and celebrity and the evolving role of the media in the nation’s capital.

In 2005, Alex Tew was a 21-year-old entrepreneur who wanted to make a million dollars before college. The only problem was he had literally nothing of value to sell. So he made The Million Dollar Homepage -- possibly the most ambitiously garish website ever created. 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.

A special hour of stories about reporting on medical science. The misreporting of the effect of vaccines on autism, tracking retractions in medical journals, and a century old hoax that went uncorrected for forty years.

When Wired reporter Andy Greenberg read Newsweek's cover story claiming to have found mysterious Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, he was disappointed. Not so much that the mystery had been solved, but that the answer to the search was not all that interesting. But then, as the Newsweek started getting picked apart, he got a tip about another possible Bitcoin creator: a very ill, very brilliant cryptographer named Hal Finney.  Andy Greenberg is the author of This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information. 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.

CNN's never-ending coverage of the lost Malaysian Airlines plane, an FCC blow to net neutrality, and why there are so many terrible political memoirs.

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.

A special theme hour - starring a computer competing against a comedian for laughs, the Army's recruitment chatbot, and Google crushing on robots. 

Continuing our expose into the very hush-hush world of Silence, we look at an app that promises to deliver you four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. PJ talks to Larry Larson, who helped design the 4'33" app.   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. Our favorite thing that we couldn't fit into this TLDR was this anecdote about John Cage and Merce Cunningham's relationship.

A fond farewell to Stephen Colbert's character, remembering the genocide in Rwanda 20 years ago, and a report on the skin lightening industry.