On the Media

It’s been one year since the armed insurrection at the Capitol, what do we know now about how it happened? On this week’s On the Media, hear about the signs that reveal militia groups were preparing for that day — or something like it — long before January 6th. Plus, how the attack may have transformed the far-right in America.  1.  OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [ @MicahLoewinger ] on the efforts t...

In 2013, 26-year-old software developer and political activist   Aaron Swartz  died by suicide. He had been indicted on federal charges after illegally downloading 4.8 million articles from JSTOR, a database of academic journals, and potentially faced a million dollar fine and decades in jail. While his death made headline news, Swartz had long been an Internet folk hero and a fierce advocate for...

Should we cancel the word “cancel”?   On  this week’s On the Media, find out who benefits from the newest culture scare, and a history of "cancellation." Plus, hear how three women reporters covered the Vietnam War against all odds. 1. Michael Hobbes [ @RottenInDenmark ], co-host of Maintenance Phase, on the anecdotes that fuel "political correctness" and "cancel culture" panics.   Listen.   2. Er...

Basketball Hall of Famer Walt "Clyde" Frazier made a successful transition from NBA star to sports broadcaster on the MSG Network. With his cool rhymes and even cooler clothes,   Frazier sat down with Brooke for a live event  in 2013  to discuss basketball, broadcasting, and the art of being cool. This segment originally aired in our March 29, 2013 program, "Culture and the Courts, The Legacy of R...

On this week’s On the Media, a look at the journalists and newspapers we lost in 2021, and hopes for the press in the year ahead. Plus, is the ever-popular genre of true crime good for us? And the mob gets a podcast.  1. Micah Loewinger [ @micahloewinger ], tells Brooke about a year of newspaper closures, murdered journalists, and the end of the Trump Bump. Listen. 2. Emma Berquist [ @eeberquist ]...

Merry Christmas, to those who celebrate! To those who don't (and, aw heck, to those who do too) we offer a   very   special end-of-year gift: fear. More specifically, Brooke's greatest fears, courtesy of our WNYC colleagues   10 Things That Scare Me . Fear is a subject — and experience — near and dear to our beloved Brooke, so we can assure you that this is not a conversation to skip.  On the Medi...

Text messages obtained by the January 6 commission revealed the panic of Fox News hosts — even as they downplayed the insurrection on camera. On this week’s On the Media, how to hold the news station accountable. Plus, an investigation of the celebrity profile – from the biting to the banal. Angelo Carusone [ @GoAngelo ], President and CEO of Media Matters, explains what the new January 6th revela...

Write a great book and you're a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you're a visionary. Turn a great film into a book...that's another story. Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings -- some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them -- but respected they are not. Instead, they're assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movi...

Amid the so-called Great Resignation, nearly 39 million Americans have left their jobs. On this week’s On The Media, hear why this trend is a logical response to the cult of work. Plus, when technology makes our jobs harder, maybe being a 'luddite' isn't such a bad thing.  1. Sarah Jaffe [ @sarahljaffe ] , journalist and author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploit...

Tonight at 7pm ET, join Brooke, the OTM staff, and other listeners from around the country for our first ever Zoom trivia night! Flex your knowledge of the show for a chance to win some sweet prizes including hats hand-crocheted by Brooke herself.  All you gotta do to participate is   become a sustaining member. Click this link.   Or, text the letters O T M to 70101. That’s the money that powers o...

By now, the new coronavirus variant has been detected in dozens of countries – including the U.S. On this week’s On the Media, hear what pigeons can tell us about how to react to the omicron variant. Plus, why we should know the names of the scientists in Botswana, South Africa, and Hong Kong who found the new strain. And what rights we do, and don't, have when it comes to when we die.  1. Katheri...

This week is Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day festival of lights. With its emphasis on present-giving, dreidel games and sweet treats, the holiday seems to be oriented towards kids. Even the story of Hanukkah has had its edges shaved down over time. Ostensibly, the holiday is a celebration of a victory against an oppressive Greek regime in Palestine over two thousand years ago, the miracle of oil tha...

Cassette tapes mostly gather dust these days. But back in their heyday, they fundamentally changed how we communicate, in ways we’re still making sense of today. On this week’s On the Media, hear how the cassette tape fueled the Iranian revolution, helped pierce the Iron Curtain, and put human connection in the palm of our hands. 1. Simon Goodwin on his innovation to broadcast computer software ov...

Last year at this time, 9 months into the pandemic, so many of us stayed separated from one another, missing out on all the gathering, yam-eating, relative-screaming, football-watching, insert-holiday-themed-cliche-here, of Thanksgiving. Not so this year. This year, vaxxed and tested and maybe even boosted, we gather once more. Like a bunch of gosh-darn superheroes.  And so, for this very special...

Politicians and pundits on the right are eager to pin rising rates of inflation on President Biden — but that misses the bigger picture. Plus, how scaremongering over 'critical race theory' is impacting elections, school boards and classrooms. And, how the stories we tell about our present shape what's possible for the future, from paid parental leave to immigration policy and beyond.  1. John Cas...

The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland concluded last weekend—the 26th “Conference of Parties.”  After more than two decades of these promises, it’s worth wondering how much of this is all just hot air. According to the non-profit Climate Action Tracker, not a single country is on target to meet the COP21 pledge, also known as the Paris Climate Accords, and many aren’t even on target for the...

Twenty months since the start of the pandemic, economic recovery has been uneven at best. This week, On the Media takes a look at one sector that’s been booming: cryptocurrency and, in particular, NFTs. Hear how a technology invented to give artists more control over their work has become a tool for speculators hoping to win big. 1. Anil Dash [ @anildash ], CEO of Glitch, helps explain the origin...

The satire site   The Babylon Bee,   a conservative Christian answer to   The Onion,   stirred controversy when some readers mistook its headlines for misinformation. In this episode of WNYC/The Atlantic's The Experiment ,  religion reporter Emma Green sits down with the editor-in-chief, Kyle Mann, to talk about where he draws the line between making a joke and doing harm, and to understand what h...

For decades, Silicon Valley leaders have been borrowing ideas from science fiction — from the metaverse to the latest tech gadgets. On this week’s show, hear why they might need to start reading their source material more closely. Also, why the midterm election results tell us so little about what’s coming next in American politics. And a forgotten behemoth of American literature gets a closer loo...

700,000. That’s the latest COVID death count to dominate a headline in the United States. Over the last 19 months, we’ve seen a steady trickle of these morbid milestones in the news. They are one way to measure, and try to understand, the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the world of journalism, death is a metric that’s important. It indicates significance, newsworthiness, and tragedy.  But death is also an...

This week, On the Media takes a deep dive into the "No Compromise" gun rights movement. Its members see the NRA as too amenable to gun control measures. Follow reporters Lisa Hagen and Chris Haxel on their journey to understand how 3 brothers used a network of Facebook pages to grow their following with some startling results.  Part 1: A World Where The NRA Is Soft On Guns. Listen. Part 2: The Fac...

True crime is incredibly popular. Whether it's books, movies, television shows, or podcasts, stories that play to our deepest fears and most sensational imaginations command large audiences. The genre, when done poorly, can also aggravate our misconceptions and biases about crime.  But true crime, at its best, offers something most of us can’t turn down, despite our better instincts — the chance t...

From boosters to breakthrough infections, pandemic vocabulary is still all over the news. On this week’s On the Media, why the terms we use to talk about the virus obscure as much as they reveal. And, why the history of medical progress is filled with so many twists and turns. Plus, why a preference for simple stories has made it so hard to keep track of the pandemic.  1. Katherine J. Wu  [ @Kathe...

Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs chairman, and omnipresence in American foreign policy for the past 20 years, died on Monday from complications from COVID-19. He was 84-years-old and been sick for years with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer.  Colin Powell was many things to many people. A symbol of the American dream. The public voice — for a time — of the Iraq War. A so-...

Have you been wondering exactly what it means to Build Back Better? On this week’s On the Media, hear why political coverage seems to address everything about Joe Biden’s bill--except what’s in it. Plus,  find out if   social media  really   does   turn nice people into trolls. 1.  Andrew Prokop [ @awprokop ], Senior Politics Correspondent at Vox, on the gap between political coverage of the Build...