On the Media
Episodes
Ghosts
25 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This election season, the media frequently looked to history in an attempt to explain the rise of Donald Trump. We consider how historical parallels d...
Thanks for Everything, Bing
23 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, Brooke spoke with the writer Paul Ford about the remarkable connection between Bing Crosby, magnetic tape, Nazi technology, and t...
Unreal
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the months leading up to the election, some fake news stories generated more engagement on Facebook than real news stories. We consider the lands...
When Real Police Shootings Look Nothing Like The Movies
16 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
According to The Washington Post, more than 800 people have been shot and killed by police officers in the United States this year. As videos of m...
Wrong Number
11 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The press didn’t see it coming. Or did they? This week, we examine the role of data – and delusion – in this election. Nate Silver reflects on ...
Now What?
09 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It's the morning after in the offices of On the Media. Usually editorial meetings take place in Brooke's office with Bob dialed in on the conference p...
On Shaky Ground
04 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The months-long protest against the North Dakota Access Pipeline finally received mainstream attention this week after a misdirection campaign on Face...
Debunking the AIDS "Patient Zero" Myth
02 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most enduring myths of HIV/AIDS history has finally been laid to rest. The so-called "patient zero," a Canadian flight attendant named Gaé...
Poor Judgment
28 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump camp is pointing to "oversampling" in the polls as the latest sign that the election is rigged against him. But the pollsters say that's no...
FiveThirtyEight presents: The Perot Condundrum
25 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since his 1992 dark horse candidacy captured nearly 19% of the popular vote, there have been arguments over the real role of Ross Perot. Was h...
The System Is Rigged
21 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
By now you know that Donald Trump likes to claim that the media, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and dead voters are among those rigging the election a...
Mike Pesca Goes Back to the Spin Room
20 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Pesca is the host of Slate's "The Gist." He braved the post-debate spin room again to bring us this report. On the Media is supported by liste...
Race, Class, and the United States of Anxiety
19 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of an election that has exposed deep and sometimes ugly rifts in American society, WNYC and The Nation have partnered for a new podcast ...
Race to the Bottom
14 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump deflected questions about sexual assault allegations at the second presidential debate by bringing up the ever-looming threat of ISIS...
The United States of Anxiety
12 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of an election that has exposed deep and sometimes ugly rifts in American society, WNYC and The Nation have partnered for a new podcast ...
Personal Responsibility
07 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump and his surrogates say he's a genius for using the tax code to avoid paying taxes. Does the public agree? We examine the complicated h...
War, Peace... and Clowns
05 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In this bite-sized OTM, Bob looks at two important news stories that we won't be able to fit into the full-sized OTM this weekend. First: this weeke...
Do Better
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Five years into the war in Syria, we examine whether calling the latest horrors "war crimes" will have any effect. Also, why the biggest story fol...
Mike Pesca Went to the Spin Room
27 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Pesca is the host of Slate's "The Gist." He braved the post-debate spin room to bring us this report. On the Media is supported by listeners li...
Freedom of Information
23 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Three weeks into what’s being called the US’s biggest prison strike ever, very little information has trickled through the razor wire. We examine...
The Short-Fingered Vulgarian!
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Spy magazine coined the term "short-fingered vulgarian" in the 80's to describe Donald Trump and it still really, really annoys him. On this podcast e...
Damned If You Do...
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This election may be remembered as the moment when a nebulous and formerly obscure white supremacist movement known as the "alt-right" was launched i...
After 9/11, Nothing Was Funny
14 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the days and weeks after the towers fell, nothing felt funny anymore. Comedians on late night TV and in the comedy clubs of New York questioned the...
After The Facts
09 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Critics have long viewed Hillary Clinton as untrustworthy and dishonest. This week, we revisit a crucial moment nearly 25 years ago that helped set ...
Brooke Gladstone Is a Trekker
07 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1966, Gene Roddenberry dispatched the crew of the Starship Enterprise on its maiden voyage through space and time and into the American l...
Kids These Days
01 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A University of Chicago welcome letter criticizing political correctness on college campuses reignited vigorous debate. An examination of the value of...
Bob's Grill #5: Former CNN President Jon Klein
31 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It's the latest and last installment of Bob's Grill, and we've got a special guest chef (it's Brooke). The year was 2005, and CNN was focused on a b...
Define "Normal"
26 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Right-wing rumors about Hillary Clinton's health have made their way into the mainstream media, but it's hardly the first time a candidate's health ha...
Bob's Grill #4: ExxonMobil's Richard Keil
24 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We return to Bob's Grill this week with a 2015 interview with ExxonMobil's Richard Keil, the company's senior adviser for global public affairs. Las...
Print Is Back, Back Again
19 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A special hour on the publishing industry and the resurgence of print--from Amazon’s flirtation with brick-and-mortar bookstores to the success of ...
Bob's Grill #3: James O'Keefe
17 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We return to Bob’s Grill this week with a 2011 interview with “sting operation” videographer James O’Keefe, best known for his efforts to disc...
Magic 8 Ball
12 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Political commentators have repeatedly, reliably, been wrong this election season. There was the improbable Bernie Sanders. The inevitable Jeb Bush. T...
Bob's Grill #2: Hunter Moore
10 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Bob’s grill! Each week this August, you’re invited to join Bob in his backyard to fire up the barbecue and turn up the heat. But, on oc...
There Must Be Another Way
05 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Democratic Party and the media are fretting about whether the Green Party will splinter Democratic votes in November. This week, we look at the ...
Bob's Grill #1: Judith Miller
03 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ahhh, summer and grilling. They’re made for each other, right? That’s why all this August you're invited to Bob’s grill: a collection of interv...
A Failure of Imagination
29 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the DNC email scandal, reports are surfacing that Russian hackers are behind the hack. But as the media runs with a narrative about D...
The Sporkful: Campaign Edition
27 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Eating like a regular person when you’re on the campaign trail is hard. The cameras are in your face and they really, really want to see you drip gr...
Hostile Takeover
22 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The divide between the Black Lives Matter movement and the police is often portrayed as unbridgeable. This week: finding common ground and working on...
You Have To Laugh Not To Cry
20 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Brazil's crises have been very good for Sensacionalista, a site that's based on The Onion and now one of the most popular "news" sites in the countr...
The Country of the Future
15 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
OTM is in Brazil this week. We delve into the web of challenges ensnaring the country: a recession, crime waves, corruption scandals, the Zika virus.....
Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Bearing Witness Edition
11 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, were both captured on video. So were the de...
Lies, Lies, Lies
08 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This election season has been rife with misinformation, half-truths, and pure deceit... but lying in politics dates back centuries. This week we dev...
Now You See Me
01 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Brexit fallout continues. Before he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson covered the EU... badly. We hear how his reporting created a caricature of ...
From Rubella to Roe v. Wade
29 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the Supreme Court upheld constitutional protections for abortion rights. To mark the occasion we have a story about the history of aborti...
The Great Divide
24 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Democrats in the House of Representatives staged a dramatic sit-in this week to protest inaction on gun legislation, but are they just preaching to th...
'White Trash' and Class in America
22 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As the media have watched the ascent of Donald Trump with disbelief-going-on-horror, pundits have returned frequently to the question of who exactl...
Never Again, Again
17 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The aftermath of the Orlando shootings has been marked by grief...and also politics, with LGBT rights, gun control, and terrorism all vying for center...
The Challenge of Fighting Terrorism Online
15 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando has renewed calls for anti-terrorist action from politicians across the board. For presumptive Democratic n...
Sad!
10 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee the night before voters went to polls. We hear from the AP and consid...
Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl
08 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week we want to share with you a piece that we really liked from our friends at Radio Diaries. It’s a personal, revealing, surprising story to...
When To Believe
03 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week, a baby girl was born in New Jersey with microcephaly, a reminder that the Zika virus is not a distant threat. What is known and still unk...
The #FreeAustinTice Campaign
01 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last week’s show, “Kidnapped,” featured an interview with Debra and Marc Tice, parents of Austin Tice, the freelance American journalist who di...
Kidnapped
27 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The threat of kidnapping in Syria has made it one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. A special hour on how we get our news fr...
Covering the First Atomic Bombs
25 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week, President Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima. To mark the occasion, we're revisiting two segments we produ...
Ghosts
20 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Seventy-one years after the bombing, President Obama is set to be first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, raising questions that many are keen ...
How The "Fake News" Gets Made
18 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There’s comedy, and there’s news, and then there’s that amalgamation of the two -- call it satire or lampoonery or, in the parlance of Jon Stew...
Trending Topics
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What's worse: potentially biased humans controlling the news you see or a "neutral" algorithm? Accusations that Facebook's Trending Topics feature i...
FiveThirtyEight vs. the Data Detractors
11 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last Tuesday Donald Trump won the Indiana primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. In the days that followed, hands were wr...
The Center Cannot Hold
06 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, the nay-saying pundits have one last-ditch idea: a centrist third party candidate to save...
A Face in the Crowd
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The story of a man's rise from local media firebrand to out-sized TV personality superstar to political demagogue. Sound familiar? It's actually th...
In The Shadows
29 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich to stop Trump was over before it began, but it's just the latest in a long history of political plots....
Revisiting the Belfast Project
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Belfast Project is an archive of interviews with militia members from both sides of Ireland's "Troubles," the war that raged in Northern Ireland f...
On Shakespeare
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It's been four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare, and the Bard is as popular as ever... and just as mysterious. For centuries, a wa...
That NPR Thing
15 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With an aging listenership and the rise of podcasts, the future of NPR is thrown into question. Bob digs into the recent conversation about how the pu...
Little Pink Pill
13 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last August, Flibanserin -- or "Addyi" -- became the first FDA-approved drug aimed at treating sexual dysfunction in women. Sprout, the company that d...
Rolling In It
08 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One week after the Panama Papers thrust the shadowy world of the ultra-rich into the spotlight, the massive trove of data is still being sifted as wo...
Behind the Panama Papers
06 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Panama Papers is by sheer volume of documents the largest whistle-blower leak in history. With over 100 news organizations from over 80 countries ...
We Gotta Try Harder
01 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week President Obama criticized journalistic irresponsibility in a speech, but critics note that he has consistently worked to block press acce...
Is This Food Racist?
30 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How do our assumptions about people affect our assumptions about their food? And how do their assumptions about our food affect how we feel about ours...
Anywhere But Here
25 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
European Union leaders declared this week’s attack in Brussels an act of war; one former ISIS hostage says those declarations play into the terro...
Gawker, Hulk Hogan, and the First Amendment
24 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A jury in St. Petersburg, Florida, found that Gawker Media must pay $140 million in damages to the wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea). The c...
Party People
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For the first months of the Trump campaign, the media wondered incredulously, "What kind of person thinks he can act like that and get elected?" No...
The Body Of An American
16 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993, the photojournalist Paul Watson took three photographs of Somali dragging the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. A...
Print Is Back, Back Again
11 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A special hour on the publishing industry and the resurgence of print--from Amazon’s flirtation with brick-and-mortar bookstores to the success of ...
Predictile Dysfunction
04 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Political commentators have repeatedly, reliably, been wrong this election season. There was the improbable Bernie Sanders. The inevitable Jeb Bush. T...
Second Comes Right After First!
26 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
President Obama's latest attempt to close Guantanamo Bay prison has been met with fierce opposition from Congress. We look at what the prison has com...
The Supreme Court, Explained
18 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A political battle is raging over Justice Scalia's replacement on the high court. But what does the public really know about how the court operates? W...
The Zika Effect
12 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The threat of the Zika virus has been covered extensively, but the reality is still largely unknown. A look away from the panicked headlines at what ...
Dark Arts
05 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A former reporter turned opposition researcher offers an insider’s perspective on the work of unearthing political dirty secrets. Also, the real st...
The Elephant in the Room
29 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A certain candidate was conspicuously absent from this week's Republican debate. But Donald Trump's presence on conservative talk radio has never fl...
Bernie Sanders Is Running For President!
22 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Why did it take so long for Flint's water crisis to be acknowledged by local officials, let alone the national media? Plus: how '13 Hours' frames part...
Terms of Engagement
15 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A Mexican journalist reacts to Sean Penn's interview with the drug kingpin El Chapo; Bob offers his own thoughts, too. Plus: We check back in with ...
Common Sense
08 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
President Obama began the year with a plea for "common sense" gun safety but admitted that it won't be easy. We examine the myths and messages ...
Digital Dark Age
01 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What if, either by the slow creep of technological obsolescence or sudden cosmic disaster, we were cut off from our electronic records? On the Medi...
Politically Correct
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What you hear about the Paris climate agreement depends on whom you ask. We sort through the competing messages about what was achieved. Plus, how to...
Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Infectious Disease Edition
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When diseases like Swine Flu and Ebola infect cable news, panic takes over. We put together a template to help the discerning news consumer see throug...
To Your Health!
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A special hour on the dodgy world of health news, from scary studies and so-called “medical breakthroughs” to celebrity-endorsed miracle cures a...
Take Responsibility
11 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Some of Donald Trump's opponents have labeled him a demagogue - but are they right? And, if so, what is there to be done? Plus: Bob reflects on the ...
Lies, Lies, Lies
04 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump’s statements about Muslims cheering after 9/11 are just the latest in a long record of false claims. But if Trump is the most recen...
6 Months Later...
27 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the attacks in Paris, global terror threats, and renewed debate about mass surveillance and national security, we revisit our special...
The Language of Terror
20 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the emotion, fear, and confusion following an attack, a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook for the coverage of terrorism. Plus, the semantics s...
Feel This
13 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
OTM examines how the media try to reach us on an emotional level. We look at the New York Times' dive into virtual reality-inspired empathy, and ...
What Did Exxon Know?
11 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
ExxonMobil is under investigation by the New York State Attorney General for potentially misleading shareholders about the threat of climate change. T...
Gotcha!
06 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Republican presidential candidates try to reassert control over the debate process, but they can't quite agree on how. Plus: in praise of the "gotcha"...
Inside/Outside
30 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The launch of a collaboration between On the Media and Nate Silver’s 538 to track the push and pull between polling, media coverage, and publ...
Truth(ish)
23 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A farewell to coverage of Joe Biden's non-existent presidential campaign. Plus: clarifying the misleading language of drone warfare and what it says a...
Porn Politik
16 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Playboy has announced it will soon stop publishing full nudes. We look at the history of men's magazines and what it means that sex doesn't sell in pr...
Bench Press
09 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
OTM digs into the Supreme Court, an institution as secretive as it is powerful -- and how we understand it through the media. Plus: how regular peopl...
The Cancer Show
02 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last 2,500 years, cancer has shifted from a disease in the shadows to one at the center of scientific research and public discussion. On the...
Pope-ular Opinion
25 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
With Pope Francis in the US this week, we examine why pundits try so hard to assess the pontiff’s remarks through the lens of 2016 politics. Plus: ...